Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music PDF Author: Joseph Horowitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393881253
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"—how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a “great and noble school” of American classical music based on the “negro melodies” he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers mainly rejected Dvorák’s lead. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to literary figures—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to ponder how American music can connect with a “usable past.” The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Dvorák’s Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation about race in America—a conversation that is taking place in music schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, “We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.”

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music PDF Author: Joseph Horowitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393881253
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"—how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a “great and noble school” of American classical music based on the “negro melodies” he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers mainly rejected Dvorák’s lead. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to literary figures—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to ponder how American music can connect with a “usable past.” The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Dvorák’s Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation about race in America—a conversation that is taking place in music schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, “We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.”

Harmony, a Course of Study

Harmony, a Course of Study PDF Author: George Whitefield Chadwick
Publisher: Franklin Classics
ISBN: 9780343405847
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Heart of a Woman

The Heart of a Woman PDF Author: Rae Linda Brown
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252052110
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
Book Prize Winner of the International Alliance for Women in Music of the 2022 Pauline Alderman Awards for Outstanding Scholarship on Women in Music The Heart of a Woman offers the first-ever biography of Florence B. Price, a composer whose career spanned both the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances, and the first African American woman to gain national recognition for her works. Price's twenty-five years in Chicago formed the core of a working life that saw her create three hundred works in diverse genres, including symphonies and orchestral suites, art songs, vocal and choral music, and arrangements of spirituals. Through interviews and a wealth of material from public and private archives, Rae Linda Brown illuminates Price's major works while exploring the considerable depth of her achievement. Brown also traces the life of the extremely private individual from her childhood in Little Rock through her time at the New England Conservatory, her extensive teaching, and her struggles with racism, poverty, and professional jealousies. In addition, Brown provides musicians and scholars with dozens of musical examples.

George Whitefield Chadwick

George Whitefield Chadwick PDF Author: Bill F. Faucett
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810830387
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Investigates the American composer's six symphonic works, looking at their historical background with respect to contemporary trends in American compositions and comparing them to aesthetic models in European symphonic tradition. Offers detailed musical analysis of the structural and stylistic tendencies in the works, and reviews the critical reception of his symphonic oeuvre. Includes musical examples, works and performance lists, and a discography. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Cultivating Music in America

Cultivating Music in America PDF Author: Ralph P. Locke
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520083950
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
"The Victorian cup on my shelf--a present from my mother--reads 'Love the Giver.' Is it because the very word patronage implies the authority of the father that we have treated American women patrons and activists so unlovingly in the writing of our own history? This pioneering collection of superb scholarship redresses that imbalance. At the same time it brilliantly documents the interrelationship between various aspects of gender and the creation of our own culture."--Judith Tick, author of Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music "Together with the fine-grained and energetic research, I like the spirit of this book, which is ambitious, bold, and generous minded. Cultivating Music in America corrects long-standing prejudices, omissions, and misunderstandings about the role of women in setting up the structures of America's musical life, and, even more far-reaching, it sheds light on the character of American musical life itself. To read this book is to be brought to a fresh understanding of what is at stake when we discuss notions such as 'elitism, ' 'democratic taste, ' and the political and economic implications of art."--Richard Crawford, author of The American Musical Landscape "We all know we are indebted to royal patronage for the music of Mozart. But who launched American talent? The answer is women, this book teaches us. Music lovers will be grateful for these ten essays, sound in scholarship, that make a strong case for the women philanthropists who ought to join Carnegie and Rockefeller as household words as sponsors of music."--Karen J. Blair, author of The Torchbearers: Women and Their Amateur Arts Associations in America

George Whitefield Chadwick

George Whitefield Chadwick PDF Author: Bill F. Faucett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Investigates the American composer's six symphonic works, looking at their historical background with respect to contemporary trends in American compositions and comparing them to aesthetic models in European symphonic tradition. Offers detailed musical analysis of the structural and stylistic tendencies in the works, and reviews the critical reception of his symphonic oeuvre. Includes musical examples, works and performance lists, and a discography. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian

Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian PDF Author: Adrienne Fried Block
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195137841
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
This biography admirably fills that gap, fully examining the connections between Beach's life and work in light of social currents and dominant ideologies. Adrienne Fried Block has written a biography that takes full account of issues of gender and musical modernism, considering Beach in the contexts of her time and of her composer contemporaries, both male and female. Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian will be of great interest to students and scholars of American music, and to music lovers in general.

George Whitfield Chadwick

George Whitfield Chadwick PDF Author: Marianne Betz
Publisher: American Music and Musicians
ISBN: 9781576472132
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931), composer, organist, conductor, and director of the New England Conservatory in Boston, was one of America's most prolific musical authority in the later 19th and early 20th century. Like with many composers of his generation, his music, his biography, and his influential role in cultural life became forgotten in the crosscurrents of modernity. However, Chadwick has been recently rediscovered, and his nearly forgotten music subsequently has provoked new and increasing interest. Hitherto unknown biographical and musical findings make it now possible to value Chadwick's importance in a new way. His biography, uniquely documented by personal papers of all kinds, simultaneously depicts the career of a 19th century American composer and the contemporary musical and social networks of his surrounding. This book was written with the intention of illuminating Chadwick's musical development, his role models, musical ideals and aesthetics. However, in reviewing the source material it was impossible not to stumble in the sources upon the very personal unburdening of a full-blooded musician, who throughout his life was confronted with many obstacles, but never stopped struggling to be recognized as a composer of good music.

The Symphonic Works of George Whitefield Chadwick

The Symphonic Works of George Whitefield Chadwick PDF Author: Bill F. Faucett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Orchestral music
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description


Music by Black Women Composers

Music by Black Women Composers PDF Author: Helen Walker-Hill
Publisher: Center for Black Music Rsrch
ISBN: 9780929911045
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description