Blitzstein's Tune

You've gotta, 'cause Captain says you've

gotta,

You've gotta . . . bow . . . down.

These words, sung to the taut accompaniment of a studio orchestra, emerged last Sunday night from such U. S. radios as were tuned in on Columbia Broadcasting System's "Workshop of the Air" (producer of Archibald MacLeish's radio play in verse, Fall of the City, Stephen Vincent Benet's Paid Revere). The Captain who expected people to bow down was, it appeared, a Fascist, for his "Purple Shirts" aimed to exterminate "the mongrel race." Mr. Musiker, the composer who wanted to present to someone a tune that was running through his head, found the Purple Shirts anything but worthy of it. Nor did he like the silly way Mrs. Arbutus, a Park Avenue matron, sang it. Finally, after Mr. Musiker's tune had gone around the world ("they made a lullaby out of it in China" --to plink-plink accompaniment from the orchestra), Mr. Musiker came upon some students, presumably radical since they were singing Pie in the Sky. He was glad to give them his tune, for a marching song.

Thus went I've Got the Tune, written and composed for Columbia's Workshop by Marc Blitzstein, whose The Cradle Will Rock rocked the WPA Federal Theatre in Manhattan last spring (TIME, June 28), will be put on Broadway this fall on a number of Sunday nights. I've Got the Tune, with Composer Blitzstein singing the role of Mr. Musiker, was his and the Workshop's first venture in radio operetta. For some listeners, Blitzstein's mocking libretto was not without class-conscious implications, even his wiry-muscled music suggesting the notion voiced in The Cradle Will Rock--that "there's something so damned low about the rich."

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