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An engraving of Robespierre guillotining the executioner after having guillotined everyone else in France.

The Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794) (the latter is date 10 Thermidor, year II of the French Revolutionary Calendar),^[1] also known simply as The Terror (French: la Terreur), was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution." The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine (2,639 in Paris),^[2] and another 25,000 in summary executions across France.^[3]

The guillotine (called the "National Razor") became the symbol of the revolutionary cause, strengthened by a string of executions: Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité (Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans) and Madame Roland, as well as many others, such as pioneering chemist Antoine Lavoisier, lost their lives under its blade. During 1794, revolutionary France was beset with conspiracies by internal and foreign enemies. Within France, the revolution was opposed by the French nobility, which had lost its inherited privileges. The Roman Catholic Church was generally against the Revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and required they take an oath of loyalty to the nation (through the Civil Constitution of the Clergy). In addition, the First French Republic was engaged in a series of wars with neighboring powers intent on crushing the revolution to prevent its spread.

The extension of civil war and the advance of foreign armies on national territory produced a political crisis and increased the rivalry between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins. The latter were eventually grouped in the parliamentary faction called the Mountain, and they had the support of the Parisian population. The French government established the Committee of Public Safety, which took its final form on 6 September 1793 in order to suppress internal counter-revolutionary activities and raise additional French military forces. Through the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Terror's leaders exercised broad dictatorial powers and used them to instigate mass executions and political purges. The repression accelerated in June and July 1794, a period called "la Grande Terreur" (the Great Terror), and ended in the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), leading to the Thermidorian Reaction, in which several protagonists of the Reign of Terror were executed, including Saint-Just and Robespierre.

Origins and causes[link]

After the resolution of the foreign wars during 1791–1793, the violence associated with the Reign of Terror increased significantly: only roughly 4% of executions had occurred before November 1793 (Brumaire, Year I), thus signaling to many that the Reign of Terror might have had additional causes.^[4] These could have included inherent issues with revolutionary ideology,^[5] and/or the need of a weapon for political repression in a time of significant foreign and civil upheaval,^[4] leading to many different interpretations by historians.

Many historians have debated the reasons why the French Revolution took such a radical turn during the Reign of Terror of 1793–1794. The public was frustrated that the social equality and anti-poverty measures that the Revolution originally promised were not coming to fruition. Jacques Roux’s “Manifesto of the Enraged” in 25 June 1793 describes the extent to which, four years into the Revolution, these goals were largely unattained by the common people.^[6] The foundation of the Terror is centered on the April 1793 creation of the Committee of Public Safety and its militant Jacobin delegates. The National Convention believed that the Committee needed to rule with “near dictatorial power” and the Committee was delegated new and expansive political powers to quickly respond to popular demands.^[7]

Those in power believed the Committee of Public Safety was an unfortunate, but necessary and temporary reaction to the pressures of foreign and civil war.^[8] Historian Albert Mathiez argues that the authority of the Committee of Public Safety was based on the necessities of war, as those in power realized that deviating from the will of the people was a temporary emergency response measure in order to secure the ideals of the Republic. According to Mathiez, they “touched only with trepidation and reluctance the regime established by the Constituent Assembly” so as not to interfere with the early accomplishments of the Revolution.^[9]

Similar to Mathiez, Richard Cobb introduces the competing circumstances of revolt and reeducation within France as an explanation for the Terror. Counterrevolutionary rebellions taking place in Lyon, Brittany, Vendée, Nantes and Marseille were threatening the Revolution with royalist ideas.^[10] Cobb writes, “the revolutionaries themselves, living as if in combat… were easily persuaded that only terror and repressive force saved them from the blows of their enemies.”^[11] Terror was used in these rebellions both to execute inciters and to provide a very visible example to those who might be considering rebellion. Cobb agrees with Mathiez that the Terror was simply a response to circumstances, a necessary evil and natural defense, rather than a manifestation of violent temperaments or excessive fervor. At the same time, Cobb rejects Mathiez’s Marxist interpretation that elites controlled the Reign of Terror to the significant benefit to the bourgeoisie. Instead, Cobb argues that “social struggles” between the classes were seldom the reason for revolutionary actions and sentiments.^[12]

