Lecture 6 – Music 1 Flashcards
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — Antonín Dvořák
–the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák was known for his “recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition” (Clapham 1980: 765)
– from 1892–95, Dvořák was Director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City
– here, the composer experimented with American folk idioms
–in The New York Herald, Dvořák opined controversially that “the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them”
– the American composer John Knowles Paine, based at Harvard, responded that it seemed “a preposterous idea to say that in future American music will rest upon such a shaky foundation as the melodies of a yet largely undeveloped race”
–in his Symphony No. 9 in E minor, op. 95, known as “From the New World” (1893), Dvořák exemplified what he meant
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882): American poet
–the middle movements of the symphony were inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855) and associated African American melodies
–Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha (1855) is anepic poemwhich relates the fictional adventures of the Ojibwaywarrior Hiawatha and his tragic love forthe young Dakota woman Minnehaha; it is based on oral traditions surrounding the trickster figure ofManabozho (also known as Nanabush); illustration of “Hiawatha’s Departure” from a 1865 edition
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — Symphony “From the New World” (1893) by Dvořák
–though Dvořák maintained: “I have not actually used any of the [Native American] melodies. I have simply written original themes embodying the peculiarities of the Indian music, and, using these themes as subjects, have developed them with all the resources of modern rhythms,counterpoint, and orchestral colour”
–the model described here by Dvořák has been interpreted as problematic, because the composer “might also be understood as an agent of cultural imperialism, spreading German theory and practice to eager American pupils” (Levy 2012)
– the critic William James Henderson described the main theme of the symphony’s slow movement as follows: “It is an idealized slave song made to fit the impressive quiet of night on the prairie. When the star of empire took its way over those mighty Western plains blood and sweat and agony and bleaching human bones marked its course. Something of this awful buried sorrow of the prairie must have forced itself upon Dr. Dvořák’s mind.”
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — Amy Beach
–Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (1867–1944): American composer and pianist; one of the Boston Six
–in addition to criticism that was motivated by racial and political anxieties, the multi-ethnic character of US society demanded more complex negotiations which complicated the question of authenticity
– Amy Beach, for instance, cautioned: “Without the slightest desire to question the beauty of the Negro melodies […] or to disparage them on account of their source, I cannot help feeling justified in the belief that they are not fully typical of our country. The African population of the United States is far too small for its songs to be considered ‘American.’ It represents only one factor in the composition of our nation. Moreover, it is not native American. Were we to consult the native folk songs of the continent, it would have to be those of the Indians and Esquimaux, several of whose curious songs are given in the publication of the Smithsonian Institute. The Africans are no more native than the Italians, Swedes, or Russians.”
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations —Edward MacDowell
–Edward Alexander MacDowell (1860–1908): American composer and pianist, one of the Boston Six
–similarly, Edward MacDowell – perpetuating the imaginary of the noble savage – noted that “the stern but at least manly and free rudeness of the North American Indian” was a worthier inspiration than “the badge of whilom slavery”
–MacDowell’s Second Suite, op. 48 (1892/1896) has become known as “The Indian” because it is based upon Native American melodies and rhythms, including an Iowa love song and Iroquois songs
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations —responses to Dvorak
–it has been suggested that the responses of American composers to Dvořák’s model “exhibited an Americanness far more complex than the assertion of blood ties or the celebration of shared historical experiences” (Levy 2012)
– as Levy argues, the American composers’ “selection and manipulation of source materials reflect their own views on race, class, and the power relations among American population groups. In short, their music encodes the same tensions and resolutions embodied in the nation they represented” (2012)
– eventually, American composers turned to the West for inspiration:
* as Beth E. Levy notes, “they contributed to the ways the West was imagined, responding to its landscapes and inhabitants as Americans always have, by idolizing, exaggerating, and stereotyping. In short, they made myths. When they incorporated western images, texts, or folk melodies into their scores, composers invited audiences to listen for the frontier and to imagine themselves as participants in history. The resulting music forms the soundtrack of Manifest Destiny, marked by symbols that are usually easy to recognize but not always easy to interpret” (2012)
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations —Arthur Farwell
–Arthur Farwell (1872–1952): American composer who was associated with the Indianist Movement; founder of the Wa-Wan Press which published music in this genre
– as we have variously noted, images of the Native American other have been central to the construction of American identity
– the European model of creating a national music embodied by Dvořák of injecting “indigenous” elements into conventional contexts was emulated by American composers
–notable among those composers are Arthur Farwell and Charles Wakefield Cadman
–an example is Farwell’s extensive use of Indian songs and symbols in his American Indian Melodies, op. 11 (1901)
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — Indigenous influences
–it has nevertheless been suggested that, while the fascination of these composers “with Indian tunes was genuine, […] their music also encoded a celebration of westward expansion and the supposed disappearance of Native American life in the face of white civilization” (Levy 2012)
