Instead of using “classical” and “popular,” we have…

Cultivated music: music brought to a country and consciously developed

Vernacular music: music from our native tongue

Early American Music: An Overview

• Puritans thought music was frivolous

  • Exception is psalms of Bay Psalm Book of 1640 (first book printed in North America)

• First composer was William Billings (1746-1800)

  • From Boston

  • Hymns and fuging tunes (simple hymn-based pieces w/ counterpoint)

The Cultivated Tradition

• Concerts grew in popularity with cities

• By 1850s, there were concert halls in all major cities and opera organizations- by 1860s, we had conservatories

• Americans saw European musicians too

  • Italy for opera, Germany for instrumental music

• We had many great American composers by 1900

Music in the Vernacular

• Includes psalms and hymns

• Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864)

  • Traveled w/ theatre troupe Christie’s Minstrels, who had rights to his music (exclusively)

  • Created some folk songs

  • Not a financial success

  • Died an alcoholic at 38

• John Philip Sousa (1854–1932)

  • Spanish and German (first gen American)

  • Marine Corps bandmaster

  • Had a touring band

African American Music

• Foster wrote songs about Black slaves

• Minstrel shows had comedy routines performed by white actors in blackface (ugh)

• “Call and response” West African musical procedure remained in Black American church music

• Religious folk music outside an established church is called “spiritual”

Jazz: The First Thirty Years

• Jazz began with Black musicians around 1910, but has grown since then

• Has foundations in improvisation

  • Breaks- improvised interludes

• Highly developed syncopation

  • More subtle beat syncopation derived from African drumming (accents are a fraction of a beat ahead of meter)

Ragtime: Scott Joplin (1868-1917)

• Ragtime is informal piano music which preceded jazz

• Very popular in the early 1900s in America

• Similar to march music

• “Ragging” described syncopation

• Scott Joplin

  • Son of ex-slave

  • Wrote “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Entertainer”

  • Didn’t “break into cultivated musical circles,” as he wished to

  • Wrote two operas

The Blues

• Blues is a category of black folk song with sad/lonely themes

• Emerged around 1900

• Strophic genre

  • Typically three 4-measure phrases (“twelve-bar blues”)

• Uses the “blues scale,” which borrows from major and minor modes

• Sonorous model for jazz

Sippie Wallace (1898-1986), “If You Ever Been Down” Blues (1927) (Composed by G. W. Thomas)

• Sippie Wallace was a legendary female blues singer

  • Accompanied herself on the piano

• Instrumental introduction and breaks

• Textbook recording has Louis Armstrong

African American gospel music also developed around this time

New Orleans Jazz

• Early jazz was casual

• Small bands (6-8 instrumentalists), commonly w/ three melody instruments and a rhythm section

• “Jamming”- collective improvisation

  • Nonimitative polyphony

• New Orleans was an early home of jazz

  • Louis Armstrong

• Recording tech helped jazz spread

Big-Band Jazz: Swing

• Armstrong helped jazz get big around 1930

• Bigger overall meant bigger audiences and…

• Big bands- 10 to 25 players and large numbers w/ less improv

• Swing, aka big-band jazz, had a variety of tone color and instrumental effects

  • There were soloists

  • Jazz arrangers had difficult jobs, and were just as important as composers

• White musicians/managers infiltrated jazz

Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) Biography

• Born into New Orleans poverty

  • Juvenile delinquent

• Carrer grew from riverboats to important jazz bands

• Went along with the commercialization of jazz

  • Caused him to eventually drift away from “true jazz”

• Nationally loved star

  • Also sponsored by the State Department for international tours

• Appeared in almost 20 movies

Duke Ellington, “Conga Brava” (1940)

• Written by Ellington w/ Puerto Rican Juan Tizol

• The “conga” is an Afro-Cuban dance (named after the drum)

• Has a latin beat

Popular Song

• Jazz isn’t a genre, but a performance style

• Lots of jazz associations

• “Standards” were songs favored by jazzmen

Duke Ellington (1899-1974) Biography

• Washington DC native

• Influenced by ragtime

• Uniquely “a major bandleader who was also its composer and its arranger”

  • Extremely impressive

• Played piano in jazz bands

  • The Ellington band toured internationally

• Nicknamed “Duke” due to his fastidious nature (born Edward Kennedy Ellington)

• Wrote “Sacred Concerts”

Early Jazz in the Concert Hall

• Symphony and opera lovers hated jazz

  • This was largely due to racism

• Some classical musicians/composers loved jazz, such as Maurice Ravel

• The 1920s was “a confident era”

• The “Jazz Age” was between 1920 and 1930

• George Gershwin merged jazz with previous styles very well, and wanted to “enter the world” of concert-hall music

George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue (1924)

• A “rhapsody” in this time was a piece with free form and “expressive flights of fancy”

  • Liszt popularized the term

  • Ancient Greek roots

• Composed for an NYC concert

• Lots of melodies “in a loosely organized work”

• Three main themes with repeats

• Most popular version is the 1942 piano and full symphony orchestra version

Later Jazz

• Big bands collapsed post-WWII due to costs

• New genres, such as rock-n-roll and bebop

Bebop

• It was hard for young Black jazz artists to find work in big bands during the early 1940s

• Less improvisation overall

• In Harlem and NYC, clubs began to be centers for bebop, a new style with “improvisation at a new level of technical virtuosity”

• Bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie used “hard, percussive sounds and sharp, snap rhythms”

• “Aggressive and exciting”

• Very complex and “far-out” harmonies

• Hard to follow melodies

Charlie Parker (1920–1955) and Miles Davis (1926–1991), “Out of Nowhere” (1948)

• Charlie Parker was “bebop’s greatest genius,” and his life was very complex

  • Was on drugs, and died at 34 after committing suicide and spending time in a mental institution

• Popular 1930s standard

  • Basis for swing and bebop

• Miles Davis trumpet solo

• AA’ form

Jazz After Bebop

• Avant-garde came to jazz, and melody, harmony, and tonality were questioned

• MANY new jazz styles, such as cool jazz, free jazz, modal jazz, fusion jazz, and Latin jazz

• New improvisation without any basis whatsoever

Miles Davis, Bitches Brew (1969)

• Miles Davis was a founder of cool jazz, and he later with modal jazz and several other genres

• Conscious blending of jazz and rock- “fusion jazz”

• Pushed against “the complex extremes of bebop”

The American Musical

• NY theatre around 1900 is a source of modern American popular music

• Operetta is “a popular European genre of light opera in the late 19th and early 20th centuries”

  • Spoken dialogue between musical numbers

  • Amusing and far-fetched plots

Musical Comedy

• Jazz gave American popular theater a “characteristic accent” around 1910

• Musical comedies (musicals) rose in the 1920s and 30s

  • Smart, catchy verses

  • Appeared due to a “golden age” in popular song

  • Composers included Jerome Kern and George Gershwin

The Musical After 1940

• Plots were more carefully designed

  • The selling point for musicals now, instead of the songs

• Big composers included Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein

• “More challenging subjects”

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), West Side Story (1957)

• Bernstein was “brilliant and versatile,” as a “crossover artist”

  • Won Grammys, Emmys, and a Tony

• West Side Story has a “moving story,” “sophisticated score,” and “superb dances”

  • Based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

The Later Musical

• West Side Story lyricist Stephen Sondheim was an “aspiring composer”

  • Wrote lyrics/music for Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, etc.

• 1960s musicals “acknowledge[d] the rock revolution”