Female Speaker: From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Susan Vita: Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Coolidge Auditorium. I'm Susan Vita, Chief of the Music Division at the Library of Congress. Just six months ago I had the pleasure of welcoming an audience to the first in a series of lectures co-sponsored by the Music Division and the American Musicological Society. Tonight, I welcome you to the second. For our part, the lectures are an opportunity to introduce scholars and students to the riches of the collections housed in the Music Division. Of course, one hopes for success in such endeavors, and I'm happy to report that so far this series has been received exceptionally well. This, primarily, because our audience for these programs literally spans the world thanks to the possibility of web casting them from the Library's home page. As many of you know, one of the main concerns in the library world today, is to uncover the so called hidden collections. To present patrons with heretofore untapped resources that will offer new research possibilities. Tonight, our lecturer, Professor Annegret Fauser, is helping us do just that. Her work in the Music Division Correspondence Files and various special collections here has brought to light a most significant aspect of the work of Harold Spivacke who was Chief of the Music Division from 1937 to 1972. And with a 35-year tenure, believe me, you can't help but be influential. During World War II, Spivacke saw it has his mission to promote music in the United States. His role in the musicological world was no less important. During the same period he worked hand in hand with Carleton Sprague Smith, Chief of Music at New York Public Library, and President of AMS from 1939 to 1940. Together they established collections policies for both institutions, thus supporting research for years to come. Professor Fauser's talk uncovers the connections between the Music Division and the history of music in the United States. These discoveries she's about to present just give a hint of what remains unstudied in our collections. She's often present in our reading room, bubbling over about some new find she's uncovered. And that excitement is really contagious, and after all, it is what musicology study is all about. It's also my pleasure tonight once again to introduce Professor Charles Atkinson, President of the American Musicological Society. And in so doing, may I also take the opportunity to wish AMS a happy 75th birthday. It's their 75th year, in 2009. We in the Music Division look forward to many more years of fruitful collaboration with AMS. Charles. [applause] Charles Atkinson: Thank you very much for that wonderful introduction to the lecture this evening. You have, you know it at first hand in a way that I don't. I'm delighted to be able to be here for the second in this series of lectures that are being co-sponsored by the American Musicological Society and the Library of Congress. There are many reasons that we in the Society are pleased to be co-sponsors of this series, but there are two that are especially prominent. The first is that we, like our colleagues here in the Music Division want to showcase the rich resources of the collection here, both for us as scholars and for you the general public. The Music Division houses the scores and manuscripts of many of the greatest masterpieces of both European and American music, works by composers such as John Philip Sousa, Aaron Copland, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, to name only a few. With the works and composers such as these, the music collection of the Library of Congress is truly a national, and indeed, an international treasure. The second great attraction to this series to us in the AMS is that it gives us a chance to share the excitement of the work that we do with the larger public, and you've already heard a bit about that, vis-a-vis tonight's lecture. The goal of our society is the advancement of research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning and scholarship, and much wonderful research is being done here at the Library of Congress. In this evening's lecture, and in those to come, you will hear or you will be able to hear some of the results of this research. Tonight's lecture will actually focus its spotlight on the Library of Congress itself, and on the activities of the Chief of its Music Division from 1937-72, Doctor Harold Spivacke. Our speaker is Doctor Annegret Fauser, Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It's a special pleasure for me to be able to introduce her, because from my perspective, Doctor Fauser represents the finest qualities of the AMS, both in the level of her scholarship and in the richness of her background. Born in Germany, she was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, and at the University of Bonn where she received her Ph.D., in 1992. Before coming to the University of North Carolina in 2001, she held positions at the University Francois Rebelais in Tours, the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the City University of London. She's held fellowships from various institutions including the [german], the University of Melbourne, and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin. She is the author of some 40 major articles on a wide variety of topics in European and American music, the editor of six books and collections of essays, and the author of four monographs: "The Orchestral Song in France between 1870 and 1920," published in 1994; "Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World Fair," published in 2005; "[French] Women Musicians [French]," which will appear in 2011; and a work now in progress, "Sounds of War: Music in America During World War II." We are indeed fortunate to get a tantalizing glimpse into that work in tonight's lecture, "After Pearl Harbor, Music, War and the Library of Congress." Please join me in welcoming our speaker, Dr. Annegret Fauser. [applause] Annegret Fauser: Chief, Professor Atkinson, colleagues from the Library