A Question About The Impressionists and America

[eighthobstruction]

Most of what I have heard of early American Composers (most are late 19th/early 20 th Century, rather late in the Countries development) comes from the works contained in the big Mercury reissue boxes, and the occasional radio broadcast. One of our local presenters here likes to program Beach, Griffey’s, Gottschalk, Billings, etc), I stand by my initial comment that until Copland and Gershwin emerged there was no American Concert Music Of lasting value. Ives may have predated the latter two but was unappreciated until a later time.
To amplify my comments about Class, it must be remembered that America is a society Founded on immigration (something that our current idiot in chief isn’t aware of, don’t get me started...). Concert music just isn’t a priority if one is struggling with a farm on the Praire or surviving 80 Hour work weeks in New York sweatshops. It was up to the Protestant New York and Boston Brahmins that were descendants of earlier settlers to promote Concert Music and a local Cultural scene, and until recently they looked to Europe for models. They were not interested in promoting music from Blacks (ragtime, Jazz) Appalachia, klezmer, Irish Folk, etc.
The Concert Music thus created was separated from the folk music of the time, and the effect was like transporting a shrub from one location to another while clipping off the roots. It may look pretty at first in the new location but eventually whithers and dies. The Concert Music here from Composers that were trained in German Academies May make a good initial impression but ultimately lacks substance and for lack of a better word, authenticity. When Composers began to embrace their ‘American-ness’ then worthwhile Music was produced

....yes interesting....add modern dance/ musicals (Bernstein)....<obviously later>

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The Concert Music here from Composers that were trained in German Academies May make a good initial impression but ultimately lacks substance and for lack of a better word, authenticity. When Composers began to embrace their ‘American-ness’ then worthwhile Music was produced

Yes - but isn't it interesting that so many had to go to Paris in order to be able to do so; as if they needed the distance in order to put into perspective which of the abundance of multi-cultural influences they needed in order to express this "authenticity"?

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes - but isn't it interesting that so many had to go to Paris in order to be able to do so; as if they needed the distance in order to put into perspective which of the abundance of multi-cultural influences they needed in order to express this "authenticity"?

I'm risking a lot of flak for what I am about to say, but, listening to a lot of that "authenticity" in the shape of "Billy the Kid", "Rodeo", Hanson's American-restyled Rachmaninov and even the symphonies of Harris, does tend to bring Soviet Socialist Realist music contemporary with it to mind: I guess by virtue of that particular form of populism being the accepted model at the time of the New Deal. Carter later acknowledged his involvement in that aesthetic in explaining the reasons why he felt he had to find a new direction for himself in the late '40s; and of course Copland did extend his interest into more advanced compositional methods including serialism in later years, though I often feel a certain strain to be detected in those later works, as though the composer was not really "at home" writing them. Outside the academic white adaptation of the European, we haven't really touched here on the American "Experimentalists", Ives apart, who perhaps expressed the "spirit of America" the most authentically? And the whole thing about jazz, Third Stream etc, adds a further dimension to this subject... of, er... impressionism in American music. Sorry, Lats...

[Serial_Apologist]

Did Berlioz pre-empt impressionist music with the 'scenes aux champs' in SF?

There is a good claim for that - and very start of that work's finale anticipates that of the third movement of Debussy's La mer.

...and surely there is an impressionist feel to Copland's music from his French training!

I think I would disagree - Copland's studies with Nadia Boulanger would have introduced her to the French classical ethos and Stravinskyian neoclassicism, but from what little I've read I understand she was very antipathetic to Debussyianism.

[eighthobstruction]

Yes - but isn't it interesting that so many had to go to Paris in order to be able to do so; as if they needed the distance in order to put into perspective which of the abundance of multi-cultural influences they needed in order to express this "authenticity"?

....they said the very same thing about Joyce going to Trieste to write about Dublin (then he got the knack and went to Zurich WW1, then Paris)....BBC4tv doc

[Joseph K]

Did Berlioz pre-empt impressionist music with the 'scenes aux champs' in SF?..

As did Liszt with Bénédiction de Dieu dans la Solitude and Les jeux d'eaux...

[Joseph K]

....they said the very same thing about Joyce going to Trieste to write about Dublin (then he got the knack and went to Zurich WW1, then Paris)....BBC4tv doc

Is this the topic of a BBC4 programme? When is it broadcast?

[eighthobstruction]

it was on last Monday 15th https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...-in-the-street

[Joseph K]

Thanks.

[Serial_Apologist]

it was on last Monday 15th https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...-in-the-street

Thanks from me too, 8th - I missed that!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

....they said the very same thing about Joyce going to Trieste to write about Dublin (then he got the knack and went to Zurich WW1, then Paris)....BBC4tv doc

Blimey! I only watched that last night an'all! A sponge - that's all I am; a sponge!

[richardfinegold]

Yes - but isn't it interesting that so many had to go to Paris in order to be able to do so; as if they needed the distance in order to put into perspective which of the abundance of multi-cultural influences they needed in order to express this "authenticity"?

And there lies the genius of Nadia Boulanger. She had the insight that all these Composers coming to Europe—let’s not forget that Piazzolla and other Latin Americans studied with her as well—would find their voices by looking back from where they came

[Lat-Literal]

I'm risking a lot of flak for what I am about to say, but, listening to a lot of that "authenticity" in the shape of "Billy the Kid", "Rodeo", Hanson's American-restyled Rachmaninov and even the symphonies of Harris, does tend to bring Soviet Socialist Realist music contemporary with it to mind: I guess by virtue of that particular form of populism being the accepted model at the time of the New Deal. Carter later acknowledged his involvement in that aesthetic in explaining the reasons why he felt he had to find a new direction for himself in the late '40s; and of course Copland did extend his interest into more advanced compositional methods including serialism in later years, though I often feel a certain strain to be detected in those later works, as though the composer was not really "at home" writing them. Outside the academic white adaptation of the European, we haven't really touched here on the American "Experimentalists", Ives apart, who perhaps expressed the "spirit of America" the most authentically? And the whole thing about jazz, Third Stream etc, adds a further dimension to this subject... of, er... impressionism in American music. Sorry, Lats...

No need to apologise......I just wonder, though, how far forward in time one needs to go before it isn't impressionism but, the word you use, work of experimentalists. On the points about Boulanger, yes, but when it comes to the South Americans I think there might be an argument for the principal influence being Copland, ie some cut the "middle woman" out.

[Serial_Apologist]

No need to apologise......I just wonder, though, how far forward in time one needs to go before it isn't impressionism but, the word you use, work of experimentalists. On the points about Boulanger, yes, but when it comes to the South Americans I think there might be an argument for the principal influence being Copland, ie some cut the "middle woman" out.

Not on Villa-Lobos though - who was earlier, and, yes, indebted to Debussy and Ravel, and a little bit to Milhaud and Honegger, (Pacific 231 on the Little Train of the Kai-Piri or however it's spelt, among much else) on top of those Brazilian forest rhythms! Ginastera comprises a separate line, as does Piazzolla; and I'm not saying much about them as I know less about either even than I do about any modern Latin American music! In the cases of Mexicans Chavez and Revueltas (maybe Roldan) I have a feeling that the influence with Copland went both ways: Copland was always generous in helping others not in his zone aesthetically, but in the case of Mexican ethnic rhythms (well, part Spanish-descended!) would have found sympathy with his longterm Stravinskyan orientation.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Perhaps of interest will be this Sunday's Listening Service, in which Mr Ibragimova discusses the impact of Dvorak on the Symphonies written by Americans at the end of the Nineteenth Century.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09p5g07