Francois Furet, however, argues that circumstances could not have been the sole cause of the Reign of Terror because “the risks for the Revolution were greatest” in the middle of 1793 but at that time “the activity of the Revolutionary Tribunal was relatively minimal.”^[13] Widespread terror and a consequent rise in executions came after external and internal threats were vastly reduced. Therefore Furet suggests that ideology played the crucial role in the rise of the Reign of Terror because “man’s regeneration” became a central theme for the Committee of Public Safety as they were trying to instill ideals of free will and enlightened government in the public.^[14] As this ideology became more and more pervasive, violence became a significant method for dealing with counterrevolutionaries and the opposition because for fear of being labeled a counterrevolutionary themselves, “the moderate men would have to accept, endorse and even glorify the acts of the more violent.”^[15]

The Terror[link]

On 2 June 1793, Paris sections – encouraged by the enragés Jacques Roux and Jacques Hébert – took over the Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for bread, and a limitation of the electoral franchise to sans-culottes alone. With the backing of the National Guard, they persuaded the Convention to arrest 29 Girondist leaders, including Jacques Pierre Brissot.^[16] On 13 July the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat – a Jacobin leader and journalist known for his violent rhetoric – by Charlotte Corday resulted in a further increase in Jacobin political influence.^[17]

Maximilien Robespierre

Georges Danton, the leader of the August 1792 uprising against the King, was removed from the Committee. On 27 July Maximilien Robespierre, known in Republican circles as "the Incorruptible" for his ascetic dedication to his ideals, made his entrance, quickly becoming the most influential member of the Committee as it moved to take radical measures against the Revolution's domestic and foreign enemies.^[18]

Meanwhile, on 24 June the Convention adopted the first republican constitution of France, the French Constitution of 1793. It was ratified by public referendum, but never put into force; like other laws, it was indefinitely suspended by the decree of October that the government of France would be "revolutionary until the peace".^[19]

On 25 December 1793 Robespierre stated:

The goal of the constitutional government is to conserve the Republic; the aim of the revolutionary government is to found it... The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death... These notions would be enough to explain the origin and the nature of laws that we call revolutionary ... If the revolutionary government must be more active in its march and more free in his movements than an ordinary government, is it for that less fair and legitimate? No; it is supported by the most holy of all laws: the Salvation of the People.^{[citation needed]}

On 5 February 1794 Robespierre stated, more succinctly that "Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible."^[20]

The result was policy through which the state used violent repression to crush resistance to the government. Under control of the effectively dictatorial Committee, the Convention quickly enacted more legislation. On 9 September the Convention established sans-culottes paramilitary forces, the revolutionary armies, to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government. On 17 September the Law of Suspects was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with vaguely defined crimes against liberty. On 29 September the Convention extended price-fixing from grain and bread to other essential goods, and also fixed wages. The guillotine became the symbol of a string of executions: Louis XVI had already been guillotined before the start of the terror; Marie-Antoinette, the Girondists, Philippe Égalité, Madame Roland and many others lost their lives under its blade.^[22] The Revolutionary Tribunal summarily condemned thousands of people to death by the guillotine, while mobs beat other victims to death. Sometimes people died for their political opinions or actions, but many for little reason beyond mere suspicion, or because some others had a stake in getting rid of them.^[23] Among people who were condemned by the revolutionary tribunals, about 8 percent were aristocrats, 6 percent clergy, 14 percent middle class, and 72 percent were workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading the draft, desertion, rebellion.^[24] Maximilien Robespierre, "frustrated with the progress of the revolution,"^[25] saw politics in a rather tyrannical way because "any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil."^[26]

Another anti-clerical uprising was made possible by the installment of the Revolutionary Calendar on 24 October. Hébert's and Chaumette's atheist movement initiated a religious campaign in order to dechristianise society. The program of dechristianisation waged against Catholicism, and eventually against all forms of Christianity, included the deportation or execution of clergy; the closing of churches; the rise of cults and the institution of a civic religion; the large scale destruction of religious monuments; the outlawing of public and private worship and religious education; the forced abjurement of priests of their vows and forced marriages of the clergy; the word "saint" being removed from street names; and the War in the Vendée.^[27] The enactment of a law on 21 October 1793 made all suspected priests and all persons who harbored them liable to death on sight.^[27] The climax was reached with the celebration of the goddess "Reason" in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November. Because dissent was now regarded as counterrevolutionary, extremist enragés such as Hébert and moderate Montagnard indulgents such as Danton were guillotined in the Spring of 1794.^{[citation needed]} On 7 June Robespierre, who favoured deism over Hébert's atheism and had previously condemned the Cult of Reason, recommended that the Convention acknowledge the existence of God. On the next day, the worship of the deistic Supreme Being was inaugurated as an official aspect of the Revolution. Compared with Hébert's somewhat popular festivals, this austere new religion of Virtue was received with signs of hostility by the Parisian public.^{[citation needed]}

The End of the Reign[link]

The execution of Robespierre.

