Introduction

Deep in America’s dreams, locked in a complex embrace, stand two mythic figures: the Pioneer (inventor, frontiersman, outlaw, tycoon) – naked, self-made, indebted to no-one, whose accomplishments dwarf his compatriots; and the Citizen – anonymous, unremarkable, but with the strength of thousands, shielded by the absolute equality of the polling booth. In their entanglements – sometimes cooperative, sometimes competitive – these figures act out the profound tension between two fundamental ideologies which drive America’s politics and culture: individualism and egalitarianism.

On one hand America declares itself a land of freedom and opportunity, a country which guarantees each person’s right to be different, to rise above the crowd, to become uncommon. On the other it declares all its citizens equal: no-one is privileged, no-one special; each is but a member of the common weal. The two declarations meet in America’s most hackneyed phrases: “e pluribus unum” [“from many, one”]; “liberty [for each] and justice [for all].” They each claim a share of America’s most fundamental laws, the egalitarian Constitution and the individualist Bill of Rights. And they confound each other in America’s comic archetypes, from Brer Rabbit to Huck Finn to The Little Tramp.

The mythic reconciliation of these two ideologies has been situated physically on the frontier: there (the story goes) any Citizen can become a Pioneer, and in its wake Pioneers rediscover Citizenship. It has been economically situated in capitalism (rags to riches), and politically situated in democracy (my son, the president). Ideological reconciliation in cultural domains, however, has been more problematic; and the domain of art has been the most problematic of all.

As the United States expanded in the nineteenth century its population increased dramatically. Much of that increase came from immigration, which was spurred by severe economic and political problems in parts of Europe. The overwhelming majority of immigrants to America still came from Europe in the nineteenth century, primarily from Germany, Ireland, and Great Britain. Only slightly fewer came from Scandinavia. On the West Coast there was considerable immigration from China. After 1880 Italian immigration began to rise, but the large waves of Italian, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian immigrants arrived only after 1900 (Thernstrom 1980, passim).

In this chapter I will discuss the kinds of music that the principal immigrant groups brought with them and the role immigrant musicians played in nineteenth-century American culture. I will not limit the discussion to new immigrants, however; I will also discuss the principal types of folk music that immigrants arriving before 1800 planted on American soil.

The subject matter presents immediate methodological problems, as much of the musical activity of immigrant groups was in the folk tradition. It was spontaneous and oral, leaving few documents. And though many of the traditions persisted into the twentieth century, they were not static. Thus to determine what nineteenth- as opposed to twentieth-century practice was can be elusive. In some areas documentation does exist. Collections of dances for the violin or flute almost certainly reflect folk practice, as do instrumental tutors, a particularly valuable source. Because of the tutors and many instrumental collections, we know more about nineteenth-century folk dance music than folksongs of several important ethnic groups.

Mark Hambourg's (1879–1960) cavalier approach to Mozart, as recalled by Artur Rubinstein (1887–1982), typifies one popular image of the Romantic virtuoso pianist: stylistically insensitive, contemptuous of textual fidelity and, to cap it all, too loud – especially in chamber music. Rubinstein heard Hambourg in 1915, but equally harsh criticisms of the ‘virtuoso school’ had been penned at least as far back as the nineteenth-century heydays of Liszt and Thalberg, whose concert triumphs served as models for many later pianists. Even today, some critics seem unable to utter the word ‘virtuosity’ without the appendages ‘empty’ or ‘meretricious’. This contrast between playing that somehow metaphysically exposes the soul of music without drawing attention to technical accomplishment, and playing in which tasteless display is paramount echoes Mozart's two-hundred-year-old criticism of Clementi as ‘a mere mechanicus’. Of course, in a fundamental sense this contrast is misleading. No player, however elevated his interpretative ability, can communicate his intentions without a sound instrumental technique (unless he becomes a conductor), and most of the great Romantic pianists were both interpreters and virtuosos of the highest order.

The golden era of Romantic pianism lasted roughly one hundred years, the famous musical duel between Liszt and Thalberg in 1837, and the death of Paderewski (the most highly paid concert pianist of all time) in 1941 being convenient, if slightly arbitrary, markers at either end.

