>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC ^M00:00:03 [ Silence ] ^M00:00:23 >> Good afternoon. I'm Jan Lauridsen, Assistant Chief of The Music Division here at the Library of Congress. Welcome to today's lecture sponsored jointly by The Music Division and The American Musicological Society. It's one in a series of lectures that was started in 2008 to highlight and publicize the work of AMS members who have conducted research in our collections. Today's speaker Professor Carol Hess worked extensively in one of our premier collections The Aaron Copland Collection. Today's lecture as well as any student piercing questions or comments that you have at the end are all going to be recorded and webcast on the library's website. Here to introduce today's speaker is Christopher Reynolds, Professor of Musicology at UC Davis, and President of the American Musicological Society. ^M00:01:33 [ Applause ] ^M00:01:44 >> It's a pleasure to be in Coolidge Auditorium for a presentation by distinguished member of the American Musicological Society. We are deeply grateful to-- that the music division of the Library of Congress provides such support and resources for our scholars, welcoming them into its remarkable collections and providing such a lovely venue for them to present the fruits of their research to the public. Today I have the pleasure of introducing one of our distinguished members Carol Hess, who will speak about her recent study of Aaron Copland and cultural interactions between the United States and Latin America. Twice the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, once to Spain and once to Argentina, Carol Hess is now Professor of Music at the University of California Davis and it gives me particular pleasure to say that because that makes her my colleague. She is an uncommonly prolific and wide ranging scholar who launched her career with a book on the Spanish composer Manuel De Falla, a book which won four awards including the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award and the Robert Stevenson prize presented by the American Musicological Society for outstanding scholarship in Iberian music. Professor Hess's work engages sweeping questions about music, identity, and the way we think about music history. Yet it does so in ways that are solidly grounded in historical detail and there are intended to the many different perspectives between North and South American musicians, critics, and government officials. Coming closer to the issues of today's lecture, Carol's third book Representing the Good Neighbor Music Difference in the Pan-American Dream is changing the way we think about music historiography not just in the America's, but generally because of the attention she pays to the historical context of our Latin American relations. Rather than focusing on differences between music composed in the United States and Latin America in the mid-20th century, Carol considers the numerous areas of shared musical values. Today Professor Hess will lecture on Copland as Good Neighbor. Please join me in welcoming Carol Hess. ^M00:04:10 [ Applause ] ^M00:04:23 >> Thank you Professor Reynolds. I'd also like to thank the efficient and good humored staff of the Performing Arts Reading Room at the Library of Congress, the Music Division, The Copland Fund for granting permission for some of the images you are about to see, The National Endowment for the Humanities for funding my work in the Copland collection, Catholic University, which has also hosted me during this visit to Washington, The Hispanic Cultural Society, Songs of America, and of course the American Musicological Society for making these lectures possible. In March 1933 when Hitler had been in power for just six weeks, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his inaugural address. Fascism loomed, European markets threatened to dry up and it seemed like the world once might again stumble into war. The America's had to unite, accordingly, President Roosevelt explained his concept of the Good Neighbor. "One who resolutely respects himself and because he does so respects the rights of others, the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors." Weeks later, on April 14, then known as Pan-American Day, the President elaborated further alluding to effective bonds among the Americas. "Your Pan-Americanism and mine" he declared "finds it source in being in the hearts of men and dwells in the temple of the intellect." In fact Pan-Americanism, the idea that the Americas are bound by geography, common interest, and a shared history had existed for over 100 years. Since the early 19th century when both the Monroe Doctrine and Simon Bolivar's vision of Pan-Latin American unity were crafted, North-South relations had been anything but harmonious however. But on the eve of World War II, President Roosevelt gave Pan-Americanism new life through the Good Neighbor Policy. A series of economic, commercial, and cultural initiatives intended to promote hemispheric solidarity. It's the cultural dimension of the Good Neighbor Policy that interests us today as we look at the career of the U.S. composer Aaron Copland. To date Copland is well-known to concert audiences to dance Officio Neveus. In 1944 his ballet Appalachian Spring premiered in this very auditorium. And to movie buffs for his numerous film scores and to readers to his various books and essays on music. Recently however, musicologists have begun to access his activities in cultural diplomacy. A pursuit of the United States took an especially seriously from mid-century on. Between 1941 and 1978 Copland made 13 government sponsored tours in which he met composers from other countries and performed his own works along with those of other U.S. composers. As such, he practiced soft power. That is his various activities suggested that the U.S. could be as viable a cultural presence as it was an economic and military one. Musicologists working on Copland's cultural diplomacy