Perspectives and the Patron: Paul Fromm, Benjamin Boretz and Perspectives of New Music

ABSTRACT

One of the less studied aspects of post-war musical life is private sponsorship of American modernist composers, such as that by the Fromm Music Foundation (FMF) established in 1952. Using unpublished letters and documents from the FMF archives at Harvard and interviews with people who worked with the founder, Paul Fromm, this article discusses how Fromm's involvement in his foundation led to ventures that were influential on the development of American contemporary music and its relationship to academia. Unlike the Ford or Rockefeller foundations, Fromm sought the role of patron, fostering close relationships with composers and accepting their advice. Yet composers in Fromm's network often had aesthetic visions that were different from his. This article discusses Fromm's sponsorship of the Princeton Seminar in Advanced Musical Studies and the journal Perspectives of New Music, and how the different, complex and contradictory visions held by Fromm and his advisers were representative of those in the larger American music scene.

Notes

1 Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1997), 104.

2 Joseph N. Straus, ‘The Myth of Serial Tyranny’, Musical Quarterly, 83 (1999), 301–43 (p. 302).

3 Ibid., 303.

4 Anne C. Shreffler, ‘The Myth of Empirical Historiography’, Musical Quarterly, 84 (2000), 30–9 (p. 32).

5 James F. English, The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value (Cambridge, MA, 2005).

6 Greg Barnhisel, Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy (New York, 2015), 11.

7 See Rachel S. Vandagriff, ‘American Foundations for the Arts’, Oxford Handbooks Online (April 2015), <http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935321.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935321-e-112>.

8  Note that I am using ‘legitimization’ in a similar way to Pierre Bourdieu. In his Distinction (trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge, MA, 1979), he notes that in restricted fields of cultural production (such as, here, the building of Ph.D. programmes), productions are not legitimized by sales, but rather via the non-commercial currencies of symbolic and cultural capital. Discourse is thus central to legitimization.

9  Straus noted that serial composers made up ‘more than a small minority’ of the faculty at Princeton during this period (‘The Myth of Serial Tyranny’, 310). In fact, they constituted half of the faculty – Milton Babbitt, Roger Sessions (one of Babbitt’s teachers) and Peter Westergaard (a former Babbitt pupil) could be considered serialists, and J. K. Randall, another former Babbitt pupil, declared himself to be an ‘experimental’ and a ‘serial’ composer. What is more, Straus counted faculty member Edward T. Cone as a composer who wrote tonal and atonal music, but Cone worked at Princeton more as a theorist than as a composer.

10 Straus, ‘The Myth of Serial Tyranny’, 310.

11 Paul Fromm to Arthur Berger, quoted in Berger, ‘What Mozart Didn’t Have: The Story of the Fromm Music Foundation’, High Fidelity, 9/2 (February 1959), 41–3, 126, 128 (p. 41).

12 Fromm to Schneider, 26 January 1956. Files: Correspondences of Alexander Schneider 1-1-55 to 12-31-56 folder 1/2, Pusey Library (Harvard University Archives; hereafter HUA), UAV 406.95.1 FMF Administrative Records 1952–1987, Box 17.

13 Fromm to Milton Babbitt, 15 August 1961. Paul Fromm Manuscripts, MS Storage 290, Houghton Library, Harvard University (hereafter PFM), Box 4.

14 Fromm to Helen Carter, 26 November 1965. PFM, Box 4.

15 Aaron Copland and Vivian Perlis, Copland: Since 1943 (New York, 1989), 279.

16 Arthur Mendel to the Fromm Music Foundation, February 1953. PFM, Box 3. Kahn was personally connected with the FMF through Alexander Schneider, with whom he and Benar Heifetz formed the Albeneri Trio in 1944.

17 A Life for New Music: Selected Papers of Paul Fromm, ed. David Gable and Christoph Wolff (Cambridge, MA, 1988), 3.

18 Fromm to Elliott Carter, 21 December 1956. PFM, Box 4.

19 A Life for New Music, ed. Gable and Wolff, 4.

20 Milton Babbitt, ‘The Composer as Specialist’, The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, ed. Stephen Peles with Stephen Dembski, Andrew Mead and Joseph N. Straus (Princeton, NJ, 2003), 48–54 (pp. 48, 54); originally published as ‘Who Cares If You Listen?’, High Fidelity, 8/2 (February 1958), 38–40, 126–7.

