Emma Goldman on the American Experience

I just finished watching a broadcast of the excellent PBS American Experience program made by Nebraska Public Television in 2004 about Emma Goldman (you can stream it and/or read the transcript here).

In my late 20s I learned from my grandmother that my great grandfather was a friend of Emma Goldman, and then I spent a good decade reading everything I could find about her. In 2005 I wrote an opera using the text of Howard Zinn's play EMMA as its libretto. Being true to the spirit of Emma Goldman, Howard Zinn and I kept the work in the public domain, and we made it available in the IMSLP.

I was particularly pleased when the historian (and playwright) Martin Duberman, who made comments in this documentary, said of Emma Goldman that he thought her whole life was operatic. It was.

You can find the score and a computer-generated recording of my Emma Goldman opera here. And you can see other Musical Assumptions posts about Emma Goldman here.

Money, Music, and Value

It always amazes me that people tend to value something that has a high price on it, and they tend to assume that if something is offered to them for free it must be something of little value.

I remember a conversation I had several years ago with a distant cousin of mine who was connected with an important opera company. I had just completed an opera about Emma Goldman that was an adaptation of a play by Howard Zinn. It was a real treat to work with Howard Zinn on the libretto, and it was a joy to fulfill my long-term fascination with Emma Goldman in a most musical and personal way.

My cousin, who thought that the subject of my opera was very interesting, told me that I should put a high price on it in order for people to consider it a work worthy of their consideration. I thought that it would be best to be true to the spirit of Emma Goldman, and along with Howard Zinn, I decided that it would only be right to offer the PDF files of the music and the performing rights to anyone who would be interested in performing the opera for free. We gave the work to the Emma Goldman Papers project, and they sent a lovely limited-edition framed photograph of Emma Goldman to express their gratitude for our gift.

Maybe my cousin was right. I know now that I will be lucky if I ever get a chance to hear the opera performed at all, which makes me rather sad. I would love the chance to see and hear its flaws, and fix them while I am still able (alive, that is), thus increasing the real value of the opera.

Thank You Howard Zinn

Nobody lives forever. But Howard Zinn, who lived until today, and made the very most of his 87 years, will (in a way). He changed the way we look at history, and the way we think about history. He redefined the meaning of activism, and was the most eloquent of critics. His work will always be current, even if he is no longer here to do it himself.

I was introduced to the work of Howard Zinn by David Dubal. After he told me about A People's History of the United States, I immediately went to the library to find it. On the same shelf (in the Zinn section), I saw a small play called "Emma" which I hoped would be about Emma Goldman, one of my personal heroes. It was. I was very excited. I checked out both books, and read the play first.

The Emma Goldman in his play was the Emma Goldman I "knew" from reading everything she ever wrote and everything written about her. The play was deeply musical, but it needed actual music. I wrote to Howard Zinn and asked his permission to make the play into an opera, and he was very excited about the idea.

I sent him tapes of scenes as I did them (with me singing all the parts), and he was very encouraging. He loved to hear Emma sing (even if it was with my voice). When the opera was finished (it took nearly a year, and hundreds of email messages) he tried to get it performed in Boston, but was discouraged to find that nobody, even his close friends, even people who closely associated with the play, would take the financial risk to produce an opera by an unknown composer. I tried everything I could to have a performance in Illinois, but I didn't have success here either. I even sent a score and parts to an old friend who teaches music at a high school in Newton, Mass (the city where I grew up, and the city where Howard lived), but nothing came of it.

We donated the score and parts to the Emma Goldman Papers Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and put PDF files of all the music (full score, piano score, and parts) on the Werner Icking Music Archive with the hope that someone would consider performing the opera. I had hoped that it would be performed during Howard's lifetime, and it makes me very sad to know for sure that it is no longer a possibility.

I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to work on this project with Howard.

Here's more about Emma.

Sasha and Emma

Imagine my surprise when I turned on the television today and saw people talking about Karen Avrich's new book Sasha and Emma. The visibility of the book comes through the good work of public relations professionals, but that is the case for the visibility of any book.

I have, as many of my friends know, been interested (nay, obsessed) with Emma Goldman for decades. I think it began when I got a letter from my grandmother (I asked her for some family history), and she told me that my great grandfather owned a restaurant in Chicago, and Emma Goldman would come there when she was in town. I remembered Emma from the movie Reds (she was played by Maureen Stapleton), and from the book Ragtime, but I never thought of her as a real person until I began reading about who she was and what she did.



After reading her autobiography, and after finding Howard Zinn's play on a library bookshelf (totally by chance), I spent the better part of a year working on an opera about her and her relationships with the various men in her life (you can find it here. I decided to keep it in the public domain because Emma would certainly have preferred it that way.)