have largely concentrated on the East West divide after the war, tracking the composer's visits to West Germany or the former Soviet Union for example. It was during the Good Neighbor period that cultural diplomacy in the United States was officially launched. As we'll see when we begin examining the materials from the Aaron Copland Collection of the Library of Congress, Copland was the right man at the right time. Prior to 1938 when the division of cultural relations was established, cultural diplomacy was more or less an ad hoc operation in the United States. But in the 1930's it took on new urgency and Latin America proved a testing ground. With one cultural official remarking, "the door seemed open wider in Latin America then elsewhere. Of course the very concept of cultural diplomacy raises questions. Is it primarily the endeavor to unite diverse peoples through deeply felt experiences of art? Is it the means by which one country promotes to other nations or perhaps tries to impose upon them its own cultural values?" Such matters are especially compelling when we consider them in terms of music. A non-representational art that in most instances lacks explicitly significance. None the less, listeners are quick to attach meaning to musical works, meanings that may vary from one nation's state, region or political constituency to another. In short, the adage "music is the universal language. Widely proclaimed by performers, music appreciation teachers and government officials is tested whenever musicians take up the duties of cultural diplomacy. How do the engineers of the Good Neighbor policy convince others of what would come to be known as Western Hemisphere Culture? For one thing they built on the fact that in the aftermath of World War I when Europe lay in ruins many artists and intellectuals in the United States were eager to separate themselves from the Old World. These individuals articulated certain creation myths that they believed to apply to the Western Hemisphere. ^M00:09:59 Newness, freshness, a tabula rasa in comparison with exhausted Europe. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, urged U.S. Americans to study Spanish. In 1917 the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese was founded. In the 1920's at University of California at Berkley, Professor Herbert E. Bolton formulated what he called a "fresh new pedagogy of U.S. history" in which he stressed the unity of the Americas by expanding the creation story of the United States beyond the New England colonies to include Spanish speaking territories. Outside of Academia so called Mayan architecture was popular. The New York Times hailed it as quote "A new style which will be in every sense of the word indigenous in the New World." The Mayans themselves were proclaimed as the Greeks of the New World. And intellectuals such as author Waldo Frank waxed euphoric about the freshness of the Americas. Indeed the word freshness surfaces repeatedly. Under Roosevelt Pan-Americanism now packaged as the Good Neighbor Policy reached unprecedented popularity. Undergirded as it was by an intricate network of government, business, and technological interests that such networks affected culture, often popular culture, emerges in the 1933 movie "Flying Down to Rio." RKO produced the film with Pan-American airways, then the only airline flying to South America and on whose board of directors Merian Cooper, the production chief of RKO staff. The high stepping dance on the wings of the airlines Yankee clipper fleet against the backdrop of Rio de Janeiro's Sugar Loaf Mountain displays wholesome American energy and technological prowess. The movie was also noteworthy in that's its creators acknowledged that Portuguese not Spanish is spoken in Brazil, something you couldn't always take for granted in Hollywood. Shortly after Flying Down to Rio was released, Pan-Am devoted its April 1933 bulletin to marketing travel in South America, which in turn prepared the Roosevelt administration to promote tourism at the Pan-American Conference in Montevallo later that year. "A perfectly safe topic" as Roosevelt told Secretary of State Cordell Hull. At that same conference the United States also promised to stop intervening in Latin American governments. A practice that had long poisoned hemispheric relations. As for music the highlight of Flying Down to Rio is a flashy dance number with generic Latin rhythms. It's all led by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, it was their first onscreen pairing and I hope to write about that someday. The point is that government business and cultural in various forms all joined in the celebration of hemispheric harmony. In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began. A special entity was formed to target North-South relations and to counter Nazi propaganda in the hemisphere, the office where the coordination of commercial and cultural relations between the American Republics. This mouthful of a name was eventually shortened to the office of Inter-American Affairs or OIAA. Its leader was the energetic Nelsen A Rockefeller, son of John D. