Its first performance was broadcast October 24, 1937, with a cast that included the composer, Shirley Booth, Lotte Lenya and Norman Lloyd.
[2] A contract was drawn up, dated August 12, 1937, requesting a "musical dramatic work … suitable for radio broadcasting" and specifying limits on the number of performers.
Blitzstein took over the part himself when Welles was consumed with rehearsals for the Mercury Theatre's debut stage production, Caesar.
[4]: 121 Along with The Cradle Will Rock and his subsequent work, No For an Answer, I've Got the Tune represents a kind of lyric theatre that grew out of European and American traditions of the 1920s and came into its own by the mid-1930s.
The resulting works were "unique amalgams of [Blitzstein's] own twentieth-century idiom with the adopted techniques clearly within the strict proletarian precepts he had formulated under the guidance of social concepts taught and practiced by Hanns Eisler, along with Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.
Musiker tries to play his melody for he but she interrupts, extemporizing her version of the tune ("The moon is a happy cheese tonight").
Beetzie and Musiker hide behind a bush as they watch Captain Bristlepunkt and his followers, the Purple Shirties, induct Private Aloysius Schnook as a new recruit.
Beetzie and Musiker recount the transformations of the tune indicative of the places they have been around the world: A Chinese lullaby, an Italian organ-grinder waltz, a Tin Pan Alley song ("The Hangover Blues"), and an African war dance.
They then encounter a group of high school students celebrating Field Day, singing leftist songs such as "Pie in the Sky," "Hold the Fort" and "Solidarity Forever."
The idea of a journeying idealist accompanied by a practical-minded sidekick could have based on Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote, which is mentioned several times in Blitzstein's previous project The Spanish Earth.
"[9] At one point he considered a male part for The Suicide, not wanting to draw attention to his wife's death from anorexia the previous year.
[7] In early drafts Blitzstein had planned an additional scene in Tin Pan Alley, at the office of Finaigler, Kibitz and McGuire, who would have already adapted the tune.
"[12] On the other hand, Aaron Copland noted the work's "hectic, nervous mood" and found "a synthetic quality about it that no amount of ingenuity and talent can hide.
"[12] I've Got the Tune received its stage premiere on February 6, 1938, in a program that included works by Aaron Copland, Hanns Eisler, Lehman Engel, Alex North, Paul Bowles, Earl Robinson, Harold Rome, Virgil Thomson and Count Basie.
Declaring it being created for uncritical left leaning audiences, Variety said that the main problem was that it had several episodes which lack integration with each other.
The unnamed critic found the tune of the title had an "evasive quality" that prevents the audience from remembering it and distances them from the story.
Blitzstein donated the manuscript for I've Got The Tune to an auction held February 20, 1939, at Hotel Delmonico, for the benefit of German refugees.