Other Emma-related Musical Assumptions posts:

Thank You Howard Zinn
Money, Music, and Value
Emma Goldman Opera
Goldman Fantasie

New York Lecture Concert Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of Emma Goldman's Death

In the last segment of his 5-part lecture series on Jewish Opera, Leonard J. Lehrman will be including some two-person scenes from my opera EMMA. Helene Williams will be singing the part of Emma Goldman, and Lehrman will be playing the piano and singing the parts of various men in Emma Goldman's life.

The lecture/concert will take place at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, May 13th, and will be held at the Community Church of New York, 40 East 35th Street (between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue). I am very excited that I will be able to hear it in person. It is an honor to have my work included in this tribute.

Here's a post from 2008 about my opera, and a link to the music.

Emma Goldman Opera

I have always admired Emma Goldman, and every once in a while I come across something that re-kindles my obsession with her. My first encounter, like the first encounter for many people of my generation, was the portrayal of her by Maureen Stapleton in the film Reds. When I found out that my great grandfather Israel Blume, a man I never met, was part of her "circle" in Chicago (my grandmother told me that he was the person who always picked up the tab), I became more and more interested in her, reading everything I could get my hands on written either by her or about her.

I was thrilled to find Howard Zinn's play Emma in the library one afternoon in 2005 (purely by chance), and was even hapier when I got permission (and enthusiastic support) from Howard Zinn to "extract" a libretto, and turn the play into an opera.

You can now see, hear (as midi files), read, and download the whole thing, parts and all here. My inspiration for putting it all on line comes from reading the graphic novel A Dangerous Woman by Sharon Rudahl that came in the mail from my friend Kenneth Ring who shares my admiration for Emma Goldman. Rudahl's drawn characters look and act exactly like the characters in the opera theater inside my head!

Encountering David Diamond Once Again

In the first semester of my second year at Juilliard I took a class with David Diamond that was devoted to studying fugues. It was 1977, and I was at the impressionable age of eighteen. David Diamond was sixty-two, and he was considered old-fashioned at the time since his music was diatonic and tonal. I thought he was really interesting, and I used to talk to him (or, rather, listen to what he wanted to say to me), even though my flute teacher thought he was crazy,

He told me about his mother being Emma Goldman's seamstress.

(I had to go to the library and find out who Emma Goldman was)

He must have told me other things, but what sticks out most in my mind (aside from the stories in this blogpost) was his vehement recommendation that I read Cyril Scott's Music: Its Secret Influence Throughout the Ages.

The book was in the Juilliard library, and I read it immediately. Part I discusses the problems of musicality, pure music, inspiration, and invention. Part II has discussions about Handel, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin (one chapter called "the Apostle of Refinement," and another called "Chopin, the Pre-Raphaelites and the Emancipation of Women"), Schumann, Wagner, and Strauss.

Then we get to Part III: ESOTERIC CONSIDERATIONS--THE MUSIC OF THE DEVA OR NATURE SPIRIT EVOLUTION. The chapters in this section are about musicians and the higher powers, the occult constitution of man, Franck, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Delius, Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin ("a Deva-exponent"), the "hyper-moderns," Moussorgsky and the Sublimation of Ugliness, and popular music.

Part IV is labeled "Historical." Here we get opinions on the music of India, Ancient Egypt, Greeks, Romans, Folksong, Polyphony, the Reformation, and the section culminates with "A cursory View of the Musical Effects in England from the Pre-Elizabethan Days to those of Handel.

Part V: SOME OCCULT PROGNOSTICATIONS has a single chapter that is aptly called "The Music of the Future."

Last night I got to perform David Diamond's Rounds for String Orchestra. The recording below is not of my orchestra, but it is what our performance of this piece aspired to be.



The first time I read through the viola part I noticed that the main subject of the piece (you can hear it seventeen seconds into the above recording) is very similar to the 1926 hit song, "Every Little Breeze Seems to Whisper Louise."



A few months ago Michael and I were watching a documentary about Louise Brooks that was on a DVD of one of her movies. It's not this one, but I'm leaving it here anyway (for people reading this who don't know who Louise Brooks is, and for me to watch later).



The documentary we saw had an interview with David Diamond, who knew Louise Brooks well. If I noticed the resemblance between the subject of the Rounds and the melody of "Louise," David Diamond certainly would have noticed (while he was writing the piece). Homage, perhaps?

This morning I went searching around the internets to see if I could find more about David Diamond, and I came across a tribute to him in the MacDowell Colony newsletter, where they have reprinted a story that he told there in 1991. After reading this story I now understand David Diamond's personal fascination with the Cyril Scott book.

Odd musical (or hyper musical) forces might have been in place that fall semester of 1977 that would allow me the honor of being a kind of spokesperson for Diamond in 2020 (both in my musical community and on this blog). Or, then again, I might have been the only person to go to the library and actually read the book he recommended.

