This dissertation will investigate American music commissioned by network radio stations during the 1930s and 1940s, the "Golden Age of Radio." It focuses on the connections between the medium of radio and what has been termed American "concert music." The investigation will illuminate an era, long passed, when art music was taken seriously by the major radio networks in a way that is now largely unthinkable in the United States.

     This investigation has three foci: social, cultural, and musical. The first focus includes the discussion of American composers' social roles and their responsibilities to the listening public. The second focus is twofold, including both an examination of two basic cultural types of American music--high (art) and popular (mass) --and their interaction in radio broadcasting, as well as the increasing importance of nationalism and patriotic music during this period. The third focus is also twofold, including an analysis of technological advances in the Golden Age of Radio and their impact on musical style, in addition to an interpretive study of nationalistic characteristics in radio music.

The Social Focus

     One of the purposes of this investigation is to examine how American composers and radio directors thought and acted during the great sociological changes that occurred from the 1920s to the 1940s. Prior to this period, most European and American composers generally wrote for a small number of the elite who could understand the intellectual background and subtleties of modern music. Many composers of this new music had an artistic motivation to follow the historical progression from nineteenth-century chromaticism to twentieth-century atonality. From their point of view, the audience of modern music was "chosen." However, the advent of radio broadcasts of American music during this period changed this power relationship, because composers now had to deal with a larger proportion of the general public to be successful. In this situation, the audience had the power to chose the composers rather than vice versa.

     Another aspect of the social issues to be discussed will be of radio and its place as a patron, since radio supported contemporary composers with prizes and incomes. When CBS commissioned new American compositions, for example, each creator received five hundred dollars for their work and kept the rights for publication, concert, and radio performances. In another example, five composers shared the NBC's Orchestral Award, a total of ten thousand dollars The awards were determined by a jury of professional musicians hired by NBC. In both of these cases, the significant financial support by the radio networks must have been quite an encouragement for American composers at this time.

     The social context surrounding American composers also affected their creative habits. To be sure, after CBS commissioned twelve works in two years, musical scores began to "flow into the radio station by the dozens," waiting to be performed. Howard Barlow at CBS even announced that he would perform at least one American work every Sunday afternoon with the CBS Symphony Orchestra. He eventually received so many scores that he did not have enough time to look through all of them. Radio had such a broad impact on American composers that Gail Kubik called CBS the "twentieth-century Esterhazy." It was indeed a modern Esterhazy because the station supported musical activities and American composers financially, but the network offered more than monetary incentives.

     This dissertation will also investigate radio's great impact as a democratizing force, since broadcasting allowed easier and wider access to art music. Audiences did not have to pay to listen, did not have to go to any specific place at a specific time, and did not have to wear any formal clothes. This enabled people from different social classes to listen to serious American music. Before the arrival of radio broadcasting, Americans were "satisfied . . . with the simple forms that could be produced in the home, the modest offerings of the churches, and the occasional concerts . . . in the larger centers of population." Thanks to radio, people of all classes throughout the country could enjoy performances from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

     Because of radio's ability to reach a large number of people, teachers saw the potential of using radio as an educational tool. In response, CBS created a radio show, Everybody's Music, introducing European master composers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as new American pieces commissioned by CBS. To enhance their educational aim, an accompanying book was published for a general readership.

The Cultural Focus

     Besides these sociological issues, the dissertation will examine the interaction between high (art) and popular (mass) cultures in the 1930s. When radio directors of CBS created Everybody's Music, a music appreciation program, they tried to elevate the nation's cultural standard. The program, however, could not realize the directors' goal without communicating to a general audience who was not always familiar with the most recent art music. Some composers understood this circumstance very well and used jazz idioms in their serious compositions, since jazz appealed to many listeners.

     Historically, radio magnified the patriotism and nationalism of the Depression. For instance, a CBS program, entitled the American School of the Air, aired American pieces based on folk tunes by numerous composers, including Henry Cowell and Roy Harris. CBS also aired programs that featured U. S. military bands, and other programs dedicated exclusively to the performance of American art music. Furthermore, radio broadcasting in the 1930s was national in its nature. Different from today's locally-operated stations, whose programming is more directly determined by its own local audience, most Americans then listened to very centralized, nation-wide network programs. This made it much easier to disseminate a more unified idea of a nation, because people listening to network radio throughout the country shared a common experience.

