Women’s Volunteerism, State Propaganda, and Subsidies for New Music in the USA: Following the Money on CRI 145

Sponsoring Organizations and Women’s Ambitions

Anne Hull (1888–1984) and her colleague Grace Spofford (1887–1974) were the two individuals most committed to the record project. They had likely known each other since the 1910s, when both studied and taught at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore.¹³ Spofford was the first dean of the Curtis Institute of Music, then directed the Henry Street Settlement Music School in New York. She “retired” in 1954, but spent the next twenty years working ceaselessly to build international connections through music. Spofford was the Federation’s Chairman of International Music Relations; chaired the NCW’s Music Committee; and served as Vice-Convener of the ICW’s Standing Committee on Arts and Letters. She traveled widely for UNESCO events, served on President Eisenhower’s People-to-People Music Committee, and was present at the founding of the International Society for Music Education. She was in touch with numerous government officials and executives in non-governmental organizations that were doing international music work. She was an important figure in conveying US government and United Nations initiatives to music organizations, and vice versa. These organizations, in turn, saw Spofford and other connected women as a resource that amplified their work.

Figure 3:

Portrait of Grace Spofford, credited to Sarony, New York. Courtesy of Smith College Archives, Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History, SSC-MS-00150, Grace Harriet Spofford Papers, box 2, folder “Photographs—G. Spofford.”

Inspired by the efforts of UNESCO and the new cultural exchange programs of the US government, Spofford approached the NCW with a proposal to make a record of women’s music in 1954. She was rebuffed by Ruth Ottaway Sokoloff, who refused to support the project because women were not producing music of equal quality to that of men: “We cannot fathom why women are not so successful at composing, but they are not.” Sokoloff added guiltily, “I should not have dampened Grace’s ardor about records of women’s works and playing them at the Triennial … [but] we could not be proud of the very light program of non-inevitable music which they would probably hear.”¹⁴ Sokoloff’s dismissal of women artists was not unusual in the NCW or in the Federation. Although Sokoloff saw the NCW’s Music Committee as a “clearing house” that should disseminate information about “women’s creative work in letters, art and music,” the NCW’s investment in the arts was small and scattershot.¹⁵ Likewise, the Federation aimed to promote music of the United States, at home and abroad: music created by women was only a part of that ambition, and when the Federation wanted expert opinions it frequently turned to male composers and conductors, not to women. Even so, the Federation did sometimes sponsor projects that advanced the music of women composers—and Hull and Spofford were both committed to that cause.¹⁶ Hull had a financial interest in this topic: while teaching piano and music appreciation in New York, she was also working as the New York business manager for the composer Mary Howe. Hull and Spofford worked together on the NCW’s Music Committee, and both were active in the Federation’s leadership. They teamed up to move both of these large organizations at the same time.

Even though the record project aligned with these organizations’ long-standing interest in international work, women’s music was not a top priority for them, so it would take many months for Hull and Spofford to convince them. The ICW and the independent national councils affiliated with it grew out of the women’s suffrage movement, but their agenda was not limited to voting rights: they sought to “overthrow all forms of ignorance and injustice,” seeking educational equity, equal pay, and “the application of the Golden Rule to society, custom, and law.”¹⁷ The ICW (founded 1888) had begun with delegates from North America, Western Europe, and India; by the 1960s it had grown to comprise national councils in more than forty countries, many in the global south, and it had consultative representation at the United Nations. The NCW (also founded 1888) was itself a federation that claimed more than four million members. Its leadership consisted of delegates from dozens of national women’s organizations—including voluntary associations representing formal and informal political organizations, racial or ethnic minorities, religious groups, specific professions, and more.¹⁸

This multi-level federated structure meant that information about the goals, programs, and fundraising efforts of the United Nations and its cultural arm, UNESCO, flowed out from the ICW’s central leadership to many thousands of women volunteers who were willing to work on them. As an NCW brochure exclaimed, “Who wouldn’t do one more thing to ease world tensions?”¹⁹ NCW and ICW leaders routinely monitored and intervened in international affairs. In the 1950s and ’60s the NCW’s extensive national network provided hospitality for foreign visitors, and they often organized informational events for the public featuring politicians and dignitaries, including State Department and USIA personnel. As the United States escalated its foreign propaganda efforts during the first decade of the Cold War, the NCW aligned itself with those efforts: “it was very important for the women of the free world to cooperate in order to have the message of democracy at least as prominent as that of the communists.”²⁰

