{"id":610,"date":"2015-11-03T22:52:40","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T03:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=610"},"modified":"2015-11-03T22:52:40","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T03:52:40","slug":"american-music-an-alternative-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2015\/11\/american-music-an-alternative-narrative.html","title":{"rendered":"American Music — An Alternative Narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"psycho-1960-wallpapers-poster-6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bernard Herrmann, whose film credits include Psycho, Citizen Kane, Vertigo<\/em>, and (his most Romantically charged score) The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,<\/em> is one of eight featured composers on PostClassical Ensemble<\/a>\u2019s all-American 2015-16 season. The others are Harry Burleigh, Charles Ives, George Gershwin, Kurt Weill, Lou Harrison, and Daniel Schnyder.<\/p>\n

The season begins this Saturday night in DC with \u201cDeep River \u2013 The Art of the Spiritual\u201d \u2013 a multi-media exploration of how Harry Burleigh transferred spirituals into the concert hall. (To see the entire schedule, click here.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Binding these eight composers is an \u201cAlternative Narrative\u201d based on my Classical Music: A History<\/em><\/a> (2005).<\/p>\n

The Standard Narrative for American concert music starts with Aaron Copland after World War I. It presumes that Copland and others of his generation were the first to create an \u201cAmerican style\u201d based on American songs, American rhythms, American energies. Such populist Copland scores as Billy the Kid<\/em> (1938) and Appalachian Spring<\/em> (1944) are seen as seminal. At the same time, these composers are observed engaged in the project of creating an American symphonic canon, hot in pursuit of the Great American Symphony.<\/p>\n

Part two of the same narrative, post-World War II, observes a mass migration to non-tonal styles, Copland included. This music (a product of Cold War times) was not remotely \u201cpopulist.\u201d In fact, it drove a schism between composer and audience.<\/p>\n

In Classical Music in America<\/em>, I propose that in fact there are multiple American musical narratives, none of which takes precedence over the others. I call these \u201cmusical streams, all of which achieved substantial results and none of which reached fruition.\u201d In particular, I dispute the assumption that there was no American, American-sounding concert music of great merit before Copland.<\/p>\n

The biggest flaw in the Standard Narrative is that, having been constructed beginning in the thirties, it fails to account for the genius of Charles Ives<\/strong> \u2013 whose music was not yet generally known. It is now evident that Ives composed Great American Symphonies some time before the interwar composers took up that cause: both his Symphony No. 2 (1907-1909) and Symphony No. 4 (1912-1925) are supreme achievements, mating American vernacular sounds and images with a hallowed European template.<\/p>\n

And there are others. Louis Moreau Gottschalk, back in the 1850s, used black Creole tunes from his native New Orleans to fashion a captivating American idiom \u2013 music that didn\u2019t re-enter the repertoire until the 1950s. In Boston, George Chadwick (dismissed by Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Leonard Bernstein in their influential versions of the Standard Narrative) created Jubilee<\/em> (1895) and other salty American cameos that our orchestras have yet to discover. In New York, Antonin Dvorak turned himself into an American, creating an 1890s New World style inspired by \u201cNegro melodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there is a \u201cmaverick\u201d American tradition defined by such idiosyncratic, self-made Americans as Henry Cowell, John Cage, and Lou Harrison<\/strong>. Beginning with stray car parts, they collaboratively created the percussion ensemble as a musical genre. They also prophetically merged Western and Eastern musical styles. Harrison (1917-2003), in particular, was an American master who had no use for the Standard Narrative. He heralded today\u2019s pervasive \u201cpostclassical\u201d music, a post-modern phenomenon that chucks every assumption that \u201cclassical music\u201d on the European model retains priority as the highest possible realm of musical experience.<\/p>\n

Finally, there is a tradition of \u201cinterlopers\u201d who have blended American popular and classical styles. Here the seminal figure is George Gershwin<\/strong> \u2013 once widely dismissed (as was Ives) as a dilettante. If we can admit film music to this \u201cmusical stream,\u201d the towering figure is Bernard<\/strong> Herrmann<\/strong> (1911-1975), best-remembered for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock on such films as Psycho, Vertigo, <\/em>and North by Northwest<\/em>. Herrmann was ignored by the established non-tonal composers of his day. Now is the time to discover his concert works \u2013 of which the Clarinet Quintet (1967) is an American masterpiece somewhat in the style of Vertigo<\/em>. As a leading radio conductor, Herrmann was an early champion of Charles Ives (as was Lou Harrison).<\/p>\n

