On 26 May 2007 at 11:47, Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote: > On 26 May 2007 at 10:33, Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote: > > > In the mid-to-late 1800s American symphony > > orchestras and opera companies were sprouting everywhere; every > last > small town had its Opera House which was routinely sold out > when a > Jenny Lind or Louis Moreau Gottschalk came through. > > Both of these would correspond to today's POPULAR music. At the time > they were not thought of as "art" music at all. > > Perhaps, perhaps not. Liszt
Early Liszt, in his virtuoso days, would be popular music. As would all of the velocity school pianists, for instance. > himself described Gottschalk as the > Alcibiades of the Piano and Gottschalk was also called - routinely - > the American Chopin. Chopin was popular music. > The performing Gottschalk was known as a > "concert pianist" - not as anything less; I think rather than > describing him as a pop musician of his day, he was probably a little > more accurately the 19th-century equivalent of a crossover musician. > His music, while structurally for the most part quite simple, > certainly is as demanding as Schumann; the fact that he was swarmed > and swooned over is really not his own fault. I think he was > integral in popularizing an aspect of what truly must be thought of as > 'classical' music; is he today thought of as a pop composer or a > 'classical' one? While his music lacks the depth of - oh, say, any > number of DWM composers, I feel the only real claim to his being > described as a popular musician was simply in the fact that he > popularIZED piano concerts. A huge number of his works became popular chestnuts. There were actually two different kinds of pieces that he wrote, the virtuoso pieces, and the more popular ones. His concerts were a mix of these, but his popular pieces were very widely published and played. That's popular music, to me. Mozart wrote some popular music, too. > Jenny Lind - oh, come on! Royal Swedish Opera for years, Agathe in > Freischutz, Alice in Robert le Diable, so many other roles; > association with Mendelssohn, her great love of Bach and performance > of so many of his oratorios - the fact that PT Barnum wildly promoted > her in her 93 (count 'em) American concerts doesn't mean she was a > popular performer in our current sense of that adjective; she was > popularizing classical music on her American tour! By singing a lot of popular music, not excerpts from the operas (though those were included). > Her rep on those > concerts was eclectic (with German conductor/composer Julius Benedict > and Italian baritone Giovanni Belletti as demanded by Lind), but > contained (besides American popular songs,) You're making my point! > opera arias and other > 'classical' rep as selected by Lind - who was proud of her standing as > a serious artist. Does the fact that popular-entertainment maven > Barnum produced her concerts make them pop concerts? No, but the fact that they were programmed like our modern "pops" concerts should tell you something. And that they were attended by the general public. > Nope. Again: > she was popularizing eclectic repertoire - with emphasis on her > serious 'classical' training. A crossover artist, perhaps, but a > popular entertainer - in the way we use that term today? No. A > classically-trained, classical artist performing an eclectic rep to > throngs - and introducing many 19th century Americans to classical > music in the process. It was popular entertainment. Keep in mind that in Italy, Rossini and Verdi were popular music within their own lifetimes. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