of Congress, friends, and ladies and gentlemen. It is a great honor that the Library of Congress and the American Musicological Society have invited me to speak in this distinguished lecture series tonight. Few spaces have such important resonances with the history of American Music as this auditorium, and no other archive can rival the Music Division of the Library of Congress for its holdings relevant to the music of the United States. As a European scholar who came to this country seven years ago to teach at the University of North Carolina, this Library has become the center for my current work on music in the United States during World War II. The Music Division houses countless treasures on its shelves, which have enriched my research not only on this topic, but also my work relating to Nadia Boulanger, Aaron Copland, and Wanda Landowska. What makes this collection the heart of American Music research, however, is the warmth extended to its readers. Over the years spent in its Reading Room, I have found expertise and helpfulness way beyond anything I could have expected, and I would like to use this occasion to thank all of the librarians and support staff who have shared with me their passion for and knowledge about music over these years. You are wonderful and thank you so much and I think that really deserves a round of applause, so thank you all. [applause] Annegret Fauser: This evening I would like to tell the story of an earlier group of employees of this illustrious library, during a time when their work as librarians and music specialists was intimately and often surprisingly intertwined with the unfolding events of a global war. These activities in the Music Division during World War II provide a unique window, not only on the various roles that music played during those years, but also on the growing importance attached to music in the United States as an agent of national morale and pride. By telling these stories we encounter music's increasingly significant part, both in U.S. politics and even in the American military. The celebration of new technologies and the service of music, the morale boosting function of war time concerts, the powerful shift in aesthetic values attributed to music in and of the United States, and even reflections of American war concerns in musical compositions such as Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring," which was premiered on this very stage 64 years ago in 1944. That the Library held such a key position in musical war time activities was due in particular to one enterprising young man by the name of Harold Spivacke. Trained as a musicologist in Berlin, after studies in Economics and Philosophy at NYU, he joined the Library as Assistant Chief in 1934 when he had barely turned 30. Three years later, in 1937, he served briefly as Acting Chief after the retirement of Carl Engel, only to be appointed Chief of the Music Division a few months later at the ripe age of 33. If I emphasize Spivacke's youth at this point, it is because much of his activities in the years leading up to and during the Second World War might well be described as those of what we in England call a "young turk". He was clearly on a mission. On a mission for music, bent on modernizing and streamlining everything at the Library, and committed to making music more relevant in the greater scheme of things. Politically, he was a child of the New Deal, and education as a means of social progress ranked high on his agenda. But while Spivacke undoubtedly set the tone in the Music Division, three of his closest collaborators in those years pulled in the same direction. With Assistant Chief Edward Waters, Reference Librarian Richard Hill, and Spivacke's personal assistant Francis Gavier [spelled phonetically]. Another key collaborator, albeit a temperamental one, was Alan Lomax, who from 1937 until he joined the Army in 1942, was Spivacke's Assistant in charge of the Archive of American Folksong, and with whom Spivacke shared a passion for musical field recordings. In a 1939 article in the Washington Post, illustrated by the photograph that you can see on the power point slide, we read that under Spivacke, "The division is becoming less and less of an isolated series of offices tucked away in the Library, and more and more the governments musical center; a fountainhead of plans, as well as information, for the nation's musical life". With the Music Division increasingly embedded within the Roosevelt Administration, including its advisory role to WPA music projects, it comes as no surprise that in 1941, its Chief would be called to head the Subcommittee on Music within the joint Army and Navy Committee on Welfare and Recreation. Samuel Crocker explained the function of that committee to Harold Spivacke: "It was organized in February at the request of Mr. Stimson and Mr. Knox, in order to obtain civilian advice and assistance with respect to the leisure time activities in the Armed Forces". Music was the focus of one of three such subcommittees. The others were dedicated to athletics and education. Between 1941 and 1945, Spivacke managed to turn what could have been yet just another routine government assignment for the Music Division into an astonishing hub of activities that shaped a significant share of American wartime music. And luckily for 21st century scholars, the archives of these activities are still preserved in the Music Division; a collection of 44 impeccably filed and organized boxes that contain an astonishing assortment of documents. From letters by musicians such as Milton Babbitt, Aaron Copland and Roy Harris to concert programs of the Navy Symphony Orchestra, brochures on Music Therapy, wartime songs by Joe Jordan, correspondence about copyright, propaganda photographs, minutes of committee meetings, and pamphlets about the activities of the Music War Council. Let us now turn to this Library's musical activities after Pearl Harbor, and explore three aspects in more detail. Firstly, the Music Division's immediate, practical responses to the declaration of war; secondly, Spivacke's