Welcome to the Ultimate Music Page.........

2005-10-12T03:08:00.000-07:00

-:*:-MUSIC-:*:-
-An artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in a structured and continuous manner.
- 1. The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.
2. Vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm.
3. a. A musical composition.
b. The written or printed score for such a composition.
c. Such scores considered as a group: We keep our music in a stack near the piano.
4. A musical accompaniment.
5. A particular category or kind of music.
6. An aesthetically pleasing or harmonious sound or combination of sounds: the music of the wind in the pines.

In traditional North American Indian cultures music is a part of everyday life. Chanting and singing accompany religious rites and festivals, and an oral tradition provides a record of history. The concept of music as a performance art is as unusual among Indians as it was among the seventeenth-century New England settlers who also placed music in the context of their religious observances by chanting psalms in the meetinghouse as an important communal activity.

By the close of the century, however, psalm singing had become cacophonous, for worshipers could no longer read the metrical patterns in such sources as the Bay Psalm Book. Although the "correct" rendering of tunes was less important than religious fervor, many ministers and musical reformers supported the teaching of musical notation to restore order in the meetinghouse. "Regular singing" soon gave rise to the development of singing schools and the creation of music for secular entertainment.

The revolutionary war saw a flowering of musical creativity: supporters of the American cause often changed the words of British songs, such as "Yankee Doodle," to taunt their adversaries. William Billings, a Boston tanner, composed an anthem called "Chester" that expressed his confidence in the ability of the new nation to shake off the "iron rods" and "galling chains" of tyranny. The immediate postrevolutionary cultural climate was one of optimism that Americans could create their own culture free of English influence. Just as Noah Webster called for an American language that would serve the needs of an American people, Billings called for individual American creative voices.

Nevertheless, European influences dominated concert music after the Revolution. Alexander Reinagle of Philadelphia composed ballad operas on the English model; Benjamin Carr of New York edited a journal and ran a successful music business; and Johann Christian Gottlieb Graupner helped found Boston's Philharmonic Society and the Handel and Haydn Society. James Hewitt of New York composed a patriotic suite, The Battle of Trenton, which quoted "Yankee Doodle."

Religious music, which had occasionally deviated from European models with such American innovations as the fuguing tune, reverted to a more familiar style. Composers Andrew Law, Samuel Holyoke, and Oliver Holden advocated dignity in religious music and used melodies by Handel, Haydn, and Mozart for settings of religious texts. The emphasis on musical propriety continued throughout the nineteenth century. John Sullivan Dwight, a transcendentalist reformer and conservative cultural critic, argued that Associationists and other transcendentalist reformers should learn Handel's Messiah in order to comprehend their mission. Dwight and other arbiters of good musical taste believed that popular music, especially military music, was a bad influence on citizens of the Republic. He felt that the lessons of democracy had to be learned and that the "right" music would have a salutary influence--good Beethoven would create better Americans.

Outside of the formal concert realm, Americans created their own music, sometimes for performance but often as an everyday activity. Stephen Foster's sentimental art songs were popular with audiences, and pianist and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk was idolized prior to the Civil War for his good looks and astonishing technique. He used North and South American popular tunes in such works as "Creole Eyes," "Souvenir de Puerto Rico," "The Union" (which quotes the "Star-Spangled Banner"), "Hail Columbia," and "Yankee Doodle"--all rendered in a pianistic style reminiscent of the music of Franz Liszt; his "Le Banjo" imitates banjo strumming and quotes "Camptown Races."

The antebellum period also saw the continued development of African-American vocal music. Plantation slaves used the call-and-response style to tell stories in work songs, and individuals sang in the pre-blues style of the field holler. Music was an integral part of the religious life of slaves, and spirituals such as "My God Ain't No Lyin' Man" articulated their relationship with their faith.

In the 1850s, the call for an independent American music was heard again, this time from composer William Henry Fry, whose New York lectures in the early fifties inspired an interest in the development of an American musical language. But the drive for cultural independence fell short.

With the coming of the Civil War, marches and sentimental songs that spoke of home, sweethearts, and mothers became popular. Many of these were printed by composer-entrepreneurs such as George F. Root, whose Chicago publishing house was among many that thrived on the middle-class market of households with a piano in the parlor. By the second half of the century, many successful American composers had studied in Europe and saw no reason to abandon the romantic style despite the ongoing arguments for an American music. Three men who earned their livelihoods as professors--John Knowles Paine at Harvard, Horatio Parker at Yale, and Edward MacDowell at Columbia--achieved respectability with works that bore considerable resemblance to similar pieces being composed in Europe at the time.

By the end of the century, there were major orchestras in New York (the Philharmonic-Society was founded in 1842), Boston (1881), and Chicago (1891). In smaller communities, performances by local bands reflected the popular taste for dances, marches, and symphonic excerpts--a repertoire popularized by John Philip Sousa. In troupes throughout the country, vaudeville performers combined comedic episodes, scenes from Shakespeare's plays, dancing, and minstrel songs performed in black face. In a racially divided society, black vaudeville entertainers like Bert Williams could command high fees on the stage but could not enter restaurants near the theaters where they performed.

Concert music and opera were still the province of European, mainly German, conductors, performers, and managers. But a small group of composers--Henry F. Gilbert, Arthur Farwell, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and their colleagues--thought that the tools with which to compose American music lay in African-American culture, backwoods mountain or hill communities, and Indian tribal villages.

As these "Americanists by quotation" looked for materials to develop, new currents were stirring among black musicians. The cakewalk dance and the pianistic style known as ragtime emerged, with highly syncopated rhythms attractive to composers who thought these varieties of black music could be the material for a new American concert music. The stage was set for the emergence of jazz out of the marching-band traditions of New Orleans and its appearance in works for the concert hall. Debate still raged about whether there was an American music and what form it should take. But that debate would soon be subsumed under discussions about the utility of the many varieties of modern music for creating an American musical expression.

Gilbert Chase, America's Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present, 3rd ed. (1987); Charles Hamm, Music in the New World (1983); H. Wiley Hitchcock, Music in the United States: A Historical Introduction (1969).

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