Transcript MUL 2010 “Enjoyment of Music

Primary Source Summary
Project
•
•
•
•
Instructions Now Posted on course website
Form Groups of THREE (3) – no exceptions
Must be in groups by 20 Feb 17
Paper due on Monday, 27 Feb 17 @ 5:00 pm
Chapter Five
“A Language of Feeling” : Cultivating
Musical Tastes in Antebellum America
John Sullivan Dwight
• Boston Minister,
Transcendentalist, etc.
• 1st (important) Music Critic
• Interest in Beethoven
• 1841 – LvB’s Sym 1
• Journal (1852-1881)
• Music as a social tool
- Classical music at top
- egalitarian participation
- “Republicanism”
Classical Music in NYC
• Philharmonic Society of New York (1842)
- “the advancement of instrumental music”
- European immigrant and trained musicians
• William Henry Fry (1813-1864)
- composer, critic, & promoter of US music
- 1st (?) US symphony: Santa Claus Symphony (1853)
- Grand operas, including Leonora (1845)
• George Bristow (1825-1898)
- composer, performer & advocate of US music
- symphonic: Symphony No. 2 (1854), etc.
• A.P. Heinrich (1781-1861)
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
• Child prodigy in NOLA
• Age 13 to Paris
- rejected by Conservatoire
- private study
• Debut Salle Pleyel (age 16)
- praised by Chopin (!)
- “Creole” compositions “exotic”
b. 1829, New Orleans;
d. 1869, Rio de Janeiro
• Bamboula, danse des negres,
Op. 2 (cf., next slide)
• Gottschalk - The Banjo,
Fantaisie Grotesque, Op.15
(LG - p. 127)
“The Bamboula” by E.W. Kremble
for The Century Magazine (1886)
Gottschalk (2)
• Touring piano virtuoso
- US (to west coast)
- Latin America
• Compositions draw on:
- Afro-Cuban
- US (folk, trad., etc.)
• Souvenir de Porto Rico (1857)
• The Union (1862)
• Fiesta criolla from "La Nuit des
Tropiques« (1858-59)
• First American musician to
achieve international fame
Chapter Six
“The Ethiopian Business” : Minstrelsy
and Popular Song through the Civil War
Minstrelsy (defined)
•
•
•
•
Uniquely US popular form
Widespread from 1840s to 1880s (& beyond)
Origins in NYC (& elsewhere)
“Variety show” format
- song & dance
- jokes & comic dialogue/monologues
• Blackface (“covers”)
George Washington Dixon
(1801?-1861)
•
•
•
•
•
First (?) important US blackface performer
Working class background (NYC)
Circus act – singer & reciter of poems
“Ethiopian songs”
1829 – “Coal Black Rose” (NYC, Bowery)
- Coal Black Rose – YouTube (solo banjo)
- Coal Black Rose [364] (274) (vocal)
• Political satire & commentary
• 1834 – “Long Tail Blue” (see following slide)
- Long Tail Blue.wmv – YouTube (solo banjo)
- Long Tail Blue (banjo w/ voice)
Dixon as “Zip Coon”
Music Example: Zip Coon
Music Example: The Skillet Lickers-Turkey In The Straw
Music Example: Tennessee Mafia Jug Band "Turkey In The Straw"