Joseph Horowitz

Jan 24, 2025 | persuasion.community | Joseph Horowitz |Yascha Mounk

This article is brought to you by American Purpose, the magazine and community founded by Francis Fukuyama in 2020, which is now proudly part of the Persuasion family. by Joseph HorowitzIt is little-known that, when he died, President John F. Kennedy was about to appoint Richard Goodwin—a vigorous member of his inner circle—his advisor on the arts. Kennedy’s initiative would have vitally supported the ongoing cultural Cold War with Soviet Russia. Something like it is ever more necessary today.

Nov 21, 2024 | theamericanscholar.org | Joseph Horowitz

Lawrence Tibbett: The Complete Victor Recordings & Selected Broadcasts; 10 CDs; Marston Records, $120Of the opening of a new Italian opera house in 1833, the prominent New York City diarist Philip Hone reported: “The performance occupied four hours—much too long, according to my notion, to listen to a language which one does not understand. … Will this splendid and refined amusement be supported in New York?

Sep 20, 2024 | wsj.com | Joseph Horowitz

Charles Ives (1874-1954) once described the poetic genesis of one of his best-known compositions: “The ‘Housatonic at Stockbridge’ … was suggested by a Sunday morning walk that Mrs. Ives and I took near Stockbridge, [Mass.,] the summer after we were married. We walked in the meadows along the river, and heard the distant singing from the church across the river.

Sep 3, 2024 | theamericanscholar.org | Joseph Horowitz

IAmong canonized composers of classical music, Charles Ives—born 150 years ago this autumn—possesses the most elusive, least stable reputation. There are composers whose standing has sharply declined (the operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer were once repertory staples) or risen (Sergei Rachmaninoff is no longer despised as a sentimental anomaly). There are composers whose full stature was only recognized generations after they died (Hector Berlioz’s opera The Trojans languished for a century).

Jun 14, 2024 | theamericanscholar.org | Joseph Horowitz

In 1952, the Central Intelligence Agency covertly supported an unprecedented international arts festival lavish in cost and purpose: “Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century.” It took place in Paris over the course of a full month. The mastermind was Nicolas Nabokov, Secretary General of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, then the major instrument of American Cold War cultural propaganda.