{"id":1393,"date":"2019-07-05T12:21:39","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T16:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=1393"},"modified":"2019-07-05T16:15:25","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T20:15:25","slug":"who-was-the-american-bartok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2019\/07\/who-was-the-american-bartok.html","title":{"rendered":"Who Was the American Bartok?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Who was the American Bartok?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"286\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Arthur_Farwell_portrait_LOC.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1398\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The most plausible candidate,\nI would say, is Arthur Farwell (1872-1952), who led the \u201cIndianists\u201d movement\nin American music beginning around 1900.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is a sampling \u2013 his \u201cPawnee Horses\u201d for 16-part a cappella chorus, sung in Navajo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/postclassical.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Farwell-Pawnee-Horses-for-Chorus.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption>Farwell&#8217;s <em>Pawnee Horses<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Farwell is one of the most\nfascinating figures in the history of American classical music. His life-long\nquest was for the \u201cunGerman\u201d \u2013 a musical idiom as capacious and indigenous as\nWalt Whitman\u2019s free verse was to American literature. He lived with Native\nAmericans and studied their music and rituals. He reported out-of-body-experiences.\nHe was inspired by Dvorak\u2019s notion that the American Indian could supply rooted\ningredients for a distinctive New World concert trope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We don\u2019t know Farwell, I would\nsay, mainly because American music predating World War I remains largely unexplored.\nAnd of course Farwell bears a stigma: cultural appropriation. Yet he cannot be\nwritten off as a <em>naif<\/em>. The late David\nMcAllester, an <em>eminence gris<\/em> of\nAmerican ethnomusicology, held Farwell in high esteem. McAllester distinguished\nbetween \u201cimitating\u201d Native American music, and discovering \u201cinspiration\u201d in\nNative American music. The inspiration forging Farwell\u2019s \u201cThe Hako\u201d string\nquartet, in McAllester\u2019s opinion, was formidably authentic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>PostClassical Ensemble will be celebrating Arthur Farwell at the Washington National Cathedral next October as part of festival we\u2019re calling <a href=\"https:\/\/postclassical.com\/performances\/native\/\">\u201c<\/a><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/postclassical.com\/performances\/native\/\">Native American Inspirations<\/a><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/postclassical.com\/performances\/native\/\">.\u201d<\/a> The same series of concerts will sample the work of the eminent contemporary Native American concert composer Jerod Tate. And we\u2019ll host the South Dakota Symphony\u2019s visionary <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2016\/03\/dvorak-on-the-reservation.html\">Lakota <\/a>Music Project. <\/strong>That means we\u2019ll bring to DC distinguished musicians from the Pine Ridge Reservation, as well as members of the South Dakota Symphony who have long been interacting with Lakota drummers and singers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The festival pursues our mandate as Ensemble-in-Residence at the National Cathedral \u2013 to explore music as an instrument for mutual understanding. In seasons past, that\u2019s fostered programs celebrating <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2019\/06\/whitman-and-music-a-fresh-discovery.html\">Whitman<\/a><\/strong>,  <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2019\/04\/music-from-paradise.html\">Indonesian<\/a><\/strong> gamelan, and Harry Burleigh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This coming season, PCE will also produce <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/postclassical.com\/performances\/pomegranates\/\">\u201cAn Arm<\/a>enian Odyssey,\u201d<\/strong> for which the Cathedral\u2019s Great Nave will dramatically frame the singular live animations of Kevork Mourad. And we close with a <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/postclassical.com\/performances\/haydnfest\/\">Haydn Festival<\/a><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/postclassical.com\/performances\/haydnfest\/\"> <\/a>featuring Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, whose Haydn CDs for Chandos argue for fresh understanding of a composer\/inventor harder to place than Mozart or Beethoven. &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who was the American Bartok? The most plausible candidate, I would say, is Arthur Farwell (1872-1952), who led the \u201cIndianists\u201d movement in American music beginning around 1900. Here is a sampling \u2013 his \u201cPawnee Horses\u201d for 16-part a cappella chorus, sung in Navajo. Farwell is one of the most fascinating figures in the history of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Arthur_Farwell_portrait_LOC.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-mt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1393"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1405,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393\/revisions\/1405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}