work for the Joint Army and Navy Committee, especially as he developed it into an opportunity for musical education, and finally, the wartime concerts in this auditorium. The most immediate response of the Music Division to the declaration of war was to close for two weeks. During that time, the Library put into action an evacuation plan to protect its rare materials from military attack. As Harold Spivacke explained to Carleton Sprague Smith, his counterpart at the New York Public Library -- who was surprised by the news of the evacuation -- these plans had already been drawn up by summer, 1941 and were ready to be executed at the call of the Librarian of Congress. Usually we associate evacuated libraries with war-torn Europe when, for example, the treasures of the Staatsbibliothek Berlin were warehoused in the Polish countryside, which by the way, is the reason why the autograph of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro is now part of the collection of the Jagiellonian University Library in Krakow. But because we know today with 20/20 hindsight that Washington was neither bombed nor invaded from the Atlantic, we forget that this threat existed at the time. If Hitler could invade Russia, so the reasoning went, he might also send U boats and airplanes into the Chesapeake Bay. As Spivacke wrote to a friend, "It is impossible of course for me to make prophecies with regards to air raids. Some people believe that if Hitler makes any token raids, he will make them on Washington to impress and frighten the country at large." So the first order of business at the Library of Congress was to protect the collection, as Spivacke told Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge: "We are removing all our valuable manuscripts and rare books to places of comparative safety. This does not mean that we have any information regarding any imminent danger, but it is a logical and intelligent precautionary measure. Among the things to be moved are the manuscripts in your collection." A second, immediate response consisted in sharing with the American military the technical equipment and expertise in sound recording that the Music Division had developed in the late 1930s, in the field work of folk song. I would like to call on Harold Spivacke, himself, now to tell this story in a recording that was made six years after the end of the war in 1951. [clip] Harold Spivacke: The onset of World War II had a great affect on the laboratory's activities, since at that time the equipment in our recording laboratory was far superior in quality to that of any other organization in Washington. The recording activities connected with the war effort were so numerous that we cannot cover them in the limited time available. Many types of educational and informational recordings were planned and produced by the Library of Congress. Two of the most extensive and spectacular projects should receive special mention. The first two recording machines in the United States Marine Corp were borrowed from the Library of Congress, first as an experiment in psychological warfare, but later for the recording of battle sounds. This latter activity was so successful that the Marine Corp relied on us for the training of all combat correspondence involved in battle recordings, and deposited with us all of the recordings made during the war. Here is a sample of the sounds that our machines had to preserve, and the results are really startling. Male Speaker: From Empress Augusta Bay, on the Island of Bougainville in the Northern Solomons, we bring you now an air raid description, a Japanese air raid is being directed against the American lines at this time. [gunfire and explosions] [end clip] Annegret Fauser: This increasingly close connection between the military and the Music Division had begun already in 1940 with the Army songbook, a musical initiative aimed at the newly drafted Army, which was a joint product of the Adjutant Generals Office and the Music Division, and first published in March, 1941. As we read in the Library's 1941 report, "The Army song book presents the first instance of the military services according official recognition to the value of music as an influence on the morale of men under arms." Morale aside, the minutes of the Joined Army and Navy Committee on Welfare and Recreation reveal that such participatory music entertainment was also part of the Army's moral and medical campaign in its fight of venereal disease. Not that communal music-making was an unusual strategy in the moral mission of army's and industries. From English Mining Industrials who provided brass instruments to keep their workers from drinking binges, to a number of European armies with active singing programs, the Western Military and Industrial Complex had encouraged communal music-making as an alternative, healthier form of pleasure since at least the middle of the 19th century. This close intertwining of building morals and morale characterized much of the American military's musical activities during the war with straight forward platonic correlations between the right music and the right emotional effect being the guiding principle. Thus, in 1942 rough criteria for the selection of recordings to be sent to Army camps were drawn up in the following manner: "It was agreed that too many sentimental, sob songs should be avoided, and that an effort should be made to select forward-moving, stimulating songs." Obviously sob songs were suspected of weakening the soldiers, whereas forward-moving songs encouraged desirable character traits for military men. This notion of right, and hence "good" music also shaped the activities of the Subcommittee on Music of the Joint Army and Navy Committee of Welfare and Recreation. As Harold Spivacke wrote to a colleague in 1942, "Since the declaration of war I have done little else but work for the Joint Army and Navy Committee. The amount of organizational works still remaining to be done in planning for the Armed Forces a good musical program is simply enormous." Yet Spivacke tackled this enormous