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3 The Formation of an American Style of Composition L ike France, late-nineteenth-century America was consciously trying to forge a national cultural identity.1 No war with a foreign foe precipitated this quest, but as France was emerging from its defeat at the hands of the Prussian army, America was recovering from the farbloodier Civil War that had brought with it fratricide and the assassination of one of the most beloved presidents in its history. The appalling events of the 1860s had deepened America’s sense of inferiority in relation to European civilization, particularly its art, literature, and music. This lack of cultural self-confidence was, perhaps paradoxically, coupled with a desire to break free of European influence in the arts. There had been, of course, indigenous music in North America long before there was a United States. A chronicle written in 1670 by the French Jesuit priest Claude Dablon talks of Indian music used for various rituals and specific functions. The good Father, a missionary whose purpose was to convert the “savages” to Christianity, was most impressed by music designated to be sung by brave warriors as they were being tortured to death.2 The earliest French and English colonists brought with them the sacred music, dance tunes, and marches of their countries of origin, adapting what they had grown up with to whatever means they had at hand. Differences in religious outlook led to different musical developments: Roman Catholic communities were willing to undertake the expense of importing organs and organists as soon as their congregations were established, the Pilgrims opted for unadorned and unaccompanied hymn tunes. To ensure “disciplined” singing, even these more Spartan groups were willing to support singing masters and organized choirs.3 The first truly American musical statement took the form of a hymnal , William Billings’s The New England Psalm Singer of 1770. Billings was a Boston-based tanner and singing master—the latter was rarely a full-time occupation—who deliberately Americanized sacred music, brushing aside many of the Puritans’ restrictions.4 Richard Crawford, author of the exhaustive study America’s Musical Life, astutely notes that this newly The Formation of an American Style of Composition 21 expressed musical independence was a symptom of the general feelings leading up to the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775–76. By and large, classical secular music in eighteenth-century America was confined to the large Eastern-seaboard cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston. Boston was the first of these to have a public concert (1720) and the first to provide a proper venue for concerts (1754). Like their European counterparts, eighteenth-century American concerts were a potpourri of short pieces or movements of longer works. If an ensemble large enough to be called an orchestra were on hand, it was used to open and close the two halves of a standard performance , with soloists filling in the rest. Almost all the performers and the music performed were imported from Europe; with no state-supported institutions to promote native performers or composers, the demand for homegrown talent was slim indeed.5 Even the musical theater, which was to become the outlet for some of America’s most original artists, consisted almost exclusively of imports from London (The Beggar’s Opera was a big hit from the 1720s on). Perhaps the earliest truly American theater was the minstrel show. Rapidly developing from the early nineteenth century, these popular shows featured white performers in blackface using African American–inspired material. Neither these shows nor the later versions featuring actual black players appeared in major theaters until the early twentieth century.6 Although classical concerts and musical theater were largely European imports to the United States all through the eighteenth and well into the nineteenth century, amateur music making was enjoyed in many American homes throughout the period. Many households had keyboard or string instruments, and many immigrant professional musicians who were slowly spreading out through the United States were available to provide lessons. It was thus inevitable that some genuine native talents should eventually appear. And suddenly one such genius did. A composer, conductor, and piano virtuoso par excellence, he leaped from America to Europe’s musical center stage as if to prove single-handedly that America was not devoid of musical ability. This phenomenon was Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869). Gottschalk was born in New Orleans, which until twenty-five years before his birth had been the property of France...

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