The Musical Focus

     The sonic quality of radio established new aesthetic parameters among various musical issues; because of this, the interaction of technology and music will be a central topic. When CBS commissioned six American composers to write new pieces for the first time, their music consultant Deems Taylor stated that the purpose of commissioning radio music was "to encourage writers of serious music to utilize the possibilities of the microphone and loud speaker." Taylor was so conscious of the possibilities of radio equipment to affect sound that he recommended that composers visit the CBS studio to consult with their program producer, conductors, and arrangers. Many composers actually became frequent visitors. They listened to programs, talked to engineers, and observed how a radio production worked. Aaron Copland, following a visit to the CBS studio and after listening to the demonstration, decided to use "special sound effects" in the orchestration in his Music for Radio , such as "a muted trumpet, a flutist standing at the microphone, bassoons and saxophones for jazz effects, and vibraphone."

     Another musical issue is radio's impact on musical format. For example, many composers had to use a radio orchestra, consisting of fewer musicians than a regular symphony orchestra. Louis Gruenberg included a narrator in his radio opera, because listeners were not able to rely on a visual image of the stage but only on their imaginations. The narrator made musical events clear. Gian Carlo Menotti wrote his first opera in the English language, The Old Maid and the Thief, for NBC, because of the language's immediate appeal to the listeners.

     The musical discussion will also investigate nationalistic elements in radio music, including the use of folk and popular music and jazz in William Grant Still's Lenox Avenue and Roy Harris's Time Suite. Extramusical associations will be a part of the discussion as well, especially when it comes to the image of the West seen in Copland's Music for Radio and Jerome Moross's A Tall Story.

     In the Golden Age of Radio, a large number of people in the United States became a mass audience of art music for the fist time. They became an integral part of the whole musical community more than ever before. Composers and radio could not escape from these changes and their subsequent social influence.
 
 

     A first body of the literature relevant to this dissertation are studies of the Depression. The most useful historical overview of this period is Michael E. Parrish's Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression,1920-1941 (1992). It not only covers a broader historical period than this study's time frame but also deals comprehensively with a variety of topics, ranging from politics, race issues, literature, and popular entertainment. Parrish summarized that all these was integral part of the "consumer society" and "consumer-oriented economy," related to the federal government in Washington.

     Charles C. Alexander's Nationalism in American Thought, 1930-1945 (1969) serves as an accessible introduction to the general culture issues of the Depression. The author provides an overview of the sociological background first and examines the intellectual currents and aesthetics that formed this historical period. Alexander divides his discussion into several categories: literature, visual arts and music, films, radio, journalism, science and scholarship, and education and religion.

     Richard G. Pells's Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years(1973) has more profound discussions about the society, politics, and culture of this time period. The author does not cover music directly but deals with political thought reflected in the literature and mass media such as movies and radio. The author is particularly strong on Marxist thought and describes the ideology's influences on various levels of the American society.

     For cultural definition, Herbert J. Gans's Popular & High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste (1974, rev. 1999) provides a way to classify cultural activities hierarchically. The author divides cultural types into five levels and describes the characteristics of each one of them, including who belongs to which cultural hierarchy. Although his discussion may lead to a consideration of stereotypes, it still provides a framework for an examination of society and culture in general.

     Lawrence W. Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (1986) traces the history of high culture consumed by the popular audience. The interaction between highbrow (high culture) and lowbrow (popular culture), evidenced in the reception history of Shakespeare, art music, and other genres of fine arts, are examined. Although Levine's narrative ends with the early twentieth century, his methodology and viewpoints can be adopted to later historical periods, as well.

     As primary sources, music periodicals in the 1930s and 1940s are valuable. Especially useful is Modern Music, because its contributors, some of whom were actually composers, knew the music quite well. Each issue of this journal, from Volume 14 to 23 (the last issue), has a column titled "Over the Air," written by critics who focused on new music. In Serenading the Reluctant Eagle, Nicholas E. Tawa cites this column as he attempts to describe the relationship between American composers and their audiences. He concludes that American compositions aired on radio did not have much of an impact on the nation's musical culture, because listeners enjoyed more traditional European compositions, and the occasional broadcasting of American pieces did not receive enough support from listeners. He is probably right in that there may have not been much effort by radio networks to disseminate art music after WWII. However, radio's powerful influence and listeners' active participation in music programs that were broadcast during the Depression are historical facts that should not be easily dismissed.

