Piano Forum

Recently, I have become very interested in the sort of "folk" American classical music such as Bernstein, Copland, and (especially) George Gershwin.

In my opinion, these are some of the only composers who were able to do what Liszt (ie, Hungarian Rhapsodies), Chopin (ie Mazurkas), Ginastera (ie. Danzas Argentinas), and Dvorak (ie, Ze Šumavy) did for their contries.  To use another comparison, I believe these composers have done for music what F. Scott Fitzgerald has done for literature.

Sadly, the piano output of these composers seems very restrained.  I'd say nearly 100% of Gershwin's work was in this vein (but since he was stretched between Broadway and Art music, and since he died so young, the quantity is limited).  But Copland and Bernstein seem to have done the majority of their work in this style for other mediums, since their piano work seems to be primarily in other styles (excepting Copland's Concerto and Four Piano Blues).

Is there any other composer who has done work like I'm talking about?  most of the American music I've come across seems to be more on the side of Cowell / Ives / Ornstein side of things.  The music I have found in the genre I'm talking about is sort of transparent, or easy, I'm looking for the kind of things that would be acceptable to play on a conservatory level (or at least liberal-arts music department level).

IDK, it just bugs me that so many other countries have been able to voice their country through their music via folk songs, traditional dance styles, rhythmic or tonal preferences etc., why must the majority of America's output be in the abstract?

I think you hit on an interesting topic, though I don't really agree with how you pose the central question.  And there are some certainly good replies.

As ahinton wrote, the only thing that qualifies one for being an American composer is an American passport.  And yet we must not forget, that there was a time when American composers very consciously tried to search for a way to sound distinctly American.  Now we can make easy comments like that, but they actually struggled.  

I think in particular this was a condition of thought in Copland's time, meaning the 40's and 50's and perhaps 60's, but something that seems to have eventually faded with time.  He tried to capture certain American folk elements, and American rituals in his music.  

For me though it is precisely that music that I don't really like.  I find it too self-conscious, too transparent.  And I think it speaks to a problem that others have encountered trying to create or predict "American" music, which is that they try and use original American melodies or music, in a processed, motivically based, central European sort of way.

Think of Dvorak, for instance.  He declared that the Negro spiritual would be the future of American music.  He could say that because he and Brahms, his teacher, were able to assimilate elements of outlying cultures into the German-centric musical traditions to which they subscribed.  Brahms in particular, created a strong flavor of what people thought of as "Eastern," meaning Hungarian, music, while retaining his techniques of motivic transformation, development, and the like.

The problem with Dvorak's approach, and the approach that most people have assumed, is that the material may not be suited to treatment in that manner.  We can certainly say, from his point of view, he was totally wrong about the Negro spiritual as it relates to classical music. What works take famous spiritual tunes, like "Were you there," or "Ride on, King Jesus," or, "Nobody knows," or "Steal away," and treat them successfully as germinal motives for a large structure?

That's what Dvorak was imagining would happen, and of course that is precisely what didn't happen.  He was inadvertantly right, in the sense that the Spiritual had a lot to do with the creation of jazz and blues, which are American inventions.  But he was wrong to think that all folk music could be treated in the same way.

I think the lesson to be drawn is that what makes something distinctly this or that, is not so much source material, but process.  For me, Ives and Cage and Cowell are much more "American" in this regard.  I'm not saying that as a value judgment, but just to point out my view that one doesn't have to use American sources to make music that is distinct (although Ives did use a lot of very traditional American music).  And in this view, it is not an accident that Varese flourished in America.

In short, if you are trying to define the American musical experience as something parallel to the European one, as you seem to be doing by searching for the "American" mazurka, the "American" rhapsody, or whatever, you are really missing the point, and not realizing the true distinct qualities of what has developed here.

Just some ramblings.  Of course there are a lot of generalizations.  But I think we can generalize, based on the fact that many composers have tried hard to consciously write "American music."

Walter Ramsey