Spofford’s desire to arrange an international exchange of recorded music by women composers reflected these priorities, although her vision was more expansive than what voluntary organizations were able to undertake. Spofford had proposed the listening event for the ICW’s triennial conference in Montréal in 1957: she asked the ICW’s constituent national councils to send records of compositions by women that could be played at the conference. Hull’s statement that “many fine records of serious music” were contributed for the conference reflected more hopeful ambition than reality. Only two countries, Germany and Belgium, sent records, and because it proved difficult to find a suitably equipped space in the conference venue, the event did not happen.²¹ At the Montréal conference, though, Spofford did succeed in getting the ICW’s Arts and Letters Committee to adopt her idea of a recordings exchange as part of its official plan of work for the next three years.²² Having gotten the international committee’s approval for this proposal, she then used that approval as leverage to convince the NCW to take up the “special record project.”²³ Within the Federation, Hull was making similar arguments. She proposed to the Federation’s Executive Committee that it promote recordings of women composers’ music.²⁴

In November 1959, Spofford and Hull approached the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music to see if they could obtain sponsorship for the special record project: there they made the case for the record’s significance in international exchange. They received a demoralizing reply from Donald L. Engle, who managed the fund:

I think there is a basic serious problem of the value of the creative efforts of our women composers. It seems to me that when they can equal their male colleagues in what they offer, they will ultimately receive equal consideration. Then their works will be recorded by the major companies on a commercial basis, and we will no longer need to apologize to people overseas for the status of our ladies in the musical scene.²⁵

What do you think, really, is Mr. Engle correct? Am I out on a limb, to believe that some works by women composers have been neglected, that they are really as good as some works already recognized as being worth while? Or am I being just carried away by my own conviction which briefly is that composers are composers, music is music, and that some music is overlooked because of this awfully boring idea that a ‘Woman’ composer is different and inferior to a ‘Masculine’ composer …?²⁶

Strickland, who was then in Japan, assured Hull of his agreement and his support.²⁷ His participation was essential to the special record project: he would eventually engage the Imperial Philharmonic of Tokyo and lead the orchestra in recording the music of five US women composers.

Musicians’ Network and State Resources

The composer Mary Howe, whose music appeared on the “special record project,” was another linchpin of the social network that would finally get the project off the ground.²⁸ The intimate relationship between Hull and Strickland was cemented over decades by Howe’s patronage. It is worth examining the threesome’s business dealings in some detail, because these transactions reveal the difficulty of getting new music performed and illustrate how funding for new music became entangled in the US government’s propaganda programs.

Howe (1884–1972) had gotten to know Strickland during the Second World War, when the Army stationed him near her home in Washington, DC. Strickland programmed her music after the war when he served as founder and principal conductor of the Nashville Symphony.²⁹ The State Department chose Strickland for a Fulbright fellowship to Vienna for two concert seasons, 1951–53: the fellowship covered the cost of Strickland’s international travel and paid his living expenses for two years while he built a reputation in Vienna as a guest conductor.

Figure 4:

Portrait of William Strickland. Library of Congress, Music Division, William Remsen Strickland Collection, box 25, folder 4. Photographer unknown.

Howe saw Strickland’s fellowship as an opportunity. Before the sharp increase in foundation, university, and government funding for new concert music in the mid-to-late 1950s, composers often covered the expenses of publication, paid to have parts copied for the players, and even funded concerts themselves in order to get their music performed.³⁰ Howe was fortunate to have the means to bear these costs, and she was pleased to take advantage of the government as a co-sponsor. Before Strickland left for Europe, Howe gave him some money to support the performance and recording of her music in Vienna, making it clear that during his fellowship she was only covering specific project expenses.³¹ After Strickland’s Fulbright money ran out in October 1953, though, Howe put Strickland “on retainer.” By the end of 1954 she had sent him more than $10,800 from her “scheming account.” (Adjusted for inflation, in 2025 this sum would come to about $126,000.) Roughly half of the money she sent was intended for his living expenses; the rest was to cover performance and recording costs, including payments to soloists and recording engineers.³² While he was in Austria, Strickland led multiple performances of Howe’s music, including high-profile concerts with the Vienna Symphony in 1954 and 1955 that included Howe’s “Castellana,” “Axiom,” “Stars,” “Sand,” and the world premiere of her “Rock.”³³

Figure 5:

Mary Howe on the podium with William Strickland in Vienna, 1955, credited to Photo-Ernst, Vienna. Library of Congress, Music Division, William Remsen Strickland Collection, box 26, folder 1. A good faith effort has been made to locate the copyright holder.