– or, more specifically: “In instrumental works, those composers overrode the Indians’ own creative agency by altering borrowed melodies or disregarding original contexts. In their texted music, emphasis on Indian identification with the land suggests a metaphorical collapsing of the human, Native American presence into the distinctive Western landscape” (Levy 2012)
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — The Music Shifts
–in the late 1920 the focus of American composers began to shift from Indian music to pioneering settlers and cowboys
–an example is Leo Sowerby’s tone poem The Prairie (1929), based on Carl Sandburg’s prairie poetry
–Carl August Sandburg (1878–1967): American poet [–> “Prairie” is the opening poem of Sandburg’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Cornhusks (1918)]
–Leo Salkeld Sowerby(1895–1968): American composerand church musician; winner of the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1946
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — Authenticity
–in the 1930s, in the search for an “authentic” American sound, American composers turned away from European modernism and jazz to Anglo-American as well as Native American songs to folk song, period music, and hymnody
–from these they derived “uncomplicated melodies, simple harmonies, characteristic rhythms, and sparse orchestration” (Kalinak 2012)
–significant examples, which proved to be enormously influential, include:
* Virgil Thomson, Symphony on a Hymn Tune (1928)
* Roy Harris, Folksong Symphony (1940)
* Aaron Copland, Billy the Kid (1939), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944)
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — Exploration of Folk Songs
–these composers based their exploration of folk songs also on collections of cowboy melodies, such as N[athan] Howard Thorp’s seminal Songs of the Cowboys (1908)
–“The familiar tunes and simple harmonies of cowboy songs allowed them [i.e., these composers] to enter the popular repertory in ways that Native American tunes could not, providing American composers with a link between the populism of the 1930s and a new western mythology. Moreover, in the cowboy’s bravado – independence and good humor, but also aggression and alienation – America found heroic qualities that could sustain it through both the military conflicts of the Second World War and the ideological conflicts of the Cold War.” (Levy 2012)
– the West “with its wide open spaces and mythic archetypes (the cowboy, the farmer, the pioneer), unfettered by European modernism and untarnished by corrupt urban genres like jazz, came to stand for the quintessential American identity in music, largely superseding other regions’ claims.” (Kalinak 2007)
–this new mythology emerged specifically in the works of Roy Harris [(i.e. Leroy Ellsworth Harris; 1898–1979): American composer] and Aaron Copland [(1900–1990): American composer and conductor]
–examples are Harris’s Symphony No. 4, known as Folksong Symphony (1940)
– and Copland’s commissioned ballets Billy the Kid (1938) and Rodeo (1942)
– Copland, in particular, developed in the 1930s and 1940s a deliberately accessible style that was frequently referred to as “populist” and which was designated by the composer as his “vernacular” style
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — Musical Constructions of the West in Film Scores
–film music, as a constitutive element of the sound film, but significant also in the silent film era in the guise of life performances, adds a highly charged level of meaning to the cinematic engagement with the American West
–the semantic potential of film music operates mainly in two ways:
* as consciously selected or produced by the director (auteur) and composer
* music is, moreover, a form of cultural transmission which associates pre-established responses which influence filmic meaning
*such responses can be exploited in order to expand the semantic potential of a film
–the film score operates narratively, thematically, structurally, and ideologically (Kalinak 2007)
–songs, in particular, “authenticate historical era and geographic place and contribute to narrative trajectory, character development, and thematic exposition” (Kalinak 2007)
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — Songs carry ideological semantics, engaging with…
*the relationship between history and myth
*the definitions of nation and nationality
* class
*ethnicity
* race
* gender
–frequently these semantics affect the audience subconsciously
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — Create meaning through music and text
–but songs also create meaning through their simultaneous construction as music and text
–musical conventions of portraying the American West in film were developed during the silent film era, but were pre-dated already by the extant music from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (Levy 2012 and Kalinak 2012)
–Westerns, of both the A and B categories “have much to say about America, the American character, and American values, and they do it not only through narrative and visual style, but also through music” (Kalinak 2012)
–yet both categories differed notably in the musical style in which this was articulated
–in either case, the music would have been recognized by audiences as American and, more specifically, as Western
Traditional Music of the American West and its Transformations — Music in Westerns
–B-Westerns of the 1930s, addressing mainly the working class, exploited the new country-and-western music developing on the radio and in the recording industry
–they prominently featured cowboy songs, as recorded, for instance, by Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Tex Ritter
–among others, Autry, Rogers, and Ritter also performed in the so-called Singing Cowboy Western
–the Singing Cowboy Western was a popular sub-genre of the (B-)Western in which the main protagonist was intermittently shown singing traditional cowboy songs
–the most popular of singing cowboys was Gene Autry, followed by Roy Rogers and Tex Ritter
–cowboy songs mostly speak about the hard life of the cowboy on the range, describing his routine, desires, and (sometimes) regrets
–originally, they were sung by cowboys around the campfire but were also used to calm the cattle at night
–in contrast to B-Westerns, A-Westerns connected to cultural currents in American art music
– they were typically indebted more directly to the concert hall than the radio
– while B-Westerns might also make use of folk songs, A-Westerns were distinguished in the use also of hymnody and traditional music, in emulation of contemporary American art music
