Making music modern : New York in the 1920s

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Making music modern : New York in the 1920s

Carol J. Oja

Oxford University Press, 2000

  • : pbk

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Note

Discography: p. 365-366

Includes bibliography (p. 459-467) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

ISBN 9780195058499

Description

New York City witnessed a dazzling burst of creativity in the 1920s. In this pathbreaking study, Carol J. Oja explores this artistic renaissance from the perspective of composers of classical and modern music, who along with writers, painters, and jazz musicians, were at the heart of early modernism in America. She also illustrates how the aesthetic attitudes and institutional structures from the 1920s left a deep imprint on the arts over the 20th century. Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Virgil Thomson, William Grant Still, Edgard Varese, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, Marion Bauer, Dane Rudhyar-these were the leaders of a talented new generation of American composers whose efforts made New York City the center of new music in the country. They founded composer societies-such as the International Composers' Guild, the League of Composers, the Pan American Association, and the Copland-Sessions Concerts-to promote the performance of their music, and they nimbly negotiated cultural boundaries, aiming for recognition in Western Europe as much as at home. They showed exceptional skill at marketing their work. Drawing on extensive archival material-including interviews, correspondence, popular periodicals, and little-known music manuscripts-Oja provides a new perspective on the period and a compelling collective portrait of the figures, puncturing many longstanding myths. American composers active in New York during the 1920s are explored in relation to the "Machine Age" and American Dada; the impact of spirituality on American dissonance; the crucial, behind-the-scenes role of women as patrons and promoters of modernist music; cross-currents between jazz and concert music; the critical reception of modernist music (especially in the writings of Carl Van Vechten and Paul Rosenfeld); and the international impulse behind neoclassicism. The book also examines the persistent biases of the time, particularly anti-Semitisim, gender stereotyping, and longstanding racial attitudes.

Table of Contents

An Introduction: The Modern Music Shop Enter the Moderns 1: Leo Ornstein: "Wild Man" of the 1910s 2: Creating a God: The Reception of Edgar Varese 3: The Arrival of European Modernism The Machine in the Concert Hall 4: Engineers of Art 5: Ballet Mecanique and International Modernist Networks Spirituality and American Dissonance 6: Dane Rudhyar's Vision of Dissonance 7: The Ecstasy of Carl Ruggles 8: Henry Cowell's "Throbbing Masses of Sounds" 9: Ruth Crawford and the Apotheosis of Spiritual Dissonance Myths and Institutions 10: A Forgotten Vanguard: The Legacy of Marion Bauer, Louis Gruenberg, Frederick Jacobi, and Emerson Whitmore 11: Organizing the Moderns 12: Women Patrons and Activists New World Neoclassicism 13: Neoclassicism: "Orthodox Europeanism" or Empowering Internationalism? 14: The Transatlantic Gaze of Aaron Copland 15: Virgil Thomson's "Cocktail of Culture" 16: A Quartet of New World Neoclassicists European Modernists and American Critics 17: Europeans in Performance and on Tour 18: Visionary Critics Widening Horizons 19: Modernism and "The Jazz Age" 20: Crossing Over with George Gershwin, Paul Whiteman, and the Modernists Epilogue Selected Discography
Volume

: pbk ISBN 9780195162578

Description

New York City witnessed a dazzling burst of creativity in the 1920s. In this pathbreaking study, Carol J. Oja explores this artistic renaissance from the perspective of composers of classical and modern music, who along with writers, painters, and jazz musicians, were at the heart of early modernism in America. She also illustrates how the aesthetic attitudes and institutional structures from the 1920s left a deep imprint on the arts over the 20th century. Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Virgil Thomson, William Grant Still, Edgar Varese, Henry Cowell, Leo Ornstein, Marion Bauer, George Antheil-these were the leaders of a talented new generation of American composers whose efforts made New York City the center of new music in the country. They founded composer societies-such as the International Composers' Guild, the League of Composers, the Pan American Association, and the Copland-Sessions Concerts-to promote the performance of their music, and they nimbly negotiated cultural boundaries, aiming for recognition in Western Europe as much as at home. They showed exceptional skill at marketing their work. Drawing on extensive archival material-including interviews, correspondence, popular periodicals, and little-known music manuscripts-Oja provides a new perspective on the period and a compelling collective portrait of the figures, puncturing many longstanding myths. American composers active in New York during the 1920s are explored in relation to the "Machine Age" and American Dada; the impact of spirituality on American dissonance; the crucial, behind-the-scenes role of women as patrons and promoters of modernist music; cross-currents between jazz and concert music; the critical reception of modernist music (especially in the writings of Carl Van Vechten and Paul Rosenfeld); and the international impulse behind neoclassicism. The book also examines the persistent biases of the time, particularly anti-Semitisim, gender stereotyping, and longstanding racial attitudes.

Table of Contents

  • ENTER THE MODERNS
  • THE MACHINE IN THE CONCERT HALL
  • SPIRITUALITY AND AMERICAN DISSONANCE
  • MYTHS AND INSTITUTIONS
  • NEW WORLD NEOCLASSICISM
  • EUROPEAN MODERNISTS AND AMERICAN CRITICS
  • WIDENING HORIZONS

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