Howe urged Strickland not to disclose her payments.³⁴ She did not want it to seem as though she was violating State Department rules by increasing his stipend during his fellowship. But keeping their financial relationship quiet also enhanced Howe’s reputation. Letting it be widely known that she was sponsoring his concerts would have weakened the promotional value of these international performances, making them seem like a vanity project. Critics and Howe’s composer colleagues in the United States prized European performances, and associating these performances with Strickland’s prestigious Fulbright award gave Howe a bigger platform both in the Viennese press and at home. Howe maximized her investment by asking her agent, Hull, to distribute news items about the Vienna performances to influential music critics and editors in the United States.³⁵

Howe’s sponsorship of Strickland was relentlessly tactical, even to the point of a breach of ethics. When the Federation decided in 1956 to begin offering a $1000 award for the musician or group who had “performed the greatest number of serious American works abroad,” Howe ensured that Strickland would win the first award, while also concealing her participation on the award committee.³⁶ She was deeply involved in every phase of the planning and selection processes. Over several months, Howe repeatedly suggested Strickland to Federation president Vera Wardner Dougan as a candidate for the award, first subtly, then directly, then assertively—and even told her assistant to submit his materials to the competition on his behalf. Howe helped select the award committee and vetoed conductors who might be Strickland’s closest rivals in international work.³⁷ Howe was one of two judges who submitted the final decision to the Federation, but she urged Dougan not to publicize her name in connection with this award. Dougan complied: she suppressed the names of the judges when she reported on the award to the membership.³⁸

Howe’s support of Strickland helps us see the financial incentives and prestige opportunities that were beginning to support more and more contemporary music projects in the 1950s. The Federation’s purpose in instituting its annual award was to entice American musicians to perform more US music abroad, in line with their goal of making the United States “the Music Center of the World.” But the award also had other effects. It drew US citizens’ attention to the virtues of government music programs: that year and subsequently, most of the awardees had traveled on behalf of the State Department. When Dougan consulted USIA and State Department officials about setting up the award, they explained that the award’s propaganda value was much enhanced by its evident independence from the government.³⁹ By raising Strickland’s profile, Howe and the Federation made it more likely that the government would offer him further sponsorship. Howe could then use his projects abroad—jointly funded by herself and the government—to develop performances and recordings of her music, and the Federation would be pleased to have a confirmed advocate for US composers continuing his work overseas. Howe’s strategy leveraged not only her personal fortune but also the national network of the Federation and the increasing musical investments of the US government to ensure that her works would be heard abroad. Advancing the career of her champion, Strickland, would further this goal.

A generation younger than Hull and Howe, Strickland (1914–1991) was formed by their influence and remained a lifelong friend to both. Before meeting Howe, Strickland had demonstrated a commitment to repertoire from the United States: he routinely conducted new music by William Schuman, Samuel Barber, Walter Piston, Robert Ward, and many other US composers. Perhaps as a result of Howe’s and Hull’s influence, he developed some interest in music composed by women. In addition to his performances of Howe’s work in Nashville and Vienna, he also programmed Julia Perry’s Stabat mater—he exclaimed to Howe that this concert would include “2 American composers who are women and 2 American soloists who are women!”⁴⁰ In the early 1950s Strickland was most excited about recording projects: he saw particular opportunity in the creation of new record labels specializing in recently composed music from the United States.⁴¹ Strickland was in touch with Robert Ward, one of the founders of the new record label Composers Recordings, Inc. (CRI). He sent Howe’s Vienna recordings to CRI, and they were among the first records the label issued (1956 and 1958).⁴² A few years later, CRI would also issue Hull’s and Spofford’s special record project, again featuring Howe’s music conducted by Strickland.

Like Howe, but at a larger scale, CRI had developed a reliance on government-funded artists. In the years after his arrival in Japan, Strickland repeatedly secured State Department grants to lead orchestras in Asia and Europe, and CRI came to depend on him to make recordings of recently composed American music with those orchestras. Like Howe’s Vienna recordings, Hull’s and Spofford’s special record project was funded from multiple sources, including private contributions. But the US government’s quiet patronage would remain essential to the making and the distribution of the special record project.

Funding and Making the Special Record Project (CRI 145)

Apart from Hull’s feminist motivations and her role as promoter of Howe’s music, she also wanted to make this record for another reason: Strickland was running out of money. He had gotten to Tokyo in January 1958 as an invited guest conductor, paid by the orchestras he led. From Tokyo, he made brief run-out trips to Manila and Seoul on American Specialist grants from the State Department. After these successes, the State Department sponsored longer stays so he could work with orchestras in Manila (October–December 1958); Tokyo (January–March 1959); and Saigon (April–July 1959).⁴³ Foreseeing the end of his government funding, he wrote to Hull in June 1959 that despite “the financial squeeze,” he wanted to stay in Japan to make more records of American music. Strickland felt that Japanese orchestras were “hungry” for this kind of work, and he was proud of the records he had made for CRI: “aside from being my great interest and pleasure,” he wrote, these records were his “biggest and best advertisement.”⁴⁴ Hull, who was managing Strickland’s business affairs in the United States, responded with an idea. “The Nat. Council of Women, and the NFMC are becoming slightly interested in records of works by women composers; so it struck me that perhaps a commission to do some in Tokyo might possibly work out.”⁴⁵ Hull asked Strickland how much his other CRI records had cost, and she began outlining a plan for assembling a panel of judges to choose music and raising private money to make the recording.

