Marc Blitzstein - bio

	Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, American composer and librettist, 
was born in Philadelphia on March 2, 1905.  As the son of a wealthy 
Russian, Jewish banker, Blitzstein was able to study piano at a very 
young age.  In addition to being musical prodigious, he also excelled 
in the classroom and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania at 
age 16.  His enrollment was suspended, however, since he did not 
successfully complete the physical education requirements.  In 1924 
he enrolled in the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied 
composition with Rosario Scalero.  While at school, he would commute 
to New York to study piano with Siloti.  In 1926, Blitzstein moved to 
Europe where he studied composition first with Nadia Boulanger in 
Paris and then with Schoenberg in Berlin, only to return to 
Philadelphia the following year.  While in attendance at the 
MacDowell Colony in the summer of 1928, he met Eva Goldbeck, a 
novelist and critic.  Despite his professed homosexuality, the two 
married a few years later.  Anorexia, however, would take her life 
not long after they married.
	Before meeting and marrying Goldbeck, Blitzstein considered 
himself an artistic elitist.  He respected the forward movement of 
modern compositions and constantly tried to create new sounds and 
forms out of the existing genres.  Blitzstein and Boulanger got along 
well enough and through her he was drawn to the idea of creating an 
American musical sound, but Schoenberg's compositional approach was 
too dry, too detached for Blitzstein.  As a composer, Blitzstein was 
in favor of looking ahead and detested composers who seemingly 
pandered to the public by incorporating popular idioms in their music.
	Once his leftist political beliefs began to solidify, 
especially through his introduction to Bertoldt Brecht and Hanns 
Eisler, Blitzstein's music shifted from "modern" to "agit-pop."  He 
became convinced that all genres of art could be vehicles through 
which political messages could be communicated to the public.  Music, 
he felt, could be a unifying and liberating force for the common, 
working American.  During this period, he wrote such politically (and 
musically) radical pieces as No for an Answer (opera), I've Got the 
Tune (radio play) and the now-legendary The Cradle Will Rock (play in 
music).  The opening of the latter caused the government so much fear 
that it suspended all Federal Theatre Projects until after the 
opening date of Cradle just to keep the show from playing.  To the 
chagrin of those who opposed Cradle because of its support of social 
revolution, however, Cradle would revolt:  Blitzstein together with 
the director (Orson Welles), the producer (John Houseman) and several 
of the cast members worked all day to find an alternative theatre, 
and finally marched through the streets of New York - cast, crew, 
ticket holders and passersby - to the new home of Blitzstein's first 
pro-worker 'agit-prop' hit.
	In 1942, once the Hitler-Stalin pact was broken and the USSR 
was added to the list of allies in the second World War, Blitzstein 
joined the Eighth Air Force division in London.  While enlisted, he 
composed Freedom Morning for black chorus and orchestra.  Because 
blacks were still segregated in the military, Blitzstein was 
continuing his social commentary through music.  He was also 
commissioned to write the Airborne Symphony for the Airforce.  It 
would not be performed until after the war had ended.
	After returning from the war, Blitzstein's need to comment so 
directly on society and politics began to mellow and in his 
compositions were signs of the modern musical trends to which he had 
clung so early in his career.  Regina, very likely Blitzstein's most 
successful opera, is a good indication of this shift in compositional 
approach.  While the opera still contains biting commentary on the 
social structure of the south, it is not the driving force behind its 
conception but rather an equal partner with the vocal lines and 
orchestration.
	Regina marked the last true success Blitzstein would see 
until his translation and adaptation of Weill and Brecht's Die 
Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera).  In the interim time, he 
composed Juno and Reuben Reuben, neither of which had successful 
runs.  Threepenny, however, ran for seven years on Broadway and 
brought the composer more financial stability than he had yet 
attained with his own works.
	While beginning work on what he hoped to be his 'magnus 
opus,' Sacco and Vanzetti, Blitzstein was honored with a membership 
into the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1959.  In order to 
work undisturbed on that work and two others (The Magic Barrel and 
Idiots First), he traveled to Fort-de-France, Martinique in November 
of 1963.  Three months later, he was barhopping on the waterfront 
when he became involved with three sailors.  Once they saw the wad of 
cash in his wallet and understood his advances towards them were 
homosexual in nature, they beat him severely, stripped him of all of 
his clothes save his shirt and shoes, took all of his valuables, and 
left him in an alley.  He was found early in the morning by police 
and died in a hospital the next day from contusions and internal 
bleeding.

LEC 5/03