Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:12:39.349Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Musical Modernism Before It Began: Leo Ornstein and a Case for Revisionist History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2007

DENISE VON GLAHN  and
MICHAEL BROYLES
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Musical modernism was born kicking and screaming in 1922 in New York, fathered by Edgard Varése and his International Composers' Guild; the French émigré saved the nation from its own backward-looking ways. Or so the story goes. But this reading ignores numerous and widespread musical activities that were well under way seven years prior to the founding of the ICG. As early as autumn 1914, members of Alfred Stieglitz's artistic circle, including Paul Rosenfeld and Waldo Frank as well as Claire Reis and A. Walter Kramer among others, were engaged in organized efforts to promote musical modernism, with Leo Ornstein as their front man. The initial result was a series of concerts in January, February, and March 1915 that Ornstein performed at the Bandbox Theatre; the programs consisted of entirely modernist music. These concerts catapulted Ornstein to fame, but he was not the isolated figure that he has been portrayed to be. Rosenfeld, Reis, and Kramer continued to promote both Ornstein and modernism with ideas for new societies, and Ornstein himself developed close ties not only to literary figures but also to artists, including Leon Kroll, William Zorach, and John Marin. Music, far from being isolated from other artistic efforts, was part of a burgeoning modernist scene that was securely in place by 1915, and Leo Ornstein was at its center.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , February 2007 , pp. 29 - 55
Copyright
© 2007 The Society for American Music

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baker Houston A. Jr., 1987. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Baer Nancy Van Norman, ed. 1995. Paris Modern: The Swedish Ballet, 1920–1925. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Distributed by University of Washington Press.
Brown Jayna Jennifer. 2001 “Babylon Girls: African American Women Performers and the Making of the Modern.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University,
Broyles Michael. 2004. Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music. New Haven: Yale University Press
Buchanan Charles L. 1916 “Futurist Music.” Independent (London), 31 July.
Buchanan Charles L. 1916 “Ornstein and Futurist Music.” Vanity Fair, February 48.Google Scholar
R. C. [Richard Capell]. 1914 “Futurist Music: Wild Outbreak at Steinway Hall: Pale and Frenzied Youth.” Daily Mail (London), 28 March
R. C. [Richard Capell]. 1914 “Futurist Music Hissed: Hostile & Derisive Audience.” Daily Mail (London), 8 April
Cator Thomas Vincent. 1915, “Leo Ornstein's Music” (letter to editor). Musical America, 2 January 24– 25.Google Scholar
Everdell William R. 1997. The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
1916 “First Futurist Concert in City Has Great Value.” Montreal Daily Star, 14 February
Frank Waldo. 1973 Memoirs of Waldo Frank, ed. Alan Trachtenberg, introduction by Lewis Mumford. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Frank Waldo. 1919 Our America. New York: Boni & Liveright.
Frank Waldo. 1926. Time Exposures, by Search-light. New York: Boni & Liveright
1914. “A ‘Futurist’ at the Piano.” Times (London), 28 March
Grenville James. 1916 “The Musical Futurist and His Sophisticated Discords.” New York Tribune, 5 March.Google Scholar
Hale Nancy, and Fredson Bowers, eds. 1983. Leon Kroll: A Spoken Memoir. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia
Hopkins Charles. “Harold Bauer.” Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 12 July 2005), http://www.grovemusic.com.
Huneker James Gibbons. 1919 “Music.” New York Times, 12 April.Google Scholar
1919 “Huneker's Description of Ornstein Recital.” Musical Courier, 6 February, 43.
Kramer A. Walter. 1914 “Has Leo Ornstein Discovered a New Musical Style?” Musical America, 12 December 5– 6.Google Scholar
Langfield Valerie. 2002. Roger Quilter: His Life and Music. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press
“Leo Ornstein at Detroit.” 1917 Musical Courier, 22 November, 47.
Levin Gail. “The Ballets Suédois and American Culture.” In Baer, Paris Modern: The Swedish Ballet 1920–1925, 118– 27.
Lott R. Allen. 1983 “‘New Music for New Ears’: The International Composers' Guild.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 36/2 (Summer): 266– 86.Google Scholar
Lloyd Stephen. 1982 “Grainger and the ‘Frankfurt Group.” In Percy Aldridge Grainger Symposium, ed. Frank Calloway et al., 111– 18. Nedlands: University of Western Australia.
Marin Norma. 2004. Interview with the authors. Addison Maine, 16 July
Martens Frederick H. 1918. Leo Ornstein: The Man—His Ideas, His Work. New York: Breitkopf & Härtel
Mattis Olivia. 1992 “Edgard Varèse and the Visual Arts.” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University.
Metzer David Joel. 1993. “The Ascendancy of Musical Modernism in New York City, 1915–1929.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University,
Meyer Felix. 2006 “‘The Exhilarating Atmosphere of Struggle’: Varèse as a Communicator of Modern Music in the 1920s.” In Edgard Varèse: Composer, Sound Sculptor, Visionary, ed. Felix Meyer and Heidy Zimmermann, 82– 91. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press.
Oja Carol J. 2000. Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s. New York: Oxford University Press
Ornstein Leo. 1916 “How My Music Should Be Played and Sung.” The Musical Observer 13/1 (January): 9– 11.Google Scholar
Ornstein Leo. 1998. Interview with authors. Green Bay Wisconsin, 26 JuneGoogle Scholar
1917 “Ornstein's Los Angeles Recital.” Musical Courier, 22 November 52.
Ouellette Fernand. 1968 Edgard Varèse, trans. Derek Coltman. New York: Orion Press.
Perlis Vivian. 1975 “The Futurist Music of Leo Ornstein.” Notes 31/4 (June): 735– 50.Google Scholar
Peyser Herbert F. 1915 “Inverted Philistinism of Futurism's Defenders.” Musical America, 16 October 15.Google Scholar
1917 “Quality Concert.” Columbus (Ohio) Sunday Dispatch, 7 January magazine section, 3.
Reis Claire R. 1955. Composers, Conductors, and Critics. New York: Oxford University Press
Reis Claire R. 1923 “Contemporary Music and the Man on the Street.” Eolian Review 2/2: 24– 28.Google Scholar
“Shéhérazade, Three Poems of Tristan Klingsor for Voice and Orchestra.” New York Philharmonic, http://newyorkphilhamonic.org/programNotes/0304_Ravel_Sheherazade3Poems.pdf.
Silet Charles L. P. 1981. The Writings of Paul Rosenfeld: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing
Sperline Michael. 1934 “Varèse and Contemporary Music.” Trend 2/3 (May–June).Google Scholar
Treble Clef. 1916 “Age of Miracles Still Here for Atlanta Actually Crowds to Ornstein Recital.” Atlanta Georgian, 3 November, 7.Google Scholar
Timbrell Charles. “Walter Morse Rummel.” Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 12 July 2005), http://www.grovemusic.com.
U. A. 1914, “Steinway Hall.” Daily Telegraph (London), 8 April 8.
Van Vechten Carl. 1916. Music and Bad Manners. New York: Knopf