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Music in America
Gershwin, Copland, and Ginastera
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
• American composer and pianist.
• Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and
classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely
known.
• Among his best known works are the orchestral
compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in
Paris (1928), as well as the opera, Porgy and Bess (1935).
• George Gershwin composed music for both Broadway and
the classical concert hall, as well as popular songs that
brought his work to an even wider public. His compositions
have been used in numerous films and on television, and
many became jazz standards recorded in numerous
variations. Countless singers and musicians have recorded
Gershwin songs.
Tin Pan Alley
• At the age of fifteen, George left school and
found his first job as a performer, "song
plugger" for Jerome H. Remick and Company,
a publishing firm on New York City's Tin Pan
Alley, where he earned $15 a week.
• His first published song was "When You Want
'Em You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em,
You Don't Want 'Em." It was published in 1916
when Gershwin was only 17 years old and
earned him $5.
Classical music, opera, ballet, and
European influences
• In 1924, Gershwin composed his first major classical work,
Rhapsody in Blue for orchestra and piano. It proved to be
his most popular work.
• Gershwin stayed in Paris for a short period of time during
which he applied to study composition with the famous
instructor Nadia Boulanger who, along with several other
prospective tutors such as Maurice Ravel, rejected him,
being afraid that rigorous classical study would ruin his jazzinfluenced style. While there, Gershwin wrote An American
in Paris. This work received mixed reviews upon its first
performance at Carnegie Hall on December 13, 1928, but it
quickly became part of the standard repertoire in Europe
and the United States.
• His most ambitious composition was Porgy and Bess (1935).
Gershwin called it a "folk opera," and it is now widely regarded as
one of the most important American operas of the twentieth
century.
• Based on the novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward, the action takes
place in the fictional all-black neighborhood of Catfish Row in
Charleston, South Carolina.
• With the exception of several minor speaking roles, all of the
characters are black. The music combines elements of popular
music of the day, with a strong influence of Black music, with
techniques typical of opera, such as recitative, through-composition
and an extensive system of leitmotifs.
• Porgy and Bess contains some of Gershwin's most sophisticated
music, including a fugue, a passacaglia, the use of atonality,
polytonality and polyrhythm, and a tone row. Even the "set
numbers" (of which "Summertime", "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" and "It
Ain't Necessarily So" are well known examples) are some of the
most refined and ingenious of Gershwin's output.
Musical style and influence
• Gershwin was influenced by French composers of
the early twentieth century. In turn Maurice
Ravel was impressed with Gershwin's abilities,
commenting, "Personally I find jazz most
interesting: the rhythms, the way the melodies
are handled, the melodies themselves. I have
heard of George Gershwin's works and I find
them intriguing.”
• The orchestrations in Gershwin's symphonic
works often seem similar to those of Ravel;
likewise, Ravel's two piano concertos evince an
influence of Gershwin.
• Aside from the French influence, Gershwin was intrigued by
the works of Alban Berg, Dmitri Shostakovich, Igor
Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, and Arnold Schoenberg. He also
asked Schoenberg for composition lessons. Schoenberg
refused, saying "I would only make you a bad Schoenberg,
and you're such a good Gershwin already.”
• What set Gershwin apart was his ability to manipulate
forms of music into his own unique voice. He took the jazz
he discovered on Tin Pan Alley into the mainstream by
splicing its rhythms and tonality with that of the popular
songs of his era. Although George Gershwin would seldom
make grand statements about his music, he believed that
"true music must reflect the thought and aspirations of the
people and time. My people are Americans. My time is
today.”
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
• an American modernist composer.
• He is widely regarded as one of the first American
composers of international renown.
• Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of
his works went unperformed for many years. Over time,
Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original".
• Ives combined the American popular and church-music
traditions of his youth with European art music, and was
among the first composers to engage in a systematic
program of experimental music, with musical techniques
including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatoric
elements, and quarter tones, foreshadowing many musical
innovations of the 20th century.
• Sources of Charles Ives’s tonal imagery are hymn
tunes and traditional songs, the town band at
holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night
dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor
ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster.
• Charles Ives was born in Danbury, Connecticut in
1874, the son of George Ives, a U.S. Army
bandleader in the American Civil War, and his
wife Mary Parmelee.
• A strong influence of Charles's may have been
sitting in the Danbury town square, listening to
his father's marching band and other bands on
other sides of the square simultaneously.
• Studied music with his father
• Ives became a church organist at the age of 14and
wrote various hymns and songs for church services,
including his Variations on 'America' .
• Ives moved to New Haven in 1893, enrolling in the
• Hopkins School where he captained the baseball team.
• In September 1894, Ives entered Yale University,
studying under Horatio Parker. Here he composed in a
choral style similar to his mentor, writing church music
and even an 1896 campaign song for William McKinley.
• On November 4, 1894 Charles's father died, a crushing
blow to the young composer, but to a large degree Ives
continued the musical experimentation he had begun
with George Ives.
• He continued his work as a church organist
until May 1902.
• In 1899, he moved to employment with the
insurance agency Charles H. Raymond & Co.,
where he stayed until 1906.
• In 1907, upon the failure of Raymond & Co.,
he and his friend Julian Myrick formed their
own insurance agency Ives & Co., which later
became Ives & Myrick, where he remained
until he retired.
