“Intangible but undeniable”
Copland, Bernstein and
Jewish Identity in the
American Art Music Canon
Jewish contributions have made up a significant portion of the American art music canon since the
beginning of the 20th century; in his final year dissertation, Daniel Marx (BA Music with Politics)
explores the relationship between Jewish identity, that canon, and Americanness in general,
focusing on Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. This chapter addresses Jewishness and activism.
The image of American Jews in relation to the country’s political
dichotomy has, for a long time, been that the Jewish community leans
heavily towards the liberal end of the spectrum. Jerold S. Auerbach writes
in his discussion of liberalism and American Jews that this association
only came about in the early 20th century around the emergence of New
Deal liberalism following the financial crash in 1929:
The American Jewish identification with liberalism… was largely a
second-generation Eastern European phenomenon. The children of
Russian, Rumanian, and Polish immigrants wanted desperately to
be good Americans… the Roosevelt years culminated the struggle of
American Jews for recognition as loyal Americans. (Auerbach, 1995,
p.145)
Auerbach’s implication here is that the Jewish affinity with Roosevelt and
political liberalism was directly tied to their acceptance as Americans
in the pre-war period. It is then, not surprising that in the more overtly
political works of both Copland and Bernstein, the sentiments expressed
were of politically liberal origins.
Ronald H. Bayor, in his overview of American antisemitism in the 20th
century, points to a link between post-WWI anti-radical sentiments and
antisemitism, “with the Jews seen as the main threatening element. Thus
the Jew emerged in the nativist rhetoric of the 1920s as part-banker
controlling the world economy, part-Bolshevist subverting the nation, and
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