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Reconstructing a ‘Special Relationship’ from Scattered Archives: America, Britain, Europe and the ISCM, 1922–45
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2023
Extract
In an account of the early history of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) for a 1946 BBC broadcast, president of the ISCM Edward Dent recounted the ‘two main reasons’ why London was proposed as the society’s initial headquarters at that first meeting in 1922 in Salzburg. Firstly, he maintained, ‘it stood apart from all the quarrels and jealousies of the Continent’, and secondly, and most importantly for the purposes of this article, he outlined a triangulated relationship: ‘[London] was regarded as a link between Europe and America.’ ‘American music’, he continued, ‘really needed that link in those days; and the general feeling of the European musicians was that they would provide the music and England the money to pay for it.’ But then (again using ‘the Continent’ and ‘Europe’ interchangeably) he signalled a profound shift: ‘Today the situation has changed. It is Europe now which needs the link with America, for America has become a great music-producing country, while it will take the Continent some little time to recover its creative energy.’262 Tantalizing though Dent’s references to ‘links’ may be, obtaining clarity on what these transatlantic connections were and how they operated has proved elusive. The telling of an international and transnational history by way of searches of nationally bounded archival collections has raised certain methodological challenges.263 Rising to meet them, however, has uncovered some interesting threads which in turn offer an alternative dimension to a story that is often told from a Eurocentric perspective; one, as already noted by the editors of this round table, which places the Austro-Germanic modernist tradition at its centre.264 Moreover, Dent’s framework of a transatlantic musical internationalism that triangulated England, Europe and America as three distinct entities with a set of different and fluid musical relationships and roles has obvious resonances today as Britain, the USA and Europe are once again struggling to rearticulate their positions in respect of each other in a rapidly shifting world order.
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References
262 Edward J. Dent, ‘International Society for Contemporary Music’, 30 June 1946, typed transcript, 1–3 (p. 3), Archive Centre, King’s College, Cambridge, The Papers of Edward Joseph Dent (hereafter Dent Papers), EJD/1/4/5.
263 I distinguish here between the international and the transnational in the following way: the international retains a sense of the discrete bounded nation and describes relations between nation states, whereas the transnational suggests movement, for example flows of people, ideas and material objects across state borders. For discussion of transnational history, see Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective, ed. Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2005) and Iriye, Akira, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
264 See the Introduction to this round table, by Sarah Collins, Barbara L. Kelly and Laura Tunbridge.
265 See Reinisch, Jessica, ‘Introduction: Agents of Internationalism’, Contemporary European History, 25 (2016), 195–205 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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269 The ISCM deposited its archive with the Royal Library of Denmark, Copenhagen, in 2000. The contents date from the early 1950s when the presidency returned to continental Europe. Interestingly, the archive is arranged around the collections of three main figures in the organization from this time. The earlier period is represented through the private archive of Anton Haefeli, which comprises copies of printed material used for his major study of the society. See Haefeli, Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik.
270 Masters also reminds us of Anne C. Shreffler’s observation that the ISCM had ‘no real authority and few resources of its own’. See above, n. 8.
271 Sadly, no organizational archive survives (or none that I have yet found) for the LCMC/ISCM British Section until 1953, when it became the Music Division of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The ICA Archives are held at the Tate Archive in London.
272 Edward Dent, ‘Looking Backward’, Music Today: Journal of the International Society for Contemporary Music, 1 (1949), 6–25 (p. 10). It should also be noted here that this banding together of the Anglosphere was in part driven by a desire to weaken the Austro-Germanic hegemony within the society. This was not only an emotional hangover from the recent hostilities, but also stemmed from a desire to open the ISCM to include more peripheral players. I am grateful here to Sarah Collins for this observation.
273 Ibid.
274 C. J. Lowe and M. L. Dockrill, The Mirage of Power, 3 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), i: British Foreign Policy 1902–14, 96.
275 Ibid.
276 See ‘Report of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance Committee’, 21 January 1921, in Lowe and Dockrill, The Mirage of Power, iii: The Documents: British Foreign Policy, 1902–22, 647.
277 Jeffrey W. Legro, ‘Whence American Internationalism’, International Organization, 54 (2000), 253–89 (p. 277).
278 Ibid., 272.
279 Katharina Rietzler, ‘Before the Cultural Cold Wars: American Philanthropy and Cultural Diplomacy in the Inter-War Years’, Historical Research, 84 (2011), 148–64 (p. 160).
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283 Letter from Emerson Whithorne to Edwin Evans, 11 October 1921, Westminster Archives, Westminster City Council, Evans Correspondence (hereafter Evans Correspondence), CML/489. Other correspondence includes an interesting exchange with Ezra Pound, who was enthusiastically promoting Antheil’s music from Paris, and a detailed account of modern British music sent to the American critic, Irving Schwerke, also working in the French capital. See letter from Ezra Pound to Edwin Evans, 29 March 1923, Evans Correspondence, CML/355.
284 Letter from Percy Scholes to Edwin Evans, 5 November 1923, Evans Correspondence, CML/45; letter from Scholes to Evans, 14 December 1923, Evans Correspondence, CML/46. For Ernest Newman, see Paul Watt, Ernest Newman: A Critical Biography (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017).
285 Letter from Adolf Ochs to Edwin Evans, 4 January 1924, Evans Correspondence, CML/334.
286 Letter from George Eastman to Edwin Evans, 22 December 1923, Evans Correspondence, CML/89; letter from Lawrence Gilman to Edwin Evans, 13 November 1923, Evans Correspondence, CML/127.
287 Lawton was also active in musicological circles; for her involvement in the establishment of the American Society for Comparative Musicology, see Tamara Levitz, ‘The Musicological Elite’, Current Musicology, 102 (2018), 9–80 (p. 21).
