Harvey Milk: A Cantata Program Notes

Original Program Note (2012)

Harvey Milk: A Cantata is a new choral work (2012) by Jack Curtis Dubowsky featuring unpublished texts by Harvey Milk.

The 20-minute Harvey Milk for mixed chorus and piano was jointly commissioned by the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco and Lick Wilmerding High School, with the cooperation of the Estate of Harvey Milk and the Harvey Milk Archives / Scott Smith Collection of the San Francisco Public Library.

Susan Goldstein, City Archivist of San Francisco, gave Conductor and Artistic Director William Sauerland full access to Milk's original papers, which yielded texts that have never been published before. Sauerland's research was assisted by Tim Wilson, the archivist of the Harvey Milk collection. Texts were compiled and edited by Sauerland and composer Jack Curtis Dubowsky. The final cantata text is entirely by Milk, culled from both well-known speeches as well as rare documents. The Estate of Harvey Milk granted special permission for the use of these texts.

Program Note Addendum (2025)

Thanks to European performances of Harvey Milk: A Cantata, I wanted to explain some of the language, history, and jargon that is embedded in the piece, especially some that might get "lost in translation," as well as certain things that require some cultural and historical context to make sense. And some of the music as well.

Movement I is from a 25 June, 1978 Gay Freedom Day speech. "My name is Harvey Milk, and I want to recruit you" was a standard opening to many of Harvey's stump speeches. A "stump speech" is a kind of homey political speech intended for the general public. The term harkens back to mythical days of Abraham Lincoln, an image of a frontier politician standing on a tree stump to be better seen and heard by an audience of settlers and pioneers.

This opening line plays a twist on the anxieties of the time. It was well known that Milk was a gay politician. There were fears that gays and lesbians were "recruiting" people to become homosexual. In California, 1978 saw the Briggs Initiative (a state referendum that failed at the ballot box) attempt to have gays and lesbians fired from teaching positions, out of a homophobic panic that gays were "recruiting" children. When Milk says "I want to recruit you," he is invoking and mocking this gay panic, setting up a joke, following it up with the punchline "into the fight for the preservation of democracy." This underscores the identity of gays and lesbians as good, normal, American citizens.

Musically, Movement I introduces a recurring theme based on the notes B, A, and F# that, using German note names, H, A, Fis, kind of spells "Harvey." It's a pentatonic melody, whose simplicity and directness reflects Harvey's populist image and approach. (We also start in the key of H moll for Harvey.) The "Allegro disco" tempo with oscillating bassline puts us in the 1970s time period. The harmonization of a chromatically rising bassline may be familiar from any number of keyboard harmony exercises, and also harkens to disco hits like "It's Raining Men." (You may notice bassline octave jumps reappearing in the quiet section of Movement III.)

Movement II encourages gays and lesbians to come out of the closet. It comes from an untitled 1974 article preserved in the Milk archive. Harvey acknowledges "there is a great deal of openness," (meaning people being out of the closet), in "some places," these places being, one can imagine, major port cities like San Francisco and New York City. Milk then asks us to consider other places, using four examples, that were conservative and more homophobic at the time, all of which have changed. Chico is a small town in central California, once a primarily agricultural area, now a quaint and progressive college town. San Diego is a large city in southern California known for its naval and military bases, now home to Hillcrest, a whole gay neighborhood. The Sunset is a neighborhood in San Francisco that was once a more conservative part of the city, but now just another part of the gay Mecca. Dallas is a major city in Texas (where JFK was assassinated) that now is home to a large gay community.

The line that "to attack one minority is to attack all minorities" is from a 1 February 1978 statement, and exemplifies how Milk tried to build coalitions and bring people together. "Word is out" was the title of a 1977 documentary film about the lives of 26 gay men and women. The film aired nationally on PBS television in 1978.

Movement III is the "angry Harvey" movement, like a Dies Irae movement, that forms the dramatic center of the piece. It again uses the H A Fis motive. The text here is directed to the gay community itself, rather than to the general public.

The sentiment Harvey expresses here is a little complicated, and relates to gays who chose to stay in the closet. In "We must be judged by our leaders," "We" refers to gay people, and "our leaders" refers to the leaders of the gay community. "And by those who are themselves gay." This means that gay people must be judged by other gay people, particularly by those who are "visible" (out of the closet). (One might consider the hypocrisy of closeted homosexuals like Roy Cohn who led gay witch hunts in the McCarthy era 1950s.) Gays must not allow themselves to be judged by straight people; who cares what the straights think, we are going to come out of the closet, and live our own lives.

