# Lincoln Portrait



## timothyjuddviolin (Nov 1, 2011)

A Presidents' Day post from The Listeners' Club:

Lincoln Portrait

I linked up to the Ormandy recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra. I think this is a really great recording of this piece.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

The one with 'James Earl Jones' voice is the best!


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Arsakes said:


> The one with 'James Earl Jones' voice is the best!


The James Earl Jones recording is especially great because he puts exactly the kind of leftist slant on the final line that Copland surely intended: "and that government of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, and for... THE PEOPLE... shall not perish from the earth!" Contrast that to the Charlton Heston recording, which (not surprisingly) gives that line a different political slant: "and that government OF the people, BY the people, and FOR the people... SHALL NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH!"


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I like this piece, not only for the piece itself, but due to its history. It was banned during the Senator McCarthy 'witchhunt' era in the 1950's. Later in the 1960's under President Lyndon B. Johnson the ban was lifted and Copland was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Quite a turn around of political fortunes for Aaron, hey? Its ironic what famous pieces of classical music where banned in their own time, given that many people now may think of them as innocuous 'nice tunes,' or harmless museum pieces. I did a thread on this issue ages back:

http://www.talkclassical.com/17881-music-banned.html


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sid James said:


> I like this piece, not only for the piece itself, but due to its history. It was banned during the Senator McCarthy 'witchhunt' era in the 1950's. Later in the 1960's under President Lyndon B. Johnson the ban was lifted.


Lincoln Portrait banned? I can find no reference to this. Can you possibly offer a source?


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## Bone (Jan 19, 2013)

Should be banned - why celebrate a war criminal? But that's just me....


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

KenOC said:


> Lincoln Portrait banned? I can find no reference to this. Can you possibly offer a source?


THIS web page mentions _Lincoln Portrait_ being banned in the extracted quote I put below.



> This most patriotic and least bombastic of pieces was banned for some years when Copland was under the hammer of Senator MacCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee. A performance slated for President Eisenhower's inauguration was cancelled for the same reason.


But there is an in depth discussion of the whole thing in the extensive notes in the cd I got of this work on Naxos label:
http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.572108

...but seems its not like it used to be, you can't just go in and access their notes for free, you got to subscribe or whatever.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Bone said:


> Should be banned - why celebrate a war criminal? But that's just me....


Well I haven't heard of Lincoln being that, but even if that's the case, we can look at other classical pieces dedicated to butchers (well, butchers for some, liberators to others, depending which side of the fence you sit).

*Taras Bulba* by Janacek - Taras the Cossack was like this Slavic hero, but to non Slavs he was a genocidal nutcase. Did a huge massacre of Hungarians for example.

*Radetzky March *by J. Strauss II - Radetzky was the guy who bought the Hungarians and Czechs into line, snuffed out their attempts at independence in 1848. Ironically, Radetzky himself had family history going back to the Czechs. A quisling.

*Not to speak of obvious ones glorifying totalitarian regimes of the 20th century*. The numerous odes and other pieces to Stalin, Lenin, and so on. Franz Schmidt's cantata written to celebrate Anschluss in 1938 (Nazi Germany's invastion of Austria - dubious to call it unification, and I don't think it was liberation judging from what happened after).

Anyway I can go on but I'll stop just right here. In any case, these things should not be banned. They are part of classical music's history, which has many quite unsavoury skeletons in the closet, but on this forum its been a liability for me to open this closet of sacred cows, so better we just keep it shut guys. At least to maintain the peace and avoid our own virtual feuds.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Well...I think it'll take more than that reference to convince me. There is no law that allows the government to "ban" a piece of music, McCarthy notwithstanding. It seems very possible a performance at Eisenhower's inaugural was canceled, but that's a quite different thing. I can find nothing at Wiki or on the 'net in general, and it seems to me that the US government "banning" a piece of music would be pretty big news. The government has never even banned obscene books, although local governments have applied penalites post facto.