Strickland responded to Hull immediately by telegram—“very interested recording project letter follows affectionately”—and soon thereafter sent a cost estimate based on his prior experiences with the Japan Philharmonic:⁴⁶

For Strickland’s earlier recordings, he had been paid either by the State Department, by the orchestra’s management, or by the record company that wanted the recordings—but now that he had no government or industry funding, he asked a $500 fee for himself. As orchestras were beginning to raise their prices, he gave Hull an estimate of $2000–$2500 as the total cost of making the tapes. “To be blunt,” he added, “I am very interested in this project not only for itself but I must earn money here soon or go down the sink!”⁴⁷ He suggested Howard Hanson, Robert Ward, and William Bergsma as possible judges to advise the NFMC and NCW on the content of the record. (Hanson would later be replaced by Henry Cowell.) Strickland asked Hull to speak to Ward about issuing the disc through CRI: “I am positive they will be very interested.”⁴⁸ Soon thereafter, Ward reported to Strickland that “Anne Hull was in for a long talk and she is busy stirring the pot on the suffragette project.”⁴⁹ In further exchanges that summer and fall, Hull and Strickland nailed down the details. Both took it for granted that they would include music composed by their patron and friend, Mary Howe. Hull also suggested that it would be wise to add at least one more composer who could afford to contribute funding for the record, such as Mabel Daniels.⁵⁰

Throughout this period, Hull and Spofford worked to convince the executive committees of the NCW and the Federation, presenting Strickland’s cost estimates and explaining the alignment of the record project with the organizations’ purposes.⁵¹ Hull foresaw that the NCW might be more likely to spend money to support the record; but as a non-music organization, the NCW did not have the infrastructure to market audio recordings, nor was its audience likely to be enthusiastic about contemporary orchestral music. The Federation, by contrast, could promote the record to thousands of club members who were already interested in music.⁵² After Hull’s and Spofford’s unsuccessful query to the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, they began approaching individual donors in the networks of the NCW and the Federation.⁵³ Hull also made a radio appearance to drum up support.⁵⁴

Hull had hoped to be able to make the tapes early in 1960, but it would take another full year to secure enough money. One disappointment was that the amount she had to raise exceeded her and Strickland’s expectations. Strickland had explained to Hull that she would not have to raise money for the discs’ manufacture, but only for the tapes: “discs are made and financed by recording companies when and if they accept a tape.”⁵⁵ But CRI asked Hull to pay for the discs’ manufacture as well, adding $1,000 to the cost.⁵⁶ The majority of CRI’s records presented music composed by members of the American Composers’ Alliance; the Alliance underwrote the pressing of these records.⁵⁷ Of the five composers represented on the special record project, though, only Vivian Fine was a full member of the Alliance, so the album was ineligible for Alliance funding.⁵⁸ Perhaps Ward and others at CRI also saw that Hull could raise the money from her large partner organizations and wanted to save the Alliance’s funds for other projects. CRI balked at paying Strickland, possibly because they were accustomed to having Strickland’s fee covered by other organizations. Hull would pay him directly out of the funds she raised.⁵⁹

As a result of Hull’s nationwide publicity efforts, individual donors contributed in widely varying amounts. The donors named in the NCW’s records were women, most of them involved with the Federation at the national or state levels. Mrs. Blant Burford, former president of the Texas Federation of Music Clubs, sent $5. Mildred Bliss, a renowned patron of the arts in Washington DC, sent $500. As Hull had expected, two of the composers whose works appeared on the record contributed money—Howe $250 and Daniels $50—and so did other women musicians who were not represented on the album, such as Glad Robinson Youse and Sophie Drinker. Elsie Irwin Sweeney, a major donor to the Indiana University School of Music, was serving as the Federation’s International Music Relations chairman: she sent $300 of her own, as well as the $200 that had been allotted to her committee. The NCW gave $200 from its treasury and the Federation agreed to backstop any costs that could not be covered through fundraising. After Hull published her article in the Federation’s magazine in January 1961, though, the last donations rolled in, making the Federation’s backstop unnecessary.⁶⁰