"Invisible we remain in limbo" refers to a legal and societal limbo where civil rights, employment, and housing are not guaranteed. "A person with no parents, no brothers, no sisters" turns on its head the notion that the homosexual will be abandoned by their family, and instead underlines an idea that the "invisible" person who hides or denies their homosexuality will not have parents or siblings, because it is only their false, inauthentic self that has those relationships.

"If a bullet should enter my brain" is from "Tape 3," one of three cassettes of the "political will" Harvey recorded, to be played in the event of his own assassination. The tape was recorded 18 November, 1977, ten days after his election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Tapes 1 and 2 do not have this line, which suggests it was an impromptu remark, or perhaps Harvey was moved to make it after recording cassettes 1 and 2.

Movement IV showcases Milk's "hope speech," of which there are many recordings and multiple variations. This particular speech was given in San Antonio, Texas, in 1978. The mention of "blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us's" shows Milk's trademark inclusivity and his effort to build bridges and unite communities.

Movement V comes from a 10 January 1978 speech. This was the first movement that I composed, and I like that this text is not well known; it's from an unpublished speech. It is very much of its time, and yet powerfully prescient. This excerpt is only two sentences long.

"Standard of living" is an amorphous economic measure that became prominent during the Cold War. It can be heard in numerous Presidential speeches, including Eisenhower's 1954 State of the Union Address, Kennedy's 1962 State of the Union Address, and Nixon's 15 August 1971 "Nixon Shock Speech." Basically, "standard of living" boiled down to "we have more and better stuff than the Soviets." "Quality of life" is another period catchphrase that, while even more amorphous than "standard of living," attempts to give weight to non-economic concerns, in a way presaging the "happiness index" that arose in the 2000-teens. Harvey, as a civil rights leader, is expressing that freedom and civility should take precedence over capitalism and consumerism.

The second sentence is an example of this principle. To paraphrase this last sentence: To sit on the front steps of your own home and talk to your neighbors is more important than to stay inside watching television.

Harvey uses colorful, culturally-coded language. The "concrete stoop" that includes steps is a common feature of East Coast urban housing. San Francisco is known for charming Victorian "gingerbread" wood construction, even in apartment buildings; "concrete stoop" shows how people like Harvey came to San Francisco from New York City, and how Harvey's political speech was directed towards a potentially national audience. The "small town" house's veranda is a feature common in the American south and in warm inland central California locations like Paso Robles (or Chico). Milk's architectural references make his statement universal.

"Living room lounger," which has nice alliteration, refers to the "recliner" or "easy chair" popular at the time; "La-Z-Boy" was one popular brand of these. This was a big, overstuffed, comfy chair that could lean back, and you would relax and watch television in it. And yet, the "huddling" here connotes fear and alienation, in contrast to talking to neighbors.

And what is on television? Harvey offers a critique of mass media (which, it should be noted, often helped to spread homophobia and to stagnate social progress). A "make-believe world" implies falsehood and imparts a childlike quality to it; the famous children's show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood (1968-2001) featured a fantasy, puppet-based neighborhood-within-the-neighborhood, the "Neighborhood of Make-Believe," a dreamlike imaginary environment, to teach children to distinguish between reality and unreality.

"Living color" was RCA's advertising slogan for color television sets in the 1950s-60s; during this same time, the NBC network used the slogan "In living color" for their television broadcasts. Milk's emphasis that the "make-believe world" was "in not-quite living color" indicates that what was on television was not to be mistaken for the real world. (As a side note, "Living color" connected to RCA Victor's easy listening groups like the "Living Strings" and "Living Marimbas.")

The H A Fis motive returns, hidden in the ending of the piece. The C major ending is key symbolism, reflecting community, simplicity, and child-like qualities. (C major is also used to represent the Castro in my 2009 choral opera Halloween in the Castro, also commissioned by the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco.)

Harvey's words are prescient in that, while critiquing the alienation of mass media, they foreshadow the internet and social media, the even more addictive offspring of television. They warn of the "bubble" or "echo chamber" effect that creates an imaginary world. The antidote to this is to "talk to our neighbors," which Harvey meant both literally and metaphorically, meaning both the people next door, our own community, and other communities around us.

Jack Curtis Dubowsky, 6 April 2025