R. I. P. : The National Endowment for the Humanities (1965-2005)

(The same program, introducing the master Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, was presented by the El Paso Symphony, the Austin Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Las Vegas Philharmonic, the Louisville Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, and the Brevard Music Festival [most recently lead partner in the MU consortium].) He seems to ask the question: Who exactly is the stranger, the outsider, the exile?” Weill’s songs, and a chunk of his 1946 Broadway opera Street Scene, were interspersed with excerpts from Brecht’s Mother Courage, and from the 1929 Elmer Rice play upon which Street Scene the opera was based. I spoke about Kurt Weill and immigration, I shared my clip of FDR declaring war, I played a recording of “Dirge for Two Veterans.” A girl raised her hand to tell us that she had wept twice during the song – the parts where Whitman and Weill describe moonlight overlooking the twin graves of the two Civil War soldiers, a father and son.

Author: Joe Horowitz

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