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American classical music is music written in the United States in the European classical music tradition. In many cases, beginning in the 18th century, it has been influenced by American folk music styles; and from the 20th century to the present day it has often been influenced by American folk music and sometimes jazz.
The earliest American classical music consists of part-songs used in religious services during Colonial times. The first music of this type in America were the psalm books, such as the Ainsworth Psalter, brought over from Europe by the settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. [1] The first music publication in English-speaking North America — indeed the first publication of any kind — was the Bay Psalm Book of 1640. [2]
Many American composers [ who? ] of this period worked (like Benjamin West and the young Samuel Morse in painting) exclusively with European models, while others, such as William Billings, Supply Belcher, Daniel Read, Oliver Holden, Justin Morgan, Andrew Law, Timothy Swan, Jacob Kimball Jr., Jeremiah Ingalls, and John Wyeth, also known as the First New England School or Yankee tunesmiths , developed a native style almost entirely independent of the most prestigious European models, though it drew on the practice of West Gallery music composers such as William Tans'ur and Aaron Williams. Many of these composers were amateurs, and many were singers: they developed new forms of sacred music, such as the fuguing tune, suitable for performance by amateurs, and often using harmonic methods which would have been considered bizarre by contemporary European standards. Some of the most unusual innovators were composers such as Anthony Philip Heinrich, who received some formal instrumental training but were entirely self-taught in composition. Heinrich traveled extensively throughout the interior of the young United States in the early 19th century, recording his experiences with colorful orchestral and chamber music which had almost nothing in common with the music being composed in Europe. Heinrich was the first American composer to write for symphony orchestra, as well as the first to conduct a Beethoven symphony in the United States (in Lexington, Kentucky in 1817).
Because the United States is made up of many states, some of which were parts of other empires, the classical music of the nation has derived from those empires respectively. The earliest classical music in what is now California, and other former Spanish colonies, was the renaissance polyphony of Spain. This sacred classical music was provided to support the liturgy of the Catholic Church.
Other early American composers: [3] William Selby, Victor Pelissier, John Christopher Moller, Alexander Reinagle, Benjamin Carr, William Brown, James Hewitt, Mr. Newman (Three Sonatas, for the piano forte or harpsichord, New York 1807).
During the mid to late 19th century, a vigorous tradition of home-grown classical music developed, especially in New England. Academics view this development as pivotal in the history of American classical music because it established the characteristics that set it apart from its European ancestors. This initiative was driven by musicians who wanted to produce American indigenous music. [4] John Knowles Paine is recognized as the leader of this group.
The composers of the Second New England School included Paine's colleagues and students such as George Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach, Edward MacDowell, Arthur Foote, and Horatio Parker, who was the teacher of Charles Ives. Together with Paine, the group was also known as the Boston Six. Many of these composers went to Europe — especially Germany — to study, but returned to the United States to compose, perform, and acquire students. Some of their stylistic descendants include 20th-century composers such as Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, and Roger Sessions. Ives was considered the last of the Second New England School composers although his music is viewed by some as one that still drew influence from European tradition mixed with modernism. [5]
In the early 20th century, George Gershwin was greatly influenced by African American music. He created a convincing synthesis of music from several traditions. Similarly inclined was Leonard Bernstein, who at times mixed non-tonal music with Jazz in his classical compositions. Leroy Anderson, Ferde Grofe, Morton Gould, and William Grant Still also composed pieces in the "symphonic jazz" vein. Florence Price often used elements of African American spiritual music to compose pieces in the European classical tradition.
Many of the major classical composers of the 20th century were influenced by folk traditions, none more quintessentially, perhaps, than Charles Ives or Aaron Copland. Other composers adopted features of folk music, from the Appalachians, the plains and elsewhere, including Roy Harris, Elmer Bernstein, David Diamond, Elie Siegmeister, and others. Yet other early to mid-20th-century composers continued in the more experimental traditions, including such figures as Charles Ives, George Antheil, and Henry Cowell. Others, such as Samuel Barber, captured a period of Americana in such pieces as Knoxville: Summer of 1915.
The 20th century also saw important works published by such significant immigrant composers as Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, who came to America for a variety of reasons, including political persecution, aesthetic freedom and economic opportunity. See Modernism (music) for more information on the rise of Modernism in America and throughout the world.
