Classical music of the United States
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American
Beginnings
The earliest American classical music consists of part-songs used in
Many American
Because the United States is made up of many states, some of which were parts of other empires, the classical music of the nation has derived from those empires respectively. The earliest classical music in what is now California, and other former Spanish colonies, was the renaissance polyphony of Spain. This sacred classical music was provided to support the liturgy of the Catholic Church.
Other early American composers:[3] William Selby, Victor Pelissier, John Christopher Moller, Alexander Reinagle, Benjamin Carr, William Brown, James Hewitt, Mr. Newman (Three Sonatas, for the piano forte or harpsichord, New York 1807).
Second New England School
During the mid to late 19th century, a vigorous tradition of home-grown classical music developed, especially in New England. Academics view this development as pivotal in the history of American classical music because it established the characteristics that set it apart from its European ancestors. This initiative was driven by musicians who wanted to produce American indigenous music.[4] John Knowles Paine is recognized as the leader of this group.
The composers of the Second New England School included Paine's colleagues and students such as George Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach, Edward MacDowell, Arthur Foote, and Horatio Parker, who was the teacher of Charles Ives. Together with Paine, the group was also known as the Boston Six. Many of these composers went to Europe — especially Germany — to study, but returned to the United States to compose, perform, and acquire students. Some of their stylistic descendants include 20th-century composers such as Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, and Roger Sessions. Ives was considered the last of the Second New England School composers although his music is viewed by some as one that still drew influence from European tradition mixed with modernism.[5]
20th century
In the early 20th century,
Many of the major classical composers of the 20th century were influenced by folk traditions, none more quintessentially, perhaps, than Charles Ives or Aaron Copland. Other composers adopted features of folk music, from the Appalachians, the plains and elsewhere, including Roy Harris, Elmer Bernstein, David Diamond, Elie Siegmeister, and others. Yet other early to mid-20th-century composers continued in the more experimental traditions, including such figures as Charles Ives, George Antheil, and Henry Cowell. Others, such as Samuel Barber, captured a period of Americana in such pieces as Knoxville: Summer of 1915.
The 20th century also saw important works published by such significant immigrant composers as Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, who came to America for a variety of reasons, including political persecution, aesthetic freedom and economic opportunity. See Modernism (music) for more information on the rise of Modernism in America and throughout the world.
Minimalism is a musical movement that started in the early 1960s in New York City. Composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams (composer) used experimental composition techniques such as drones, phasing, repeated motifs, sharp contrasts between mixed meters, simple but often abrupt movements between minor and major chords with the same root, contrasts between tonality and atonality, and a large amount of use of synthesizers to display the interplay of the fundamental building blocks of music: the cancellation and amplification of wavelengths that make up all acoustic and synthesized sound. As is often the case in art, the rise of American minimalism in music paralleled the rise of minimalism as an artistic style, which used the contrast of black and white, the gradual movement of shading with gradients, and also often repeated concepts and themes.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the
In the 20th century,
Classical and popular (non-classical) genre fusion compositions also developed in the United States, starting circa 1950s, with entertainers such as Liberace and composers such as Walter Murphy bringing classical music to different genre with their arrangements, such as in Walter Murphy's disco-classical fusion piece "A Fifth of Beethoven". Many disco versions of famous classical works were arranged in the 1970s, such as works by Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Wagner, Mussorgsky, J.S. Bach, and George Gershwin.
Popular classical works are also referenced and covered frequently in the United States, also starting circa 1940s-50s, in cartoons, famously in Rhapsody Rabbit and The Cat Concerto, both using Franz Liszt's famous solo piano concert piece: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.
21st century
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See also
References
- ^ J. H. Dorenkamp. "The "Bay Psalm" Book and the Ainsworth Psalter". Early American Literature. Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring, 1972), pp. 3-16. Published by: University of North Carolina Press
- ^ "America's First Book". Library of Congress. Retrieved July 14, 2013.
- ^ Olivier Beaumont, CD The Enlightenment in the New World, Erato Records 2001
- )
- ISBN 9780313393471.