Music and the American Presidency: A Virtual Fireside Chat with U.S. Presidents

Music and the American Presidency: A Virtual Fireside Chat with U.S. Presidents

An aerial view of the South side of the White House Compiled by Frank J. Oteri and Jenny Undercofler Additional research by David Hughes   The Role of Music in American Life Personal Attitudes About Music Great American Composers Other Favorite Presidential Musicians Music & Diplomacy: International & Domestic The Chief Executive as Music Critic… Read more »

Written By

Frank J. Oteri

Frank J. Oteri is an ASCAP-award winning composer and music journalist. Among his compositions are Already Yesterday or Still Tomorrow for orchestra, the "performance oratorio" MACHUNAS, the 1/4-tone sax quartet Fair and Balanced?, and the 1/6-tone rock band suite Imagined Overtures. His compositions are represented by Black Tea Music. Oteri is the Vice President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and is Composer Advocate at New Music USA where he has been the Editor of its web magazine, NewMusicBox.org, since its founding in 1999.

The White House from above
An aerial view of the South side of the White House

Compiled by Frank J. Oteri and
Jenny Undercofler
Additional research by David Hughes

 

 

The ‘virtual fireside chat’, like its namesake developed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt during his Presidency, is an informal discussion designed to appeal to American citizens. Since it appears on NewMusicBox, it is a discussion about music. We call it a ‘virtual fireside chat’ because it crosses chronological lines going back more than 200 years, purporting to be a conversation between such musical opinion mongers as Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry S Truman, which of course could never have happened because they lived in different eras. In fact, all but 6 of the 42 men who have served as President of the United States are represented here in this compendium of quotes from archival interviews, books, letters, speeches and addresses spanning their entire careers, not just their brief years in the White House. If anyone knows of any comments related to music by the 6 missing presidents (Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce), we’d be delighted to give their opinions a forum here.

Like the ‘virtual séance’ we conducted in November 1999 with the six founders of the American Music Center, texts have been shuffled and re-organized to emulate a conversation relevant to music, but every statement contained here is in the words of an American president. It is a product of intensive research conducted by NewMusicBox editor Frank J. Oteri and Assistant Editor Jenny Undercofler, with additional help from David Hughes, during the months of August and September 2000 at several branches of the New York Public Library, in consultation with various Presidential Libraries across the country, and on the World Wide Web. We are also greatly indebted to Elise K. Kirk’s wonderful book Music at the White House: A History of the American Spirit (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), which provides a remarkable treasure-trove of information about the musical attitudes of the people who have held this nation’s highest elected office.