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and well connected in business and philanthropic circles. These associations proved essential to the workings to the OIAA which boasted 59 separate committees and a generous budget, $3.5 million in its first year and a staggering $38 million in its second. In other words, congress believed that it was important to allocate funds to send musicians, architects, writers, actors, and ballet dancers to South America. Another detail was the fact that Rockefeller was a republican in a democratic administration. Suggesting an environment of dare I say it "bipartisanship?" Charged with promoting a Western Hemisphere identity distinct from Europe, the cultural wing of the OIAA now set about persuading Latin Americans to reject the influence of Paris, Vienna, or Berlin, and embrace a shared culture of the Americas. This was no small challenge. Most educated Latin Americans had defined themselves in relation to Europe, acknowledging a history of violence and oppression with the mother countries Spain and Portugal, but a wealth of cultural riches especially from France. Further, many of these Latin American elites believed that U.S. culture simply did not exist. Well maybe it did exist, but if so it amounted to nothing but westerns and jazz. U.S. cultural officials however believed the hemispheric political solidarity had a greater chance if a case could be made for cultural bonds. Accordingly, the OIAA awarded a Pan-American novel prize which NBC covered in a special radio broadcast on Pan-American Day in 1941. Thanks to the OIAA's motion picture division Hollywood served up a variety of timely films ranging from documentaries such as Our Neighbors Down the Road, to Walt Disney's animated features Solos Amigos, and The Three Caballero's, and spate of movie musicals that like Flying Down to Rio capitalized on the Latin dance craze in the United States and for which a bilingual Cuban born consultant named Alison Dorland [assumed spelling] was hired to edit out the stereotypes that had long offended Latin Americans. To be sure such projects were not without complications. In 1942, Orson Wells began shooting a film about carnival in Rio de Janeiro which was shelved because it was felt that he dwelled at too great of length on impoverished Afro Brazilians. "Dark skinned peoples" as one commentator put it "living in the favelas or hillside shanty towns." Also during Goodwill Tours essential ritual of the Good Neighbor Policy not all U.S. visitors to Latin America gave the right impression. As was the case with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. who evidently made some rather unturned remarks to the media. As a result of these missteps Waldo Frank caused a murmur of approval in the Spanish Language Press during his Good Will tour simply because he opened one of his lectures with the words "I have come here to learn." That is he would absorb what Latin Americans had to offer rather than tell them what to do. What about music? The OIAA's music committee was formed to promote a better understanding of the peoples of the various Latin American countries by us here in the United States through the medium of music and all its forms. Its chair was a musicologist and chief of the music division of the New York Public Library, Carleton Sprague Smith. The committee whose minutes are found in the Copland Collection generally met in New York. Other members were Marshall Bartholomew, director of Yale Glee Club. Walter Berrien, Advisor on Latin American Studies to the American Council of Learning Societies, and Evans Clark of the Twentieth-Century Foundation, along with Copland himself. Others came and went such as Davidson Taylor, Assistant to the Vice President of CBS, Phillip Barbour of NBC, and Gustavo Duran a Spanish expatriate who in addition to be a composer and specialist in folk music had served as a lieutenant colonel during the Spanish Civil War on behalf of the Loyalists. That is the government on which the Roosevelt administration had turned its back. Collaborating with business, private foundations, community organizations, and the musicians union, the OIAA music committee approved composition contests and radio broadcasts. It helped organize music education exchange projects, thanks to which Brazilian composer Francisco Mignone found himself conducting the Elkhart, Indiana High School band at the 1942 meeting of the Music Educator's National Convention. Copland was involved at the ground level, especially when it came to evaluating compositions. Suddenly in viewed in Pan-Americas spirit U.S. composers courted the committee. For example, when Henry Clough-Leighter requested funds to distribute his Christ of the Andes Symphony in Latin America, alas the committee judged the work unworthy. Committee members also advised on Good Will Tours now to include composers and performers of art music, and by this I mean classical or concert music. The committee also determined which Latin American art music composers should come to the United States. To be sure, some in the general public accused the music committee of snobbery. On seventeen November, 1940, an editorial in the New York based Sunday Mirror appeared under the pseudonym Candide. As Candide complained the music committee was composed of one musicologist, one chairman of the music department at Yale, one executive director of the Twentieth-Century fund, one lofty composer, and one gentleman from the American Council of Learning Societies. ^M00:20:32 "The fault that we find is simply this; get down to earth. You can't lick only human nature Mr. Rockefeller. We wish you had appointed to your music committee only leaders of Americas dance orchestras and perhaps made Bing Crosby and Ethel Merman co-chairman." Of course of the lofty composer was Copland. Let's not even comment on the scare quotes surrounding the dubious profession of musicology. True to his literary prototype Candide perhaps exaggerated. Although the music committee was oriented toward art music it did at least consider the possibility of a tour by Benny Goodman, a project that never came to fruition however. Committee member Evans Clark argued vehemently on behalf of Latin American popular music, believing that except insofar as composers of concert music make use of local themes and rhythms, their music tends to be an entirely individual expression in a sort of international, usually European in musical language. And therefore it would be undeserving of support. In practice the Music Committee valued not only art music that communicated Pan-American identity, but music that was also accessible to a broad public. On negotiating a project intended to commission works by Latin American composers for performance in the United States, Arthur Lesser of the Cleveland Institute of Music gave