     In addition to the column, Modern Music published other articles on music and radio. For example, Davidson Taylor's "To Order, For Radio" discusses the influence of network radio broadcasts on the creation of new American music, and speculates convincingly the strong potential of radio on "average" listeners.

     More general music journals review and critique music on the radio. For instance, many short articles that appeared in Musical America were dedicated to various musical radio productions. These articles briefly discuss a variety of topics on music but occasionally deal with American music and new music in general. Magazines and newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s are also important resources. In The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and Time, for example, journalists and critics frequently featured musical topics and reviewed new American pieces with comments by composers and radio directors.

     A small number of books about radio and art music exist. Thomas A. DeLong's The Mighty Music Box (1980) devotes one of the twenty chapters to concert music on radio. While the chapter is titled "The Maestros," its investigation centers around Arturo Toscanini, among others. DeLong does not always talk about the activities of the radio station, but NBC's contribution to the American musical community is described in connection with Toscanini's career in the United States.

     Barbara Zuck's A History of Musical Americanism (1980) briefly touches upon the musical initiatives of CBS and NBC. She places these initiatives within a broader discussion of music history and relates them to anti-modern movements and the American adaptation of Gebrauchsmusik in the 1920s and 1930s. Marc Blitzstein's radio opera, I've Got the Tune is also included in Zuck's discussion of the composer.

     Joseph Horowitz's Understanding Toscanini (1987) is not a straightforward biography but a sociological contextualization of this master musician. Although the book does not deal directly with the relationship between Arturo Toscanini and American composers, its thorough investigation reveals Toscanini's views on new American music. In fact, several pages discuss new American music in the 1920s and 1930s. The social context that the author discusses in the book is also useful for the present study, which deals with the same historical period. In this context, Horowitz depicts the United States as a "transplanted multicultural community" created by immigrant European musicians and French-trained American composers (p. 226). Furthermore Horowitz address issues on modern music and mass culture. According to the author, for example, various writers criticized the popularization of art music initiated by radio and phonographs as degenerating its value. To enhance his argument, Horowitz elaborates upon Theodore Adorno's criticism of mass media's treatment of serious music. Horowitz argues that this German musicologist's view was reflected in the way that the American elites thought of the wide dissemination of art music to the masses (pp. 229-243).

     Although dealing with a different medium and different musical genres, William Howland Kenny's Recorded Music in American Life (1999) provides ideas and a methodology useful to this dissertation. The author's kaleidoscopic observations deal with some important issues, including the social impacts of recorded music, records as a medium to document a society and its history. Kenny also touches upon the dissemination of certain ideas such as political views and racial and gender stereotypes as well as musical styles by the media.

     Among the earliest serious studies of this subject was Frederick William Westphal's 1948 dissertation "Music in Radio Broadcasting." He broadly discusses technological aspects of radio broadcasting, from the physics of sound to the way radio transmits the sound. Such topics in radio music literature were very popular in the period when radio symbolized state-of-the-art technology. The discussion, unfortunately, is a little outdated from today's point of view, but it still illuminates the way people in the 1940s regarded the medium. Perhaps more useful is a chapter that details how a radio production with original background music would have been created in the 1930s. Westphal samples several program scripts and reproduces a musical score actually used in a radio production.

     Bradley Howard Short's thesis, "American Radio Opera: 1928-1971," (1986) provides contextual information and a detailed analysis of two operas aired on CBS: Marc Blitzstein's I've Got The Tune and Vittorio Giannini's Beauty and the Beast. With many musical examples, Short describes plots and musical events thoroughly. The author also lists fifty-seven radio operas with annotations, and supplies information on publication, manuscripts, operas plots, and critics' reviews.

     A more recent dissertation, Louis E. Carlat's "Sound Values: Radio Broadcasts of Classical Music and American Culture, 1922-1939," (1995) is an interdisciplinary investigation, generally organized chronologically. This survey traces the history of NBC's serious music programming and its directors' influences upon it. One of the most important issues discussed in the dissertation is NBC's integrated presentation of popular and high culture in their musical programs. Carlat examines two ways this goal was accomplished by the network: one was to popularize art music and the other was to make jazz fit into the category of the symphonic music.