Here's David Diamond's story:
[click on the image for a larger view]

Goldman Fantasie

I wrote an opera about Emma Goldman back in 2005, and, simply because I really should have been doing other things (which I will get to right away), I decided to organize some of the music that popped into my head and wouldn't leave into a stand-alone piece for clarinet, violin, cello and piano.

You can listen to it here and see the music in the Petrucci Library.

I did toy (for just a second) with calling it the "Goldman Variations" (before actually working on it) but I scrapped the idea because this piece is not a set of variations, and is also not worthy of such a reference, even a punny one (nothing is).

Male and Female Musicians and Physical Attractiveness

During these first few days of Women's History Month I have been thinking about the role that physical attractiveness seems to play in the careers of women, particularly women who are performing musicians.

Pauline Viardot was, by many accounts (and photos), not a terribly attractive woman. Heinrich Heine wrote (when she still known as Pauline Garcia, before she was married) about her particular type of ugliness:

"She is ugly but with a kind of ugliness which is noble, I should almost say beautiful…. Indeed the Garcia recalls less the civilized beauty and tame gracefulness of our European homelands than she does the terrifying magnificence of some exotic and wild country…. At times, when she opens wide her large mouth with its blinding white teeth and smiles her cruel sweet smile, which at times frightens and charms us, we begin to feel as if the most monstrous vegetation and species of beasts from India and Africa are about to appear before us."

All Ginette Neveu had to do to have a performing career (short as it was--she was killed in a plane crash) was play the hell out of the violin. She didn't have to try and glamorize herself.

Amy Beach was not a particularly attractive young woman



(though, as an older woman she did have an unusual sort of beauty), but she was able to achieve remarkable success as both a performing pianist and as a composer. It was her music that mattered, not her looks.

There have been legions of male 20th century performing musicians and composers who would have fit into the "less-than-attractive" category.



This photograph shows one male musician who definitely exceeds the standards of normal attractiveness, and one who certainly falls short of the parameters of normal attractiveness. Both men had tremendous talent, intellect, social skills, and ability, and both had great careers. Copland's looks never hampered his career (and Bernstein's looks never hurt his). The world of music is filled with the faces of men who were, even as young men, particularly unattractive. Of the 20th-century male composers and performing musicians I know with less-than-attractive faces, no one seems to have been unfairly judged as a musician because of his looks.

Women who appear before the public have always been judged by their looks. During the 20th century a man could get away with appearing clean and (sometimes) combed, and be judged by what he said (or in the case of a performing musician, how he played). Some women (and some men) have considered (and still do consider) certain less-than-attractive men tremendously attractive because of their intellect, substance, and power. A less-than-attractive woman has to try to make herself attractive in order for people to even consider her intellect or substance. If she presents the aura of being powerful (and she is not particularly attractive) she becomes particularly suspect. Consider Emma Goldman.

Consider what I call the Boyle Effect. Remember the hubbub that her looks caused, and the subsequent media obsession with her "makeover?" Consider the way Hillary Clinton had to slave over her appearance when she was running for president in 2008, and now that she has proven that her brains are more important in her current job than her looks, she doesn't have to waste her time trying to look 20 years younger than she is.

Now, in the 21st century, it seems that both men and women HAVE to look attractive in order to have careers as soloists. Never in my life have I seen so many photographs of attractive musicians in the "classical" field. Could it be that we are all simply getting better looking because of what we do? I doubt it. Perhaps the photographs are just getting better (not to mention the magic of orthodonture).

The City that Once Was: 3854 West Roosevelt Road

From John Drury's Dining in Chicago
CAFE ROYALE
3854 West Roosevelt Road

Here is Bohemia in the true sense of the word. The Cafe Royale is an intellectual and artistic rendezvous of the west side Jewish quarter. Full of poets, musicians, actors, artists, radicals, intellectuals, and all night talkers. Founded and operated by Israel Blume, a poet, and Morris Mason, an actor, as a Chicago counterpart of the famed Cafe Royal on the East Side of New York. Saturday nights, beginning at 10, the Jewish cabaret, a sort of neighborhood version of the Russian Chauve Souris, is staged in the concert hall at the rear of the place. Harry Rosen and his orchestra are in Russian costumes; Mme. Maria Masheir sings gypsy ballads; Gregory Venetzsky and Joe and Edith Levinson entertain; playlets are performed; there is dancing after the show; and Jewish, Russian, and Roumanian dishes tempt your palate. The walls are decorated with rustic murals by the artist, De Vries. All is gay, garrulous.Continental, colorful and worth much more than the $1.00 you pay for it.

