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Leonard Bernstein and the Harvard Student Union: In Search of Political Origins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Abstract

In spite of the publicity generated at times by the politics of the mature Leonard Bernstein, the roots of his entanglement with political causes have been little-explored. As part of a larger collaborative project investigating Bernstein's ties to Boston, this article traces his role in the Harvard Student Union's theatrical productions. These shows were important because they represented some of Bernstein's earliest efforts at writing and directing for the theater. Bernstein worked on two shows sponsored by the Union: the production of Marc Blitzstein's Cradle Will Rock in 1939, during Bernstein's senior year at Harvard, and that of Aristophanes' play Peace in 1941, two years after he graduated. Although the Harvard Student Union was a major progressive political force on campus, Bernstein's relationship with the group appears to have been surprisingly casual. Examination of archival materials surrounding the productions, as well as selected interviews from the larger collaborative Bernstein project of which this article is but one part, reveals Bernstein as a man who was primarily interested in the Harvard Student Union insofar as it was an organization amenable to supporting his musical activities. As the heat of Bernstein's celebrity cools with time, such findings are an important aid in avoiding drawing overly deterministic conclusions about the significance of Bernstein's affiliations while ignoring his own immediate aims, political or otherwise.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2009

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References

References

Item from the Leonard Bernstein Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.:

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Bernstein, Leonard. “Peace” (by Aristophanes): Incidental Music. ML96.B5.Google Scholar
“Application blank for participation in Harvard Student Union Activities 1939–40.” Harvard Student Union General Papers, Harvard University archives.Google Scholar
Bunde, Karblen [pseud.]. “Harvard Economics Department, Part II: Courses and Personnel.” Harvard Progressive, May 1939.Google Scholar
Harvard University Corporation (Committee of Eight) . “Report on the terminating appointments of Dr. J. R. Walsh and Dr. A. R. Sweezy, 1928 May 24.”Google Scholar
Harvard University Corporation (Committee of Eight) . “Report on some problems of personnel in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 1939.”Google Scholar
“Keep America Out.” Harvard Progressive. November 1939.Google Scholar
Marx, Leo. “Lean Years for Harvard Dramatics.” Harvard Progressive. May 1939.Google Scholar
Marx, Leo. . “Conscription: First Step toward War.” Harvard Progressive. September 1940.Google Scholar
“Notes on Harvard and the War.” Harvard Progressive. April 1940.Google Scholar
“Zero Hour.” Harvard Progressive. May 1941.Google Scholar
Fox, Edward. Interview with the author. 30 March 2006.Google Scholar
Leacock, Richard. Interview with the author. 15 April 2006.Google Scholar
Federal Bureau of Investigation . Case file on Leonard Bernstein. Freedom of Information Act Reading Room, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Oja, Carol J. “Bernstein's Wonderful Town and McCarthy-Era Politics.” Paper read at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, Quebec City, Quebec. November 2007.Google Scholar
Oja, Carol and Shelemay, Kay Kauffman. Letter to the author. 25 April 2006.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Burton . Family Matters: Sam Jennie and the Kids. New York: Summit Books, 1982.Google Scholar
Blitzstein, Marc . The Cradle Will Rock. New York: Doubleday, 1938.Google Scholar
Boyd, Timothy W. and Carolyn, Higbie. “‘Not So Much New Deal as Old Howard’: Leonard Bernstein and Aristophanes’ The Birds.” In Swan, Claudia , ed., Leonard Bernstein: The Harvard Years, 1935–1939 (New York: Eos Orchestra, 1999), 7179.Google Scholar
Burton, Humphrey . Leonard Bernstein. New York: Doubleday, 1994.Google Scholar
Denning, Michael . The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. London: Verso, 1996.Google Scholar
Green, Penelope . “10 Parties That Shook the 20th Century.” New York Times, 29 December 1999.Google Scholar
Hart, Justin . “Archival MacLeish Rediscovered: The Poetry of U.S. Foreign Policy.” Historically Speaking(January/February 2007), 20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Name Ten Members of the First Freshman ‘Union Committee.”’ 24 October 1931.Google Scholar
“‘Waiting for Lefty’ Will Be Seen at Brattle Hall Tonight.” 8 May 1935.Google Scholar
“Amateur Musicale in Union This Evening.” 5 February 1936.Google Scholar
“Coalition Forms Union at Meeting Tonight.” 19 February 1936.Google Scholar
“Another Cross Roads.” 12 December 1936.Google Scholar
“Yardling to Eat Goldfish Alive in $10 Bet.” 3 March 1939.Google Scholar
“The Mail.” 19 May 1939.Google Scholar
“H.S.U. to Present Play by Toller.” 13 November 1940.Google Scholar
“Theatre Guild Blocks H.S.U. Fall Production Schedule.” 20 November 1940.Google Scholar
“The Peace Strike.” 23 April 1941.Google Scholar
Progressive Discontinues Publication.” 18 December 1941.Google Scholar
Holabird, John . Interview with Susan Benjamin. 29, 30 October, 3, 6, 12, 16 November, and 3 December 1992. <http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/caohp/holabird.html>..>Google Scholar
Krenn, Michael L. Fall-out Shelters for the Human Spirit: American Art and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Lichtenstein, Nelson . State of the Union: A Century of American Labor. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Magna Charta [sic],” Time, 5 June 1939.Google Scholar
Meyler, Bernadette A. “Composing (for a) Philosophical Comedy;” in Leonard Bernstein: The Harvard Years, 80–89.Google Scholar
Morison, Samuel Eliot . Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936.Google Scholar
Oja, Carol J. Review of Leonard Bernstein: Trouble in Tahiti. American Music 23/4 (Winter 2005): 526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oja, Carol J. . “Marc Blitzstein's ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ and the Mass-Song Style of the 1930s.”’ Musical Quarterly 73/4 (1989): 445–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosovsky, Henry . The University: An Owner's Manual. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990.Google Scholar
Smith, Richard Norton . The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Swan, Claudia , ed. Leonard Bernstein: The Harvard Years, 1935–1939. New York: Eos Orchestra, 1999.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Tom . Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970.Google Scholar
Zieger, Robert H. American Works, American Unions: The Twentieth Century. 3rd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.Google Scholar