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Marc Blitzstein
March 2, 1905 - January 22, 1964
born in Philadelphia, PA, composed during the Modern period
Biography
In the first half of the twentieth century, no one successfully fused classical and popular music styles or convincingly fit American vernacular speech to music as well as composer-pianist Marc Blitzstein. Blitzstein composed primarily for the musical stage, using his own librettos, though he also wrote non-dramatic vocal and instrumental music as well. From experimental and polytonal beginnings, Blitzstein's music changed as he rejected the idea of art for art's sake in the 1930s and turned instead to a socially oriented aesthetic that had been embraced by Bertolt Brecht and the rest of the scattered or destroyed German avant-garde.

Exposed to music as a young child, he attended the University of Pennsylvania, losing a scholarship after he flunked a physical education class, but persisting with studies in piano and composition. In 1926 he appeared as solo pianist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, soon after which he left for further compositional studies in Europe. He major mentors for the next two years were Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg. Afterwards, he made his first two major New York appearances in 1928: as a composer-pianist performing his Sonata for Piano (1927) and as a music critic in the periodical Modern Music.