Although the terms “avant-garde” and “experimental” are often used to categorize radical composers and their works, it has been noted that “‘avant garde’ remains more a slogan than a definition” (Griffiths 1980, p. 743) and that “‘experimental music’ is ill-defined and the concept it is used to describe is vague” (Rockwell 1986, p. 91). (In fairness to Rockwell, he does also stress the “bolder, more individualistic [and] eccentric” aspects of experimentalism, which suggest an “untrammeled willingness to probe the very limits of music” [p. 91].) But equally problematically, there is no clear demarcation line between the composers and repertories to which the terms are usually applied, or between the territory supposedly described by combining the two terms and that inhabited by other species of contemporary composer. Thus Ruth Crawford (Seeger) (1901–1953) and George Crumb (born 1929) might be thought of as either avant garde or experimental, while Steve Reich (born 1936) and Philip Glass (born 1937) have – over a twenty-five year period – moved imperceptibly from the experimental fringe to the postmodern mainstream, without having compromised their work to any substantive degree.

These problems of definition are at least partly attributable to two linked paradoxes. First, almost all forms of radicalism will, as a function of time, progressively degenerate into normality and acceptability: today’s novelty can easily become tomorrow’s cliché. Second (and more important), radicalism does not exist per se, but rather is a function of difference when measured against contemporaneous norms.

Introduction

The underlying acoustical principles of sound production on the piano are very straightforward. When a key is depressed, it causes a small, felt-covered hammer to be thrown against a set of strings tuned to a specific note of the scale. The key incorporates an escapement mechanism which detaches the hammer from the key just before striking the strings so that they receive a single, unimpeded blow from the hammer. The exchange of momentum causes the strings to vibrate, and it is these vibrations which are the origin of the musical sound. The strings do not radiate sound directly, however, because they are much too small to interact with the surrounding air. Instead, they are coupled to a soundboard, a lightweight plate of wood, which is specifically designed to vibrate in sympathy with the strings. It is the structural vibrations of the soundboard which induce pressure changes in the air, rather in the manner of a loudspeaker cone, to create the sound we hear.

This is, of course, just the start of the story. This simple explanation of the mechanical action of the piano invites more questions than it answers. Why do different pianos have different sound qualities? What is the function of double and triple stringing? What control does the performer have on the final sound quality of an instrument? In searching for the answers to these questions, we discover that the piano has a few hidden secrets of surprising complexity, and we have to marvel at the ingenuity of the craftsmen who have played their part in the development of the modern instrument and at the skill of the technician who keeps a piano at the peak of its performance.

The experience of recording

The modern recording studio is a very different place from the studios of the early twentieth century, and the process of making records has changed very greatly. Until the introduction of tape recording around 1950, pianists, like other musicians, recorded onto a wax disc one side at a time. The maximum length was about four and a half minutes by the 1930s, shorter in the early days. Recordings could not be edited, and they could not even be played back at the time without destroying the wax master. Before the advent of electrical recording in the mid 1920s, the frequency range was very limited in both bass and treble, making a concert grand piano sound more like a small upright.

The first important pianists to make records were Alfred Grünfeld in Vienna in 1899, and Raoul Pugno in Paris in 1903. But for several years into the twentieth century the principal work of the studios was vocal recording. Because the acoustic recording horns were very directional, the piano used for accompaniment was raised up to the same level as the singer's head. In 1902, Caruso's accompanist Salvatore Cottone played on an upright piano set up on a platform of packing cases. Pugno's recordings were made under similar conditions. Even when solo piano recording became established, and grand pianos were routinely used in the studio, the pre-electric recording still had limitations.

Throughout the world, music is used by the powerful to advance their personal or political agendas, by governments to achieve national objectives, by performers and tradesmen to earn a living, and by the people for entertainment and individual goals. Thus, the music played and heard in colonial America was defined by the distinct national cultures that held political power and whose people populated its land.

The first colonists arrived from and perpetuated a world in which the arts were divided. On one side were the cultivated arts of music and dance, enriched by centuries of patronage from the court and nobility. Settlers with ample means purchased instruments and music, hired professional instructors, and enjoyed playing or listening to new compositions of British and European artists. They performed the latest dances learned from their teachers or from books ordered from London, Paris, or Madrid, depending on trade connections at the time. In colonial societies that were anxious to appear as refined as those in the mother countries, capability in, or consumption of, the arts was a sign of gentility, affluence, and influence; it gave evidence of sufficient means to obtain appreciation, training, and leisure to practice necessary skills.

On the other side was the music of the people. The laboring, farming, and servant classes had little access to cultivated music. They did not understand it and they did not need it. Their long-lived ballads and dancing tunes were seldom consciously learned but rather absorbed from frequent hearing. They were an integral part of their community bond and identification.

In 1972 a well-known pianist confided to an interviewer that his favourite composer was Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625). In a later interview he declared that he ‘had doubts about Beethoven’ and that he didn't think Chopin was ‘a very good composer’; in fact the whole core of the pianorecital repertory was ‘a colossal waste of time’.