21 Babbitt to Fromm, 21 November 1957. Files: Correspondences of Paul Fromm, Folder A–C 1959, folder 1/2, HUA, UAV 406.95.2 FMF: Correspondence of Director Paul Fromm, 1952–1987.

22 Ibid. In 1958, Babbitt, with the help of Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky, campaigned for and were awarded a Rockefeller Foundation grant that established the Princeton–Columbia Electronic Music Center.

23 Aaron Girard, ‘Music as a (Science as a) Liberal Art at Princeton’, special issue, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (2010), 31–52 (p. 43).

24 The Princeton seminar, including the selection of faculty, guests and seminar topics, is discussed in full in Rachel S. Vandagriff, ‘The History and Impact of the Fromm Music Foundation, 1952–1983’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2014), Chapter 2: ‘Paul Fromm, Milton Babbitt, and Benjamin Boretz’ (pp. 39–77).

25 See Hans Werner Henze, ‘German Music in the 1940s and 1950s’, Music and Politics: Collected Writings, 1953 –1981, trans. Peter Labanyi (Ithaca, NY, 1982), 27–56 (p. 43), and Gunther Schuller, Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty (Rochester, NY, 2011), 516–17 and 622, note 25.

26 Letter dated 7 November 1958, in The Correspondence of Roger Sessions, ed. Andrea Olmstead (Boston, MA, 1992), 417. See also Princeton University, Department of Music Records, 1932–2002, Box 3, Folder 6: ‘Fromm Foundation’, draft of memo from Mendel to Dean J. D. Brown, Princeton University Music Department; Carlton Gamer, ‘Milton at the Princeton Seminar: A Remembrance’, The Open Space Magazine / Perspectives of New Music, 49 (2012), 361–2.

27 Paul Fromm, ‘The Princeton Seminar – Its Purpose and Promise’, in ‘Problems of Modern Music: The Princeton Seminar in Advanced Musical Studies’, ed. Paul Henry Lang, special issue, Musical Quarterly, 46/2 (1960), 155–8.

28 Ibid., 158.

29 Problems of Modern Music: The Princeton Seminar in Advanced Musical Studies, ed. Paul Henry Lang (New York, 1962).

30 As Peter Westergaard remembers it, the seminar ‘led to the first “non-issue” of Perspectives. I have forgotten what it is called now, but it was sort of the beginning of the whole thing. [ … ] It was, in a sense, a kind of trial balloon.’ ‘Interview: Peter Westergaard’, Perspectives of New Music (hereafter PNM ), 50 (2012), 236–43 (pp. 238–9).

31 Fromm probably got to know Foss at the Berkshire Music Center, where Foss was a member of the faculty; during the school year, he taught at UCLA.

32 Lukas Foss to Fromm, 30 November 1958. HUA, UAV 406.95.2.

33 Fromm to Foss, 22 December 1958. HUA, UAV 406.95.2.

34 Fromm noted that, while he could not vouch for Craft’s interest in the post, he did believe that Craft had ‘the integrity, intellect, originality of thinking, non-sectarian musical judgement and a sense of value which you and I would consider the sine qua non for the job’. Fromm to Foss, 22 December 1958. HUA, UAV 406.95.2.

35 Foss to Fromm, 9 January 1959. HUA, UAV 406.95.2. Foss’s first point about Craft’s language foreshadows criticism he and others would have about PNM.

36 Foss to Fromm, 1 February 1959. HUA, UAV 406.95.2.

37 Babbitt to Fromm, no date (probably 1 February 1959). HUA, UAV 406.95.2. Boretz was 24 years old at the time.

38 Marion A. Guck, Fred E. Maus and Benjamin Boretz, ‘July 29, 1989: A Talk with Ben (about Writing “Meta-Variations” and Other Things)’, PNM, 43/44 (summer 2005–winter 2006), 346–76 (p. 356). I discuss the contrast between Boretz’s public and private writing in ‘The History and Impact of the Fromm Music Foundation’, 62.