The repression brought thousands of suspects before the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal, whose work was expedited by the Law of 22 Prairial (10 June 1794). As a result of Robespierre's insistence on associating Terror with Virtue, his efforts to make the republic a morally united patriotic community became equated with the endless bloodshed. Finally, after 26 June's decisive military victory over Austria at the Battle of Fleurus, Robespierre was overthrown on 9 Thermidor (27 July).

The fall of Robespierre was brought about by a combination of those who wanted more power for the Committee of Public Safety, and a more radical policy than he was willing to allow, with the moderates who opposed the Revolutionary Government altogether. They had, between them, made the Law of 22 Prairial one of the charges against him, and after his fall, advocating Terror would mean adopting the policy of a convicted enemy of the Republic, endangering the advocate's own head. Before his execution, Robespierre tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide by shooting himself, but the bullet merely shattered his jaw, and Robespierre was guillotined the next day.^[28]

The reign of the standing Committee of Public Safety was ended. New members were appointed the day after Robespierre's execution, and term limits were imposed (a quarter of the committee retired every three months); its powers were reduced piece by piece.

This was not an entirely or immediately conservative period; no government of the Republic envisaged a Restoration, and Marat was reburied in the Pantheon in September.^{[citation needed]}

Gallery[link]

• 

  Mass shootings at Nantes, 1793

• 

  Drownings at Nantes, 1793

• 

  Nine emigrants go to the guillotine, 1793

• 

  "The Last Cart" before the 9th Thermidor, 1794

• 

  Revolutionary Tribunal

See also[link]

• Bals des victimes
• Great Fear
• Tricoteuse
• Use of the Guillotine in Paris

References[link]

Further reading[link]

Primary sources[link]

• Cléry, Jean-Baptiste; Henry Essex Edgeworth (1961) [1798]. Sidney Scott. ed. Journal of the Terror. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OCLC 3153946. 

Secondary sources[link]

• Andress, David (2006). The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-27341-3. 
• Beik, William (August 2005). "The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration: Review Article". Past and Present (188): 195–224. 
• Kerr, Wilfred Brenton (1985). Reign of Terror, 1793–1794. London: Porcupine Press. ISBN 0-87991-631-1. 
• Moore, Lucy (2006). Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-720601-1. 
• Steel, Mark (2003). Vive La Revolution. London: Scribner. ISBN 0-7432-0806-4. 
  • Reviewed by Adam Thorpe in The Guardian, 23 December 2006.
• Palmer, R. R. (2005). Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-12187-7. 
• Jordan, David P. (1985). The Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre. New York: Free Press. pp. 150–164. ISBN 0-02-916530-X. 
• Schama, Simon (1989). Citizens – A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 678–847. ISBN 0-394-55948-7. 
• Scott, Otto (1974). Robespierre, The Fool as Revolutionary – Inside the French Revolution. Windsor, New York: The Reformer Library. ISBN 978-1-887690-05-8. 
• Loomis, Stanley (1964). Paris in the Terror. New York: Dorset Press. ISBN 0-88029-401-9. 
• Hibbert, Christopher (1981). The Days of the French Revolution. New York: Quill-William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-688-16978-7. 
• Censer, Jack, and Lynn Hunt (2001). Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. 
• Hunt, Lynn (1984). Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press. 
• Kafker, Frank, James M. Lauz, and Darline Gay Levy (2002). The French Revolution: Conflicting Interpretations. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company. 
• Popkin, Jeremy D. (2002). A Short History of the French Revolution. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 

External links[link]

• The Terror from In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)
• Reign of Terror from Khanacademy

Tom Lehrer
Lehrer performing in 1960
Background information
Birth name	Thomas Andrew Lehrer
Born	(1928-04-09) April 9, 1928 (age 84) New York, New York
Occupations	Mathematician, teacher, lyricist, pianist, composer, singer/songwriter
Instruments	Vocals Piano
Years active	1945–1971, 1998
Labels	Reprise/Warner Bros. Records Rhino/Atlantic Records Shout! Factory
Associated acts	Joe Raposo

Thomas Andrew Lehrer (born April 9, 1928) is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater. Lehrer is best known for the pithy, humorous songs he recorded in the 1950s and 1960s.

