Jonathan Rosenberg, "Dangerous Melodies"

Jonathan Rosenberg discusses his book, "Dangerous Melodies", at Politics and Prose.

A professor of U.S. history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York as well as a Juilliard-trained musician, Rosenberg combines his areas of expertise for a unique look at the nexus of 20th-century world politics and classical music. During World War I, for instance, American concert audiences rejected German works and some German musicians were even dismissed or imprisoned. By contrast, the focus during the Second World War was on Russian compositions, with the work of Shostakovich, in particular, being used to cement the U.S.-Russian alliance. Rosenberg carries his story through the Cold War, as the State Department began sending symphony orchestras around the world to act as anti-Communist ambassadors.

Jonathan Rosenberg, professor of twentieth-century US history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is author of Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from the Great War through the Cold War; How Far the Promised Land?: World Affairs and the American Civil Rights Movement from the First World War to Vietnam; and co-author of Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes. He lives in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

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Produced by Tom Warren