task with amazing efficiency and drive, putting everyone at the Music Division to work for the Committee. His librarians compiled lists of suitable materials, dealt with a variety of queries, and helped with copyright issues in military music publications. In 1943 for example, Ed Waters acted as an editor of the Navy song book. I mean if the Army got one, the Navy got one. Spivacke's assistant, Frances Gavier, typed and often wrote hundreds of letters each day, and Spivacke himself organized, coordinated and channeled a significant number of music initiatives from both inside and outside the Library. Within months after Pearl Harbor, the Music Division had become the hub of official American wartime music. Let me highlight just a few of those endeavors. Together with the Special Services Music Officer, Major Howard Bronson, Spivacke worked tirelessly to promote active music making in the military through a number of initiatives. Under the catch-all phrase of the "Singing Army" -- everyone talked about the singing army -- Spivacke and Bronson established a song leader training program, in which amateur musicians were prepared to lead soldiers in communal singing. A rudimentary pocket guide for self-study accompanied the project. Of course, this program was not disinterested. Howard Bronson pointed out in remarks that addressed a group of morale officers, "The employment of music by the German Army has received considerable publicity. Much attention is given to the size and musical excellence of their bands, and mass singing is a part of their daily routine." Thus, if mass singing worked for the Germans, it might also bring benefits to the American Army. In order to support this kind of singing, the Library of Congress produced bibliographies of choral music for male voices to address questions of repertoire, and later helped generate the concept of the Army Hit Kit. This publication was distributed by the tens of thousands, and contained popular music including songs of the Allied Troops, with texts in both English and, for example, phonetic French. In order to coordinate these and other projects, Spivacke and Bronson spearheaded the establishment of a group of musical specialists in the Armed Forces, so-called "music advisors," whose task it was to coordinate and generate musical activities in the military. As we read in material from the first training session in July, 1942, the over arching objective of the program was, "To make music a psychological weapon to win the war." From the archives, it seems that at least in the beginning this was Spivacke's baby. He was the one to act as a mediator between the Army and a series of well known musicians and music educators, from composer Aaron Copland and William Schumann, to band leaders Joe Jordan, Wayne King and Glenn Miller, in order to encourage them to enlist them as music advisors. He also helped with their paperwork. Spivacke's correspondence with Copland gives a fascinating example. Throughout the fall of 1942, Spivacke and Copland discussed the composer's joining the Army, and their letters show how personal needs and anxieties -- for Copland it meant continuing to compose -- clashed with day-to-day Army needs. As Copland put in a letter to William Schumann, "I hate like hell the idea of giving up composing, at least until New York is under attack." Between Army physicals, which Copland passed, as he wrote, "with flying colors," and the commission of what would become "Appalachian Spring," Spivacke and Copland focused in their correspondence on composing while serving. On the 21st of August, 1942, Copland brought this up in a letter to Spivacke when he sent in his application to become a Special Services Officer: "As I told you on the phone, I contemplate the giving up of my composing activities with the greatest reluctance, but if I must be used in the war effort, I wish to be as useful as possible." Spivacke responded reassuringly, "Dear Aaron, I received the material, and it seemed to be properly filled out, so I gave it to Miss Goss. If any additional information is required they will let you know. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Music of the Joint Army and Navy Committee on Welfare and Recreation, I wish to take this opportunity to advise yo you to change your attitude towards service in the Army. I admit that you will not have as much time for composing as you had in civilian life, but I see no reason why you will have to give it up entirely. No matter what branch of the service you end up in, whether as a commissioned officer in the Army Specialist Corp or even as a back private in the Infantry, there will be time for composing. It may be difficult, but it will be important that you carry on." Copland's response reveals his relief. "Your letter cheered me up considerably. I mean the part about composers in the Army being given time for composing. You can't imagine how right I hope you are, but I should warn you that composing to me means a private room with a piano, and some consecutive time for writing. Unlike Beethoven and Hindemith, I don't work in the fields. [laughter] "If the army can provide that, its set up is even more intricate than I thought. Well anyway, I'm only too happy to take your word for it that Army life But Spivacke's final missive on this point corrects the rosey picture. "I do not want you to get a false impression of the possibility of composing while in the Army. It will be up to you to find the opportunity and facilities for composing. Please do not expect the Army to make any special arrangements for you, as I fear you will be disappointed. Perhaps you had better start learning to compose on something portable, like an accordion -- [laughter] " -- rather than rely on pianos that you will find in the camps. Some of those I have seen would produce a very peculiar harmony when an ordinary c-major chord was played on them. At any rate, you will certainly have a better chance of finding an opportunity to compose as an officer than you would as a private. I think you better start preparing yourself for some