What can an American(?) painter tell us about American music

Posted on April 27, 2015 by smithg

John Singer Sargent, the painter in question, is American by birth. If he had elected to run for president there would be no question as to his eligibility (no one would ask for his birth certificate, certainly). Sargent, while born in America, studied in Paris, and lived most of his life in Europe. Semantics aside, it’s clear that Sargent is a Westerner and can teach us about how Western cultures interpret themselves as well as Other cultures.

Sargent’s watercolors were not his claim to fame, but he was well versed in the medium, boasting over 2,000 watercolors. Here we have his painting simply titled, Warrior.

The subject is all alone in the painting, much like a portrait, but facing away from the observer. The warrior seems to be looking off into the distance as well. The warrior has specific points of detail and other places have significantly less detail. Particularly the head and left foot sandal have a lot of detail. On the warrior’s head there is an earring, shading on the head wrap, and lighting detail on the forehead and cheek. On the sandal there is an elegantly painted feather adorning the otherwise simple footwear. A long draping cape covers most of the warrior masking one whole side, the cape is mostly implied and also seems to be translucent.

The focus on the trappings of the warrior and his figure rather than choosing to put him in action (not necessarily violence) takes him out of his context. This lack of contextualization is where I think we can find a link to music written by Americans or Westerners. Pieces such as El Salon Mexico by Aaron Copland lies in the same vein of “representative” art. While this may be exactly what the model looked like has he posed for Sargent and Copland may accurately composed Mexican music, they present their art pieces without any context. This creates issues for the those receiving the work not understanding where the work came from and what weight it carries. We’ve discussed this many times so I won’t beat it to death, but there it is.

The forgotten vs the popular

Posted on April 20, 2015 by smithg

This week two records are thrown into the cage and only one will be the victor. First up is After the Ball: A Treasury of Turn-of-the Century Popular Songs. Including songs “After the Ball”, “Good Bye, My Lady Love”, “Will You Love Me in December As You Do in May?”, and many other great hits from 1892 – 1905. These songs are all performed by soprano Joan Morris and pianist William Bolcom. The album features liner notes from Joan Morris as well.

In the other corner is Where Have We Met Before?: Forgotten Songs from Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley. This record boasts tracks such as “Where Have We Met Before?”, “What Can You Say in a Love Song?”, “You Forgot Your Gloves”, and other forgettable tunes from 1931-1939 and 1944-1947. These songs are performed by all sorts of bands, small groups, and orchestras. The album is defended and presented by theorist Milton Babbit. Which of course begs the question, “Who cares if Milton Babbitt listens to unsuccessful tunes from years past?”

A serious difference between these two contenders is their (re)interpretation of the songs. In the case of Morris and Bolcom, they create a team that likely would have been familiar in the homes of first listeners. Most of these early songs success depended on sheet music sales which meant that common, untrained musicians had to like them and buy them for casual performance and entertainment. However these songs also would have been initially presented on stage for Broadway productions and had slightly larger orchestrations than voice + piano.

In contrast Where Have We Met Before? gives us original recordings that are all within a year of the publication or first performance of the song. In his liner notes, Milton Babbitt gives an overview of the history of the songs from sheet music to radio to movies and back again. Babbitt also delves into questions of genre in popular music and what it means that these songs all present similar form and style as our other contender, but either didn’t sell or did and were forgotten. Most of these songs are written by Tin Pan Alley greats Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein, among others. Babbitt argues that these songs were a victim of history, caught between favored genre and technological change.

Of course there is the ever present issue of Milton Babbitt as our liner note writer. Babbitt gives these songs meaning that they might never have had otherwise. Why present songs that were forgotten if you are a distinguished theoretical mind and professor. My personal theory is that while Babbitt was spending all of those hours in university basements composing and putting together his pieces he listened to these obscure pop songs from the 30s and 40s and found love for them. More on the point, does Babbitt give these songs undue authority? Do these songs represent something that the successful ones cannot? Do they mean more because they were written and forgotten, but Milton Babbitt says that we should listen to them?

Perhaps it is just a way to pay homage to great writers and songsters that are not appreciated fully and only remembered for a few super hits. Possibly it has something to do with a little blurb at the bottom of the page.

This could be Babbitt’s ego manifesting itself as a Tin Pan Alley fan.

