Marc Blitzstein: The Marc Blitzstein Songbook, Volumes One and Two. Leonard Lehrman, Editor. Boosey & Hawkes ISMN M-051-93344-0 and M-051-93347-1.
The twentieth century has known a pantheon of "composer's composers" worth studying on the page. In American musical theater, the scores of George Gershwin, Kurt Weill, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim are of intrinsic value. The music of Marc Blitzstein, an outspoken leftist murdered in a 1964 gay bashing, was obliterated from music and record catalogues for decades. Finally, with the publication of The Marc Blitzstein Songbook, his right to join this illustrious crowd has been affirmed.
Volume One, published in 1999, is the 'essential' Blitzstein, containing his most famous and most recorded works from Cradle, Juno, and even "Emily" (the "Ballad of the Bombardier") from Airborne Symphony, as well as "The Best Thing of All" from Regina. Also represented are "Penny Candy," "Zipperfly" and "Fraught," all wonderful comic songs, as well as enticing snippets from Blitzstein's late operas Idiots First and Sacco and Vanzetti.
In Volume Two, published last year, the Blitzstein archive is opened up, and is full of songs that only a researcher would know. In this regard, this music has been blessed with an able advocate, editor Leonard Lehrman, who years ago created the homemade A Blitzstein Cabaret with soprano Helene Williams, and was entrusted with completing the two late operas. In works where Lehrman discovered alternate versions, or notes in the orchestral score that don't appear in the piano reduction, there are annotations with footnotes and commentary. In the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, which Lehrman completed in 2001, he indicates what is extant so people can judge the validity of his completion job for themselves
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