Listening to the Special Record Project

The music chosen for the record served a variety of purposes—not only Hull’s, Spofford’s, and Strickland’s, but also those of the US government. The record included different generations of women representing different schools of composition. Mary Howe’s and Mabel Daniels’s music was gentle and accessible to listeners; these pieces made a clear connection between US-composed music and European orchestral music from earlier in the twentieth century. The orchestration and harmony of Howe’s Spring Pastoral, composed in 1936, recall Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Nuages. Howe’s writing for the orchestra is gently dissonant throughout, with solo wind instruments emerging from clouds of string sounds. Daniels (1877–1971) was the eldest composer on the record: her Deep Forest (1933) is even more strongly reminiscent of Debussy, with whole tone and augmented sonorities, lots of parallel motion in the strings, abundant harp, and interjections from flute, horn, and oboe soloists.⁶¹ These two composers, the most similar to each other and the most conservative in style, were also the ones Hull had identified as most able to contribute money to make the record.

The other composers on the record appear to have been chosen both for their diversity of styles and their impeccable credentials, including Guggenheim fellowships, Ivy League degrees, and famous teachers. Louise Talma (1906–1996) was a generation younger than Howe and Daniels. Her Toccata for Orchestra (1944) is a high-energy, cinematic piece, by turns serious and light. The piece is bookended by urgent-sounding fanfares. It incorporates elements from popular and theatrical music—syncopation, occasional sounding of blues scales, and a waltz suitable for a merry-go-round—but also passages of neoclassical counterpoint.⁶² Vivian Fine’s orchestral suite from the ballet Alcestis was a very recent work (1960) comprising four short movements of ballet music composed for Martha Graham’s ballet company. Fine (1913–2000) emphasized the work’s abstraction: “the music does not deal with the myth in a descriptive way, but depicts its dramatic and emotional aspects.”⁶³ Alcestis contrasts austere and richly chromatic counterpoint with vigorous ostinati and heroic passages for brass. Jagged melodic contours correspond to Graham’s angular choreography. Fine’s and Talma’s pieces presented contrasting aspects of new music.

Julia Perry (1924–1979) was a student of Luigi Dallapiccola and Nadia Boulanger and was the only African American among the five composers. Perry’s A Short Piece for Orchestra (1952) represents a modern and virtuosic sensibility, with vibrant textural and topical contrasts. Strident unison passages impress the listener with a sense of urgency and recur throughout the piece. We hear solos and duets that are more lyrical, but still disjunct rather than tuneful; they are accompanied by delicate, spacious counterpoint or by quiet, sustained dissonances. The orchestra is used sparingly: Perry’s piece includes pointillistic passages where contrasts between instrumental textures and timbres (celesta, xylophone, a pair of muted trumpets) become the most noticeable feature. Composed when interest in Anton Webern’s music was at its peak, Perry’s work integrates some of his innovations in timbre and texture without committing to other elements of his style. In all, the special record project was representative of contemporary concert music in the United States in that it showcased a broad range of personalities and musical idioms.

The record’s existence and its content helped bolster one of the USIA’s key talking points—the idea that classical music was “vigorous and popular” in the United States.⁶⁴ As part of USIA’s information program, agency officials circulated brochures full of compelling statistics that pointed to “the vast number of performances sponsored by symphony orchestras” and “the meteoric rise in audiences for fine music.”⁶⁵ Contemporary music was of particular interest: when USIA’s Music Advisor, composer David S. Cooper, toured foreign service posts in 1956, he reported to the Agency that whereas German audiences “cling to the traditions of the past,” US audiences were forward-looking: the “United States … may be considered the center of contemporary music rather than Europe.”⁶⁶ The large quantity of contemporary music that was being recorded for sale in the United States helped make the case for a classical music boom, especially in the field of new music. As the “1960 Concert Music U.S.A.” brochure described it, the Schwann Long Playing Record Catalog for that year contained “1,468 compositions of 426 contemporary composers available on 2,594 recordings.”⁶⁷ These figures were meant to demonstrate that the United States was a leader in the field, and that people in the United States cared not only about money and industry, but also about the arts and cultural life. Hull’s and Spofford’s special record project, and CRI’s record projects in general, contributed to this overall picture of robust circulation of “serious music” in the United States.