His work often parodies popular song forms, though Lehrer usually creates original melodies when doing so. A notable exception is his song "The Elements", where he sets the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the "Major-General's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Lehrer's earlier work typically dealt with non-topical subject matter and was noted for its black humor, seen in songs such as "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". In the 1960s, he produced a number of songs dealing with social and political issues of the day, particularly when he wrote for the U.S. version of the television show That Was The Week That Was.

In the early 1970s, he retired from public performances to devote his time to teaching mathematics and music theatre at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He did two additional performances in 1998 at a London gala show celebrating the career of impresario Cameron Mackintosh.^[1]

Early life[link]

Lehrer was born in 1928 to a Jewish family in the New York City borough of Manhattan, and began studying classical piano music at the age of seven. He was more interested in the popular music of the age, however. Eventually, his mother also sent him to a popular-music piano teacher.^[2] At this early age, he began writing his own show tunes, which eventually helped him in his future adventures as a satirical composer and writer in his years of lecturing at Harvard University, and later at other universities.^[3]

Lehrer graduated from the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, NY.^[4] He attended Camp Androscoggin, both as a camper and a counselor.^[5] While studying mathematics as an undergraduate student at Harvard College, he began to write comic songs to entertain his friends, including "Fight Fiercely, Harvard" (1945). Those songs were later named The Physical Revue,^[6] a joking reference to a leading scientific journal, The Physical Review.

Mathematics career[link]

Lehrer earned his AB in mathematics (magna cum laude) from Harvard University in 1946, when he was nineteen.^[7] He received his MA degree the next year, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He taught classes at MIT, Harvard, and Wellesley.

He remained in Harvard's doctoral program for several years, taking time out for his musical career and to work as a researcher at Los Alamos, New Mexico. He served in the U.S. Army from 1955 to 1957, working at the National Security Agency. (Lehrer has stated that he invented the Jell-O Shot during this time, as a means of circumventing liquor restrictions.)^[8] All of these experiences eventually became fodder for songs, viz. "Fight Fiercely, Harvard", "The Wild West Is Where I Want To Be" and "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier". Despite holding a master's degree in an era when American conscripts often lacked a high school diploma, Lehrer served as an enlisted soldier, achieving the rank of Specialist Third Class, which he described as being a "corporal without portfolio".^[9] In 1960, Lehrer returned to full-time studies at Harvard, but he never completed his doctoral studies in mathematics.

From 1962, he taught in the political science department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).^[10] In 1972, he joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, teaching an introductory course entitled "The Nature of Mathematics" to liberal arts majors—"Math for Tenors", according to Lehrer. He also taught a class in musical theater. He occasionally performed songs in his lectures, primarily those relating to the topic.^[11]

In 2001, Lehrer taught his last mathematics class (on the topic of infinity) and retired from academia.^[12] He has remained in the area, and still "hangs out" around the University of California, Santa Cruz.^[13]

Mathematical publications[link]

The American Mathematical Society database lists Lehrer as co-author of two papers:

• RE Fagen & TA Lehrer, "Random walks with restraining barrier as applied to the biased binary counter", Journal of the Society for Industrial Applied Mathematics, vol. 6, pp. 1–14 (March 1958) MR0094856
• T Austin, R Fagen, T Lehrer, W Penney, "The distribution of the number of locally maximal elements in a random sample", Annals of Mathematical Statistics vol. 28, pp. 786–790 (1957) MR0091251

Musical career[link]

Lehrer was mainly influenced by musical theater. According to Gerald Nachman's book Seriously Funny, the broadway musical, "Let's Face It" (lyrics by Sylvia Fine; music by Cole Porter) made an early and lasting impression. Lehrer's style consists of parodying various forms of popular song. For example, his appreciation of list songs led him to set an unordered list of the chemical elements to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Major-General's Song".