some advice to Latin American composers seeking such commissions. He wrote in a letter to the committee "South American rhythms are swell and Indian percussion instruments are fine provided they are not too hard for our boys to learn how to play. But webs of atonal dissonant counter point are definitely out. Nothing remotely resembling Hindemith, Schoenberg, Post-Sacre Stravinsky or Bartok will do. Here I'm not speaking as myself, but as a representative citizen of a fairly progressive middle-western large city." When I give this talk in the mid-west I always get a laugh at that point and I guess [laughter]. Lesser also urges composers to distinguish their works from European models writing "the titles of the compositions are important. Variations on an Original Theme is not particularly calculated to arouse an interest in South America. But a title like Anaconda or Commodore Rivadavia is intriguing and will start burgeoning program notes with consequent fixation of attention." Now I want to be clear that Arthur Lesser was not a member of the OIAA committee. In fact he was the brother of the musical theater composer Frank Lesser, whereas Arthur was witty and charming as we can perhaps see from these excerpts Frank was apparently rather nasty. In fact, Frank was known as the evil of two lesser. [laughter] Yet Arthurs' idea is about what kind of Latin American art music would be the surest carrier of hemispheric solidarity, where exactly what the music committee promoted. Let's think back for a moment to the creation myths of Pan-Americanism that we just mentioned newness, the tabula rasa and that ubiquitous freshness. It isn't hard to relate these to music. In describing recent works by U.S or Latin America composers, the trope of freshness could easily prevail. Unlike a familiar Beethoven Symphony say such works could be tagged as products of a tabula rasa. If they involve folklore, national or regional dances, melodies or rhythms, the difference with Europe was even more explicit. As we'll see this question of identify was especially meaningful to Copland who privileged folklore both in his own compositions and in those of his Latin American colleagues, all to assert the music of a hemisphere distinct from Europe. As it turned out however, Latin American composers themselves were by no means agreed on folklore. Mainly because many associated it with 19th century musical nationalism and thereby found in old fashioned. Wishing to be taken seriously by the International Avant Guard, by the First World, these composers pursued this sort of modernism that lesser believed was definitely out. All these issues folklore, identity, musical modernism, surfaced in Copland's 1941 Goodwill Tour. He was charged to study contemporary Latin American music, to lecture on American music, and to conduct concerts of American music in several Latin American countries. He was also asked to return with a list of composers and musical scholars who are first rate and who ought to be given funds to come to the United States for musical purposes. Copland was the logical choice for such a tour. He spoke Spanish fairly well and could at least read and pronounce Portuguese. He was interested in Latin America especially Mexico, first visiting there in 1932 and composing his popular orchestral work El Salon Mexico as a souvenir. Here's a sample of that famous work which as you might imagine uses folk tunes. Not only that, but a good five years before Roosevelt's Good Neighbor speech, Copland had advocated the idea of a music unique to the Western Hemisphere, especially praising works by the Mexican composer Carlos Chavez. Copland believed that the freshness of Chavez's works would stand up to European music, which with Copland was becoming disillusioned. In 1931 he even complained to Chavez's, "Carlos I've had it with Europe." Carlos [foreign language]. More important, Copland was aesthetically in sync with the OIAA Music Committee. Before El Salon Mexico he had distinguished himself as a modernist in works such as the piano variations from 1930, and here's a sample of the piano variation, Copland's modernist period. After he composed-- shortly after he composed the piano variations however, Copland decided to renounce the rarified world of the avant-garde and express himself in the simplest possible terms as he put it in his book "our new music," which appeared just before he left for Latin America. Accordingly, he composed not only El Salon Mexico, but the ballet Billy the Kid, into which Copland inserts cowboy songs. To be sure with his populist stance, Copland guaranteed that some critics and composers would accuse him of selling out, of pandering to the masses. The committee gave Copland a stipend of $3,100.00 which was to last him for all four months in Latin America. He was instructed to buy health and accident insurance from these monies. He kept a diary of his experiences. I understand the diary's on display in the glass case outside in the lobby. From this diary he was able to write a 45 page report from the state department at the end of his trip. Today I'd like to focus on those diary entries that most compellingly revealed the priorities, the successes, and the missteps of U.S. cultural diplomacy with Latin American during World War II. In fact Copland kept diaries for a total six trips he made to Latin America between 1941 and 1963, and since they've never been analyzed I'm presently completing an annotated addition of them describing the composers he met, explaining Latin American [inaudible] or other phenomena that may be unfamiliar to readers in the United States. My goal is that my readers see Latin American music through Copland's eyes over this twenty year period. I mentioned this not so much as to plug my book, but to urge that we as a musical public reconsider some of the priorities of the musical Good Neighborliness, most of which in fact atrophied during the Cold War and after. For example, between 1987 and 1997 the