The record’s gendered framing reflected Hull’s and Spofford’s feminist aims, but it also accorded with the USIA’s strategy of portraying US women in a variety of social roles.⁶⁸ It offered tangible evidence that these composers were succeeding as professionals. The liner notes described Fine as “a teacher, pianist and, of course, a full-time composer” and explained that “more and more genuinely talented women are becoming composers and working seriously at the profession.”⁶⁹ In addition, the inclusion of Perry aligned with the USIA’s goal of demonstrating America’s embrace of racial diversity. Because media around the world frequently highlighted US racial violence and discrimination, the USIA developed strategies that countered those messages. Across the late 1950s, USIA propagandists moved from describing the progress of African Americans toward civil rights; to creating feature stories and films about successful Black athletes, entertainers, and public figures; to presenting images of an integrated society—no longer talking about civil rights, but portraying everyday Americans in racially integrated settings without comment.⁷⁰ Whereas Howe’s Scottish-Welsh ancestry was mentioned in the liner notes, Perry’s Black identity was not named. The USIA’s music libraries enacted this form of representation on a larger scale, too: their collections included robust representation of Black American musicians working in many genres of music, presenting integrated multiculturalism as a settled fact. Hull’s special record project offered evidence that Black composers were succeeding not only in jazz and popular music, but also in classical music.

The special record project’s alignment with the US government’s propaganda priorities was not coincidental. Throughout the music ecosystem, musicians were taking advantage of government propaganda programs wherever possible. Even though the record was billed as a private effort, produced by a for-profit record label, and marked as a product of the Federation and the NCW, those who contributed most to its creation were all involved in government activities. Strickland worked closely with USIS personnel in US embassies in Europe and Asia, and with the State Department as a major sponsor of his work.⁷¹ Henry Cowell, who assisted with the selection of music, had been hired by the State Department for multiple international projects and had extensive connections at USIA.⁷² The leaders and membership of the NCW contributed to both overt and covert US government projects and cooperated closely with USIA.⁷³ Federation president Vera Dougan served on President Eisenhower’s People-to-People Music Committee, which was supervised by USIA; so did Grace Spofford. In 1957 Spofford had attended a five-day USIA workshop on the “World Ideological Conflict”: the workshop covered principles of international propaganda and strategies for responding to critics of the United States, modeled on the training given to US foreign service officers.⁷⁴ And as we have already seen, the Federation paid attention to government projects, explained them to club members, and highlighted them through its award programs. I have argued elsewhere that “soft power” lies not in the ability to transmit a particular propaganda message, but in a state’s ability to recruit voluntary participation in its projects.⁷⁵ Here we see a similar kind of recruitment, not abroad, but at home.

Perhaps the most impressive case of coordination between private and government actions is CRI. The record label’s intimate collaboration with the government is evident in every aspect of its business model. On the production side, using State Department-sponsored conductors helped the label contain costs by recording abroad with non-union musicians. Tapes made in the United States could cost more than $8,000 for one LP; at $3,500, the special record project was affordable, and it was just one of many albums recorded overseas.⁷⁶ CRI also benefited from government patronage on the purchasing side. From the mid-1950s into the 1960s, David Cooper and Angelo Eagon, USIA’s music advisors, purchased thousands of long-playing records from CRI for the agency’s use.⁷⁷ Indeed, the US government was the label’s largest customer: USIA purchases might account for 40%–60% (or more) of initial sales of each record.⁷⁸ By partnering with government programs to further its mission, CRI had purposefully developed an unacknowledged cost-sharing plan for getting contemporary music onto records. None of this activity was an illegal use of government resources, but it was not what Congress had envisioned when they appropriated funds for propaganda.⁷⁹ This pattern of state patronage amounted to a hidden subsidy for the “new music” industry.

Cooper (a composer) and Eagon (a pianist as well as a diplomat) undoubtedly knew that their purchasing mattered for the industry: they were well connected and communicating freely with musicians and musical organizations. It is more difficult to judge how many other USIA or State Department officials understood how much the agencies’ programs were affecting the production of contemporary music. Certainly, by 1960 economists inside and outside the government were studying the effects of government spending, and they were well aware that government purchasing programs could create unintended “subsidy effects” on markets for goods and services.⁸⁰ Especially because government support for music was ad hoc, indirect, and coming from several different agencies and programs, it may have been invisible to most people inside the government. Expenditures that were big enough to be a meaningful source of support to musicians were still miniscule by government standards.

