{"id":1364,"date":"2015-04-27T23:12:39","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T04:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=1364"},"modified":"2015-04-27T23:12:39","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T04:12:39","slug":"romanticizing-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2015\/04\/27\/romanticizing-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Romanticizing the West"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"800px-Colorado_-_Branding_Calves_c._1900\"William Henry Jackson was tasked with exploring and surveying the American West at a time when America was expanding and the Manifest Destiny was still at the forefront of American\u00a0ideology. Over his life of 99 years, Jackson became famous for his work with photochrom, such as the photo\u00a0to the left from around\u00a01900.[1] The branding of a calf is posed as a fairly leisurely activity, as a few of the characters stand around looking at their corral of cattle and the wide open space available to them in the West. Working for the government, Jackson often took exploration trips to photograph scenery along railroad routes and with his photography of beautiful natural landmarks, he even convinced Congress to create Yellowstone National Park. With photos like these, that show a decent life on the frontier and human’s domination over nature, Jackson’s narrow lens\u00a0paints a Romantic image of the west, sure to keep out the fact that many Native Americans were displaced as a result.<\/p>\n

Just as Jackson’s work had a lot to do with the image of the West to the rest of America, composers such as Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland composed the sounds of the Western frontier, though 30 years later and for nostalgia instead of Manifest Destiny. In Virgil Thomson’s\u00a0The Plow that Broke the Plains, <\/em>a film made by the Works Progress Administration in 1936,\u00a0the cattle are represented by this music.[2]<\/p>\n

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