five hundred plus concerts given by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra included exactly one work by a Latin American. ^M00:29:22 Until just recently, students in undergraduate music history classes would begin studying music of the United States with psalm singing in colonial New England., thus eliminating Gregorian chants for example, sung in what is now Texas. Given that the Latino population in the United States reached 16% in 2010, and is projected to figure at 29% by 2050, it would seem only appropriate to revisit that fleeting moment, the Good Neighbor period when Latin American art music mattered in the United States. As we explore some of Copland's diaries from 1941, we'll also consult other documents related to Latin America found in the Library of Congress, such as correspondence and press reviews, which you'll see transcribed on my slides. On August 19, 1941 at 7:15 p.m. Copland left New York's Idle Wild Airport, arriving the next morning in Brownsville, Texas on the northern bank of the Rio Grande. After a short layover the Good Neighbor Policy's representative for art music arrived in Mexico City where he renewed old friendships and met with various Mexican composers. Then he set off for less familiar territory. Throughout Copland flew Pan-Agra, a subsidiary of Pan Am. And this picture is also on display outside. What cultural values would Copland's own music suggest to Latin American critics? How attractive would these values prove and would they further the Good Neighbor Policy? Throughout the 1941 trip critics reviewing his music consistently observed optimism, realism, dynamism, vigor, and especially freshness. [foreign language] in both Spanish and Portuguese all terms that echoed basic Pan-Americanist principles. Such values conquered the musical public of Lima for example, where Copland conducted Billy the Kid in its full ballet version. Now ballet might not have seemed one of the U.S.'s strongest cards to play in cultural diplomacy. After all many in the United States felt keenly the lack of a national school of dance despite the efforts of Isadora Duncan and Martha Ground. Incidentally, Graham who choreographed Appalachian Spring was also moved by good neighborliness in that she choreographed several scores by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. Never the less, the OIAA funded a Good Will Tour or recommended funding for a Good Will Tour of South America by the American Ballet Caravan. The company Lincoln Cur Stein [assumed spelling] found it to showcase American works. Among them was Billy the Kid, El Chivato in Spanish that tale of the American west. Peru was important to U.S. diplomatic and military effort given its specific coastline and capacity to produce fuel for aviation. Not all Peruvians, indeed not all Latin Americans wished to take sides in the growing global conflict however. Believing that a U.S. engineered tour-- a U.S. engineered war would generate additional tensions between Latin America and the so called "colossus of the North." Of course Copland was not expected to address such questions head on, rather in pursuing soft power he met various Peruvian composers and lectured at the Institute of Peruano North Americano. An event covered by at least four newspapers with Lachronica [assumed spelling] publishing photos of the composer before an attentive audience. Of particular interest to the press was a novel technological enhancement that is the recordings Copland played during the talk. Excerpts from Ives second violin sonata, and set for theater orchestra, Harrison's Symphony Number Three and Pistons Carnival Song. Copland also played his own quiet city, which one reporter called "a real gift." The next day he conducted Billy the Kid. Even Kirstein acknowledged that Latin American audiences use to classical ballet might be unreceptive to all American dance programs. For that reason, Billy was bookended by Die Fledermaus, by Johann Strauss Jr, and Imperial Ballet on Tchaikovsky's second piano concerto. What would the Lima public make of a ballet based on the wild west, that symbol of U.S. energy, aggression, entrepreneurship, or imperialism depending on your point of view? In fact, Lima's critics were much taken with Billy. One implied that the western United States was as exotic to the Latin American public as the jungles of the Amazon or the swaying palms of the Caribbean were to U.S. audiences. Another critic preferred it outright to Die Fledermaus, declaring "Billy the Kid transports us to an aesthetic scheme of much greater interests for the novelty of its choreographic conception, audaciously treating a theme that in and of itself would seem less then apt for a ballet." The same critic observed vigor and dynamism, multiple in-depth touches of realism. In other words, unconventional, but identity conscious subject matter surpassed on aesthetic grounds a European classic, largely through dynamism and vigor. To be sure critics in other cities were less enthusiastic. Whereas Buenos Aires praised Copland's An Outdoor Overture for its freshness, critics there were underwhelmed by Billy. The same was true of Rio de Janeiro, which like Buenos Aires was an important diplomatic target given the strong presence of axis sympathizers. Yet it is impossible to know if this tepid reaction was politically motivated. Nazi newspapers such as El Pompero in Argentina [assumed spelling] for example could hardly be expected to enthuse over American vigor or dynamism, or possibly sub-standard performances were to blame since as Kirstein complained "orchestras were not always up to snuff." Clearly Copland's presence on the podium in Lima also struck a blow for U.S. culture. What about that other marker of U.S. culture Jazz? On September 15th Copeland left Peru for Santiago, Chili. Where among other activities he would perform his own jazz inflected piano concerto with the artistic [foreign language] under Armando Carbajal. And also conduct his outdoor