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The United States Inthe United States, national identity was both complicated and enriched by the country's ethnic diversity. Immigrants from many different regions in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, as well as former African American slaves . and their descendants, brought their own musical traditions, from folk to classical.American musicaIrlife became not exactlyamelting pot but perhaps astewpot, where each group maintained its own music while lending a flavor tothe whole. Superimposed on these ethnic divisions were the rapidly emerging distinc-

lions between classical, popular, and folk music. In theory, these three cat- egories represented different attitudes toward notation, composition, and performance. The classical tradition centered on the composer and the work and required scrupulous adherence to the notated score. Popular music was written down and sold as acommodity but centered on the performer and the performance, allowingconsiderable leewayin rearranging the notated music. Folkmusic was independent of notation, passed on through oral tradition. Butin practice, the categories overlapped. Folk tunes were written down and sold as popular music, arranged for concert performance, or incorporated into classical pieces; classical works were transcribed and altered for per- formance in popular venues; and some popular songs (such as Turkeyin the Straw) became sowell known they were passed down orally, like folk songs. Of all these trends, we will look at four: music in the classical tradition;

band music, affected strongly bythe growing split between classical and pop- ular music; popular songs; and music ofAfrican Americans, drawing on oral traditions but becoming a strand ofboth popular and classical music.

THE CLASSICAL TRADITION

Beginning in the 1840s, crop failures and the 1848 Revolution spurred many Germans to emigrate to the United States, following others who had done so overthe previous century. Manyofthe immigrants were musicians and music teachers with a strong commitment to classical music, and they contributed to an extraordinary growth in performing institutions, music schools, and university departments ofmusic in the second half ofthe nineteenth century. German musicians performed widely, filled positions in orchestras, taught music at all levels, and-along with Americans who had studied in Germany- dominated the teaching of composition and music theory in conservatories, colleges, and universities. The new immigrants and the institutions they helped to found fostered an increasingly sharp divide between classical music and popular music. Not surprisingly, German tastes and styles dominated American music in the classical tradition until WorldWar 1. One of the most famous immigrant musicians was Theodore Thomas

0835-1905), who came over with his family in 1845, played violin with the NewYorkPhilharmonic and the Academy of Music, conducted the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and in 1865founded his ownprofessional orchestra. Through constant performing and touring, the Theodore Thomas Orchestra became the best and the most fInancially successful in the United States. Thomas

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Immigrationand institutions

TheodoreThomas

754 CHAP T E R 30 • Diverging Traditions in the Later Nineteenth Century

TIMELINE Diverging Traditions in the Later Nineteenth Century

MUSICAL HISTORICAL

• 1848-49 California Gold Rush

.1852-70 Second French Empire under Napoleon III

.1855-81 Reign of Czar Alexander IIof Russia

.18605 First African American spirituals published

.1861-65 Civil War in United States

.1862 Victor Hugo, Les miserables

.1865 Theodore Thomas Orchestra founded

.1866 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

• 1870 Third French Republic proclaimed

.1870-71 Franco-Prussian War

FIGURE 30.6, Amy Beachin about 1903. (COBBIS)

was devoted to the classical masterworks but recognized that there was not a large enough demand for them to pay his musicians' salaries. So his orchestra gave both concert hall programs centered on works in the classical tradition and outdoor concerts that interspersed dances and lighter music between overtures and symphonic movements, pleas- ing the public while introducing them to the classics in small doses. In 1890,he became the frrst conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of a new breed of full-time pro- fessional orchestras backed by wealthy donors and focused almost entirely on classical music. As classical music became well established, native-bom

composers were able to pursue careers that combined compo- sition with performing and teaching, especially in the region from Boston to NewYork.Among them were John Knowles Paine 0839-1906), trained by a German immigrant, who became Harvard's (and North America's) first professor of music; GeorgeWhitefield Chadwick 0854-1931), who stud- ied at the New England Conservatory in Boston and became its director; Chadwick's student Horatio Parker 0863-1919), whotaught atYaleand was the first dean ofits School ofMusic; and Edward MacDowell 0860-1908), a NewYorker who was the first professor of music at Columbia University in New York.All studied in Germany aswell as the United States, and allpursued styles deeply rooted in the German tradition (pri- marily the Brahms wing for the Boston composers, Wagner and Lisztfor Macfrowell). However, these composers had varying attitudes about

