Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, musicologists have gradually accepted music and the Cold War as a viable subfield within the discipline, and over the past decade, a Cold War musicology has taken root. This thesis contributes to this still burgeoning field by contextualizing Frederic Rzewski's North American Ballads within the United States domestic realm during the latter half of the Cold War. Written in a virtuosic, neo-romantic vein, the North American Ballads are solo-piano arrangements of American labor songs, three of which date back to the 1930s. During the early Cold War, Rzewski's distinctly tonal idiom, as well as his pro-labor agenda, would have been untenable in the United States, but by the 1970s, as tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union eased temporarily, the politics governing musical style and content became less rigid. Drawing on the work of several scholars including Danielle Fosler-Lussier and Peter J. Schmelz, I demonstrate how Rzewski may be situated within the "return to tonality" movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. I argue that Cold War détente facilitated Rzewski's return in the Ballads, for as fear of nuclear annihilation receded, domestic concerns came more sharply into focus. Moreover, Rzewski's nostalgic arrangements, although prompted by his leftist leanings, resonated beyond the political, appealing during an era when nostalgia was a common escape for Americans weary of the Cold War.
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