Richard Crawford

America's Musical Life

A History

The fascinating story of music in the United States, from the sacred music of its earliest days to the jazz and rock that enliven the turn of the millennium.

America's Musical Life: A History tells the fascinating story of music in the United States, from the sacred music of its earliest days to the jazz and rock that enliven the turn of the millennium. Beginning with the music of Native Americans and continuing with traditions introduced by European colonizers and Africans brought here as slaves, the book reveals how this bountiful heritage was developed and enhanced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to produce the music we hear today.

As author Richard Crawford points out, American musical activity has taken place in three spheres: the traditional (folk music), which emphasizes continuity and the preservation of community custom; the popular, which seeks most of all to find paying audiences; and the classical (Western art music), which places priority on the musical works themselves. We observe American music making in each of these spheres and see, for the first time, how they have continually crossed over, interacted, and combined to shape the rich tapestry of sounds of the twenty-first century. Most important, the narrative is always set in its proper historical context—we cannot, for instance, truly understand Civil War music without knowing the social and political factors that precipitated the conflict. In juggling political, social, and musical history, the author strikes a happy balance between general background and specific accounts of individual composers, performers, and pieces of music.

For the earliest period, America's Musical Life records activity in all domains of music. We learn of attempts by Europeans to describe the songs they heard Native Americans perform, of sacred music making among the colonists that existed side by side with secular song and dance, of Spanish Catholic missionaries who brought their own music to the New World a full century before the Pilgrims landed, of the first book printed in New England, and of the robust theater and concert life that Colonial America nourished.

The nineteenth century saw commercial interests gain a strong foothold, with parlor music making money for performers and publishers, though not always for the composer. Stephen Foster wrote songs that became wildly popular while he himself was scratching out a meager living. There were idealists, such as the quirky Anthony Philip Heinrich, who moved to the "wilds" of Kentucky; show-offs, such as the enormously talented pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk; "serious" academic composers, including John Knowles Paine at Harvard and Horatio Parker at Yale; and talented women composer/performers, including Amy Marcy Cheney, who performed and published as Mrs. H. H. A. Beach. Thrown into the mix are ethnic musics, slave songs, American musical nationalism, band music, the advent of the phonograph, Tin Pan Alley, and a host of other influences.

However wide American tastes ranged before 1900, the twentieth century offered an even broader array of musical genres, encompassing blues, jazz, musicals, movie soundtracks, folk-revival music, swing, classical music, and rock, to name just a few. Musicians discussed in this section include Charles Ives, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, the Beatles, the Roberta Martin Singers, Philip Glass—the list is almost endless.

Bringing order to this cacophony, America's Musical Life gives us a highly readable and informative account of this country's rich musical traditions.

"A highly readable and wonderful book that brings together classical, folk, and popular music. No lover of American music should be without it." —Beverly Sills, chairman, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

"In the scope of its chronology and the range of its examined musics—from the popular, the ethnic, the regional, and the vernacular to the most 'cultivated'—America's Musical Life may seem encyclopedic, but it is in no sense an encyclopedia in style or in spirit. Rather, it is a distinguished music historian's considered overview of five centuries of our richly multiple musical culture, addressed to general readers, who—when they emerge from reading the book—will be general readers no longer." —Milton Babbitt, composer, The Juilliard School, and William Shubael Conant Professor of Music Emeritus, Princeton University

"Covering everything from early hymnody to the latest hip-hop, Richard Crawford roves with an easy authority through the nation's musical life. His telling of the history of music in America is animated by his command of the social context of music making and the breadth of his musical sympathies. I cannot imagine a more engagingly written account of the country's music." —Stanley Sadie, editor, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

"This monolith is the culmination of Richard Crawford's forty years of profound, enthusiastic immersion in America's music, past and present. It is a book for the twenty-first century and beyond. It illuminates brilliantly all facets of the music and, unprecedentedly, its social, political, economic, intellectual, and multicultural contexts. It is the work of a superb scholar and master teacher who is generous with compelling perceptions of what has made American music 'sing,' communicated in crystalline prose with humanity, humility, and humor." —H. Wiley Hitchcock, Distinguished Professor of Music Emeritus, City University of New York

Richard Crawford is Hans T. David Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan. A past president of the American Musicological Society, Crawford has published ten books on American music and won numerous honors, fellowships, and awards, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

2000 / ISBN 0-393-04810-1 / 6 1/8" X 9 1/4" / 50 photographs and 15 music examples / 704 pages / MUSIC