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THE CAPITALISTIC MACHINE AGAINST A RADICAL INDIVIDUAL

earliest attempts at titling the work sound cryptic and colo, two oboes, English horn, three B-fl at clarinets, two
ominous: The Martyr, The Prisoner, Day, For One Dying, As- A clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons,

cent to Death, The Hour, The Last Hour, The Final Hour, Death contrabassoon, four horns, three C trumpets, three
Hour. trombones, tuba, timpani, drums, cymbals, harp, piano,
Blitzstein halted work on the opera in the months full strings, and four choirs: TTBB (“The Condemned”),
following his return, focusing instead on other musical SSA (“The Wife”), BB (“The Friend”), and TT (“The
projects. His Serenade for string quartet featured three Priest”). Blitzstein expanded the size of each choir to 48
movements, all marked Largo; critics did not embrace the singers by his fi nal drafts, bringing the total choral forces
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piece. He watched as plans for premieres of Cain and to nearly 200—a massive undertaking. Perhaps inspired
The Harpies disintegrated. His frustration with the cur- by Bertolt Brecht’s epic theatre, or by the experimenta-
rent musical scene nearly overwhelming, he stated early tion of Soviet directors like Vsevolod Meyerhold, Blitz-
in 1932 that he had become “impatient…to sense the stein imagined the four choirs on stage standing on a
germ of new greatness in a work…. the sound of new series of ramps, with members of the fi rst choir (“The
compositions no longer startles or shocks… It is a new Condemned”) in various positions indicating sleep, or
individuality who is awaited…” 23 exhaustion, stirring themselves to attention by the end
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In June 1932, Blitzstein and Eva Goldbeck sought of the fi rst scene. Curtains would obscure the other
frugal accommodations abroad, settling first in the Cro- choral characters (“The Wife,” “The Friend,” and “The

atian town of Dubrovnik, and later in Mlini. Here, the Priest”), revealing each group for their scenes before hid-
composer could focus on the opera without distraction, ing them again. The only other stage action given is the
and Blitzstein worked rapidly, fleshing out the libretto exit of the Condemned, at his execution in scene nine.

within two weeks. Around this time, Blitzstein renamed The libretto, written entirely by Blitzstein, contains
the opera The Dying, and fi nally, The Condemned. While none of the composer’s characteristic humor. Dark and
Eva noted in her extensive journals from the period that brooding, it became more minimalistic with each revi-
work and stress had put Blitzstein in a precarious psy- sion. This may have been purposeful experimentation
chological state, by July the composer had written most on the part of the Blitzstein, or possibly a decision in-
of the music. Blitzstein fi nished the short score for the tended to emphasize the philosophical weight of the
24
choral opera in August, and completed the orchestration subject matter. At any rate, the spare libretto lends the
and final conductor’s score by November 1932. opera an air of abstraction and emotional distance, with

short utterances communicating the claustrophobic anx-
iety of the prisoner.
Musical Analysis Musically, Blitzstein’s choral opera is marked by
The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research neo-classical and contrapuntal techniques, with frequent

houses the unpublished manuscripts for The Condemned and bold dissonance between chorus and orchestra. Har-
within the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives. Nu- monic clashes of seconds, fourths, and sevenths abound,
merous pages of draft notes exist in this archive, in addi- and music historian Howard Pollack notes a variety of
tion to a complete piano reduction, an incomplete piano possible infl uences, mentioning similarities to the styles

transcription, an unfinished conductor’s score, and two of Beethoven, Stravinsky, Bach, and Milhaud. Table 1
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completed conductor’s scores. Even at the earliest stag- presents the overall musical structure of the work, along
es a fair amount of musical agreement exists between with key lines from the libretto to aid in visualizing the
each of these drafts and scores, and a comparison of the opera.
two final conductor’s scores shows that Blitzstein com- An examination of the beginning of the opera illus-

pleted his work by the end of 1932. trates the harmonic language that Blitzstein employs
Blitzstein’s one-act opera takes place over eleven short throughout The Condemned, revealing how he handles

scenes, approximately thirty-five minutes in total. The the opera’s various motives and themes. At the open-
choral and orchestra forces are sweeping: two fl utes, pic- ing curtain, the Condemned awaits his execution, the

36 CHORAL JOURNAL June/July 2021 Volume 61 Number 11