Mordecai Hirsch Bauman (March 12, 1912 in

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

– May 16, 2007 in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

) was an American

baritone A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the r ...

Biography

Bauman was born on March 2, 1912, to Allen and Minnie Bauman in the Bronx,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He attended James Monroe High School, then was granted a fellowship to the Juilliard Graduate School of Music during his freshman year at Columbia College in 1930, making him the first and only student to attend both institutions concurrently. He studied voice with Francis Rogers at Juilliard. During the 1930's he became active in the

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

political movement within the United States, and made several recordings with a group under the name " The New Singers" where they recorded English language versions of well known communist songs. He married Irma Commanday. Together, they started the Indian Hill Art Workshop in

Stockbridge, Massachusetts Stockbridge is a town in Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,018 at the 2020 census. A year-round resort area, Stockbridge is h ...

. Indian Hill was the first summer school in the arts for high school students. It was open until 1978. During the Bach

Tercentenary An anniversary is the date on which an event took place or an institution was founded in a previous year, and may also refer to the commemoration or celebration of that event. The word was first used for Catholic feasts to commemorate saints. ...

in 1985, he led a tour to the Bach Festival in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

. A few years later, he completed a documentary, "The Stations of Bach", in

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

. The documentary was funded by the National Endowments for the Arts and

Humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

and broadcast nationally on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

in 1990.

CUNY TV , mottoeng = The education of free people is the hope of Mankind , budget = $3.6 billion , established = , type = Public university system , chancellor = Fél ...

now owns the documentary and broadcasts it annually on Bach's birthday, March 21. In 2006, Mordecai and Irma published their memoir, titled,
From our Angle of Repose
'. He died in 2007 at the age of 95.

References

External links

Mordecai Bauman papers
in the Music Division of th
New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsIndian Hill Music Workshop Records at Stockbridge Library, Museum & Archives
* ttps://www.flickr.com/photos/timeportal/sets/72157603369276673/ Photographs from Bach Tercentenary tour led by Baumanbr>Indian Hill Arts Workshop
1912 births 2007 deaths Jewish American classical musicians American operatic baritones Musicians from the Bronx Singers from New York City Juilliard School alumni Columbia College (New York) alumni 20th-century American male opera singers Classical musicians from New York (state) James Monroe High School (New York City) alumni 20th-century American Jews {{US-opera-singer-stub