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"Horowitz, Joseph, 1948-"
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The Propaganda of Freedom
The perils of equating notions of freedom with artistic
vitality
Eloquently extolled by President John F. Kennedy, the idea that
only artists in free societies can produce great art became a
bedrock assumption of the Cold War. That this conviction defied
centuries of historical evidence--to say nothing of achievements
within the Soviet Union--failed to impact impregnable cultural Cold
War doctrine.
Joseph Horowitz writes: \"That so many fine minds could have
cheapened freedom by over-praising it, turning it into a
reductionist propaganda mantra, is one measure of the intellectual
cost of the Cold War.\" He shows how the efforts of the CIA-funded
Congress for Cultural Freedom were distorted by an
anti-totalitarian \"psychology of exile\" traceable to its secretary
general, the displaced Russian aristocrat/composer Nicolas Nabokov,
and to Nabokov's hero Igor Stravinsky.
In counterpoint, Horowitz investigates personal, social, and
political factors that actually shape the creative act. He here
focuses on Stravinsky, who in Los Angeles experienced a \"freedom
not to matter,\" and Dmitri Shostakovich, who was both victim and
beneficiary of Soviet cultural policies. He also takes a fresh look
at cultural exchange and explores paradoxical similarities and
differences framing the popularization of classical music in the
Soviet Union and the United States. In closing, he assesses the
Kennedy administration's arts advocacy initiatives and their
pertinence to today's fraught American national identity.
Challenging long-entrenched myths, The Propaganda of
Freedom newly explores the tangled relationship between the
ideology of freedom and ideals of cultural achievement.
eBook
Moral fire
Joseph Horowitz writes in Moral Fire: \"If the Met's screaming Wagnerites standing on chairs (in the 1890s) are unthinkable today, it is partly because we mistrust high feeling. Our children avidly specialize in vicarious forms of electronic interpersonal diversion. Our laptops and televisions ensnare us in a surrogate world that shuns all but facile passions; only Jon Stewart and Bill Maher share moments of moral outrage disguised as comedy.\" Arguing that the past can prove instructive and inspirational, Horowitz revisits four astonishing personalities—Henry Higginson, Laura Langford, Henry Krehbiel and Charles Ives—whose missionary work in the realm of culture signaled a belief in the fundamental decency of civilized human nature, in the universality of moral values, and in progress toward a kingdom of peace and love.
eBook