very peculiar experiences, no matter what happens." In the end Copland did not become a music officer in the Army, and remained civilian throughout the war. As for Spivacke, once the music advisors program was in place, he and his committee turned to different projects. In particular, that of providing soldiers with recordings of "good" music. One civilian group, whose efforts Spivacke facilitated as much as he could, was the Armed Forces Master Records, a small but effective charity run by the New York accountant Harry Futterman that shipped crates of classical music albums across the U.S., and to bases overseas. Recordings of Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Brahms found their way on to submarines in the Atlantic and Army hospitals in the Philippines, aircraft carriers in the South Pacific and training camps in Alaska. Reports from officers often expressed their surprise that classical music should attract so many soldiers. Yet as one Captain Davis wrote from the Philippines, "This music was one of the main stays of their moral." The Armed Forces were equally puzzled, and conducted a number of surveys into the musical taste of soldiers. What they found was not only that, from the get go, 30 percent of soldiers liked to listen to classical music, but as the war -- and with it, the music education programs in the Armed Forces -- went on, this percentage increased to 41 percent. "Men and boys who used to impatiently flip the dial if by accident serious music should emanate from their radio sets are forming groups to listen to the Metropolitan Opera Hour, the NBC Symphony, and the Philharmonic Orchestra on Sunday afternoon." This official report gets confirmed in a remark by Oscar Hammerstein's son Bill, who served in the Navy and wrote in 1944 a letter to his father from aboard his ship. "A buff to hear Toscanini with the NBC Symphony. It's very, very seldom that I get the chance to hear music, and it sounded wonderful. Very satisfying and restful, but at the same time causing pangs of frustration." Among the more moving documents in the collection is a brief exchange of letters between Spivacke's assistant Frances Gavier, and Harry Futterman of the Armed Forces Master Records. In October, 1943, she writes in her first letter to Futterman, "My eyes popped when I saw in your letter of October 18 to Mr. Spivacke that you now have money to send record libraries to New Guinea. Ever since I began typing letters to you from Mr. Spivacke, I have eagerly awaited the day when I would read of a library or two headed to that island. You see, my husband, Corporal Hamilton D. Gavier has been there for a year, and frequently has written that he would so enjoy hearing some good music. For a while he had access to a radio and was occasionally able to dial in some faint symphonic music from Australia, but at present there is no radio and the only music is of two types: that of which the fellows concoct themselves, and very old popular recordings played over the amplifying system before the presentation of movies." Futterman replied the very next day chiding her, "Why didn't you let us know earlier," and sets out to clear the shipping crates to Corporal Gavier. But as we learn several months later, the records did not reach New Guinea before he was deployed to another island in the Pacific. Gavier relates her husband's comments to Futterman: "Honey, we don't even have tents here, much less phonographs, so I am afraid the record library would do some other group more good. There are so few of us here, too, but thank Mr. Futterman so much for setting aside this library. I surely wish we could use it. Needless to say the tent situation was remedied but the lack of phonographs remains the same. I think you should feel free to direct to some outpost to direct it to some outpost where there is a machine." This very personal account also points to broader issues that we, in our times of iPods and CD players, may find difficult to grasp. Even recorded music was available only when there were radios and record players in a camp or on a ship. With electricity a sporadic commodity in the war theaters, hand cranked and battery operated machines in good working order became essential musical tools. One Air Force officer pointed out, in 1943, for example that, "Victrolas and records are vitally needed for small units in Africa." As with many other such practical issues, Spivacke acted as a conduit between civilian organizations, as for example, the National Federation of Music Clubs, and the Armed Forces in order to facilitate the distribution of charitable gifts, so that the music advisors could use the machines for soldier education and concerts of recorded music. The latter, in keeping with the notion of strengthening morale, often took place in the chapel, as in this photograph showing a weekly candlelight musical of recorded classical and semi-classical music. And as you can see, you have the soldiers sitting there, you have the candlelight, but there is no orchestra. The music is played from the record player. As the end of the war came in sight, Spivacke added another operation to his committee's work by exploring the ways in which music would facilitate the transition of soldiers into civilian life. He sponsored brainstorming sessions in 1944, and he acted as a facilitator between a number of groups. One aspect in particular that seems to have caught Spivacke's interest was the use of music in reconditioning of wounded soldiers, or as we know it today, music therapy. It is clear that his training in systematic musicology in Berlin kicked in, because he became a proponent of clinical research in order to reign in what he considered amateurish individuals. One letter offers a rare glimpse onto Spivacke's unfiltered personal reaction when he wrote to Raymond Fosdick, "Following our recent conversation on the subject of the possibility of organizing a study on musical therapy, I am taking the liberty of sending you the enclosed three booklets. I do not expect you to read all of those three, but I do hope you will read the