Author Isaac Asimov recounted in his second autobiographical volume In Joy Still Felt of seeing Lehrer perform in a Boston nightclub on October 9, 1954, during which Lehrer sang very cleverly about Jim getting it from Louise, and Sally from Jim, "and after a while you gathered the 'it' to be venereal disease [the song was likely "I Got It From Sally (in later versions 'Agnes')"]. Suddenly, as the combinations grew more grotesque, you realized he was satirizing every perversion known to mankind without using a single naughty phrase. It was clearly unsingable (in those days) outside a nightclub." Asimov also recalled a song that dealt with the Boston subway system, making use of the stations leading into town from Harvard, observing that the local subject-matter rendered the song useless for general distribution. Lehrer subsequently granted Asimov permission to print the lyrics to the subway song in his book. "I haven't gone to nightclubs often," said Asimov, "but of all the times I have gone, it was on this occasion that I had by far the best time."^[14]

Lehrer was inspired by the success of his performances of his own songs, so he paid for some studio time to record Songs by Tom Lehrer. At the time, radio stations would not give Lehrer air time because of his controversial subjects. Instead, he sold his album on campus at Harvard for three dollars, while "supportive record merchants and dorm newsstands bought copies…and marked them up fifty cents."^{[citation needed]} After one summer, he also started to receive mail orders from all parts of the country (as far away as San Francisco, after The Chronicle wrote an article on the record). Interest in his recordings was spread by word of mouth; friends and supporters brought their records home and played them for their friends, who then also wanted a copy.^[15]

The album—which included the macabre "I Hold Your Hand in Mine", the mildly risqué "Be Prepared", and "Lobachevsky" (regarding plagiarizing mathematicians) became a cult success via word of mouth, despite being self-published and without promotion. Lehrer then embarked on a series of concert tours and recorded a second album, which was released in two versions: the songs were the same, but More of Tom Lehrer was studio-recorded, while An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer was recorded live in concert.

Lehrer's major breakthrough in the United Kingdom came as a result of the citation accompanying an honorary degree given to Princess Margaret, where she cited musical tastes as "catholic, ranging from Mozart to Tom Lehrer". This prompted significant interest in his works and helped secure distributors for his material in the UK. It was there that his music achieved real popularity, as a result of the proliferation of university newspapers referring to the material, and the willingness of the BBC to play his songs on the radio (something that was a rarity in the United States).

By the early 1960s, Lehrer had retired from touring and was employed as the resident songwriter for the U.S. edition of That Was The Week That Was (TW3), a satirical television show. An increased proportion of his output became overtly political, or at least topical, on subjects such as education ("New Math"), the Second Vatican Council ("The Vatican Rag"), race relations ("National Brotherhood Week"), air and water pollution ("Pollution"), American militarism ("Send the Marines"), World War III "pre-nostalgia" ("So Long, Mom", premiered by Steve Allen), and nuclear proliferation ("Who's Next?" and "MLF Lullaby"). He also wrote a song that famously satirized the alleged amorality of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, who had previously worked for Nazi Germany before working for the United States. ("'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department', says Wernher von Braun.") Lehrer did not appear on the television show; his songs were performed by a female vocalist and his lyrics were often altered by the network censors. Lehrer later performed the songs on the album, That Was The Year That Was, so that, in his words, people could hear the songs the way they were intended to be heard.

In 1967, Lehrer was persuaded to make a short tour in Norway and Denmark, where he performed some of the songs from the television program. The performance in Oslo, Norway, on September 10 was recorded on video tape and aired locally later that autumn; this program was released on DVD some 40 years later.^[16]

Also around 1967, Lehrer composed and performed on piano original songs in a Dodge automobile "industrial" film that was distributed primarily to Dodge automobile dealers. It was also shown at promotional events organized by Dodge. Set in a fictional American wild west town, the full proper title of the film appears to be "The Dodge Rebellion Theatre presents Ballads For '67" Since the film is introducing 1967 model automobiles, it was possibly produced in late 1966.

