At 6:01 PM -0400 3/24/08, Stu McIntire wrote:
> > My theory (and I really miss being able to discuss it with Andrew) is
> that the return to simplicity and melody in the early 20th century was
> in reaction to the increasing complexity of late romantic harmony, and
> that 20th century American popular music was and is the result of that
> stylistic change, while all the 20th century experimental stylistic
> movements are simply an unnatural late outgrowth of post-romantic
> excess which survive precisely because academia has nourished and
> protected them from the influence of public opinion.
John, I'm so used to the narrative of the late 19th century breakdown of
tonality leading to free atonality then on to serialism that I don't even
know what return to simplicity and melody in the *early* 20th C you are
referring to. What composers/salient pieces are you thinking of?
Sorry. I thought I'd made that clear. I see the return to melody in
the virtual universal acceptance of the American popular music that
had been gestating during the late 19th century in the North American
heartland, pretty much out of contact with European developments. It
was NOT folk music, although it grew out of an amalgam of folk musics
brought here by successive waves of immigrants. I don't pretend to
find it within the established academic composers, but rather among
those who actually made a living from the music they composed.
Andrew disagrees with me because the big popular song publishers were
on the East Coast, and a couple of studies have cited that as a
reason that there WAS interaction between European developments--at
least those known in England--and those in the U.S. and Canada. But
whichever way you look at it, American popular music IS the important
music of the 20th century, and it is the music that future
generations of musicologists and sociologists will be studying
because it was music that touched the lives of entire populations and
brought change to entire cultures. In case nobody's noticed, melody
and common practice functional harmony is alive and well and has been
throughout the 20th century in popular music, jazz, and musical
theater.
Your mileage may very well differ.
John
--
John R. Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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