Topic of my first discussion:
Understanding my understanding of Undertanding Toscanini

Over the past couple of months I have been reading various books detailing the life of Artuo Toscanini and the effect that he had, and still has, on the operatic and orchestral world. The first book, Joseph Horowitz's Understanding Toscanini, discusses Toscanini's direct involvement in the dissemination of "high" culture to the masses. According to the author, this resulted in the dilution of "high" culture into what is known as midcult. Midcult is a form of intellectual or artistic culture that has qualities of high culture and mass culture without being either.

The end result of all this is the state we are in today. Horowitz names Live from Lincoln Centre and PBS's Great Performances series as the consequences of the dissemination and dilution of high culture. It was David Sarnoff's NBC (it was a radio network before TV) in the 1930's that decided to persuade Toscanini to direct their radio orchestra and thus to start the true mass marketing of classical/art/serious/whatever you want to call it music.
This was not the first attempt to bring culture to or educate the 'masses.' For many years before this, there were various music appreciation radio shows. Many of these were offered so that they could be listened to in schools. Some of these hosts would find neat little ways to help the public, say, remember a motif or theme of a Beethoven symphony. For example:
My name is Matt B!
You're now listening to me!


I think I could have done a great job as one of these hosts.

Regardless.... I digress.

It is very easy to hate and try and bring down the people on top. Conductors including Klemperer, Walter, Solti, Szell and Karajan all stated at one time or another their fascination and reverence for Artuo Toscanini. They must have been pretty dedicated to the lie... I would venture to say that there were probably hundreds of musicians and singers who would have agreed. The fact of the matter is that we all have faults and using a documentation of Toscanini's tantrums and displays of bullheadedness to get the reader so disgusted that they will believe whatever the author feels like postulating is unfair. This is what I believe happened in Understanding Toscanini.

I would have to agree with Toscanini's biographer Harvy Sachs when he states that Toscanini could have had a chapter dedicated to him and NBC's role in the dilution of high culture in a larger book on the subject. But blaming a 75 year old conductor for not wanting to conduct new or American music in 1937 onward is a little far fetched to me. The NBC orchestra was created for him so he could play the pieces he wanted to. After a 55 year career of totally reforming the Italian Operatic scene, bringing German Music to Italy, rehearsing and conducting over 170 operas from memory, many of them world and Italian premieres who can blame him?

By the way, for a man who didn't help new music at all, he sure did a lot before 1930 promoting both lesser and widely known CONTEMPORARY composers. He conducted the Italian premier of Salome, Eugene Onegin, the first Italian productions of Siegfried and Gotterdammererung and the world premieres of Pagliacci, La Boheme, La fanciulla del West, Madame Sane-Gene, Nerone and Turandot.

Pretty impressive if you ask me.

More on this soon.
MJB