I have no idea why I plan out dream courses I could teach, when it’s the middle of the summer. One of my great regrets (there are so many) is that I’ve never taught an American music course. It just doesn’t fit our curriculum. To do it the way I want to, it really ought to be a graduate seminar somewhere, because I’d want to get into Riegger’s Study in Sonority and the Becker Third and Martirano’s L’sGA, which I can’t do if they don’t know who Ives is yet. I taught a History of the Symphony once and I’ll never do that again because it was waaay too much material. But I had an idea the other day for an “American Symphony” course, one symphony per week, sort of creating the idea of America through symphonic form:
Anthony Philip Heinrich: The War of the Elements and the Thundering of Niagara (c. 1845)
George Frederick Bristow: Arcadian Symphony, Op. 50 (1872)
George Chadwick: Third Symphony (1894)
Amy Beach: Gaelic Symphony (1896)
Charles Ives: First Symphony (1899)
Charles Ives: Third Symphony (1911) [might ought to do the Fourth, but sentimental about Third]
Virgil Thomson: Symphony on a Hymn Tune (1928)
James P. Johnson: Harlem Symphony (1932)
Roy Harris: Third Symphony (1938)
Florence B. Price: Symphony No. 3 (1940)
George Antheil: Symphony No. 4, “1942†(1942)
Aaron Copland: Third Symphony (1946)
Leonard Bernstein: Second Symphony, “Age of Anxiety†(1949/65)
George Rochberg: Second Symphony (1956)
Roger Sessions: Third Symphony (1957)
William Schuman: Eighth Symphony (1962) [Sixth would do, too]
William Bolcom: Fifth Symphony (1989)
Glenn Branca: Symphony No. 6, “Devil Choirs at the Gates of Heaven†(1989)
Philip Glass: “Low†Symphony (1992)
This is a few too many. Chadwick could go, kind of a dutiful inclusion. Everything would hinge on being able to get a score to the James P. Johnson Harlem Symphony – that’s key, and I won’t do that without a score. The archive seems to be at Rutgers. Still’s Afro-American Symphony, nice as it is, would be a disappointing second choice. I don’t know how to get Bristow’s Arcadian, either, whereas I can get the earlier Jullien – but the Arcadian is significantly better, and more evocative of the American wilderness. The Florence Price 1st and 3rd symphonies are published, and either would provide a piquant highlight. And I need an analysis of the Sessions Third, I’ve tried and can’t do it myself. Blitzstein’s 1946 Airborne Symphony might be a wild, corny substitute for the Antheil.
I should set up one of those web sites that fly around on Facebook: “Which American Symphony Are You?” And of course it’s rigged so that no matter kind of wine you like, everyone gets Morton Gould’s Latin-American Symphonette. (Which I used to enjoy.)
UPDATE: Actually, I’ve always thought the relatively unknown Bristow was the best of the 19th-century American symphonists (admittedly, not saying a lot), and the reason he was on my radar screen at all is because I heard his music in a course on American music at the University of Texas, from Delmar Rogers. I got to looking around, and found that Prof. Rogers’s doctoral dissertation was on Bristow, which I hadn’t known. Couldn’t find anything else about him, I suppose he’s no longer around. But he left me with a strong impression of Bristow and I appreciate it. That class also occasioned my first attempt at an analysis of Emerson from the Concord Sonata, and I still have it.