Within the orbits of the NCW and the Federation, some people did understand and comment on these programs’ subsidizing effects. Gertrude Macy, who managed the private agency that approved artists for State Department-funded tours, acknowledged at an NCW-sponsored event in 1962 that the government’s “objective was propaganda—but the product has been a subsidy of music, the ballet, the theatre and the graphic arts.”⁸¹ Federation leaders could see it, too. When the Federation’s Ohio chairman of International Music Relations explained to state convention-goers that the State Department was spending more than $6 million per year on music diplomacy, she added a word of caution to skeptics: “Whether or not we as individuals are in favor of the Government’s subsidizing of music in many phases including exchange programs, the N.F.M.C. [the Federation] believes in this cultural project.”⁸²

Diplomatic historians have described a “state-private network,” which they typically define as covert government infiltration into a citizen organization to promote the government’s aims. According to the historian Helen Laville, President Truman’s Psychological Strategy Board suggested as early as 1951 that the government could profitably assign to private veterans’, youth, and women’s groups projects that aligned with those groups’ missions, but also advanced the government’s purposes.⁸³ Most of the private groups that worked with the government in this way tried hard to maintain the appearance of autonomy: their cooperation with the government remained known only to a few leaders.⁸⁴ Music organizations, by contrast, saw government projects as a way to capture scarce resources. They participated avidly and openly in the USIA’s and the State Department’s work.

Making a market for new music

The feedback loops among the various constituencies described here have a peculiar quality, as does the special record project itself. As Daniel Boorstin once put it, when a project is brought into existence primarily to be mediated, its relation to reality is “ambiguous.”⁸⁵ Hull and Spofford’s special record project sits oddly in the chain of causes and effects. In a circular process, the USIA and the State Department incentivized rapid growth in new music recordings through hidden subsidies—and USIA used those growing numbers of recordings to brag about US audiences’ increasing interest in new music. The special record project contained real music by real composers, made for real purposes; yet it represents a sort of “self-fulfilling prophecy” in which reality was made to conform to a desired effect.⁸⁶ The record did not document the robust public interest in contemporary classical music that USIA touted. It documented the belief of government personnel and advisory committees that this music would make effective propaganda; it documented the substantial investment of citizens and voluntary organizations in that propaganda project; and it documented the commitment of a small group of women to causes that were distinct from, but aligned with, that propaganda project. This was not a conspiracy, exactly: with the exception of Howe’s suppressions of fact, each party was playing its assigned role openly. Rather, the record project’s ambiguous relationship to reality is a system effect: it emerges from the situation as a whole.⁸⁷ There were many motivations at play; but the recording was conceived and developed only because the framing and financial support of music as diplomacy had made such recordings relevant.⁸⁸ Whereas “new music” was often said to be valued for its own sake, this record was the most instrumentalized item imaginable.

The record project also demonstrates a historical continuity. In some regards, the official government propaganda system that subsidized new music for export and the unofficial system of women-led voluntary organizations that supported musical work used similar strategies and had similar goals. Quite a few of the Federation’s early projects created events and works specifically so that they could be mediated. Ruth Ottaway, who would later dismiss Spofford’s efforts at organizing the record project, remarked in 1926 that “We cannot manufacture culture. We must band together to make it grow.”⁸⁹ This formulation highlights the paradox: in order to establish in the eyes of the world that American music already existed, it would have to be made to exist. So, for decades, the Federation meticulously looked after the supply side and the demand side. On the supply side, they supported the music education system that produced performers and composers, and they organized clubs, competitions, and award programs to encourage musicians’ participation. On the demand side, they promoted newly created works by US composers to club members, music teachers, and the wider public. In a 1945 speech, Federation president Anne Macomber Gannett made explicit the Federation’s strategy of creating a market for American compositions: she explained that the Federation would focus on promoting published music of US composers in hopes of increasing sales. By recommending compositions for schools, libraries, and club members to buy, she said, “we hope greatly to increase the purchase of new American works and to prove to the publishers that so-called prestige music need not involve a monetary loss.”⁹⁰ This strategy was already in place when the US government added new resources that aligned with the Federation’s cause. Seen in this light, the Federation’s enthusiastic participation in creating propaganda is not surprising: the nation-state’s new focus on music diplomacy served their long-standing aims and harmonized with their methods. The labor of Hull, Spofford, and clubwomen across the country was another hidden subsidy: a resource provided at no monetary cost that was foundational to the enterprise of classical music in the United States.⁹¹

Although the Eisenhower administration regarded volunteers as willing assistants who could be recruited and led, the opposite was also true. The Federation and musicians throughout the ecosystem recruited government resources to advance their purposes. The record project thus illuminates both the extent of the US government’s patronage of American music, and how the work of women’s voluntary organizations benefited from and contributed to that patronage. The government’s expanding appetite for the arts suited the women’s purpose of promoting US composers and gaining respect for US music internationally. The government had come around to the Federation’s project—and when it did, they were ready.

