Marc Blitzstein - Biography

Biography

Marc Blitzstein was born in Philadelphia on March 2, 1905, the son of affluent parents. In 1928 his father Sam Blitzstein married Robert Serber's sister-in-law Madeline Leof. Blitzstein's musical gifts were apparent at an early age; he had performed a Mozart piano concerto by the time he was seven. He went on to study piano with Alexander Siloti, (a pupil of Tchaikovsky and Liszt), and made his professional concerto debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Liszt's E-flat Piano Concerto when he was 21. His first relationship was in 1924, when he traveled to Europe with conductor Alexander Smallens.

After studying composition at the Curtis Institute of Music, he went to Europe to continue his studies in Berlin with Arnold Schoenberg (with whom he did not get on), and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger (with whom he did). Despite his later political beliefs, he was, in the early years of his career, a self-proclaimed and unrepentant artistic snob, who firmly believed that true art was only for the intellectual elite. He was vociferous in denouncing composers — in particular Respighi, Ravel, and Kurt Weill — who, he felt, debased their standards to reach a wider public.

His works of this period, mostly pianistic vehicles such as the Piano Sonata (1927) and the Piano Concerto (1931) are typical of the Boulanger-influenced products of American modernism — strongly rhythmic (though not influenced by jazz) and described by himself as "wild, dissonant and percussive." These early works were far removed from the Schoenberg style.

Although Blitzstein married novelist Eva Goldbeck on March 2, 1933, he was openly gay; they had no children. His mother-in-law was Berlin-born musical star and opera singer Lina Abarbanell. He dedicated a number of works, including Romantic Piece for Orchestra (1930), String Quartet, 'The Italian' (1930), the ballet Cain (1930), and the Serenade for String Quartet (1932) to his wife-to-be. She died of anorexia in 1936, and his grief prompted him to throw himself into the work of creating The Cradle Will Rock. He summered at the Pine Brook Country Club located in the countryside near Nichols, Connecticut, which became the summer rehearsal headquarters of the Group Theatre in the 1930s and 1940s.