Abstract
After gaining freedom from Great Britain as the result of the Revolutionary War in 1783, the newly labeled Americans had to forge an identity for themselves in all areas including music. Music Teacher’s National Association was created in 1870 and has encouraged immigrant and native-born American composers since. However, it wasn’t until 1893 and at the urging of the visiting Czechoslovakian composer, Antonín Dvořák, did Americans start to take seriously the task of creating music that could be identified as uniquely American. This poster will show the evolution of piano music in the quest to find the American sound as well as identify specific composers who aided in the evolution.
American piano works can be separated into distinct categories each with its unique style that coincided with other countries’ development of classical music. One of the earliest American composers of piano works was Louis Moreau Gottschalk. His works were composed using the sounds of the cultural melting pot of 19th century New Orleans. They were immensely popular and played throughout Europe and the Americas. The next group of composers, John Knowles Paine, George Whitefield Chadwick and Horatio Parker, were considered the Germanics. These early to mid-19th century composers studied in Europe then returned to the United States but continued to write in the style of their teachers.
In 1893, Antonín Dvořák wrote that the future of American classical music must be based upon the folk melodies and rhythms of the Native Americans or African Americans. A group of composers, including Arthur Farwell, Amy Beach, Harvey Worthington Loomis, Edward MacDowell, and Henry F. Gilbert started the Indianist Movement. This movement used the melodies of the Omaha Indians as recorded by ethnologists Alice Fletcher and Francis LaFlesche on wax cylinders as source material for their compositions. Other composers, Scott Joplin and Robert Nathaniel Dett, turned to the melodies and rhythms of African Americans as sources for their compositions. Ragtime, built on these idioms, grew to be immensely popular in the late 19th century. Jazz appeared on the American music scene shortly after ragtime aided by George Gershwin. The two styles, ragtime and jazz, were popular not only in America, but were also being recognized as the American sound in Europe. In Paris, composition teacher Nadia Boulanger encouraged her American students, Aaron Copland, Louise Talma, Virgil Thomson, and Roy Harris, to find their unique sound and experiment with jazz.
In the 1920s and 30s after the public’s appetite for jazz waned, composers began to write in the modernist style. Techniques in this genre included impressionism, neoclassicism, atonality, and twelve tone serialism. In this time period, composers had to balance appealing to the paying public and their own stylistic evolution. Established composers such as Copland and Thompson experimented with these new sounds. After WWII, with the dramatic increase in higher education, composers found themselves being hired by universities to teach. The university setting gave the composers more freedom to experiment with new techniques. In turn, students were exposed to new styles of composition in addition to the ways of the old masters. Many of the university teachers were immigrants escaping political persecution. As such, they did not put emphasis on composing using uniquely American idioms although a few composers still incorporated jazz and other idioms into their works. These composers include Paul Creston, Samuel Barber, Norman Dello Joio, Vincent Persichetti and Frederick Rzewski.
American post-modernist composers had several different goals. William Bolcom looked to the past and led revivals in old forms such as ragtime. Others, such as John Cage experimented with all sorts of sounds, not just the ones created when a hammer struck a string. Around the same time as the post modernists, a group of composers began to rebel against the complexity that music had become. The minimalists, including Philip Glass and John Adams, strove for simplicity in their music. Instead of writing goal oriented music, they composed music that would require the listener to focus on the work’s internal processes.
As a young country, Americans had to decide how to represent themselves musically. In their quest for an American sound, composers in the United States created sounds that would go on to influence the rest of the world. With the advent of the internet, exposure to new sounds and sources for compositions is on demand for any composer. It is with excitement that the world and the creator of this poster await the next phase in American piano music.
Benjamin Carr The Siege of Tripoli, An Historical Naval Sonata for the Piano Forte, Op. 4 (1804)
Louis Moreau Gottschalk “Louisiana Trilogy”, Le Bananier, La Savane: Ballade creole, and Bamboula: Danse des negres.(1844-1846)
Thomas Green Bethune Battle of Manassas (1866)
John Knowles Paine Fuga Giocose Op. 41, No. 3 (C. 1883)
George Whitefield Chadwick Ten Little Tunes for Ten Little Friends (1903) Horatio Parker 3 Character Pieces Op. 49 (1889)
Daniel G. Mason Variations of ‘Yankee Doodle’ Op. 6 (1912)
Arthur Farwell American Indian Melodies, Op. 11 (1901)
Amy Beach From Blackbird Hills (An Omaha Tribal Dance) Op. 83 (1922)
Harvey Worthington Loomis Lyrics of the Red Man, Books 1 and 2, Op. 76 (1903-04)
Edward MacDowell From an Indian Lodge Op. 51 (1896)
Henry F. Gilbert Indian Scenes (1912)
Scott Joplin Maple Leaf Rag (1899)
Robert Nathaniel Dett In the Bottoms (1913)
George Gershwin Rialto Ripples (1916)
Florence B. Price Sonata in e minor (1932)
William Grant Still Quit dat fool’nish (1938)
Virgil Thomson Portraits (1928-1984)
Roy Harris Toccata (1949)
Aaron Copland Three Moods (1920-21)
Louise Talma Soundshots (1944)
Charles Edward Ives Second Pianoforte Sonata, Concord, Mass., 1840-1860(1909-15)
Paul Creston Five 2-Part Inventions Op. 14 (1946)
Samuel Barber Excursions Op. 20 (1944)
Norman Dello Joio Lyric Pieces for the Young (1971)
Vincent Persichetti Little Piano Book Op. 50 (1953)
Frederick Rzewski North American Ballads (1978)
John Cage Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48)
William Bolcom Garden of Eden (1968)
Lowell Liebermann Piano Sonata No. 1 (1977)
Philip Glass Openings (1982)
John Adams Phrygian Gates (1977-78)
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