first paragraph of Music Answers the Call. If I see much more of this kind of stuff, I fear I shall become violent, even before my admission into one of the mental hospitals." That's a very uncharacteristic letter. Instead, Spivacke and his committee supported research in hospitals such as the Walter Reed General Hospital that was organized through the Office of the Surgeon General, and they were kept informed While the work of the joint Army and Navy committee most certainly took up the lion's share of the Music Division's time and energy, other musical activities continued in particular the organization of chamber music concerts in this, the Coolidge auditorium. When I first looked at the concert programs for those years, I was surprised to find that Beethoven and Brahms remained the hands-down favorites throughout the war, with entire cycles dedicated to these German composers, but the rhetoric about repertoire had changed since World War I when German music was banned from concert stages in the U.S. Instead during World War II America prided itself as a Noah's Ark of world culture or in Eleanor Roosevelt's words "We have come to regard music as an essential of the heritage of a country that has cherished the genius of the great composers and the musical artists of all lands and peoples." Patriotism in concerts was thus demonstrated not necessarily through the choice of the program, which could be entirely Germanic. Instead national allegiance became audible in such gestures as the performance of the Star Spangled Banner at the opening of a concert even, or should I say especially, when two exiled European musicians, Adolf Busch and Rudolph Serkin began their program on Bach, Brahms, and Schubert with the American National Anthem in their first appearance on this stage after the declaration of war in January -- not the declaration of war, their concert -- in January 1942. [clip] [music] [end clip] This is a rare recording, because most of the surviving wartime tapes from the Coolidge auditorium only contain the announced program. And I've not been able to ascertain whether Busch and Serkin's inclusion of the National Anthem was the exception in the Coolidge auditorium concerts, or the rule, and hence simply not recorded. Perhaps there is someone in the auditorium this evening who remembers. But Spivacke, who had taken over as music advisor for the Coolidge Foundation in 1937, would not have been Spivacke if these concerts had stayed "business as usual." He proposed to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge to "Allot some part of our next year's program to concerts at certain camps. In fact, I have already received several touching requests for chamber music from boys in uniform. We must not forget that since we have operated for so long with young people in colleges, a good part of our audience is now in the Army." Later in the war, Coolidge and Spivacke sent the London String Quartet and the Budapest String Quartet into Army hospitals to play for wounded veterans. Soldiers were guaranteed places in the regular concerts in the Coolidge Auditorium. As Spivacke explained to the Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, "There are in the District of Columbia and vicinity many thousands of servicemen (the exact number is of course a military secret) -- " [laughter] -- to the Librarian of Congress [laughs] "-- a good part of whom would like to attend our concerts. In fact, these servicemen include over 1,000 professional musicians distributed among the four major service bands, the Army music school, and the Navy music school. Some of these men have even appeared as artists on the programs of the Coolidge and Whitall Foundations, in the Library and elsewhere. We make special provisions for them as far as possible." This was no consolation for the civilian population of Washington, who found it a challenge to get tickets for the series. After a year of trying in vain, one Eileen G. Trainer [spelled phonetically] complained to MacLeish that, and I quote, "One of the factors influencing me to come to Washington was anticipation of hearing the Library of Congress concerts. I've now been here since last July and have yet to hear one, although I have every effort I know to make." In his response, MacLeish pointed out that even several years before Washington "became as crowded as it is today, there were between 5 and 10,000 people trying to obtain tickets for these 500 seats for an average concert." Again, the story tells us more than frustration at getting tickets. We gain insights into the tastes and motivations of music lovers in Washington who frequently cued for hours to get tickets to these chamber music concerts, and we glance some of the ever-increasing enthusiasm for classical music during the war years. We find out also about competing needs, and hard decisions on whom to prioritize. While classical chamber music was certainly the steady attraction of the concerts in the Coolidge auditorium, Founders Day Concerts honoring Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge took place every 30th of October, and normally presented the premier of a newly commisssioned chamber music work. During the war, compositions by Roy Harris, Quincy Porter, and Heitor Villa-Lobos were among those first performances. And if you go outside into the foyer, you will have the Quincy Porter Quartet, and the Roy Harris Sonata and their autograph displayed, and it's actually a wonderful display. The most famous of those premier however took place on the 30th of October 1944, and presented three chamber ballets commissioned for Martha Graham from Aaron Copland, Powell Hindemith and [inaudible]. When Coolidge and Spivacke set out on this commission, they were ambitious. Beyond the individual works themselves, they saw a newly created genre. As Spivacke wrote to Coolidge, [pause] Ok. "I have always hoped that the Coolidge Foundation will be able to aid in the development of a smaller form which might be called Chamber Ballet." Martha Graham, herself was thrilled with the opportunity, and celebrated it as