39 Guck, Maus and Boretz, ‘July 29, 1989’, 366.

40 Ibid., 364.

41 Interview between Benjamin Boretz and Rachel S. Vandagriff, New York, 27 December 2011.

42 Ibid.

43 Interview between Boretz and Vandagriff, 27 December 2011.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid.

47 Foss to Fromm, 1 February 1959. HUA, UAV 406.95.2.

48 Foss to Fromm, 2 July 1959. HUA, UAV 406.95.2.

49 Unedited tape of conversation between Arthur Berger and Benjamin Boretz, November 1986, later published in edited form as Berger and Boretz, ‘A Conversation about Perspectives’, PNM, 25 (1987), 592–607; interview between Boretz and Vandagriff, New York, 13 April 2012.

50 Interview between Boretz and Vandagriff, 27 December 2011.

51 Ibid. In Boretz’s 1986 conversation with Berger, he described Fromm’s opinion in starker terms: ‘I mentioned [the idea for a magazine], telling him what I was interested in.’ Boretz remembers Fromm saying he was ‘in no way interested in any of these projects’. Unedited tape of conversation between Berger and Boretz (see note 49 above).

52 Ibid.

53 Fromm to Boretz, 4 June 1960. PFM, Box 4.

54 Alexander Schneider to Fromm, 27 June 1960. PFM, Box 3.

55 Fromm to Schneider, 28 June 1960. PFM, Box 3.

56 Fromm and Schneider exchanged further letters regarding payment. Schneider continued to refuse compensation until he felt it was deserved, but the two did seem to mend whatever irked their friendship at that point in time. The FMF did pay Schneider $1,000 for his services in 1961. Fromm to Schneider, 11 July 1960. PFM, Box 3.

57 Benjamin Boretz, ‘The Zeitgeist of Perspectives, Ab origine’, PNM, 50 (2012), 9–17 (p. 17).

58 Interview between Boretz and Vandagriff, 27 December 2011.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.

61 Interview between Boretz and Vandagriff, 27 December 2011. See also Guck, Maus and Boretz, ‘July 29, 1989’, 363–4.

62 Interview between Boretz and Vandagriff, 13 April 2012.

63 For Boretz’s elaboration on this topic, see Guck, Maus and Boretz, ‘July 29, 1989’, 349, 351, 364–5.

64 Interview between Boretz and Vandagriff, 27 December 2011.

65 Babbitt to Fromm, 24 January 1959. HUA, UAV 406.95.2.

66 Interview between Boretz and Vandagriff, 13 April 2012.

67 Interview between Boretz and Vandagriff, 27 December 2011.

68 See Rachel S. Vandagriff, ‘Foundations, Patronage, and American Modernism: Paul Fromm, the Fromm Music Foundation, and Elliott Carter as Case Study’, paper presented at the Society of American Music Conference, March 2014, and forthcoming publication.

69 Interview between Boretz and Vandagriff, 27 December 2011.

70 Berger, ‘What Mozart Didn’t Have’.

71 Berger to Fromm, 3 October 1959. PFM, Box 2.

72 Berger, Reflections of an American Composer, 139.

73 Ibid.

74 Unedited tape of conversation between Berger and Boretz (see note 49 above).

75 Berger, Reflections of an American Composer, 148; interview between Boretz and Vandagriff, 13 April 2012.

76 Berger, Reflections of an American Composer, 148.

77 Ibid. Daniel Lewis, ‘Huntington Hartford, A & P Heir, Dies at 97’, New York Times, 20 May 2008; Arthur Berger and Benjamin Boretz, ‘A Conversation about Perspectives’, PNM, 25 (1987), 592–607 (p. 593).

78 The Journal of Music Theory was founded in 1957 and published by Yale University Press. Modern Music began publication in 1924 as the League of Composers Review, and was issued quarterly until 1946. Score was founded in 1949 by William Glock and published in England.

79 Berger and Boretz, ‘A Conversation about Perspectives’, 593.

80 Everett Helm, ‘Reviewed Work(s): Die Reihe, Vol. I: Electronic Music by Herbert Eimert [and] Karlheinz Stockhausen; Die Reihe, Vol. II: Anton Webern by Herbert Eimert [and] Karlheinz Stockhausen’, Journal of Music Theory, 3 (1959), 155–60.