PostClassical Ensemble\u2019s season explores alternatives to the Standard Narrative. From the fecund pre-World War I period, we celebrate Dvorak\u2019s assistant Harry<\/strong> Burleigh<\/strong> (1866-1949), who was instrumental in transplanting spirituals into the concert hall. In fact, such pivotal Burleigh arrangements as \u201cDeep River\u201d are as much compositions as transcriptions \u2013 an observation we\u2019ll explore in \u201cDeep River\u201d \u2013 The Art of the Spiritual<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Coming next, chronologically, is Charles Ives<\/strong>, whose Second Symphony (belatedly premiered by Leonard Bernstein in 1951) has yet to attain the canonic status it obviously deserves. PCE\u2019s Angel Gil-Ordonez conducts the Georgetown University in this American masterpiece \u2013 part of a PCE-produced Ives weekend also including two peerless Ives advocates: baritone William Sharp and pianist Steven Mayer.<\/p>\n

Bernard Herrmann \u2013 Screen, Stage, and Radio<\/strong> is a multi-week immersion experience advocating the versatility and ingenuity of a leading American musician still incompletely known. Our series of screenings and concerts includes world-premiere restorations of two classic Norman Corwin radio dramas (music by Herrmann) in live performance, as well as a one-hour exploration of The Music of Psycho<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Lou Harrison \u2013 The Indonesian Connection<\/strong> illuminates Harrison\u2019s groundbreaking percussion compositions, alongside Cowell<\/strong> and Cage<\/strong>, as well as his mature gamelan-inspired idiom. (PCE will also record a Harrison CD for Naxos.)<\/p>\n

Finally, our \u201cSchnyderfest<\/strong>\u201d explores the musical world of the Swiss-American composer Daniel Schnyder (b. 1961) \u2013 an emblematic postclassical musician who delves deeply into jazz (he is a gifted saxophonist), and also mines the musics of Africa and Asia. With California\u2019s Pacific Symphony, PCE has commissioned a Schnyder Pipa Concerto<\/strong> for the pipa genius Min Xiao-fen \u2013 to be premiered at the National Gallery of Art May 1. Our Schnyder weekend also includes Schnyder\u2019s takes on George<\/strong> Gershwin<\/strong> and on Kurt<\/strong> Weill<\/strong> (a key post-Gershwin \u201cinterloper\u201d), as well as F.W.<\/strong> Murnau\u2019s silent cinema classic Faust<\/em><\/strong> (1926) with Schnyder\u2019s film-score performed live.<\/p>\n

I write in Classical Music in America<\/em>: \u201cIn 1965 Elliott Carter lamented \u2018the tendency for each generation in America to wipe away the memory of the previous one, and the general neglect of our own recent past, which we treat as a curiosity useful for young scholars in exercising their research techniques \u2013 so characteristic of American treatment of the work of its important artists.\u2019 Carter\u2019s plaint applies to . . . the streams of American classical music, each of which so little interacted with any other. It points to a pervasive fragmentation, to an absence of lineage and continuity complicated by a late start and a heterogeneous population, by two world wars and the confusing influx of powerful refugees. But this same fragmentation may be read as a protean variety: of composers who imitated Europe or rejected it; who preferred German music or French; who viewed the popular arts as a threat or as a point of departure. To a surprising degree \u2013 surprising because American institutions of performance have understood so little \u2013 American composers have partaken in the diversity of American music as a whole. It is, in the aggregate, a defining attribute.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bernard Herrmann, whose film credits include Psycho, Citizen Kane, Vertigo, and (his most Romantically charged score) The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, is one of eight featured composers on PostClassical Ensemble\u2019s all-American 2015-16 season. The others are Harry Burleigh, Charles Ives, George Gershwin, Kurt Weill, Lou Harrison, and Daniel Schnyder. The season begins this Saturday night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"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-610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-9Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","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=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":612,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}