So I'll stand by for more...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^Well I am not a scholar, never claimed to be. Its good this has aroused your interest. But the onus is on YOU to find sources. I'm just reflecting what I've read in different places. Norman Lebrecht's companion to 20th century music also mentions this. But you probably have a point that banning and cancellation of that performance for the inauguration can be kind of conflated.

The McCarthy witch hunts did affect musicians. Paul Robeson, the singer, had his passport temporarily confiscated, so he could not travel outside USA. Hanns Eisler was deported back to Germany for being a member of the Communist party (don't remember if it was the German or American Communist Party). Copland was on a blacklist of some sort, as he was indeed a member of the American Communist Party. Injustices where done for sure, but after McCarthy's death, my understanding is that this sort of thing largely stopped.

As regards to censorship, it exists in free societies like Australia. We had a list of banned books here, and also films. _Lady Chatterley's Lover_ by D.H. Lawrence was one, and the film _Salo_ by Pasolini was another. This was for sexual and not political content. Of course, that was decades ago.

But my wider point is that complete freedom doesn't exist anywhere.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sid James said:


> But the onus is on YOU to find sources.


I believe it is a fundamental principle that the burden of proof is on the affirmative...


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Bone said:


> Should be banned - why celebrate a war criminal? But that's just me....


Argue that something should be banned in an abuse of government authority, on the basis that it celebrates someone that abused government authority. Seems legit :3


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

KenOC said:


> I believe it is a fundamental principle that the burden of proof is on the affirmative...


Well to finish our conversation, your instincts where right. The piece was banned from being played at the inauguration only, according to Lebrecht: "His populism - allied to his socialism, Jewishness and homosexuality - became suspect in the McCarthy era when the Lincoln Portrait was banned from President Eisenhower's inauguration ceremony and Copland felt for the first time a stranger in his homeland." (in The Companion to Twentieth Century Music, 1992, p. 80).

As for the Naxos cd notes, its says that Copland "found himself immersed in the McCarthy era of the 1940's and 1950s. In the April 4, 1949 issue of LIfe magazine, Copland was castigated, along with Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein, Lillian Hellmann, Langston Hughes, Norman Mailer, and others under the headline DUPES AND FELLOW TRAVELLERS DRESS UP COMMUNIST FRONTS. Fifteen years later, in a 1964 White House ceremony, Lyndon B. Johnson presented Aaron Copland his country's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Copland learned the hard way that freedom, as Norwin Corwin once remarked, must be exercised like a healthy muscle." (Notes from above Naxos cd written by Thomas O'Neal).

So yes, I stand corrected, however I must stress I am no fan of the trend of this forum becoming a defacto academic journal or court of law where we need citations and references for things we say. Surely members here have the skills to find what they need online or elsewhere (but this I appreciate can take time and effort). But no harm in asking for information, just saying this is not a court of law, its an open forum.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Thanks Sid. I downloaded the Naxos booklet from NML and see the same thing. BTW I hope that if (remote though the possibility may be) I post something that is mistaken, somebody will have the courtesy to offer a correction.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> I believe it is a fundamental principle that the burden of proof is on the affirmative...


Satisfy your own curiosity -- look up all people 'blackballed' by him / her / them during the McCarthy 'reign of terror' (McCarthy's personal pathological progression had him later as certifiably bat-guano crazy).

There was nothing 'legal' about any of those bans - some banned were on actual 'official' lists, others. "just not done business with...."

If you get word that if you play Copland's "Lincoln Portrait," it is consequentially almost certain you will be spending a lot of time and money on lawyers talking to a senate sub-committee or a grand jury, that it is enough to give one pause.

[My taste has me really disliking those pieces of music with narrative, because I have yet to hear one which does not seem at odds between the two media of speech + music: I think that like oil and water, they just don't mix. Fact is, I find the Copland especially egregious because it is speech -- a politicking bit of speech / propaganda at that -- and music -- and calculatedly manipulative (and I think 'corny') music at that.

