Excerpt from the Preface: This book is offered to the reader with the hope that it will abet a fuller comprehension of American musical culture in the twentieth century. It describes how contemporary American art music struggled to exist during the twenties and early thirties, and how the Great Depression seemed poised to wipe it out altogether. But, wonder of wonders, music took a new lease on life. Men and women began to flock to concerts as never before; performing ensembles proliferated; and composers felt they might have a real function to perform in American life. The period of the thirties and early forties has been described as the Golden Age of American music, a time when composers created vital works that audiences greeted with curiosity and which they often learned to enjoy.  How this period of great cultural achievement came about and why it ended is the subject of these pages.

Serenading the Reluctant Eagle: American Musical Life, 1925-1945

Arts & Photography

Tawa, Nicholas E.

Music

Wadsworth Pub. Co.

Book includes Musical scores, index, selective bibliography of songs from 1866 to 1910, from just after the American Civil War to just before the First World War.

The Way to Tin Pan Alley: American Popular Song, 1866-1910

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Schirmer Reference

Tawa considers the musical and social ramifications influencing the American composer between 1950 and 1985. He draws information from composers, music reviewers, and from his own listening experiences. Tawa's common theme is the gulf between what the composer (or critic) says about the music and how the public experiences it. . . . More than 50 composers are considered. . . . Tawa . . . goes beyond biographical detail to help the reader to `understand the reasons for the deep abyss separating contemporary composer and listener'. ChoiceThe decades following World War II witnessed an explosion of musical creativity in America. Unfortunately, they also witnessed a widening abyss between the contemporary composer and his or her audience. Confusion on the part of the modern listener is an all-too-frequent phenomenon when he or she is confronted by the extraordinary profusion of contemporary musical styles. This useful volume is intended to relieve some of that confusion. Insightful commentaries and a highly readable text combine to focus on all contemporary musical styles from the most traditional to the most experimental in relation to modern American life. Taking the position that music is a transaction between creator/composer and listener, the author considers ways in which each faction may become more aware of the other's imperatives, thereby sponsoring a new and mutually meaningful music.

A Most Wondrous Babble: American Art Composers, Their Music, and the American Scene 1950-1985 (Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance)

Praeger

In the years following the Civil War, a tradition of American art music arose that has now come to be neglected and almost ignored. This work studies that period of music that preceded Copland, Sessions, and Thomson by focusing on a number of its important composers, as well as the society that produced them. John Knowles Paine, George Chadwick, Edward MacDowell, Horatio Parker, Arthur Foote, and Amy Beach all achieved national and international reputations for the high quality of their compositions, which included songs, keyboard pieces, chamber works, oratorios, concertos, symphonies, and operas. But with the great changes of the 1920s, music critics and historians either flatly dismissed these artists as mediocre or completely ignored them.Author Nicholas Tawa fully details the world of these undervalued composers, offering a portrait of American cultural life during the latter part of the nineteenth century, the place of art composers within their society and the nature of the music created in response to the mandates of the time. The book begins with the chapters that explore post-Civil War society and music's relationship to it. Among the topics discussed are the nature of the musical public, American promoters of native music, performance of American art music, and artistic frames of reference. Tawa then devotes a series of chapters to the composers themselves, considering the styles and principal features of each one's work, specific groups of compositions, and what artistry meant to the composers. The study concludes with an evaluation of the composers and their musical legacy and features an appendix of musical examples. Students in American music and American studies courses will find this work to be a useful resource, and public and academic libraries will consider it a valuable addition to their collections.

The Coming of Age of American Art Music: New England's Classical Romanticists (Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance)

Chronologically following Nicholas Tawa's The Coming of Age of American Art Music, this new study stands on its own in examining the music of the most prominent American composers active in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Among them are Edgar Stillman Kelley, Frederick Shepherd Converse, Daniel Gregory Mason, Edgar Burlingame Hill, Mabel Daniels, Henry Hadley, Deems Taylor, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Henry Gilbert, Arthur Farwell, John Powell, Arthur Shepherd, Scott Joplin, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Marion Bauer, and John Alden Carpenter. Unjustly neglected by a later generation of critics interested in the avant-garde, this music deserves a hearing today and, in fact, increasingly is the subject of new recordings.
Professor Tawa puts his exemplary research and analytical skills to work to determine what these composers accomplished, not what latter-day critics felt they should have accomplished. The attitudes, styles, and compositions are analyzed in cultural context. The period of 1900-1930 witnessed an intense debate on what constituted an American identity in music. Was it Anglo-Celtic, Amerindian, African-American, jazz, or the individual unconsciously expressing the American society he or she lived in? The changing world of music, the clash of beliefs and values, and the attempts at a musical reconciliation between old and new approaches to composition figure prominently in the discussion. Tawa concludes that if the present-day listener does not reject romantic music out of hand, he or she will find delight in much of this large body of skillful, meaningful compositions.