81 John Backus, ‘A Scientific Evaluation of Die Reihe’, PNM, 1 (1962), 160–71.

82 Unedited tape of conversation between Berger and Boretz (see note 49 above)

83 Ibid.; Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky, Conversations (Garden City, NY, 1959). Berger discusses this further in his memoirs. Berger, Reflections of an American Composer, 140.

84 Berger, Reflections of an American Composer, 140.

85 Princeton University, Department of Music Records, 1932–2002, Box 4, Folder 26, ‘Perspectives 1963’.

86 Princeton University, Department of Music Records, 1932–2002, Box 4, Folder 26, ‘Perspectives 1963’.

87 Mendel to Berger and Boretz, June 1963. Ibid.

88 Boretz to Fromm, 23 February 1962. PFM, Box 4.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid.

91 Paul Fromm, ‘Young Composers: Perspective and Prospect’, PNM, 1 (1962), 1–3 (pp. 1–2). Babbitt had given up on this, mostly because he regarded many American concert-goers as musically uneducated, non-intellectual, and yet quick to judge. See Babbitt, ‘The Composer as Specialist’, and ‘Contemporary Music Composition and Music Theory as Contemporary Intellectual History’, Perspectives in Musicology: The Inaugural Lectures of the Ph.D. Program in Music at the City University of New York, ed. Barry S. Brook, Edward O. Downes and Sherman van Solkema (New York, 1972), 151–83, among other writings by Babbitt.

92 Fromm, ‘Young Composers’, 1–2.

93 Ibid., 2.

94 Ibid., 3. Babbitt said: ‘Admittedly, if this music is not supported, the whistling repertory of the man in the street will be little affected, the concert-going activity of the conspicuous consumer of musical culture will be little disturbed. But music will cease to evolve, and, in that important sense, will cease to live.’ Babbitt, ‘The Composer as Specialist’, 54.

95 Arthur Berger and Benjamin Boretz, ‘Editorial Note’, PNM, 1 (1962), 4–5 (p. 4).

96 Ibid.

97 Martin Brody, ‘“Music for the Masses”: Milton Babbitt’s Cold War Music Theory’, Musical Quarterly, 77 (1993), 161–92 (p. 166).

98  See ibid., esp. pp. 173–8.

99  Milton Babbitt, ‘The Unlikely Survival of Serious Music’, Words about Music, ed. Stephen Dembski and Joseph N. Straus (Madison, WI, 1987), 162–83.

100 Berger and Boretz, ‘Editorial Note’, 5.

101 The editors learnt about Backus from George Perle, who recommended him as a potential contributor to PNM on the basis of his article ‘Pseudo-Science in Music’, Journal of Music Theory, 4 (1960), 221–32.

102 Backus, ‘A Scientific Evaluation of Die Reihe’, 160.

103 Ibid., 171.

104 Babbitt, ‘Contemporary Music Composition and Music Theory’, 174.

105 Ibid.

106 Ibid., 172. Boretz sought to ameliorate the ‘conceptual problems that hinder communicative capacity of musical discourse’. Benjamin Boretz, ‘Meta-Variations: Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought (I)’, PNM, 8 (1969), 1–74 (p. 12).

107 Babbitt, ‘Contemporary Music Composition and Music Theory’, 182–3.

108 Boretz, ‘Meta-Variations (I)’, 13.

109 Ibid.

110 Milton Babbitt, ‘Past and Present Concepts of the Nature and Limits of Music’, Report of the Eighth Congress [of the International Musicological Society], ed. Jan LaRue, 2 vols. (Kassel, 1961), i, 398–403; repr. in Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (New York, 1972), 3–9, and in The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, ed. Stephen Peles et al. (Princeton, NJ, 2012), 78–85 (subsequent references are to this last edition).

111 Babbitt took his definition of ‘concept’ from Rudolf Carnap. See Babbitt, ‘Past and Present Concepts’, and Rudolf Carnap, Meaning and Necessity (Chicago, IL, 1956), 21.

