Abstract
Can music influence international relations? During the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which began in 1947, the American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) believed that it could. At the conclusion of a 1959 US State Department cultural exchange tour—to Western Europe, Soviet bloc nations, and the Near East—by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, of which Bernstein was music director, he delivered a passionate address to a National Press Club audience in Washington, D.C. In his remarks, he stated, “What this kind of thing does costs so much less and produces so much more good results than any bit of propaganda you can think of or any bit of weaponry you can think of.”
The audio recording of Bernstein’s talk is included in the new Library of Congress web presentation “Food for Thought: Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Other National Press Club Luncheon Speakers, 1954–1989.” The site offers talks by more than two dozen of the period’s most prominent figures in the worlds of politics and the arts, accompanied by essays that set the topics discussed into relevant historical contexts. Each recording is approximately one hour in length. Since 1932, the National Press Club has given presidents, visiting world leaders, and other notables a convivial venue to address the press and answer questions about current affairs. In recognition of the historical importance of the luncheon talks, the Library of Congress has undertaken to digitize its complete National Press Club collection of nearly 2,000 recordings.
Bernstein called the 1959 Philharmonic tour a “mission of friendship.” He explained to his Press Club audience:
It’s incredible, really, how deep a contact you can make through music with people of all kinds of backgrounds and origins and ideologies and systems. Because music is uncluttered by any conceptual notions. There are no words involved. Nothing to get in the way. And ideologies can be reduced like that to F-sharps and B-flats. And Khrushchev can’t argue about such things. He doesn’t know beans about B-flat.
Bernstein’s dig at the Soviet premier produced guffaws among Press Club attendees, many of whom had recently sat through a luncheon talk by Nikita Khrushchev himself that also is included in the web presentation. Khrushchev’s visit to the United States, the first by a Soviet leader, marked a potential thaw in Cold War relations that Bernstein’s tour hoped to foster. In each of their Press Club talks, Bernstein and Khrushchev engaged in international diplomacy. Bernstein’s focus, unlike Khrushchev’s, however, was cultural.
Cultural diplomacy—distinguished by one scholar as the “fourth dimension” of foreign policy, in contrast to more traditional forms of political, economic, and military interactions between nations—was a relatively new endeavor for the United States when Bernstein visited the Soviet Union. The two countries signed their first accord since the end of World War II on January 27, 1958, a two-year agreement to exchange persons in cultural, scientific, technical, and educational fields; radio and television broadcasts; and motion pictures. Robert H. Thayer, the head of the State Department’s Bureau of International Cultural Relations, stated in a July 1959 document,
We in the United States are becoming increasingly aware of the strength and validity of the cultures of other peoples, and they are becoming more interested in understanding us. This kind of mutual appreciation is important to stability and progress in the world. Cultural interchange furthers the kind of understanding we seek. (“The MLA Foreign Language Program,” Hispania 42, no. 4 [1959], 599; https://www-jstor-org.web.bisu.edu.cn/stable/335064)
An advocate for both music appreciation and world peace, Bernstein wrote at the time that although the Russian people routinely received impressions from the Soviet press that demonized America, “these contacts we make with them on so deep a level as that of musical communication can tell them much more about us than their press can tell them” (Leonard Bernstein, Speech to National Press Club [not used] [unpublished manuscript, Leonard Bernstein Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress, October 13, 1959, Box 77, Folder 11, p. 3]). Long a champion of U.S. composers, Bernstein included in every concert on the tour at least one work by an American. Bernstein also brought to Russian concertgoers music by Soviet composers that had been banned or discouraged during the previous decade—such as Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, and Aram Khachaturian. The Soviet Central Committee had judged that their music “distinctly smacks of contemporary modernistic bourgeois music in Europe and America, which expresses the decay of bourgeois culture, the total negation of musical art, its impasse” (“On the Opera The Great Friendship by V. Muradeli. The Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) of February 10, 1948,” VOKS Bulletin 54 [1948], 5-7; quoted in David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War [New York: Oxford University Press, 2003], 381).