The record deal with Reprise Records for the That Was The Year That Was album also gave Reprise distribution rights for Lehrer's earlier recordings, as Lehrer wanted to wind up his own record imprint. The Reprise issue of Songs by Tom Lehrer was a stereo re-recording. This version was not issued on CD, but the songs were issued on the live Tom Lehrer Revisited CD instead. The [live] recording also included bonus tracks "L-Y" and "Silent E", which Lehrer wrote for the PBS children's educational series The Electric Company. Lehrer later commented that worldwide sales of the recordings under Reprise surpassed 1.8 million units in 1996. That same year, the album That Was The Year That Was went gold.^[15] The album liner notes (and Lehrer himself in one routine) promote Tom Lehrer's songs using reverse psychology, by deliberately quoting his negative reviews. ("I know it's very bad form to quote one's own reviews, but there is something the New York Times said about me [in 1958], that I have always treasured: 'Mr. Lehrer's muse [is] not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste.")

Departure from the music scene[link]

There is an urban legend that Lehrer gave up political satire when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1973. He did comment that awarding the prize to Kissinger made political satire obsolete, but has denied that he stopped creating satire thereafter as a form of protest, asserting that he had stopped several years prior to the award.^[17] Another mistaken belief is that he was sued for libel by the estate of Wernher von Braun, the subject of one of his songs, and forced to relinquish all of his royalty income to von Braun. Lehrer firmly denied this in a 2003 interview.^[13]

When asked about his reasons for abandoning his musical career, in an interview in the book accompanying his CD box set (released in 2000), he cited a simple lack of interest, a distaste for touring, and boredom with performing the same songs repeatedly. He observed that when he was moved to write and perform songs, he did, and when he was not, he did not, and that after a while he simply lost interest. Although many of Lehrer's songs satirized the Cold War political establishment of the era, he stopped writing and performing just as the 1960s counterculture movement gained momentum.

Lehrer's musical career was brief; in an interview in the late 1990s, he pointed out that he had performed a mere 109 shows and written 37 songs over 20 years. Nevertheless, he developed a significant cult following both in the United States and abroad.

In the 1970s, Lehrer concentrated on teaching mathematics and musical theater, although he also wrote ten songs for the children's television show The Electric Company—Lehrer's Harvard schoolmate Joe Raposo was the show's musical director for its first three seasons.

Revivals and discographic reissues[link]

In the early 1980s, Tom Foolery, a revival of his songs on the London stage, was a hit. Although not its instigator, Lehrer eventually gave the stage production his full support and updated several of his lyrics for the production (such as "Who's Next", in which Neiman-Marcus [or in the San Francisco production, J.C. Penney], not Alabama, gets the bomb). Tom Foolery contained 27 Lehrer songs and led to more than 200 productions,^[15] including an off-Broadway production at the Village Gate, which ran for 120 performances in 1981.^[18]

In conjunction with the Tom Foolery premiere in 1980 at Criterion Theatre in London, Lehrer made a rare TV appearance on BBC's Parkinson show, where he sang "I Got It from Agnes".^[19][20]

On June 7 and 8, 1998, Lehrer performed in public for the first time in 25 years at the Lyceum Theatre, London as part of the gala show Hey, Mr. Producer! celebrating the career of impresario Cameron Mackintosh, who had been the producer of Tom Foolery. The June 8 show was his only performance before Queen Elizabeth II. Lehrer sang "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" and an updated version of the nuclear proliferation song "Who's Next?". The DVD of the event includes the former song.^[21]

In 2000, a boxed set of CDs, The Remains of Tom Lehrer, was released by Rhino Entertainment. It included live and studio versions of his first two albums, That Was The Year That Was, the songs he wrote for The Electric Company, and some previously unreleased material. It was accompanied by a small hardbound book containing an introduction by Dr. Demento and lyrics to all the songs.

In 2010, Shout! Factory launched a reissue campaign, making his long out-of-press albums available digitally. They also issued a CD/DVD combo called The Tom Lehrer Collection, which includes his best-loved songs, plus a DVD featuring an Oslo concert.^[22]

Musical legacy[link]

Lehrer has commented that he doubts his songs had any real effect on those not already critical of the establishment: "I don't think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted... I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin kabaretts of the 1930s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War."^[17]

In 2003 he commented that his particular brand of political satire is more difficult in the modern world: "The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban land mines... I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them."^[13]

In a phone call to Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post in February 2008, Lehrer instructed Weingarten to "Just tell the people that I am voting for Obama."^[23]

A play, Letters from Lehrer, written by Canadian Richard Greenblatt, was performed by him at CanStage, from January 16 to February 25, 2006. It followed Lehrer's musical career, the meaning of several songs, the politics of the time, and Greenblatt's own experiences with Lehrer's music, while playing some of Lehrer's songs. There are currently no plans for more performances, although low-quality audio recordings have begun to circulate around the internet.

