Marc Blitzstein

Marc Blitzstein (Philadelphia, 2 March 1905 – Fort-de-France, Martinique, 22 January 1964) was an American composer whose stage works shaped a musical theatre of social and political character. His career illustrates the move from an abstract neoclassicism towards a more functional, agitprop style, in which the blues, popular song, satire and parody served a direct message. The son of parents of Russian Jewish origin, he received an early and precocious musical education: at the age of seven he gave his first public concert, playing Mozart's Coronation Concerto with his teacher Constantine von Sternberg at the second piano.

Following his parents' separation, he moved with his mother and sister to Venice, California, where he continued his piano studies and performed at charity concerts. Back in Philadelphia, he entered the University of Pennsylvania at the age of sixteen, although he soon gave up his scholarship. For three years he studied with Siloti, and in 1924 he joined the newly founded Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied composition with Rosario Scalero. His training later included periods in Paris, with Nadia Boulanger, and in Berlin, where he took a course with Schoenberg at the Akademie der Künste. Twelve-tone technique proved arid to him, and he returned to Philadelphia in 1927.

In the 1930s his music turned towards social protest. His operas The Condemned, about the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, and No for an Answer gave voice to labour and immigration conflicts. His best-known work, The Cradle Will Rock, whose official premiere was cancelled by the Federal Theater Project, was eventually staged independently at the Mercury Theatre in New York. His years of close association with the communist movement attracted the attention of the FBI. During the Second World War he served with the Eighth Air Force in London, and afterwards returned to the theatre with Regina, centred on the struggle of African Americans for equality.

His adaptation of Brecht and Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper brought him the recognition he had sought, with a long run of performances. In 1959 he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1962 he taught at Bennington College. His death in Martinique, following an assault in a harbour bar, brought to a close a career in which music aspired to be an instrument of social criticism. His legacy is remembered above all for The Cradle Will Rock, a symbol of American political musical theatre and the musical counterpart of Brecht's epic theatre.