Mainstream Music of Early Twentieth Century America: The Composers, Their Times, and Their Works

Humor & Entertainment

Tawa examines the musical traditions brought to America by the peasants and urban workers of southern Italy, the Middle East , and eastern Europe, and by the Chinese, Japanese, and East European Jews, and describes their survival within the American context, in often hostile surroundings.

A Sound of Strangers

Scarecrow Press

This is a study of the way in which popular words and music relate to American life. The question of what popular song was, and why it came into existence, as well as how each song fit within the context of the larger 20th Century society are considered and explained clearly and fruitfully. Songs of the Jazz Age and Swing Era are considered primarily in terms of song-types and their relation to the times. Post World War II songs are shown to have splintered into a multitude of different styles and variations within each style. Many 20th Century songs came to be closely identified with particular singers and performance groups, shifting the attention to the styles identified with particular performers and the audiences they reached. Tawa avoids overly-technical vocabulary, making this examination of hundreds of popular songs accessible to a wide variety of readers seeking to better their understanding of the often perplexing musical landscape of the time.

Supremely American: Popular Song in the 20th Century

Popular parlor songs were the main form of secular musical entertainment in the early years of the United States. They were heard regularly in the homes of our principal statesmen, authors, intellectuals, professionals, and businessmen. Laborers and slaves also sang them. They were the principal fare of concert and stage performances, and were freely interpolated into Italian operas, Shakespearean plays, lyceum lectures, and church services. In short, parlor songs played a dominant role in American cultural history. This was the music that Jefferson, Lincoln, Longfellow, Whitman, and Emily Dickinson enjoyed. Yet, whether owing to prejudice or misinformation, we still know little about the songs they listened to and sang: why and for whom written; when heard; or how performed. This book attempts to contribute that knowledge. Contemporary diaries, biographies, fiction, newspapers, periodicals, and books on music were studied and the music itself exhaustively analyzed in order to reach accurate conclusions about the popular culture that emerged between the American Revolution and the Civil War. The reader comes away with a sympathetic understanding of the human hopes, fears, and joys embodied in the songs, and with a curiosity about the countless melodic gems awaiting exploration.

Sweet Songs for Gentle Americans: The Parlor Song in America, 1790–1860

Popular Press 1

Popular parlor songs were the main form of secular musical  entertainment in the early years of the United States. They were heard  regularly in the homes of our principal statesmen, authors,  intellectuals, professionals, and businessmen. Laborers and slaves also  sang them. They were the principal fare of concert and stage  performances, and were freely interpolated into Italian operas,  Shakespearean plays, lyceum lectures, and church services. In short,  parlor songs played a dominant role in American cultural history.    This was the music that Jefferson, Lincoln, Longfellow, Whitman, and  Emily Dickinson enjoyed. Yet, whether owing to prejudice or  misinformation, we still know little about the songs they listened to  and sang: why and for whom written; when heard; or how performed.    This book attempts to contribute that knowledge. Contemporary  diaries, biographies, fiction, newspapers, periodicals, and books on  music were studied and the music itself exhaustively analyzed in order  to reach accurate conclusions about the popular culture that emerged  between the American Revolution and the Civil War.    The reader comes away with a sympathetic understanding of the human  hopes, fears, and joys embodied in the songs, and with a curiosity about  the countless melodic gems awaiting exploration.

Sweet Songs for Gentle Americans: The Parlor Song in America, 1790-1860

Popular Pr of Bowling Green State

High-Minded and Low-Down: Music in the Lives of Americans, 1800-1861

Musicologist Tawna presents a portrait of how various strata of Americans encountered, performed, and enjoyed music from the dawn of the 19th century to the Civil War. Relying on letters, memoirs, interviews, and other primary sources, he explores settings from the opera house to the saloon and discusses how economic class, educational background, geographic distribution, and other factors helped steer the way Americans experienced musical performance. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

High-Minded And Low-Down: Music in the Lives of Americans, 1800-1861

Northeastern University Press

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