The Jazz Singer: from stage to film

Posted on April 13, 2015 by smithg

Much of the success of The Jazz Singer in 1927 is due to the massive popularity of the star Al Jolson. Regular concert goers and musical theater fans were familiar with Jolson who performed to sold-out audiences at the Winter Garden theater on Broadway. Jolson began performing in blackface make-up early in his career when he realized that it made him even more popular.[1] Most of the music featured in the film is either traditional Jewish music such as Kaddish and Kol Nidre, or popular music of the time.

The popular music comes from successful writers Paul Dresser, Lewis Muir, Irving Berlin, and Walter Donaldson, among others. The popular music is all written and published before the filming of The Jazz Singer. Jolson often graces the covers of these published tunes, illustrating just how public he was in the music that he performed. While the movie plot follows the course of an aspiring minstrel singer, it basically functions as a minstrel show on film. This makes sense of course, but also falls to the problems with minstrel shows. Even more, the popularity of the movie comes from the popularity of Jolson and the music he has already made popular.

The movie is an attempt to gain as much publicity as possible by including several popular songs and a most popular actor, Jolson. Using the minstrel techniques to gain popularity ignores where they come from and places them on a stage which legitimized blackface as a way to confront discrimination on all accounts.

[1] Oberfirst, Robert. Al Jolson: You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet. (London: Barnes & Co., 1980), 61-80.

Sheet Music Consortium

Library of Congress

Amy Beach: musician in spite of her family

Posted on March 24, 2015 by smithg

Today many listeners of classical music are familiar with the music or at least the name of Amy Beach. A prodigy from a very young age who came to fame through her virtuosic piano performances made her lasting mark in her compositions. Her life was defined by her gender because women, especially those of Beach’s social standing, were not to support themselves. Even though her parents were distinctly aware of Amy’s talents, they stuck with the status quo plan for young women of the time: some formal schooling, lessons in the arts, and marriage.[1]

In her article published in many women’s magazines in the early 1900s she does not fault her family for so obviously holding her back when she had so much to do in music. Rather she saw her mother’s education style as a way to ease the young prodigy into music without becoming overwhelmed. Beach’s article almost exclusively focuses on the relationship between Amy and her mother, as well as her career as a performer and composer.[2]

Beach’s success as a musician almost depends on this sort of frame that women were expected to live in. There is no doubt that Beach could have done amazing things if afforded the right to a fancy musical education that men had available to them. However, her affluent family history and unique life story allowed (or forced) her to stand out among other women. I mention forced because Amy hardly had any choice in her study of music or the path it would take.[3]

Beach had the opportunity to become a self-taught musician after her little formal training because she did not have the duties of a domestic wife like many other women. After her husband’s death in 1910 she was able to take many tours of Europe and make her name even larger.

All of these facts make for a confusing picture of Amy Beach. On one hand we have a woman who is a prisoner in her time where women aren’t allowed to study music at high levels and must submit their wills to their parents and husbands. On the other hand we have Beach as a child prodigy who has led the way for other women composers after her and succeeded because of her circumstances, but could have thrived even more in a more accepting culture.

[1] Adrienne Fried Block, Amy Beach: Passionate Victorian, (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1998), 298.

[2] Judith Tick ed., Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 323-327.

[3] Walter S. Jenkins, The Remarkable Mrs. Beach, American Composer, (Warren: Harmonie Park Press, 1994), 66-68.

A Muddy link from Blues to Rock

Posted on March 9, 2015 by smithg

As blues gained popularity through publication and performances it became blended with other types of popular music. Blues and rock music were obvious candidates for combination, both drawing on folk instrumentation and sharing similar subjects. In Chicago, which was a hotbed of blues music when many black musicians migrated to Chicago to leave the South. Possibly the most influential musician of the blending is McKinley Morganfield AKA Muddy Waters. Waters got his start at home in Mississippi when Alan Lomax traveled there on behalf of the Library of Congress in 1941 and again in 1942. Waters was later released on the album “Down on Stovall’s Plantation” from these recordings.

This recording shows us that Muddy Waters is a legit player of the blues from the south and would be taken seriously by white audiences in the North.