nationalism. Paine argued that the best composers of the day used a universal language that transcended nationality, and as amelting-pot ofdifferent nations the United States should embrace that transnational approach (see Source Readings, pp. 750-51), Parker believed American composers should simplywrite the best music they could; his Latin oratorio Hom novissima (893), thd piece that made his reputation, is in a universal style modeled on German and English oratorios. Chadwick, on the other hand, developed an idiom laced with American traits such as pentatonic melodies and characteris- tic rhythms from Protestant psalmody and African -Caribbean dances, used in his Symphony No.2 in B~Major 0883-85) and Symphonic Sketches 0895-1904)! MacDowell opposed jingo- istic nationalism, but like most Europeans he saw a national identity as an important aspect of any composer's claim to international attention. Among his overtly nationalist works is his Second (Indian) Suite for orchestra 0891-95), based on NativeAmerican melodies. Another Boston composer, Amy Beach 0867~1944),

shown in Figure 30.6,could not study or teach at the top uni- versities because they excluded women. A child prodigy, she

studied piano, harmony, and counterpoint privately, then taught herself to compose by studying and playing works of composers she admired. In 1885she married awealthy physi- cianwho considered a career as a professional pianist inap- propriate for awoman ofher social standing, so she restricted her public performances to one solo recital each year and occasional orchestral and chamber concerts, with the pro- ceedsdonated to charity. Freed offmancial concerns and ofthe demands ofperformance, and with the strong encouragement ofher husband, she devoted herself to composition, publish- ingher works under her married name, Mrs. H. H.A. Beach. At the time, women were considered incapable of com-

posing in longer forms. As if to prove them wrong, Beach wrote large-scale works such as her Mass in £I, (890), Gaelic Symphony0894-96), and Piano Concerto (899), all ofthem well received. She also wrote about 120 songs and dozens of pianoand choral pieces, many ofthem very popular. After her husband's death in 1910, she resumed her career as a pro- fessional performer, while continuing to compose. During a successful three-year residency in Germany in 1911-14. she used the name Amy Beach. but on her return to the United Statesshe decided to revert toher married name. bywhich she wasalready wellknown. Some ofBeach'smusic had an ethnic flavor. like the Gaelic

Symphony on Irish tunes and the String Quartet (929) on American Indian melodies. Butmost ofher works engaged the traditions ofthe German classics. Shebased the themes ofher Piano Quintet (907) on a theme from Brahms's Piano Quin- tet. Op. 34.which she had performed in 1900.Her individual voice emerges forcefully in the third and last movement t{NAWM162IF"";,I).moving beyond the Brahmsian music of the first movement to embrace late-nineteenth-century chromatic harmony. with unusual inversions. augmented triads. and colorful nonchord tones. Recognized in her own day as one of America's leading composers and its most famous woman composer. Beach inspired many women musicians in later generations.

BAND MUSIC

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• ca. 1872-79 Bedrich Smetana, Ma vlast .1874 Modest Musorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition

.1877 Thomas Edison makes first cylinder recording

• 1878 Antonin Dvorak, Slavonic Dances, Op, 46

• 1880s Tin Pan Alley becomes center for popular song publishers

• 1884 Cesar Franck, Symphony in D Minor

• 1887 Emile Berliner invents disc-playing phonograph

.1889 Eiffel Tower erected

.1893 Antonin Dvorak, New World Symphony

.1893 Piotr ll'yich Tchaikovsky, Sixth Symphony (Pathetique)

.1897 John Philip Sousa, The Stars and Stripes Forever

.1898 Spanish-American War

.1907 Amy Beach, Piano Quintet

While orchestras gradually moved toward greater concentration on the clas- sics. wind and brass bands maintained the mix of serious and popular music that had once been common to all concerts. The earliest American bands were attached to military units, but in the Spread olbands

nineteenth century local bands became common everywhere. One important factor was the invention of brass instruments with valves. pistons. or keys. allowing these instruments to play melodies throughout their range (instead ofjust notes from the harmonic series) and making them easier for amateurs toplay (see chapter 25). Soon the brass were the backbone ofthe band, either joining or replacing the winds. Amateur bands were formed in communities