Minimalism is a musical movement that started in the early 1960s in New York City. Composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams (composer) used experimental composition techniques such as drones, phasing, repeated motifs, sharp contrasts between mixed meters, simple but often abrupt movements between minor and major chords with the same root, contrasts between tonality and atonality, and a large amount of use of synthesizers to display the interplay of the fundamental building blocks of music: the cancellation and amplification of wavelengths that make up all acoustic and synthesized sound. As is often the case in art, the rise of American minimalism in music paralleled the rise of minimalism as an artistic style, which used the contrast of black and white, the gradual movement of shading with gradients, and also often repeated concepts and themes.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the postmodern music movement would see the rise of composers such American composers like John Cage who adopted atonal structures and took an experimental approach to music composition, most famously and controversially with his 1952 piece 4'33", for which there are no notes written on the page and the music is described to consist of the sounds of the immediate environment of the audience, thus extending the definition of music to consist of any and all sounds even though they are without a composer created structure. Another more current, example of postmodern music is that of American composer Miguel del Águila, who blends American idioms with those of his Hispanic, Latin American roots.
In the 20th century, incidental music saw new heights with the development of the full orchestrated film score. Drawing from the opera styles of composition and the rules of Richard Wagner (specifically the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk), many early soundtracks include overtures, intermission music, and medleys and concert suites and a repeat or use of the overture for the end credits, depending on whether the movie was showing opening or ending credits. Over the evolution of the cinema the music took on greater and greater sophistication with the inclusion of advanced instrument techniques, a multiplicity of musical genre in any given work, and multicultural structures and instrumentation as the film industry, and therefore the music composition industry, became more globalized. It exploded in the 1990s in America with the release of many different blockbuster films and a high demand for fully orchestrated soundtracks, but is now often replaced with soundtracks that are entirely synthesized or utilize covers songs of famous popular songs or are even composed by popular performers, such as in the soundtrack for the 1997 film Titanic ( Titanic: Music from the Motion Picture ) and the use of many popular songs for specific historical references in the soundtrack for the movie Forrest Gump (Forrest Gump (soundtrack)). Because of the growing common practice of using popular songs combined with a more classical soundtrack, it became a standard to release two soundtracks with one made of up the popular genre selected songs, and the original score or film score as mentioned previously. Significant American composers of film music include Wendy Carlos, Danny Elfman, Michael Giacchino, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, James Horner, James Newton Howard, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Randy Newman, Alan Silvestri, and John Williams.
Classical and popular (non-classical) genre fusion compositions also developed in the United States, starting circa 1950s, with entertainers such as Liberace and composers such as Walter Murphy bringing classical music to different genre with their arrangements, such as in Walter Murphy's disco-classical fusion piece "A Fifth of Beethoven". Many disco versions of famous classical works were arranged in the 1970s, such as works by Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Wagner, Mussorgsky, J.S. Bach, and George Gershwin.
Popular classical works are also referenced and covered frequently in the United States, also starting circa 1940s-50s, in cartoons, famously in Rhapsody Rabbit and The Cat Concerto , both using Franz Liszt's famous solo piano concert piece: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.
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Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Definitions of music vary depending on culture, though it is an aspect of all human societies, a cultural universal. While scholars agree that music is defined by a few specific elements, there is no consensus on their precise definitions. The creation of music is commonly divided into musical composition, musical improvisation, and musical performance, though the topic itself extends into academic disciplines, criticism, philosophy, and psychology. Music may be performed or improvised using a vast range of instruments, including the human voice.
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that had its peak from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott Joplin, James Scott and Joseph Lamb. Ragtime pieces are typically composed for and performed on piano, though the genre has been adapted for a variety of instruments and styles.
A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetition and variation of sections.
Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called composers. Composers of primarily songs are usually called songwriters; with songs, the person who writes lyrics for a song is the lyricist. In many cultures, including Western classical music, the act of composing typically includes the creation of music notation, such as a sheet music "score," which is then performed by the composer or by other musicians. In popular music and traditional music, songwriting may involve the creation of a basic outline of the song, called the lead sheet, which sets out the melody, lyrics and chord progression. In classical music, orchestration is typically done by the composer, but in musical theatre and in pop music, songwriters may hire an arranger to do the orchestration. In some cases, a pop or traditional songwriter may not use written notation at all and instead compose the song in their mind and then play, sing or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable sound recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written or printed scores play in classical music.
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part. However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances.
The United States' multi-ethnic population is reflected through a diverse array of styles of music. It is a mixture of music influenced by the music of Europe, Indigenous peoples, West Africa, Latin America, Middle East, North Africa, amongst many other places. The country's most internationally renowned genres are traditional pop, jazz, blues, country, bluegrass, rock, rock and roll, R&B, pop, hip-hop/rap, soul, funk, religious, disco, house, techno, ragtime, doo-wop, folk, americana, boogaloo, tejano, reggaeton, surf, and salsa, amongst many others. American music is heard around the world. Since the beginning of the 20th century, some forms of American popular music have gained a near global audience.
