Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices (review)

Abstract

TWENTIETH-CENTURY COMPOSERS Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices. By Michael Broyles and Denise Von Glahn. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. [xvi, 392 p. ISBN-13: 9780253348944. $34.95.] Illustrations, music examples, works list, biographical references, index. In the early part of the twentieth century, Russian-born Leo Ornstein burst onto the American musical scene. He played piano recitals to standing-room only audiences across the country, was discussed in newspaper and magazine articles, parodied in cartoons, and had his portrait painted by Leon Kroll and William Zorach among others. For a time, Ornstein was the poster child for the cause of musical modernism. His name once was mentioned beside Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky as a harbinger of modernism in America; however, shortly after World War I he disappeared from the public eye and was almost entirely forgotten by music historians. In the early 1970s Ornstein's family contacted historian Vivian Perlis, with the hope that she could help bring the composer out of obscurity. Perlis brought Ornstein's manuscripts and related material to the Yale University Music Library, where she was able to preserve and promote his music. One of the fruits of her labors was an article published in this journal (The Futurist Music of Leo Notes 31, no. 4 [ June 1975]: 735-50), which helped to acquaint the late twentieth century to Ornstein's music. Despite Perlis's work, Ornstein unfortunately still resides on the periphery of American music. For this reason, the authors of Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices seek to reestablish Ornstein's place in early twentieth-century America and the development of musical modernism. In addition to presenting the most comprehensive history of Ornstein's music and life to date, they attempt to answer two questions about Ornstein's life: what led to his slip into obscurity and what influenced his brief stint with musical modernism? In the preface the authors tell us that this text will be more than just a biography of Ornstein and an attempt to answer these pressing issues about his life. The authors indicate that they want to tell about the role of music in early twentieth-century America. To this end, the book covers the gamut of events, from Russian pogroms that led to mass migrations of Jews to the United States, to the beginnings of a modern art movement in the United States; from anti-Semitism in the early 1920s to the stock market crash of 1929 and the rise of the Red Scare. In the broad path of this historical sweep we encounter a cast of prominent characters who had some type of relationship to Ornstein, albeit sometimes tangential, such as Frank Damrosch, Henry Ford, Georgia O'Keefe, Deems Taylor, Henry Cowell, Sergei Rachmaninoff, John Coltrane, Dan Rudhyar, and George Antheil. Besides discussing important figures and events of the early twentieth century, the authors also discuss some of the important technologies sweeping the musical world such as player pianos, recording technology, and radio broadcasting. The first two chapters of this text serve to give the reader the most comprehensive understanding of Ornstein's musical beginnings. In the first chapter the authors give details of Ornstein's earliest days in a fairly novel way; they turn to the autobiography of Jacob Titiev, Ornstein's uncle, to furnish otherwise incomplete details about the Ornstein family's life in Russia and their immigration to the United States. In the second chapter the authors attempt to pinpoint the impetus behind Ornstein's futurist works. In addition to examining the first references in contemporary media to Ornstein's new style, they also probe his compositions to look for the transitional period to determine from where and whence his inspiration came. The authors' sticking point in the argument is whether Ornstein was influenced by modern music that he heard while on a European tour in 1913 or whether his modernist style emerged from his own imagination without any contemporary influences. …