http://www.juilliard.edu/alumni/aspot_0402_Bauman.html
Alumni News
Spotlight
A Passion for Music
Born on March 2, 1912, baritone Mordecai Bauman is one of
Juilliard's oldest living alumni. He was granted a fellowship to the
Juilliard Graduate School of Music during his freshman year at Columbia
College in 1930, the first student to attend both institutions concurrently.
He went on to introduce many important works of the 20th century, to
champion the music of his contemporaries, including Ives, and to found the
innovative summer arts school, Indian Hill, with his wife, Irma. He also
produced a significant documentary about Bach.
It is clear when speaking to the 91-year-old Mordecai Bauman that
longevity has not dimmed his dedication to and passion for music. Though his
parents hoped he would become a lawyer, he discovered while at James Monroe
High School in the Bronx that he wanted to major in music, an
extra-curricular activity. Leading roles in productions of Gilbert and
Sullivan operettas and a gold medal in the New York Music Week Competition
convinced him to make music his vocation. Bauman credits his many
performances of G&S to his later reputation as a great interpreter.
"Performing Gilbert and Sullivan helped me learn to express the text of the
songs I sang."
His voice teacher at Juilliard was "the remarkable" Francis Rogers.
It was the Harvard-educated Rogers who encouraged Bauman to continue his
studies at Columbia. He starred in varsity shows every year, and sang
leading roles in Juilliard operas, including Figaro in Mozart's The Marriage
of Figaro. While still in college, Bauman sang a part in a Broadway play,
Sean O'Casey's Within the Gates .
Columbia in those years was home to an active theatrical scene, and
Bauman would return after graduation for starring roles in a variety of
Morningside Players' productions (including MacHeath in John Gay's Beggar's
Opera, Pepys in Martin Shaw's Mr. Pepys , and the Impressario in Pergolesi's
The Music Master ). He also was the Narrator in the 1941 premiere of
Benjamin Britten's first opera, Paul Bunyan , in New York. Britten and the
opera's librettist, W. H. Auden, were living in the United States at the
time and were present at the production. Among Bauman's fellow Bunyan cast
members was Irma Commanday, whom he later married.
In 1935, a fellow Juilliard student, Elie Siegmeister, introduced
Bauman to composer Hanns Eisler, and, Bauman says, their resulting
relationship changed his life. He went on tour with Eisler, under the
auspices of the Anti-Nazi Federation. Eisler opened Bauman's eyes to the
atrocities in Europe, and this gave shape to the baritone's political
convictions, which found voice in his dedication to songs with potent
political content. During this time, Bauman was chosen to record the first
group of songs by Charles Ives for Henry Cowell's New Music Recordings.
After serving in the European Theater of Operations while in the
U.S. Army, Bauman was hired to head the opera department at the Cleveland
Institute of Music. Frustrated by the limited opportunities to present opera
at the Institute, he was challenged by one of the trustees to start his own
school—and Indian Hill, in Stockbridge, Mass., was born.
The list of Indian Hill alumni is impressive, including Ruth Laredo,
Julie Taymor, Frank Rich, Jacob Brackman, and Nora and Arlo Guthrie, among
many others. The early faculty included Seymour Lipkin, Sidney Harth, Henry
Cowell, and Wallingford Riegger. Bauman and his wife established a unique
atmosphere dependent upon dedicated teachers and students living together,
and everyone starting their day with a choral rehearsal. "This was a very
important component, because there is something different in making , rather
than listening to music," says Bauman. In 1976, after running the
institution since 1952, the Baumans donated the property to Brooklyn
College.
In 1978 Mr. Bauman was invited to a symposium in Berlin, in honor of
Hanns Eisler. While there, the Baumans visited Leipzig and the St. Thomas
Church. Mr. Bauman was so moved when he entered Bach's church that he was
inspired to create a documentary about the composer even though, at 66, he
had never produced a film. He collaborated on this project with his son,
Marc (named after Marc Blitzstein, a close friend). The Stations of Bach was
the first documentary about a musician funded by the N.E.H. and was telecast
nationally on PBS in 1990.
Two of Bauman's early recordings were among the 50 selected last
year for inclusion in the National Recording Registry at the Library of
Congress, an archive established recently to maintain and preserve
significant American sound recordings spanning the 20th century. Mr.
Bauman's archive is in the Tamiment Collection at New York University, and
the Indian Hill material is in the Stockbridge Library in Massachusetts. All
give evidence to a passionate commitment to the arts whose influence will
continue for generations.
—Jamée Ard
© 2001 - 2003 The Juilliard School.
Paul Moor
<Texas-Paule@Sigmund-Freud.Org>
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