Propaganda is propaganda, whether you admire or dislike the subject: I've never much cared for those appeals of rhetoric and emotion clearly meant to manipulate the audience into thinking / feeling something.

The "Oil and Water" of it being that bureaucracy and art generally have never made a good couple.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Sources*



Sid James said:


> So yes, I stand corrected, however I must stress I am no fan of the trend of this forum becoming a defacto academic journal or court of law where we need citations and references for things we say. Surely members here have the skills to find what they need online or elsewhere (but this I appreciate can take time and effort). But no harm in asking for information, just saying this is not a court of law, its an open forum.


Sid,

I understand what you are talking about. I used to be a pension auditor with the US Government. The last time I had to provide sources is when I had to cite federal law or regulations in order to support the findings of one of my audit reports.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

arpeggio said:


> Sid,
> 
> I understand what you are talking about. I used to be a pension auditor with the US Government. The last time I had to provide sources is when I had to cite federal law or regulations in order to support the findings of one of my audit reports.


Well yes, unlike work, this is a forum and I come here not to do work - eg. find sources all the time - but just chat. Inevitably I may bring up things that people want more information about, that's fine. But I don't always have the time to get the sources. In any case, Copland's leftist politics are widely known. One can draw certain conclusions about that in a logical way without the need for sources. The 1940's and '50's political climate in America (eg. the first decades of the Cold War) where times when people on that side of the political spectrum got put out in the cold so to speak. Similar thing happened here (a famous diplomatic incident involving supposed Communist agents acting Australia was the Petrov Affair) and other Western countries. It was an ideological war. But in a way I was right. Lincoln Portrait was banned, at least once for that Presidential inauguration. Copland also had a campaign of political discrimination against him, a kind of shaming and blacklisting.

But things like this preoccupation with evidence/sources can potentially get pedantic (and don't begin on pedantic semantics - I hate it, for similar reasons, I don't have time to use the so called correct words for everything I write here, I just write what comes to mind, and I trust members of this forum have the intelligence to garner from that my basic points).

However I like to use sources to stimulate debate, eg. when opening a thread. I like to contrast quotes for example giving different or opposite opinions on some topic. But I don't like to lock things down with quotes (eg. 'I am right, you're wrong,' type attitude').


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I remember hearing Lincoln Portrait on the radio before I got into classical so I didn't catch who the composer was or whose narration it was (I'm guessing it was Gregory Peck). I've got the version that features an aged Katherine Hepburn - it doesn't seem to get many plaudits as other versions but I think the by-then unavoidable shakiness in her voice made it sound quite affecting and heartfelt.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Sid James said:


> So yes, I stand corrected, however I must stress I am no fan of the trend of this forum becoming a defacto academic journal or court of law where we need citations and references for things we say.


I can understand the motivation behind this but personally I'm willing to err on the side of caution and expect people to back up their claims about factual matters, since fact-checking is how we learn stuff in the first place. I definitely appreciate the clarification that fact-checking provided in this particular thread, anyway, and I think the benefit of having a more accurate picture of history far outweighs the inconvenience of having to look stuff up. Just my two cents.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^Agreed, of course if its concerning factual information, not so much in the case of for example 'proving' something that is subjective opinion, eg. that Beethoven is greater than Mozart or whatever. But I think there is no onus, in some cases I have checked things people say on this forum, sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong, sometimes its hard to get exact facts, sometimes its a grey area. I think its ok if we're talking facts, I don't like to use these as supporters of dichotomies and dodgy arguments. But that was not the case on this thread re my exchanges with KenOc. I was just making the point which is obvious, TC forum isn't an academic journal or court of law. First and foremost for me its a place to share ideas - and yes facts - but not get too pedantic about them, or demand things of others that may not be realistic given the time constraints that many of us are under when we log on here.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Sid James said:


> not so much in the case of for example 'proving' something that is subjective opinion, eg. that Beethoven is greater than Mozart or whatever.


(Oh, definitely.... that drives me nuts. It's one of the reasons I took a hiatus from this site for a while. But it's good to be back.)


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