At the philharmonic’s first concert at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Bernstein chose to close with Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony and as an encore played the scherzo movement of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony. The audience’s ovation, lasting twenty minutes according to the Soviet news agency TASS, exceeded any that Bernstein had ever received, he said. About Bernstein’s uninhibited conducting style, a Soviet critic commented, “We never saw anything like him before. He leaves us without words” (“Russians Give Big Ovation to Bernstein,” Chicago Daily Tribune [AP], August 23, 1959, 7).
Russian composers expressed gratitude for the tour. At the close of the philharmonic’s final Moscow concert, Shostakovich embraced Bernstein. In the United States, Russian expatriate Igor Stravinsky was deeply touched by Bernstein’s efforts on behalf of his music. Historian Boris Schwarz considered that “the public discussion engendered by Bernstein’s remarks [during the tour] began to pave the way to an eventual reconsideration of Stravinsky’s role in Russian music—a reconsideration that culminated in the master’s visit to Russia three years later, in 1962” (Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia: Enlarged Edition, 1917-1981 [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983], 314).
Televised programs of the Philharmonic tour were shown both in the Soviet Union and the United States. A Soviet music critic said that since Bernstein’s visit, “The works of American composers are frequently heard in the Soviet Union now” (Boris Yarustovski, quoted in “Visiting Soviet Music Leaders Radiate Charm,” Los Angeles Times, October 30, 1959, 2).
For the American television documentary, Bernstein told Russian musicians, “Your music and ours are the artistic products of two very similar people who are natural friends, who belong together and who must not let suspicions and fears and prejudices keep them apart” (Leonard Bernstein in “Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic,” produced by Robert Saudek, taped on September 12, 1959, at the farewell concert in the Moscow Conservatory [videotape, New York Philharmonic Archives]; quoted in Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, “‘How Good Are We?’ Culture and the Cold War,” Intelligence and National Security 18 [Summer 2003]: 279).
In addition to orchestras, the State Department sent abroad modern dance troupes of Martha Graham and Jerome Robbins and “jazz ambassadors” such as Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, and Benny Goodman to make the case to the developing world that the United States, not the Soviet Union, best represented freedom of expression and the modern way of life. While promoting African American culture abroad, the jazz ambassadors, through jamming with local musicians and responding to audiences, portrayed Americans as open to the possibility of intercultural cooperation. The Library of Congress online exhibition Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/hope-for-america/cultural-diplomacy.html) tells their stories.
Some Teacher Resources
Related Student Explorations
Invite students to discuss whether cultural diplomacy is relevant in today’s world. The following questions might lead such a discussion:
Are there any current musical performers or shows that could help promote peace and cultural empathy by touring abroad?
Are there any types of music from abroad that could help Americans appreciate other cultures?
What music and art from your family or community would you like to share with people of other cultures?
Links to Some Cultural Diplomacy Resources at the Library of Congress
The Bernstein National Press Club talk is available at http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/pressclub/bernstein.html.
The online Library of Congress Leonard Bernstein Collection can be found at https://www.loc.gov/collections/leonard-bernstein/about-this-collection/.
The section on cultural diplomacy in the Library’s Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture exhibition is at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/hope-for-america/cultural-diplomacy.html. This exhibit also has resources devoted to political songs, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/hope-for-america/political-songs.html, and political satire in Broadway musicals, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/hope-for-america/satire-in-song-and-dance.html.
Dizzy in South America, three volumes of recordings from Dizzy Gillespie’s 1956 State Department–sponsored South American tour was released in 2000 by Consolidated Artists Productions. As a tribute to—and satire of—State Department cultural exchange jazz tours, Dave Brubeck, who had participated in such a tour, and his wife Iola wrote the musical The Real Ambassadors with Louis Armstrong in mind to play the lead. The story follows Armstrong to a new African nation where he is mistaken for the American ambassador before the actual one arrives. Armstrong proclaims himself the “real ambassador,” however, by virtue of his ability to “represent the human race” through music. While adding a pointed critique of the racial status quo back home—“The government don’t represent some policies I’m for”—Armstrong predicts that “soon our only differences will be in personality.” The musical was recorded as Dave and Iola Brubeck, The Real Ambassadors (New York: Columbia Records, 1962).
Editor’s note: A commercial website tells more about the recording: http://wwwtherealambassadors.com.