Always, the main dining room out front, unique with its modernist panels depicting the various arts, is crowded with lively bushy-haired men wearing hornrimmed spe'ctacles and carrying books under their arms; black-eyed actresses from the nearby New Yiddish Lawndale Theatre; visiting Jewish celebrities from New York; and gourmets who have a weakness for substantial Jewish dishes fragrant with garlic. The popular entrees here are rib steak, broiled in the Roumanian style, and gratchitze, or sweetbreads. The foods in general are wholesome and savory and not so expensive. Here, then, dine most of the local Jewish celebrities in the arts and allied interests -- Emil Armin, the painter; S. P. Rudens, the essayist; L. M. Stein, the publisher and patron of the arts; Todros Geller, the wood-block artist; Joseph Kriloff, the singer; Dr. M. S. Malamed and J. Siegel, the well-known newspaper editors; J. Z. Jacobson, author of "Thirty-Five Saints and Emil Armin"; I. Iver Rose, the painter and potato pancake maker; and a great many others of lesser note. Meyer Zolotareff, the newspaperman, edits his Yiddish literary monthly, Chicago, from a table in the corner. Here also have come such famous figures in the Jewish world as Abraham Raisen, the poet; Prof. Enrico Glickenstien, the Italian- Jewish sculptor; Molly Picon, the actress; Maurice Schwartz, theatrical director; Boris Thomashefsky, the actor; Alexander Kipnis, the opera singer and Morris Topchevsky, the painter. Politicians also come here -- Alderman Jacob Arvey, Ward Committeeman Moe Rosenberg, and their followers. We could go on describing this interesting place but the above information ought to be enough to arouse your curiosity. Don't miss it. Saturday nights are the best.

The proprietor, Israel Blume, was my maternal great grandfather. My grandmother told me that Emma Goldman used to go there when she was in town.

My Great Grandfather’s Cafe

 How I wish I could have known Israel Blume, my mother’s paternal grandfather, who was the co-owner of the Cafe Royale in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Chicago. I made a post about it in 2010, and thought I'd repost it with an updated photo:

CAFE ROYALE 3854 West Roosevelt Road

[Click here for a larger view]

From John Drury's Dining in Chicago

CAFE ROYALE
3854 West Roosevelt Road

Here is Bohemia in the true sense of the word. The Cafe Royale is an intellectual and artistic rendezvous of the west side Jewish quarter. Full of poets, musicians, actors, artists, radicals, intellectuals, and all night talkers. Founded and operated by Israel Blume, a poet, and Morris Mason, an actor, as a Chicago counterpart of the famed Cafe Royal on the East Side of New York. Saturday nights, beginning at 10, the Jewish cabaret, a sort of neighborhood version of the Russian Chauve Souris, is staged in the concert hall at the rear of the place. Harry Rosen and his orchestra are in Russian costumes; Mme. Maria Masheir sings gypsy ballads; Gregory Venetzsky and Joe and Edith Levinson entertain; playlets are performed; there is dancing after the show; and Jewish, Russian, and Roumanian dishes tempt your palate. The walls are decorated with rustic murals by the artist, De Vries. All is gay, garrulous. Continental, colorful and worth much more than the $1.00 you pay for it.

Always, the main dining room out front, unique with its modernist panels depicting the various arts, is crowded with lively bushy-haired men wearing hornrimmed spe'ctacles and carrying books under their arms; black-eyed actresses from the nearby New Yiddish Lawndale Theatre; visiting Jewish celebrities from New York; and gourmets who have a weakness for substantial Jewish dishes fragrant with garlic. The popular entrees here are rib steak, broiled in the Roumanian style, and gratchitze, or sweetbreads. The foods in general are wholesome and savory and not so expensive. Here, then, dine most of the local Jewish celebrities in the arts and allied interests -- Emil Armin, the painter; S. P. Rudens, the essayist; L. M. Stein, the publisher and patron of the arts; Todros Geller, the wood-block artist; Joseph Kriloff, the singer; Dr. M. S. Malamed and J. Siegel, the well-known newspaper editors; J. Z. Jacobson, author of "Thirty-Five Saints and Emil Armin"; I. Iver Rose, the painter and potato pancake maker; and a great many others of lesser note. Meyer Zolotareff, the newspaperman, edits his Yiddish literary monthly, Chicago, from a table in the corner. Here also have come such famous figures in the Jewish world as Abraham Raisen, the poet; Prof. Enrico Glickenstien, the Italian- Jewish sculptor; Molly Picon, the actress; Maurice Schwartz, theatrical director; Boris Thomashefsky, the actor; Alexander Kipnis, the opera singer and Morris Topchevsky, the painter. Politicians also come here -- Alderman Jacob Arvey, Ward Committeeman Moe Rosenberg, and their followers. We could go on describing this interesting place but the above information ought to be enough to arouse your curiosity. Don't miss it. Saturday nights are the best.

The proprietor, Israel Blume, was my maternal great grandfather. My grandmother told me that Emma Goldman used to go there when she was in town.