Such heretical statements could come only from Glenn Gould, whose groundbreaking performances of J. S. Bach (and indeed of Orlando Gibbons) demonstrate a profound understanding and love of contrapuntal writing. Gould dismissed nineteenth-century music purely on the grounds that Romantic composers treated the piano as a ‘homophonic instrument’. Leaving aside the breathtaking inaccuracy of that statement, it presumably achieved its main purpose to challenge complacent notions about piano repertory and canon.

Repertory

What are these notions? Ask any pianist about his or her ‘repertoire’ and out will come a list of works by composers from J. S. Bach to Bartók – that is, if your pianist is at all interested in his or her own century; many will not venture much beyond Brahms. Beethoven will perhaps be predominant, then Mozart and Schubert, some Haydn, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt and possibly some Mendelssohn. Choice of repertory is in part influenced by examination requirements, from elementary to diploma level; it is what is taught in our conservatories, whose syllabuses reflect and reinforce prevailing custom. On the other hand, the diversity of the recording industry, particularly since the arrival of CDs, means that we now have more choice of what to listen to than ever before.

Introduction

One of the most compelling portrayals of jazz develops from the theme of the downtrodden hero. According to this narrative, jazz, as an anthropomorphism of black survival – America’s “living art” - endures a precarious existence, trapped within a plebeian and often hostile commercial environment. For a time, the hero narrative worked successfully to perpetuate beliefs in the music’s historical and aesthetic coherence. Jazz endured, it seemed, despite the wide range of styles and practices that had emerged since its “birth” in the “cradle” of New Orleans. By the late 1950s, however, many observers had begun to suspect that something was seriously wrong with the musical body, jazz. Having taken for granted its ties to a market economy that required a constant flow of new stars, taste makers and pundits feared that jazz might soon die off unless a new figure of vision could provide a clear stylistic direction. Musical activity in a real sense had not subsided, of course. Journalistic coverage from the period shows that musicians actively performed and recorded in an array of styles, from New Orleans ensemble improvisations to gospel-inflected soul jazz, from “third stream” (a hybrid of jazz and European-based art music) to energetic extensions of bop (Lees 1960). Yet the expectations of innovation, exacerbated by market pressures, led many to believe that any lapse in discernible stylistic growth was a sure sign of a coming “death.” As a matter of course, critics and audiences looked hopefully to that next “Great Man” who would build a new kind of jazz based on prior practices.

It seems a virtually inevitable development that the creative explosions taking place in the realms of American jazz, popular, and theatrical music following World War I would find a parallel in the sphere of American art music. It also follows that much of the new art music would draw direct or indirect inspiration from those exciting and novel developments in the vernacular areas. Sometimes this took the form of direct stylistic mimicry or evocation, and other times it came across more subtly as an attempt to emulate, in art music terms, the sense of an original, energetic American identity that characterized the best of the new vernacular musics.

The prosperous United States of the 1920s proved an ideal environment for a flourishing of concert music. There was a significantly wide bourgeois audience, interested in “culture” and with money to spend, and a striking growth in upper-class financial support for art music performing organizations, concert series, and individual efforts and events – offered through personal, charitable, and corporate sources. The emergence of the United States as a world presence in the aftermath of World War I was an equally important stimulus to creativity in the art music sphere. American composers became abruptly aware of the inspiration and challenge presented to them by developments in European modernism, at the same time that they sought to establish a new and distinctive identity for American music, an identity that would speak both to their native audiences and to the world.

Introduction

Nationalism used to be portrayed, mistakenly, as an offshoot of nineteenth-century Romanticism, portrayed, moreover, almost exclusively as an eastern European phenomenon. We can see now that Weber's Der Freischütz and Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen are German nationalist in concept in much the same way that Mikhail Glinka's (1804–57) A life for the Tsar and Modest Musorgsky's (1839–81) Boris Godunov are Russian nationalist works. However, it is true that musical nationalism seems most apparent in those countries where there had been virtually no previous traditions of art music, such as one can point to in France, Italy or the German-speaking areas of western Europe. This is, of course, not to say that music was uncultivated in eastern Europe. Far from it: the Slavonic peoples have for the most part been intensely musical. Bohemian instrumentalists were justly celebrated in the second half of the eighteenth century and, as in most countries, eastern Europe enjoyed a rich cultural heritage of folk song and dance. Nor should we ignore the importance of church music, which had a strong impact on nineteenth-century Russian music. Since eastern European folk music and church music are much less familiar to western ears they seem to have acquired an exoticism and mystique that formerly contributed to the myth of musical nationalism as a purely eastern phenomenon. And one might add that in the nineteenth century social and political forces were strong factors in the emergence of nationalist sentiments: political unrest was endemic throughout Europe, particularly between about 1830 and 1870.

