Music

America is too new for most of the common-practice music I listen to. Only a few composers who reached adulthood before 1900 amount to more than footnotes*, were we to keep textbooks at lighter-than-backbreaking size, and of these, the handful people are likely to have heard (Sousa, Joplin) were a little bit removed from classical/romantic stuff. The musical center of the times was always somewhere in Europe; America was, musically, hardly a blip on the radar (... had radar been invented).

And in 1892 Dvořák the Bohemian arrived unto the New World. Prophesied he: In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music. (His stay was only until 1895, but left a lasting impression. His final symphony, “From the New World” was composed during this period. The great and noble school of music? Perhaps not what he envisioned, but definitely turned out to be jazz.)

By the time there was something distinctly an American style, there was already a recording industry, and I think by that time it was pretty clear the popular music tradition would eventually win most of the money. What is now left tends to be somewhere on a spectrum from academic (weirdness) to commercial (films), and as a matter of fashion, the grand scoring styles of classic Hollywood or opera are not finding much traction of late compared to minimalist** or twelve-toney stuff. Well, the state of common-practice music has been pretty grim like that for a while anyway.

I’d say Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein are definitely indispensable when one considers common-practice music written by Americans; it’s common practice with clear popular influences. Outside an American style, there were notable immigrants: Rachmaninoff (escaped the Bolsheviks), Schoenberg (escaped the Nazis), Stravinsky (escaped the Bolsheviks, then the Nazis). But in general, today’s “classical” in that bent is largely the game and film composers you already hear.

As for Barber, his most famous work is “Adagio for Strings”, often employed in the movies for tear-jerking. I don’t know much more than that, as he does not get very much airtime on any station I listen to. Jeremy Soule posted it, saying “Always an influence”. I thought it was pretty nice, compared to how a lot of Modern stuff is downright inaccessible.

* Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869) was a piano prodigy who traveled to Europe at age 13 to get a decent musical education. His application was rejected by the Paris Conservatoire because obviously the U.S. had never produced a good musician and wasn’t about to start. He gave lots of concerts throughout the Americas, eventually catching malaria and dying from what was probably a quinine overdose.

** Minimalism is a horrible name for that particular school; it’s just the one that’s stuck. In many cases, its calling card is lots of carefully varied repetition, which may build up slowly or not at all. But it is also incredibly intricate at times, which is not “minimal”, yes? So, a bit more like EDM, but less electronic, less dance, and lessG’NIIIIGHT