overture Quiet City and El Salon Mexico. Here's an excerpt of the concerto. As a bit of advance publicity, Copland was interviewed by the Santiago Daily [foreign language]. The interviewer Chilean composer and critic Pablo Garrido was passionate about jazz. Garrido translated the famous 1934 book the Jazz Haute by French critic [foreign language] into Spanish, and also established the [foreign language] the hot jazz club DE 'Chili [assumed spelling]. Garrido's enthusiasm so overwhelmed his meeting with Copland that the interview turned into an essay. Poor Copland doesn't get in a word amid Garrido's reflections on the social ramifications of jazz in the United States. Garrido's article also stands out in the Latin American press coverage of Copland's tour in that it touches on the composer's politics. Garrido takes as a point of reference Copland's 1934 workers chorus Into the Streets May First, which Garrido believes placed Copland in direct contact with the very social classes that jazz represented. Garrido writes "right alongside Copland without him being aware of it runs the warm blood of hot jazz. Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins and a hundred anonymous figures with dark faces scrape out the song of the down trodden with melodies and rhythms beyond anything we know. Inspirations and improvisations of the moment in which one lives." Eventually and without Copland being aware of it or being able to avoid it, Duke Ellington's band and the African Jungle came to be mixed with the rivers, the trees, and the birds of the fields and the town. Aaron Copland is the magnificent result of this delirium and desire. Like all genuinely great men Copland is extraordinarily simple. There is no pretension in his stance, his clothes, and his speech. He extends his hand, receives and greets everyone as an equal. Far from exuding vigor, or freshness, jazz speaks for unnamed marginalized African Americans whose presence Copland exemplifies both in his music and in his comradely demeanor. As for the idea that cultural diplomacy could cross racial lines, an articulate ambivalence reined in the absence of policy however. If Brazil was unwilling to display its dark skinned peoples to Orson Wells, Copland too was aware of such tensions. When he met the afro-Brazilian musicologist and critic [foreign language] in South Paolo, later in his 1941 tour Copland acknowledged [foreign language] impressive [inaudible] and speculated as to whether to recommend him for an exchange visit. Given as Copland confided to his diary the negro problem to be considered of course. As it turned out, the fact the [foreign language] spoke no English resolved the question. As for jazz in Chili, Copland silenced during his so called interview with [foreign language] commented on the subject a few days later. This time is a real interview with another Santiago newspaper [foreign language]. Essentially he distanced himself from jazz to be sure he acknowledged its power, but he makes it clear that for him jazz had been but a first step. "The first influence I received was a black music. The primordial origins of jazz that so impassioned the mass public in the United States. But since jazz is such a limited field contained between the blues and swing so popular today, I had to get off this path by force. Today I'm free of all outside influence and dedicate myself solely to pouring out my own ideas in relation of course to the world around me." Of course we cannot know the extent to which Copland's remarks were edited as to his freedom from outside influence here he essentially asserted the well tested tropes of newness and pristine originality that is the creation myths for the Americas. ^M00:40:46 On the piano concerto itself, Santiago's critics were divided. One writing in [foreign language] observed that the concerto was quote "the weakest of the works presented." Noting a langer [phonetic] that tires the listener. Then there was the anonymous reporter from [foreign language] who believed that jazz and by extension Copland's concerto bastardized rather than sublimated African American culture. The composer of the concerto for piano and orchestra writes "music following the tenancies staked out by the race of color from his native land. But we believe that black music counts for its rustic and principally for its religious value." He's referring to spirituals. "Not only that, but jazz failed to do honor both to the people that represented and to their spiritual forbearers. Jazz is the blackest of black music" wrote this critic "its music with neither backbone nor vital marrow. It's not the spirit of the poor north American black that The Cabin immortalized in a revolutionary novel that dignifies the colored race. In a parting shot, the same critic excoriates those who would exploit the music of the underclass North or South in either art music or in the popular realm. He writes "north America jazz and Argentine tango are the two tendencies that have done the greatest harm in the domain of art and in the immaculate field of the music of the people. In short, the colossus of the north was hardly immune to poverty and inequality. The very problems that beset Latin America." As we can see national identity was front and center in Latin American critic's perception of Copland, but the reverse was also true. Copland formed his opinions of Latin American composers largely in terms of their ability to resist European influence. Those too indebted to France for example were unlikely to win his approval At the end of his trip in December 1941 Copland jotted in his diary "the French influence is predominant everywhere in music in south America. Spain and France exerted undo power as well, as was clear from the vast output of the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. Copland called Villa-Lobos "Manuel de Falla of Brazil on a good day, and the [foreign language], the Italian composer on a bad one." According to Copeland, Villa-Lobos