Ives’s Music
• Early period (before 1900)
• As a youth, Charles was musically trained by his father George Ives,
the bandmaster in Danbury, Connecticut. Charles played drums in
his father's band at an early age, then learned to play piano and
organ as his "main" instrument. He was a sought-after organist in
some of the local churches as a teenager and once received a
favorable newspaper review.
• George Ives engaged his son with challenging musical exercises
such as alternative tunings and bitonal singing exercises.
• The elder Ives experimented with having two marching bands start
at opposite ends of town playing two different songs in different
keys while marching towards each other. Charles later credited his
father as the seminal musical influence in his life.
• Works
– First Symphony—traditional sonata form of the late 19th
century, as well as a tendency to display an individual and
iconoclastic harmonic style
– Ives published a large collection of his songs, many of
which had piano parts that paralleled modern movements
in Europe, including bitonality and pantonality. He was an
accomplished pianist who could improvise in a variety of
styles, including those then quite new.
– Though he is now best known for his orchestral music, he
composed two string quartets and other works of chamber
music. His work as an organist led him to write Variations
on "America" in 1891, which he premiered at a recital
celebrating the Fourth of July. The piece takes the tune
(which is the same one as is used for the national anthem
of the United Kingdom) through a series of fairly standard
but witty variations; it was not published until 1949.
• Middle period (1900-1910)
• Around the turn of twentieth century Ives composed his
Symphony No. 2, signifying a departure from the conservative
approach of his composition teacher at Yale.
• Adopted new techniques that included musical quotations,
unusual phrasing and orchestration, and even a blatantly
dissonant 11-note chord ending the work.
• The second symphony foreshadows his later compositional
style even though the piece is relatively conservative by Ives'
standards.
• In 1906, Ives composed what some have argued was the first
radical musical work of the twentieth century, Central Park in
the Dark. The piece evokes an evening comparing sounds from
nearby nightclubs in Manhattan (playing the popular music of
the day, ragtime, quoting "Hello! Ma Baby" and even Sousa's
"Washington Post March") with the mysterious dark and misty
qualities of the Central Park woods (played by the strings).
• Mature period (1910–1923)
– Starting around 1910 Ives began composing his most
accomplished works including the "Holidays Symphony"
and arguably his best-known piece "Three Places in New
England".
– The “Concord” sonata is possibly Ives's best-known piece
for solo piano (Rhythmically and harmonically, it is typically
adventurous, and it demonstrates Ives' fondness for
quotation — on several occasions the opening motto from
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is quoted. It also contains one
of the most striking examples of Ives' experimentalism: in
the second movement, he instructs the pianist to use a
143⁄4 in (37 cm) piece of wood to produce a dense but
generally very soft cluster chord.)
– This range of extremes is frequent in Ives' music —
crushing blare and dissonance contrasted with lyrical quiet
— and carried out by the relationship of the parts slipping
in and out of phase with each other.
Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)
• an Argentine composer of classical music. He is
considered one of the most important Latin American
classical composers.
• Ginastera was born in Buenos Aires to a Catalan father
and an Italian mother.
• He studied at the conservatory in Buenos Aires,
graduating in 1938. After a visit to the United States in
1945–47, where he studied with Aaron Copland at
Tanglewood, he returned to Buenos Aires and cofounded the League of Composers.
• He held a number of teaching posts. He moved back to
the United States in 1968 and from 1970 lived in
Europe. He died in Geneva at the age of 67.
Music
• Ginastera grouped his music into three periods:
"Objective Nationalism" (1934–1948), "Subjective
Nationalism" (1948–1958), and "NeoExpressionism" (1958–1983).
• Among other distinguishing features, these
periods vary in their use of traditional Argentine
musical elements.
• His Objective Nationalistic works often integrate
Argentine folk themes in a straightforward
fashion, while works in the later periods
incorporate traditional elements in increasingly
abstracted forms.
• His early works belong to the first period.
– Ginastera uses Argentine folk and popular elements and
introduces them in a straight forward manner. He is also
influenced by Stravinsky and, in a lesser degree, by Bartok and
Falla.
– Two of his most famous works belong to this period, Argentine
Dances op. 2 for piano, and Estancia (Ballet).
• From 1948 on, the time of his stay in the US, he starts to
use more advanced composing techniques. He naturally
turns to Subjective Nationalism, with no revolutionary
positions.
– He does away with popular traditional elements, although he
continues to use them mainly for symbolic purposes. He never
gives up Argentine traditions. He uses rhythmic contrasts and
has a deep, tense feeling. Melody is still important, as well and
contrasts between tension and relaxation.
– The most important works belonging to this period are
Pampeana No. 3 for orchestra and his Piano Sonata No. 1, one
of the staples in the repertoire of today's pianists.
• His Neo-Expressionist period starts
approximately in 1958.
– In Ginastera's own words, "There are no more folk
melodic or rhythmic cells, nor is there any
symbolism. There are, however, constant
Argentine elements, such as strong, obsessive
rhythms, meditative adagios suggesting the
quietness of the Pampas; magic, mysterious
sounds reminding the cryptic nature of the
country.”
– Several important works belong to this period,
such as his much criticized opera Bomarzo, his
Popul Vuh for orchestra, and his Concerto No. 2
for Cello and orchestra.