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Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise

Online ISBN:
9780199358670
Print ISBN:
9780199358649
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise

Douglas Shadle
Douglas Shadle

Assistant Professor of Musicology

Assistant Professor of Musicology, Vanderbilt University
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Published online:
19 November 2015
Published in print:
1 December 2015
Online ISBN:
9780199358670
Print ISBN:
9780199358649
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book narrates the history of symphonic composition in the United States during the nineteenth century and explains why this substantial repertoire of over one hundred works failed to enter the performance canon of American orchestras. Throughout the century, a widespread desire for musical independence from Europe, however defined, stood in sharp contrast to a similarly widespread reverence for music written by European masters such as Ludwig van Beethoven. Faced with choices about which side to take, aspiring composers stood in the middle. The first generation of American symphonists, which flourished between 1835 and 1870, constructed national musical identities with a wide range of highly expressive, idiosyncratic styles. Local orchestras often refused to perform their music, however, while critics applied a protean set of values when they heard the music at all. Following the Civil War, increasing demand for stylistically innovative music, including the works of Richard Wagner and his allies, proved to be a boon for American composers who used Wagnerian techniques as tools for expressing a distinct national identity. Yet conductors and orchestral musicians, who tended to be German-speaking immigrants, preferred German music so strongly that they occasionally sabotaged the efforts of local composers. By century’s end, critics had begun to consider a folk-derived national style as the only appropriate tool for constructing a national musical identity, thus relegating the music of two generations of American composers to a bygone era.

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