     A more focused study related to this dissertation's subject is Margaret Susan Key's "Sweet Melody Over Silent Wave: Depression-Era Radio and the American Composer" (1995). Key's research uses numerous archival and secondary materials written by composers, critics, journalists, and those who were directly involved in radio productions. Looking at archival documents to describe what was happening on American radio stations during the Depression, Key's research deals with the social context of American music on radio. Many issues are raised and, for the discussion of each topic, numerous documents are cited. Many quotes (almost on every page) from primary documents illuminate various perspectives and views, but the reader may well have the impression that she relies too much on these resources and does not have control over them. She also discusses network stations' commitment to the cultivated music tradition. Radio encouraged American composers to write more pieces because their music had more of a chance of being performed on radio and reaching a broad range of people all over the country.

     In addition, Key covers five radio pieces in the manner of program notes. The pieces in her discussion include William Grant Still's Lenox Avenue, Aaron Copland's Music for Radio, Roy Harris's Time Suite, Louis Gruenberg's Green Mansions, and Marc Blitzstein's I've Got the Tune. She documents the commissions and examines the characteristics of these pieces. Unfortunately, she uses only six music examples from the Harris, Gruenberg, and Blitzstein pieces and does not employ other scores for her discussion. A more extensive investigation of musical styles in radio music will be undertaken in this dissertation.

     Various biographies of American composers often provide close studies of specific compositions for radio. One such work is Verna Arvey's Studies of Contemporary American Composers: William Grant Still. This book gives contextual details on Still's piece Lenox Avenue, from CBS's Deems Taylor's commissioning procedure to listeners' responses. The author actually quotes a few letters from listeners to describe how the piece was warmly appreciated.

     Aaron Copland: 1900 through 1940, by Aaron Copland and Vivian Perlis (1984), includes Copland's own account of his radio piece, Music for Radio. He describes the commission procedure and his visit to the radio studio to examine orchestration. Copland also discusses the title-naming contest which resulted in the piece's initial name, Saga of Prairie , later revised (by Copland himself) as Prairie Journal.

     Eric A. Gordon's Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein (1989) discusses the commissioning procedure of his radio opera I've Got the Tune, along with the opera's synopsis and reception history. Gordon details how much CBS paid for Blitzstein's project and explains that the composer thought the piece was an "integration of music and drama." Gordon's account, however, may need a critical read and reexamination when it comes to details. For example, he states that few other composers "showed as specific an appreciation for the medium as Blitzstein," but this statement contradicts the fact that many other composers were aware of the medium of radio and took advantage of it in one way or another.
 
 

     Archival research is essential for this dissertation in order to provide the resources to answer more complex questions. Documents, including contracts and correspondence between radio stations and composers, will clarify the nature of a commission and the criteria of music set by radio stations. The archival research will also include manuscript scores, since most pieces written for radio broadcasting have not been published.

     Stylistic analysis of actual pieces will illuminate the types of compositions that were commissioned. For example, a piece may have been written in an "accessible style," suitable for general radio listeners. There may be a nationalistic character to some pieces. There may be special technical requirements due to radio station equipment.  An analysis of cultural and social contexts will be seminal in order to evaluate the radio pieces in a broader scope. For example, these pieces should be viewed as part of the American music of the 1930s and 1940s. This will show how the role of individual works can effect the larger, general American culture.

     Selected case studies will incorporate various methods discussed above as they are applied to actual radio compositions. For example, a study of William Grant Still's Lenox Avenue includes an investigation of the piece's special instructions found only in archival materials. The study also includes the piece's "accessible style" by the use of a jazz idiom. Stylistic analysis will clarify some "radiogeneric" features in Lenox Avenue, such as the use of a narrator, various kinds of brass mutes, and composer's notes for the studio engineer regarding the placement of microphones. Additionally, the piece can be seen as an evocative cultural statement, representing an African-American landscape in New York's Harlem specifically and Black culture in general.
 
 

Chapter 1. The Depression, Conservatism, and Nationalism
Chapter 2. Radio and Music from the 1920s to the 1940s: Anti-Modernism, Invasion of Popular Culture
Chapter 3.Case Studies: William Grant Still's Lenox Avenue, Aaron Copland's Music for Radio, and Other Related Pieces.
Chapter 4. Evaluation and Conclusion