288 See letter from Dorothy Lawton to Edwin Evans, 20 November 1923, Evans Correspondence, CML/279; letter from Lawton to Evans, 21 February 1924, Evans Correspondence, CML/280.
289 Letter from M. L. Mencken to Edwin Evans, 14 January [1924], Evans Correspondence, CML/317.
290 Letter from Eugene Goossens to Edwin Evans, 14 December 1925, Evans Correspondence, CML/131.
291 The first issues of this influential journal appeared under the title League of Composers’ Review until April 1925. See, for example, Edwin Evans, ‘The New Spirit in English Music’, League of Composers’ Review, 1 (1924), 20–3; Evans, ‘Who Is Next?’, League of Composers’ Review, 1 (1924), 3–6; and Evans, ‘Half-Time in England’, Modern Music, 3 (1926), 10–15. His ongoing fascination with New York musical culture is documented in his meticulously maintained and voluminous clippings collection held at the Westminster Archives, London, and which cover all aspects of musical life there.
292 See Anon., ‘To Form Section of New Music Society’, Musical America, 6 January 1923, 4. Quoted in David Gresham, ‘The International Society for Contemporary Music, United States Section: 1923–1961’ (DMA thesis, Juilliard School, New York, 1999), 37.
293 Gresham, ‘The International Society for Contemporary Music’, 41, 39.
294 Oja, Making Music Modern, 162, 159.
295 Ibid., 178.
296 Whereas Gilbert saw Europe as being ‘at the summit of centuries of development of the art of music’, America was ‘practically at the beginning of the development of her own native musical culture’. He saw the development of a ‘native musical culture’ as critically important and was wary of being ‘too imitative of Europe’. Gilbert, Henry, ‘Notes on a Trip to Frankfurt in the Summer of 1927’, Musical Quarterly, 16 (1930), 21–37 (p. 27)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
297 Copland, Aaron, ‘What Europe Means to the Aspiring Composer’, Musical America, 3 January 1925, 15, 27; ‘America’s Young Men of Promise’, Modern Music, 3 (1926), 13–18 Google Scholar.
298 Minna Lederman, ‘Copland – Then and Now: A Close-up’, typewritten draft, 1970, 1–11 (p. 11), Library of Congress, Washington DC, Minna Lederman Daniel Collection, Box 6 [Copland], Folder 2. Modern Music was the journal of the League of Composers and chief among the many new music journals of this period.
299 See my forthcoming book chapter, ‘British “Internationalmindedness” and the Early Years of the International Society for Contemporary Music’, A Great Divide? Music, Britain and the First World War, ed. Michelle Meinhart (London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming).
300 Claire Reis, ‘Introduction to an Era in Contemporary Music’, typewritten draft, n.d., New York Public Library, League of Composers/ISCM Records, JPB11-5, Series 1 ‘Reis Collection’ (hereafter League of Composers/ISCM Records), Box 3, folder 3.4 ‘Biographical Information – II’.
301 Despite the attempt to marginalize the US Section, there was significant overlap in personnel. Key ISCM figures including Whithorne, Gruenberg and Bauer, for example, were also deeply involved in the League of Composers.
302 Reis, ‘Introduction to an Era in Contemporary Music’.
303 Claire Reis, Composers, Conductors and Critics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 32–3. See also League of Composers/ISCM Records, Box 5, folder 5.20 ‘[League of Composers] Bliss, Arthur’.
304 Letter from Eugene Goossens to Claire Reis, 15 September 1943, League of Composers/ISCM Records, Box 6, folder 6.13 ‘[League of Composers] Goossens, Eugene’.
305 Letter from Edward Dent to Clive Carey, 5 March 1940, Archive Centre, King’s College, Cambridge, The Papers of Francis Clive Savill (‘Clive’) Carey, GBR/0272/PP/FCSC (hereafter Clive Papers), Dent Letters to Clive Carey 1918–1923, FCSC/1/1/8.
306 Letter from Edward Dent to Edwin Evans, 23 December 1940, Evans Correspondence, CML/73.
307 Letter from Edward Dent to Lawrence Haward, 4 January 1938, Dent Papers, Dent–Haward 1935–1940, EJD/4/111/10/9.
308 Letter from Dent to Haward, 27 February 1938, Dent Papers, Dent–Haward 1935–1940, EJD/4/111/10/9.
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310 Edward Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 174. Quoted in Cohen, Brigid, ‘Musical Modernism beyond the Nation: The Case of Stefan Wolpe’, Crosscurrents: American and European Music in Interaction, 1900–2000, ed. Meyer, Felix, Oja, Carol J., Rathert, Wolfgang and Shreffler, Anne C. (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), 197–209 Google Scholar (p. 201).
311 See Lawton, Dorothy, ‘The Eighteenth I.S.C.M. Festival’, The Music Review, 2 (1941), 185–9Google Scholar.
312 ‘Nineteenth I.S.C.M. Festival Held in Berkeley’, newspaper cutting, League of Composers/ISCM Records, Box 9, folder 9.22.
313 Dent, ‘International Society for Contemporary Music’, 1.
314 Pagden, ‘Europe’, 45.
315 Reinisch, ‘Introduction: Agents of Internationalism’, 204.
316 In addition to the USA, membership until 1946 included not only other anglophone countries such as Australia (from 1926), but also Argentina (1924), Cuba (1932), Israel (1932), Colombia (1933), Peru (1933), Japan (1935), Egypt (1938) and China (1946). See Haefeli, Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, 621.
317 Scott Goddard, ‘Music in Salzburg, August, 1922’, The Sackbut (August 1922), 72–3 (p. 72).
318 Andrew Rawnsley, ‘Europe Is Fast Losing Interest in the Brexit Soap – It has Bigger Worries’, The Guardian, 17 June 2018.