marshalled a range of quote "modern French processes a composition such that his music in enormously picturesque at times, sometimes cheap and vulgar. Sometimes astonishing original." In tersely Copland concluded "the Villalobos music has won outstanding quality; abundance that is its primary virtue." Indeed as Copland noted in his diary few Latin composers really rose to the occasion. Some, like Chavez, tried their hand at indigenous music, but without much success. In Lima, Copland attended a rehearsal of the [foreign language], a small ensemble that preformed on harps, violins, pan pipes, and various percussion instruments, more or less the Indian music so widely marketed today. "Someday" Copland speculated "some Peruvian composer will be able to recreate this music in its symphonic form." No one to my knowledge has done that yet. As for folk music, Copland praised the efforts of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera. Ginastera by the way got-- received funding at a very-- various prizes from the Elizabeth Freya Coolidge Foundation. On Ginastera Copland observed "so far at any rate Ginastera is not a heavy weight. He has a pleasant talent, a sure handed orchestration, and a knack for writing effective surefire music. It is sympathetic rather than impressive, with the mutual French-- a French Spanish bias, and a natural flair for Argentinian musical phraseology. Here Copland was probably referring to the in-progress nationalist ballet Espana, which takes as its inspiration the world of The Gaucho or Aaront Horseman of the Vast Argentine Pompas. It remains one of Ginastera most recorded works. Well, as I mentioned earlier any number of Latin American composers could have cared less about folklore. Havana based composer Jose Ardevol wrote sonatas and [foreign language], and urged his large class of students to emulate European traditions and thus avoid the stigma of [foreign language]. This was also the viewpoint of the well-traveled [foreign language] of Columbia, whom Copland met in Bogota. [foreign language] had studied in Paris and throughout his long career rejected folklore. He argued "music knows no country." And he disparaged Colombian folk music, which he believed could be quote "reduced to a handful of dance pieces characterized by their rhythms." To be sure in employing a universal music language, [foreign language] was accused of rejecting his own roots. One especially hardcore anti-folklorist was the argentine composer Juan Carlos Paz who Copland met in Buenos Aires. There, the OIAA's message of musical Americanism proved a hard sale, since many Argentines prided themselves on their cosmopolitism with some unabashedly dubbing Buenos Aries, "the Paris of Latin America." Paz tried his hand at several styles; late romantic chrematistic, neo-classism, before coming the first composer in Latin America to practice serialism, which is the method formulated by the German composer Arnold Schoenberg according to which all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are equalized. That obliterates any perceptions of the dissonance and constanance. A fine pianist, Paz performed serial music in Buenos Aires and in 1937 his [foreign language] for orchestra was performed in Paris, the first serial work by a Latin America to be played abroad. Here's a sample of Paz's music, clearly in a different world from Ginastera's rollicking gaucho dance. More than once Paz expressed himself on folklore. In 1940, he declared in the journal Modern Music, which was published in New York "when the Argentine composer tries to be national, and invokes the easy folklore of Argentina his language seems dead, his folkloric styles superficial, his creative impotence only too obvious and pathetic." This hard hitting language emerges even more forcefully in Paz's music criticism, which caused him to be widely known and feared in Argentine musical circles. Those familiar with Paz's sharp tongue however will be surprised to read his correspondence with Copland prior to the 1941 trip. Not long before Copland's departure the administrative staff of the OIAA sent Paz a copy of Copland's profoundly non-folkloric piano variations, the work we heard a moment ago in which so decisively established him as a modernist that is before he resolved to express himself in the simplest possible terms. In a letter of August 3rd, 1941, Paz addressed Copland as "most dear friend." Rather than the more formal distinguished sir of previous correspondence. He writes "thank you for your gracious letter of July 22nd, and for the copy of your variations for piano for which I'm very thankful. I knew this stunning work from the Columbia recording in which it appears in your magisterial interpretation. ^M00:49:23 Thus, without your knowing it, you were already in my studio, ready to delight me with a rendering of your work whenever I have the desire and the time to hear it." Then Paz offers Copland an appearance on the new music concert series he had recently established. In other words, impressed by the unflinching modernism of the piano variations Paz was eager to assemble for Copland an audience of peers above and beyond the broader public envisioned by the OIAA. Certainly Paz knew and disliked El Salon Mexico and Billy the Kid, but in 1941 he kept a discreet silence on Copland to the populist to welcome Copland the modernist. It's not hard to image therefore Paz's reaction to Copland's article The Composers of South America, which also appeared in the journal Modern Music just weeks after Copland returned to the states. In it Copland abruptly sheds the role of cultural diplomat to become a critic. Indeed we might almost surmise that unlike Waldo Frank, who went to Latin America to learn, Copland went to teach. Acknowledging a handful of potentially fine composers among them Ginastera, and sighting difficulties of education and infrastructure under which Latin American composers labor. Copland notes that of the 65 composers he met