Throughout the multifarious developments in the field of composition during the twentieth century, the piano has clearly retained its high profile, and its central role in European-style music making. The divide between broadly ‘popular’ and so-called ‘serious’ music, however, has widened irrevocably and, even though the boundaries may fluctuate from time to time, this has come about through changes in Western society.

It is undeniable that the distinct personality of twentieth-century popular music reflects the stylistic contribution of African–American idioms. While such idioms originally developed unhindered, the last one hundred years have seen a gradual but remarkable takeover of the popular field. The arrival of a powerful sheet-music publishing industry was followed (in chronological order of their greatest impact) by radio, sound films, commercial recording and television. Although in each medium the powers that be initially resisted black composers and performers, they eventually capitulated and thereafter played a crucial role in spreading previous minority preferences among the mainstream.

Further consideration of this fascinating process lies outside the scope of the present volume, but two other factors must be borne in mind. Firstly, those responsible for each musical innovation were not merely the elite who form the breeding ground for innovation in any artistic sphere, but a performing minority within a racial minority. Thus, despite the accelerated rate of change brought about by technological developments, the dissemination of musical innovation was a three-stage process.

Anatomy

It is a perfect, warm spring day in Denver, Colorado. The tops of the city buildings trace sharp edges against the infinite, cloudless blue of the sky, and boulevards speed across the plains until stopped by the glittering snow-peaks of the Continental Divide. I take the bus from downtown to Cherry Creek. There, at the huge shopping mall, a more all-American crowd you could not find – healthy, young, handsome, casual, and easy in their clothes and with their bodies. Heady with purchase, pizza, and wine, I modulate into an epiphany of recognition that the American dream has somehow survived the latter-day depredations of media, technology, politics, and environment after all and, on a day like this, can suddenly glow with the splendor of all its old tangibility. A wave of satisfaction sweeps over me, and I find myself humming The Trolley Song.

It is, perhaps, rather touching that the desiccated soul of a musicologist can yet respond to the blandishments of sentiment, wit, association, and presentation that Tin Pan Alley forever traded in: for it is obvious that The Trolley Song still fits the experience. (The song, from the musical film Meet Me in St. Louis [1944] was written by Hugh Martin [born 1914] and Ralph Blane [1914–1995] and presumably “routined” and orchestrated by Roger Edens [1905–1970] and Conrad Salinger [?1900–1962].) The “ideal motion” of a ride to the consumer’s paradise in the suburbs remains, even if for shops rather than Louisiana Purchase Exposition stands and on a bus rather than a trolley.

At heart, this is a chapter about the early development of what musicologist Richard Crawford calls the music of “accessibility”, a music which seeks “most of all to find and please audiences and to increase their size” (Crawford 1993, pp. 86–88). To judge by events and developments in the nineteenth century, popular music pleased its audience by speaking directly to its needs and wishes. This chapter, then, will attempt likewise to discover and analyze audience and its concerns, in the belief that such a method leads most directly to understanding. By concentrating on reception and audience, instead of production (i.e. the performers, composers, and publishers), one hopes with Walt Whitman to find Americans – his mechanics, carpenters, masons, boatmen, shoemakers, hatters, woodcutters, ploughboys, mothers, wives, girls, young fellows – again “Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs,” all “singing what belongs to [them], to none else” (from I Hear America Singing, 1860).

The range of popular music available to nineteenth-century Americans followed from developing notions of public and private spheres. Until this period, “privacy” in Western society was something unique to the few, generally those of exceptional wealth or special status. Most white Americans and their cousin Europeans of the previous centuries lived in a public world, where the individual’s primary role was the sustenance of the community. Accordingly, the music of this earlier period was almost always for public venues, whether theatres, churches, streets, or byways, for audiences that were often in some way participants as well. Communities sanctioned, varied, and sustained folk ballads; operas were social occasions; church music served to unite a congregation and bind it through ritual.

In 1830 Friedrich Kalkbrenner (1785–1849) wrote:

His remarks could easily have been made twenty or thirty years previously, since his description summarises – albeit in a highly generalised fashion – so many of the essentials of piano making and playing for much of the period covered by this chapter.

‘Viennese’ and English grand pianos

Most English grand pianos of the late eighteenth century look much like the Backers grand of 1772, illustrated in Fig. 1.5. The anonymous and undated grand of Fig. 2.1 is typical of instruments made in the last two decades of the eighteenth century in southern Germany and Austria (generally referred to as ‘Viennese’ pianos). These two instruments therefore illustrate the essential differences in appearance of pianos by members of the English and ‘Viennese’ schools.