Song of the Day 6/16: New York Philharmonic Orchestra, “Fanfare for the Common Man”

This is probably the only piece of music in the classical canon inspired by a political speech. Henry A. Wallace, FDR’s third-term vice president, proclaimed in early 1942, “Some have spoken of the ‘American Century.’ I say that the century on which we are entering — the century which will come out of this war — can be and must be the century of the common man.” Later that year the conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony commissioned a total of 18 fanfares — short, punchy, usually brassy numbers written for special occasions — to introduce each concert in the 1942-43 subscription season. This is the only one that entered the repertoire.

Wallace was the most left-leaning person in Roosevelt’s cabinet before being tapped as VP, and the “common man” speech he gave shortly after the entry of the United States in WWII is worth reading, if only to see how a progressive vision for the future was possible even with world fascism in full bloom. And though Wallace grew up in a different world from ours — he was born in 1888 — what he described then isn’t much different from what we see now:

“In a twisted sense there is something almost great in the figure of the Supreme Devil operating through a human form, in a Hitler who has the daring to spit straight in the eye of God and man. But the Nazi system has a heroic position for only one leader. … All the rest are stooges. They are stooges who have been mentally and politically degraded, and feel they can get square with the world only by mentally and politically degrading other people. These stooges are really psychopathic cases. Satan has turned loose upon us the insane. … No compromise with Satan is possible.”