In 1943, shortly after Lomax’s visit, Waters moved to Chicago in hopes of making it big as a blues musician. As Muddy Waters made his way as a blues performer he made with friends with Big Bill Broonzy who helped Waters become popular. This article from Cultural Equity highlights some of the connection between Muddy Waters and Big Bill Broonzy. Muddy Waters was put on singles in the late 40s and through the 50s in Chicago. Waters gained popularity from recording Robert John tunes who had been on the blues mind since 1938 from the “Spirituals to Swing” concert in New York (Here’s a short RadioLab episode about this concert and Robert Johnson, it’s great!).

Muddy Waters became very popular in Chicago and was seen as a performer who was keeping the folk in the blues and rock that he was performing. Because he had such a close connection to the south and his history there. The Defender wrote an article to this effect in 1972. Muddy Waters keeps alive an Afro-American culture

Flocking to Folk Festivals

Posted on March 2, 2015 by smithg

In the 20th century folk song was afforded new status as a legit musical form. Previously folk song was sidelined by other more “artful” musical forms from famous composers such as Brahms or Beethoven (even though their music did often draw on popular contemporary songs or folk songs for themes or ideas). Academics, musicians, and composers all studied folk music with new vigor when they realized folk music was something worth paying attention to. Composer Hubert Parry spoke highly of the emotional value of folk music saying it is one of “the purest products of the human mind” (Crawford, 598).

Of particular interest in the folk music festivals that were founded in the early 20th century to around the 50s or 60s. Many of these festivals still exist today in some facet and it wouldn’t be hard to hear “modern” folk music somewhere like the Newport Folk Festival.

Academics became concerned with folk music that was being performed in their time because they were concerned with their musical past disappearing and being replaced with the popular music of the age. Ironically, today we would probably consider their popular music our folk music now.

Bog Trotters Band from Virginia http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.00412

The best way to share music is of course performance and creating a festival where many performers and listeners come together is a great way to share and learn new things about folk music. These festivals were highly attended in the height of their popularity. For example in 1968 70,000 people paid entry for the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island (Link to article: <http://search.proquest.com/docview/118382353?accountid=351>).

Folk Festivals were a huge part of why folk music was successful and pointed to the large demand for folk music in American consciousness. Without these festivals for sharing music across regions and states folk music might have stayed in its small box without having room to grow. If there had not been a strong community around folk music it indeed would have died in the libraries no matter how meticulously it was cataloged.

Transmission of “Nobody know(s) the(de) Trouble I(‘ve) See(n)”

Posted on February 23, 2015 by smithg

As former slaves entered American culture and society as citizens with slightly more rights after the Civil War and Reconstruction they created bands and groups for themselves to play in. In the late 19th and early 20th century military bands, small orchestras, and “stock bands” were formed mostly performing popular music of the day as well as notable Classical music such as Mozart Operas.

Claflin University Brass Band. Picture collected for the 1900 Paris Exposition <http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2001705781>

At this time spiritual music had long been co-opted by white culture with many former slave songs being compiled in “American” songbooks. In the 1920s black composers and arrangers were able to publish their settings for these groups. Composers Gussie Davis, M.L. Lake, Robert Cole, and others were very popular stock band composers and arrangers during the ’20s. Here is a setting of the familiar tune “Nobody knows de trouble I seen” from M.L. Lake.

Setting for small orchestra.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.100010139/pageturner.html?page=2&section=p0001&size=640

We can find the melody in the treble voice and this is a form of the melody that modern listeners would most likely be familiar with. However because of its setting it and acculturation it is rife with western harmonization and figuration. This adaptation of black folk songs is something that we are very comfortable with and reminds me of William Grant-Still’s Afro-American Symphony.

H.T. Burleigh (1866-1949) was an essential figure in bringing black folk music to the classical music scene in post-reconstruction America. He introduced popular singers to the literature and was well connected with influential musical big-wigs, including Antonin Dvorak.

H.T. Burleigh’s setting of “Nobody knows” for voice and piano.
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/hasm_n0737/

The earliest notated record of this particular tune we have is from Slave Songs of the United States, published in 1867, the seminal work of collecting slave songs in the Antebellum South. This representation from the collection is not definite however, it is still subject to editing and doesn’t account for massive variation across the southern states. This post outlines how different settings of the same tune have been treated when brought into a western context and setting. First the tune is in its most original form (that we have available), then adapted to solo voice and piano for mass consumption and use in the home and then finally used as popular music that can be recognized by the populous who attend concerts.

Music 345: Race, Identity, and Representation in American Music

Student Blogs and Library Exhibit Companion

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