American Traditions in Music Flashcards
What are the two traditions of music in America?
1) High Art - The Opera, Symphonies, and chamber music imported from Europe
2) Lighter Music - For informal occasions at home and in public.
BOTH ARE BASICALLY DERIVATIVE FROM EUROPE
What are parlor songs?
A combination of folk song and upper class operas that were intended to illicit feelings of nostalgia about the Old Country from immigrants to America.
What is Minstrelsy?
When performers that were either white or black dawned blackface to act out scenes from the plantation vastly different from actual slave life. A stereotypic of that culture.
What is the first American composer who attempts to compose in the American style?
Gottschalk. We get his Banjo piece which is a Piano Minstrel attempted to imitate the Banjo.
Describe American Sacred Music during the Romantic Era.
- Has to be viewed within the context of the Second Great Awakening. Camp meetings gathered whites and blacks to sing hymns and join revivals for days or weeks at a time.
- This created the tradition of ring shout in a call and response format.
- The Spiritual was also a huge part of this. Like Swing Low Sweet Charriot
What is the Harlem Renaissance?
An attempt by African American artists to claim a high culture space of the art of their people to counteract the racism of their day.
What is the Pentatonic scale?
A Five note scale.
When is the National Conservatory of Music Founded?
Around 1870.
What is the National Conservatory of Music?
The First American Music School. It eventually goes out of business.
Who does the National Conservatory of Music enlist to teach American composition?
Dvorak. A Bohemian Composer.
What does Dvorak think are the two key “American” styles of music?
Spirituals and Native American Music
How does Dvorak’s composition style influence American music?
- Dvorak is more conservative in the Romantic Era. So there is an emphasis on composing symphonies and things in line with typical forms.
- There are Spirituals and Native American melodies inside of the pieces he composes. Influences the direction of American Music.