to her knowledge the first ever commission of works for American dance. As Grahm wrote to Elizabeth Spague Coolidge the new Ballet Commission was located "In the midst of war I feel at this time the sheer physicality of dancing has a magic-- when there's so much death all over the world." Her original 1943 scenario for Copeland set their ballet in the countryside of Pennsylvania at the time of Civil War. That changed later. Toward the end of the scenario, crisis intrudes. As Graham explains, "It need not be a definite picture of anxiety, or have any of the exact feeling of wartime, but there is a tension. At the moment of greatest tension when it seems that the whole thing will become a scourge of violence, the daughter breaks the spell. She begins to dance in some simple way, something like a song." In his composition Copeland followed Grahm's suggestion and introduced an American hymn. But his choice of the Shaker Hymn, the gift to be simple for a set of variations is far more programmatic in terms of its wartime context than is usually acknowledged. For the opening line of the text reads, "Tis a gift to be simple. 'Tis a gift to be free." Copeland's choice of a hymn that promises freedom, that ubiquitous word in war propaganda since 1942, and that merges this with the notion of simplicity, the belonging to the land, and early American culture of a quasi utopian character fits perfectly with the political wartime rhetoric in Washington. [music] That message, and the music that bears it, resonates through this auditorium today just as it must have done 64 years ago at the first performance. Harold Spivacke and his Library of Congress colleagues were there, probably agreeing wholeheartedly with its Americanist bent, giving all their other efforts to grant music a leading role in wartime America. I hope that I have been able to share two things with you this evening: new and exciting knowledge about the central role that this Music Division played for American music during World War II, and some sense of the amazing richness of the documents from recordings and letters, to pamphlets and scores that are preserved in the collections of the Library of Congress. I have centered my story around one young scholar who strived to make music relevant in the United States, led to an all inspiring number of initiatives that put music to use in that war, whether as entertainment or weapon for morale. In this respect, he was a majority leader, in tune with world events. Musicians, as countless other documents show, were eager to instrumentalize their art in the nationalist course, whether they were Germans or Italian, Russian or English, French or American. Indeed the story that emerges from these archives is one that inscribes music, both the Music Division's activities and the philosophy behind them, into a much broader context of a world at war in which music was systematically exploited for it's uses in a global conflict. Whether from today's perspective, we consider this a boon or a tragedy, is another story. But what we have discovered this evening is the power of music to console and inspire, to persuade and to unify. Thank you. [applause] I was told that if we have some questions now, there's the time for it, so if there are questions you have about more about -- yeah? Male speaker: I always have questions. [inaudible] As you work with studies, as I'm sure you know, there was as much activity in folk life to those years as in music [unintelligible] my question is this, as you look at the broader transitions of the music, in those five intense years, in my areas of technology, there was extraordinary integration between mathematicians, engineers, you name it [unintelligible] Have you've seen similar types of integration moving out, from the Library into the broader musical community, seeing change that accompanied the war, did you think it [unintelligible]? Female speaker: You asked about whether technical -- is it about technical advances, changes there, because there's some very interesting things I could say. Male speaker: [unintelligible] Do you see evidence of there being change in how [unintelligible] this champagne bottle. Did the champagne flow out into the general culture, and in the general musical culture, in new and different ways as everything else did? Female speaker: Tremendously. There was huge change and the change was really channeled through the war. You mentioned folk music, as one of the aspects because a lot of it was recorded, was performed, was brought out. In terms of American music, there was a lot of money poured into the recording, the performance, the commissioning of works by American musicians, and so there was a big change there too. But there was also, and this is where I thought your question was going originally, there was a huge change in terms of technology that went on as you mentioned it yourself, over those five years, including technology that had to do simply with listening to music in complicated situations, like on board of submarines or on ships, without giving away the position of the ship or the submarine to enemies. And interestingly enough, it was one of the main interests -- I mean one of the many, many main interests of Spivacke -- who channeled various agencies and private inventors work in trying to find a radio transmitter that could be used to perform and to reproduce music in these situations, because for the first two years of the war, there couldn't be any music on ships, or especially not on submarines, simply because the wavelengths would sort of go out. Now, I'm not a technician, so I don't know what the great difference was with the new transmitter, but the Joint Army and Navy Committee was really trying to find a transmitter that would allow the performance and the distribution of recorded music even in a war theatre where both the submarines and the normal ships wouldn't be too far away from enemy lines. So in that sense, also technology and developments in music were really sort of working together. The recordings, themselves, sort of shifted, as you