he failed quote "to find a Bach or a Beethoven among them." He also warns readers who quote "thrive exclusively on masterpieces to stay away from Latin American music." Although to be sure he asked that those receptive to future potential may well be rewarded. Copland also reiterates his conviction that quote "the countries that have developed most quickly are those with the richest folklore." Then he enumerates country by country the consequences of Latin American composers avoiding their folklore. For example, Copland found that Chilean music was not as fresh as it might be. With uncharacteristic bluntness he devoted an entire paragraph to Villa-Lobos defects taken verbatim from his diary which I've just summarized. He adds that in Peru and Columbia only two composers [foreign language] and [foreign language] were quote "worth serious consideration." With regard to Paz, Copland praised his Argentine colleague's formidable intellect and work ethic. But he also informed the U.S. musical public that Paz's quote "attachment to the Schernberg [assumed spelling] line was mental rather than emotional." And that "his music was as cool and detached and precise as any diagram. The kind of music that is always a pleasure to look at, if not always a pleasure to hear." It is difficult to know how Copland imagined his article would be received in Latin America. Perhaps he believed Latin Americans were unfamiliar with the international musical press, or that they did not read English. Nor is it clear why he did not fulfill his charge to identify candidates for visits to the United States less publically. In Buenos Aires at any rate there were repercussions. In May 1942, one of Ginastera symphony's premiered there and Paz true to form lambasted it in a review. [foreign language] stepped in on Ginastera's behalf such that the normally mild mannered Ginastera himself entered the fray. His principal defense Copland's modern music article. "How right Copland is," Ginastera declared in a written response. Paz's manner of composing is like solving a crossword puzzle or an anagram. Mix the twelve tones among themselves, coldly like a calculator. In 1952, Paz published a book [foreign language] music in the United States, one of few by a Latin American on that subject. In it Paz accused Copland of quote "susceptibility to the law of supply and demand." He also called El Salon Mexico quote "the limit of sentimentalized conformity and folkloric banality. Of course by that time the Cold War had begun, and a new enemy threatened the hemisphere, communism. The United States returned to the hated practice of interventionism, supporting rightwing Latin American dictators unfriendly to communism and with the aid of the newly established CIA sometimes toppling governments seen us left us as in Guatemala in 1953 and in Chile twenty years later. As for cultural diplomacy in Latin America, state department programs now expanded to other regions such as the far east and Soviet bloc countries such that Latin America was but one element of a global project. Copland pursued cultural understanding in the region however. In 1947 he returned to Latin America visiting Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. In 1962 he went to Brazil, Mexico, and Uruguay. And in 1963 to Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Columbia, each time with government support. By then folkloric nationalism was increasing associated with communism. Indeed in government and in the press the very term nationalism was often equated with anti U.S. left leaning sentiment. Serialism seen as neutral with respect to national identity became ever more attractive. Copland himself took it up. A shift some scholars have connected with his desire to distance himself from communism. As you may know in 1953 Copland appeared before a senate subcommittee of the House on American Activities committee, as did so many artists and intellectuals involved in liberal politics however peripherally, during the Great Depression. The idea of folk tinged art music redolent of the Western Hemisphere had bussed proof an ephemeral. On balance Copland received high marks from the Latin American press as he went about the often exhausting tasks, cultural diplomacy demands, interviews, radio and television broadcasts, lectures, and the endless round of embassy functions and small talk, along with musical performances all in a foreign language. Perhaps because he was never again as outspoken as he was in the Modern Music article, the great majority of his Latin American colleagues applauded his efforts. For example, the Chilean composer [foreign language] remarked that "Copland's interest in Latin America went beyond just a Good Neighbor Policy." But in the late 1980's Copland himself remarked in an interview that he and others had once believed quote "that the history of 20th century music was going to be written from both North and South America." Adding "in insight perhaps we were naive." Given the indifference I described earlier to Latin American art music by U.S. performing ensembles, to the Spanish colonial presence and the study of U.S. history, music and otherwise, we might be inclined to agree with Copland's rather bleak assessment. If perhaps the hindsight we now possess can stimulate us to return to the positive features of the Good Neighbor period. We can at least agree that composers who successfully proved themselves before an international public in the 1930's and 40's deserve to appear on concert programs nowadays. We can see to it that their music is taught in college and university music departments and also written about. In reflecting on Copland's cultural diplomacy tour of 1941 we can decide to learn rather than teach. In short, as recent demographic trends alter the human landscape of the United States we can practice cultural diplomacy here at home. There would see, to be seem naive [inaudible] in such an enterprise. Thank you very much. ^M00:57:49 [ Applause ]