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Germany claims some of the most renowned composers, singers, producers and performers of the world. Germany is the largest music market in Europe, and third largest in the world.
Music of Russia denotes music produced from Russia and/or by Russians. Russia is a large and culturally diverse country, with many ethnic groups, each with their own locally developed music. Russian music also includes significant contributions from ethnic minorities, who populated the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and modern-day Russia. Russian music went through a long history, beginning with ritual folk songs and the sacred music of the Russian Orthodox Church. The 19th century saw the rise of highly acclaimed Russian classical music, and in the 20th century major contributions by various composers such as Igor Stravinsky as well as Soviet composers, while the modern styles of Russian popular music developed, including Russian rock, Russian hip hop and Russian pop.
The music of Mexico is very diverse and features a wide range of musical genres and performance styles. It has been influenced by a variety of cultures, most notably deriving from the culture of the Europeans, Indigenous, and Africans. It also sometimes rarely contains influences from Asians and Arabs, as well as from other Hispanic and Latino cultures. Music was an expression of Mexican nationalism, beginning in the nineteenth century.
Program music or programmatic music is a type of instrumental art music that attempts to musically render an extramusical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience through the piece's title, or in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music. A well-known example is Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.
Ukrainian music covers diverse and multiple component elements of the music that is found in the Western and Eastern musical civilization. It also has a very strong indigenous Slavic and Christian uniqueness whose elements were used among the areas that surround modern Ukraine.
In Italy, music has traditionally been one of the cultural markers of Italian national and ethnic identity and holds an important position in society and in politics. Italian music innovation – in musical scale, harmony, notation, and theatre – enabled the development of opera, in the late 16th century, and much of modern European classical music – such as the symphony and concerto – ranges across a broad spectrum of opera and instrumental classical music and popular music drawn from both native and imported sources.
The colonial history of the United States began in 1607 with the colonization of Jamestown, Virginia. Music of all genres and origins emerged as the United States began to form. From the Indigenous spiritual music to the African banjos, music in the United States is as diverse as its people. In New England, the music was very religious and was vitally important in the rising of American music. The migration of people southward led to the settling of the Appalachian Mountains. There many poor Europeans inhabited and brought country blues and fiddling. As music spread, the religious hymns were still just as popular. The first New England School, Shakers, and Quakers, which were all music and dance groups inspired by religion, rose to fame. In 1776, St. Cecilia Music Society opened in the Province of South Carolina and led to many more societies opening in the Northern United States. African slaves were brought to the United States and introduced the music world to instruments like the xylophone, drums and banjo. The diverse music of the United States comes from the diverse type of people who first colonized this country.
Music of Tamil Nadu has a long tradition and history going back thousands of years. Music is a very important aspect of marriage and temple festival Tamil people.
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also applies to non-Western art music. Classical music is often characterized by formality and complexity in its musical form and harmonic organization, particularly with the use of polyphony. Since at least the ninth century it has been primarily a written tradition, spawning a sophisticated notational system, as well as accompanying literature in analytical, critical, historiographical, musicological and philosophical practices. A foundational component of Western Culture, classical music is frequently seen from the perspective of individual or groups of composers, whose compositions, personalities and beliefs have fundamentally shaped its history.
Since Biblical times, music has held an important role in many Jews' lives. Jewish music has been influenced by surrounding Gentile traditions and Jewish sources preserved over time. Jewish musical contributions on the other hand tend to reflect the cultures of the countries in which Jews live, the most notable examples being classical and popular music in the United States and Europe. However, other music is unique to particular Jewish communities, such as klezmer of Eastern Europe.
A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from musical form and musical style, although in practice these terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
The Second New England School or New England Classicists is a name given by music historians to a group of classical-music composers who lived during the late-19th and early-20th centuries in New England. More specifically, they were based in and around Boston, Massachusetts, then an emerging musical center. The Second New England School is viewed by musicologists as pivotal in the development of an American classical idiom that stands apart from its European ancestors.
In Western classical music tradition, Lied is a term for setting poetry to classical music to create a piece of polyphonic music. The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German, but among English and French speakers, lied is often used interchangeably with "art song" to encompass works that the tradition has inspired in other languages as well. The poems that have been made into lieder often center on pastoral themes or themes of romantic love.
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