The Special Record Project in the State-Private Network

Soon after the special record project was published, CRI told Hull that her record was selling better than most of the label’s new releases typically did.⁹² USIA had purchased its maximum number of copies for its libraries abroad (numbering at least 255), and the extensive network of women’s organizations had put some extra buying power behind the project. In addition to at least 50 copies distributed by the NCW leadership, the Federation and the NCW encouraged members of their organizations to purchase the record at a discount.⁹³ The NCW’s music committee asked its members to publicize the record within their social networks, and Hull planned to promote it at the Federation’s convention.⁹⁴ One year after its release, the record had earned $700 in royalties, which were divided between NCW and the Federation after other expenses were paid.⁹⁵ Precise sales numbers have not come to light, but it seems that the record sold between 350 and 400 copies in its first year: better than most CRI records, but still a modest number.

In addition to promoting sales, the NCW and the Federation used their institutional connections to ensure that the record would be heard. Spofford arranged to play the recording on a special hour-long program over WNYC.⁹⁶ Sophia Yarnall Jacobs, president of the NCW, sent copies with personal notes to conductors Eugene Ormandy and Leopold Stokowski. Jacobs also sent a copy to Nina Popova, the chair of the Soviet All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), whom the NCW had hosted during her visit to New York the previous year.⁹⁷ The NCW received gratifying responses from its sister councils around the world, several of which described plans for circulating or broadcasting the record. Their correspondent in Southern Rhodesia wrote: “We are thrilled with the record and plan to hold a series of afternoon tea-parties, at which we will invite music lovers, Council members, and other women of the town… . I will invite the press to the first tea.”⁹⁸ Their Australian correspondent wrote: “I am letting it be as widely heard as I can here in Brisbane first and have arranged to send it round later to the various states in turn ending up in Perth West Australia for our Australian National Council of Women Conference there in August this year.”⁹⁹ That correspondent also reported that she was in touch with the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Director of Music in hopes of getting the record played on the air.

Spofford and Hull were gratified that in the wake of their project, more recordings of women’s compositions came in from Austria, Belgium, Greece, the Philippines, and Australia. The NCW’s Music Committee arranged to play the Australians’ music on WNYC radio, since the Australians “had cooperated so well in presenting our American women’s record.”¹⁰⁰ In 1963 Hull and Spofford worked together on financing a new record of US women’s chamber music, and almost went so far as to solicit scores from composers for consideration.¹⁰¹ But Theodate Johnson, publisher of Musical America magazine and a member of the NCW’s Music Committee, noted that given the $3000 cost, “the recording would not arouse sufficient interest to make the project worthwhile.”¹⁰² For the short term, Hull and Spofford had struck a dead end with the NCW.

In the decades that followed, though, Federation volunteers continued to work on getting women’s compositions recorded, and they continued to support the circulation of the special record project and other recordings of US contemporary music. In 1971, Federation president Merle Montgomery (1904–1986) and composer Julia Smith (1905–1989) devised a plan to get more women’s music on the radio. The Federation approached 200 radio stations that broadcast “serious music” and offered to send them recordings free of charge, enough to produce thirteen radio shows, with verbal scripts and timings already prepared.¹⁰³ They sent each of the seventy participating stations a package of twenty-five records of contemporary US music, including the special record project. Though much of the collection consisted of CRI recordings, it also included Desto Records 7107, “The Black Composer in America,” and Desto 7117, “Four American Composers,” featuring music of Talma, Daniels, Miriam Gideon, and Smith herself.¹⁰⁴ The funding for this initiative was provided by the Federation and ASCAP—the American Society of Composers and Publishers, a music licensing agency—with the labor provided by the Federation. CRI and Desto Records agreed to sell the records to the Federation for $1 apiece: for CRI, this sale of 1,050 records represented an unusually large order. Montgomery urged the Federation’s national and state officers to get their club members to listen to the radio programs when they aired, and then to write thank-you notes to the radio stations in hopes that they would play the records again.¹⁰⁵ This radio project was not state-supported, except insofar as government money indirectly assisted the record labels: Montgomery and Smith applied to the National Endowment for the Arts but were turned down. This project suggests that, long after CRI 145 was issued, the commitment of volunteer women continued to support the market for this record and for new music more generally. Getting this music heard in public was work, and the hidden subsidy of women’s voluntary labor contributed to the cause.

When Merle Montgomery returned from the Federation’s 1970 national board meeting in Detroit, she wrote to a colleague: “As always … I am struck with the resemblance of Federation to a submarine. All a person sees ordinarily is the periscope or tiny little bit on top; the big part, the important part, is not seen.” She added, “I always find it sort-of breath-taking.”¹⁰⁶ From Montgomery’s position in the network, she could see the remarkable investments of time, labor, money, and enthusiasm that lay under the surface of American musical life. If we attend closely to those investments, we too might find them breath-taking—not least because they so vividly reveal the complexity of the enterprise.