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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.