Some of his songs ("I Hold Your Hand in Mine" and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park") were reworked into German by the Austrian-Jewish singer satirist Georg Kreisler who lived in the United States from 1938 until 1955. Lehrer was praised by Dr. Demento as "the best musical satirist of the twentieth century". Other artists who cite Lehrer as an influence include "Weird Al" Yankovic, whose work generally addresses more popular and less technical or political subjects,^[24] and educator and scientist H. Paul Shuch, who tours under the stage name Dr. SETI and calls himself "a cross between Carl Sagan and Tom Lehrer: he sings like Sagan and lectures like Lehrer." More stylistically influenced performers include American political satirist Mark Russell,^[25] and the British duo Kit and The Widow.^{[citation needed]} British medical satirists Amateur Transplants acknowledge the debt they owe to Tom Lehrer on the back of their first album, Fitness to Practice. Their songs "The Menstrual Rag" and "The Drugs Song" are to the tunes of Lehrer's "The Vatican Rag" and "The Elements" (itself set to the tune of the "Major-General's Song" from The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan), respectively. Their second album, Unfit to Practise, opens with an update of Lehrer's "The Masochism Tango" and is called simply "Masochism Tango 2008". Syndicated conservative morning-radio talk show host Jim Quinn sings with piano backing in a Lehrer-like tribute in a song on how political correctness has destroyed so many Christmas traditions with the song "A Politically Correct Christmas".

Lehrer has said of his musical career, "If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while."^[2]

Music lists[link]

Reviews selected by Lehrer for his liner notes[link]

• "Mr. Lehrer's muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste." — The New York Times (9 February 1959)
• "More desperate than amusing" — New York Herald Tribune
• "He seldom has any point to make except obvious ones" — The Christian Science Monitor
• "Plays the piano acceptably" — The Oakland Tribune

Solo discography[link]

• Songs by Tom Lehrer (1953)
• More of Tom Lehrer (1959)
• An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer (1959)
• Revisited (1960) (1990 CD reissue includes 1971 studio recordings of Silent E and L-Y)
• Tom Lehrer Discovers Australia (And Vice Versa) (1960; Australia-only)
• That Was the Year That Was (1965)
• Songs by Tom Lehrer (1966 re-recording)
• Tom Lehrer in Concert (1994; UK compilation)
• Songs & More Songs by Tom Lehrer (1997; US compilation of his first two studio albums with additional songs)
• The Remains of Tom Lehrer (2000)
• The Tom Lehrer Collection (2010)

Many Lehrer songs also are performed (but not by Lehrer) in That Was The Week That Was (Radiola LP, 1981)

The sheet music to many of Lehrer's songs is published in The Tom Lehrer Song Book (Crown Publishers, Inc., 1954) Library of Congress Card Catalog Number 54-12068 and Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer: with not enough drawings by Ronald Searle (Pantheon, 1981, ISBN 0-394-74930-8; Methuen, 1999, ISBN 978-0-413-74230-8). There is also a second song book, called "Tom Lehrer's Second Song Book," which is out of print and has no ISBN.

Lehrer wrote The SAC Song that was sung in the 1963 film A Gathering of Eagles.^[26]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Tom Lehrer

• That Was the Wit That Was Tom Lehrer interview in SF Weekly, published 2000-04-19, retrieved 2010-08-26
• Tom Lehrer Annotated Song Lyrics, many with MIDI files, collected by Graeme Cree, retrieved 2011-04-13
• 59 minute long mp3 radio programme from 1983, with a telephone interview with Tom Lehrer, as well as a 10 minute follow-up 1989 From "Bob Claster's Funny Stuff" on KCRW, retrieved 2010-08-26
• A Conversation with Tom Lehrer done by Paul D. Lehrman on September 7, 1997, retrieved 2010-08-26
• Tom Lehrer page on The Demented Music Database—includes biography, discography, lyrics and other miscellanea, retrieved on 2011-01-23