112 Babbitt, ‘Past and Present Concepts’, 79.

113 In this context, the ‘Vienna Circle’ philosophers have been identified as logical positivist philosophers, although according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in the 1930s and 1940s Carl Hempel helped develop logical positivism into a more nuanced position known as ‘logical empiricism’, and preferred that term. Richard Creath, ‘Logical Empiricism’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2017), ed. Edward N. Zalta, <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/logical-empiricism>.

114 During this time, Princeton participated in the Army Specialized Training Program, the School of Military Government and the Officers Instruction Program, and thus hosted 20,000 soldiers for instruction. See Girard, ‘Music as a (Science as a) Liberal Art’, 42.

115 Babbitt got to know Carnap personally when he taught at Princeton from 1952 until 1954. Hempel taught at Princeton from 1955.

116 According to Berger, ‘Among the factors that favored its adoption at Princeton were the already existing Ph.D. for creative work in architecture and the testimonials from the mathematics department that it would never consider a dissertation in the history of mathematics appropriate for a Ph.D. candidate in its field: the candidate must “create new mathematics”.’ Berger, Reflections of an American Composer, 144.

117 Boretz, ‘Meta-Variations (I)’, 3.

118 Ibid., 6.

119 Babbitt, ‘Past and Present Concepts’, 79.

120 Boretz, ‘Meta-Variations (I)’, 6.

121 Babbitt, ‘Past and Present Concepts’, 83.

122 Ibid.

123 ‘Interview: Peter Westergaard’, 239.

124 Babbitt’s only publication prior to the establishment of PNM was his ‘Past and Present Concepts’ (see above, note 110).

125 Charles Rosen, ‘The Proper Study of Music’, PNM, 1 (1962), 80–8; Joseph Kerman, ‘“The Proper Study of Music”: A Reply’, PNM, 2 (1963), 151–60.

126 Rosen, ‘The Proper Study of Music’, 83.

127 Kerman, ‘“The Proper Study of Music”: A Reply’, 159.

128 Kerman, original draft of ‘“The Proper Study of Music”: A Reply’, Princeton University, Department of Music Records, 1932–2002, Box 4, Folder 26, ‘Perspectives 1963’. Sent by Boretz to Mendel, 14 May 1963. The Naumberg chair was held by Roger Sessions.

129 Oliver Strunk to Mendel, 27 June 1963, Princeton University, Department of Music Records, 1932–2002, Box 4, Folder 26, ‘Perspectives 1963’, pp. 6–7.

130 Edward T. Cone to Mendel, 28 May 1963, Princeton University, Department of Music Records, 1932–2002, Box 4, Folder 26, ‘Perspectives 1963’.

131 Rosen, ‘The Proper Study of Music’, 88.

132 Berger and Boretz, ‘A Conversation about Perspectives’, 599.

133 Ibid.

134 Kerman, ‘“The Proper Study of Music”: A Reply’, 152–3, note 1.

135 Berger, Reflections of an American Composer, 143.

136 Boretz and Berger, ‘Editorial Note’.

137 Berger, Reflections of an American Composer, 145 (italics original).

138 Berger and Boretz, ‘A Conversation about Perspectives’, 599.

139 Ibid.

140 Later, Boretz claimed that the role of PNM in the academicization of the profession of composition surprised him. See Guck, Maus and Boretz, ‘July 29, 1989’, 369. In his memoirs, Berger explained that he viewed the campaign for the Ph.D. in composition as recognition for the ‘intellectual aspect of composition’. Berger, Reflections of an American Composer, 143.

141 Fromm to Foss, 3 January 1963. Fromm to Helen Carter, 9 November 1961: ‘[Carter] made a wise decision when he did not even want to consider the Presidency of Juilliard. Elliott’s loyalties belong to his creative work. His status will always be derived from his stature, rather than from false glory of an administrative appointment.’ PFM, Box 4.

142 Fromm to Garvey, 4 March 1963. HUA, UAV 406.95.2.

143 Ibid.

144 These claims are discussed inVandagriff, ‘The History and Impact of the Fromm Music Foundation’.

145 As one of many examples, Fromm suggested to Boretz that they commission the composer Walter Piston to write an article for PNM. With Piston, Fromm wrote to Boretz, they ‘would have the voice of a respectable conservative’. Fromm to Boretz, 18 January 1963. PFM, Box 4.