know, as well, quite a bit in terms of technology. In terms of creating a technology that was cheaper, that wouldn't use the shellac that was rare, and so forth. And again, Spivacke was among those who really pushed for these changes, and quite strongly, and defined that in the documents of the Joint Army and Navy Committee. Male speaker: [unintelligible] do you see any impact of the arrival Jewish population [unintelligible] in the late 1930s on the events that followed [unintelligible]. Annegret Fauser: That would be a whole other talk. The impact that Jewish musicians had to leave Germany -- and other countries, not just Germany -- after the end of the war started much earlier than Pearl Harbor. The impact started immediately after the arrival of musicians, and you find a wide range of ways in which Americans responded to the arrival of all those new musicians. Some were very happy, some were less. You find, within the documents that I saw, not a significant shift -- that suddenly, musicians would do a different thing, save for one or two things. Firstly, musicians such as Kurt Weil and Arnold Schoenberg, in 1942 -- so immediately after Pearl Harbor -- became very, very openly and vocally involved in Americanist projects. Both of those composers took citizenship, I think both in this year. Arnold Schoenberg wrote the Ode to Napoleon and a couple of other works, like the piano concerto, that were very clearly wartime works and were received as such. The Ode to Napoleon relates the dictatorship of Napoleon to that of Hitler, and he ends it with a reference to Washington that he actually adds, that's not in Byron. Kurt Weil writes the Whitman songs. Then, in 1942 he becomes very, very actively involved in war propaganda song composition. He becomes involved in the Lunch Time Follies. So what you find is that exiled musicians will do what American musicians will do, and become hyper patriotic, at least a lot of them, not every single one. But in the sense of change other than that no, I didn't. It's not as if suddenly -- it's really this kind of taking part of that patriotic fight, and the international fight against fascism. It's both sides. It's to show you are a good American, not that you're a new American, but also you're very active in that fight against Washington - oops. [laughter] I think that's something we'll need to edit out. Betty. Betty: [Inaudible]. In collections other than the [unintelligible] collection, there is so much of that material here, only a lot of it in what is a huge basic collection called [unintelligible] Correspondence which are compartments of [unintelligible] that's going out of here and Spivacke, especially [unintelligible]. And then in composer's collections like the Schoenberg Collection the letters [unintelligible] so you have both sides of that correspondence, including the commissioning, and all that kind of thing that happened, And then tertially, in places like the Gershwin Collection, because Gershwin and Schoenberg played tennis on Gershwin's tennis courts out in Beverly Hills - [low audio] [laughter] And then there's all of that there. There's so much, so much here. Annegret Fauser: I can only sort of add to that that I think it will take an army of young and not so young scholars to actually even get a sense of the material, and only just, you know, I'm only talking about a very short time span. A defining time span, but a short time span. I mean, if you start digging in the Music Division's archives, and I think -- I'm very grateful you mentioned the old letter's collection, because you call up something like Copeland, or Barber, and you get these piles of letters -- or Schoenberg, or whoever was corresponding with Spivacke. And as you said, Betty, it's quite surprising whom he knew. He knew everyone. Everyone would write him, and often about a lot of things that were going on. So just going through the correspondence of the Library of Congress' Music Division gives you kind of a microcosm, almost macrocosm I would say, given the amount of documents of musical life in America. Not just during the world war, but I mean, right up to today. [low audio] Annegret Fauser: Music therapy didn't start with research during the second world war, but it became quite an important element of research. You've had early research in therapeutic uses of music by a couple of people, but they were only more outside ranges. Starting 1943, the General Surgeon of the Armed Forces -- the Surgeon General,sorry -- of the Armed Forces started to get very interested in, what at that time they called "music and the reconditioning of wounded soldiers." They were kind of weary of music therapy as a term. But what was started in both Walter Reed, but also in other hospitals, mostly along the East Coast, were programs to study how music could be used. And there were clinical trials that went from participatory music therapy, so music that sort of has active participation of patients, to simple passive listening and sort of trying to sort of somehow involve changes in the mood, or making people happier, for want of better words. And what was going on was quite an in-fight between the Surgeon General of the Armed Forces and the Red Cross, who had its own research program in music therapy, which ended with, actually, a directive from Washington as to who was allowed to do what in hospitals. The Red Cross was allowed to do entertainment, but any therapeutical use of music would be done by the personnel of the Surgeon General, and by Army personnel and music advisors that went with that. So what the war did was it catalyzed, really, research into music therapy on a big scale, and set off what we now know as music therapy. By 1945, music therapy was practiced in at least five hospitals as a therapeutic measure, not just entertainment. Right, that sounds like -- do I need to announce something? No? So in that case, thank you all so much for coming and listening to all the things I have discovered in this wonderful library. [applause] Female Speaker: This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.