Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - The Historical Background
  - Vernacular Styles
  - Foundations for an American Art Music
  - Music After 1945
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
Vernacular Styles
  1. Ragtime (1890s–early 1900s)

    1. Origins in the cakewalk, a strutting dance for couples used in minstrel show finales

    2. Syncopation against a regular bass rhythm, sometimes with silence on the downbeat, derived from the clapping or "patting" juba of American blacks, which itself derived from African music.

    3. Maple Leaf Rag (CHWM, ex. 22.1) by Scott Joplin (1868–1917) inspired a craze for ragtime music, used for dancing to steps such as the turkey trot, chicken glide, and foxtrot.

  2. Blues

    1. Began in the rural south before 1900

    2. Texts are laments over loss of a lover or job, or general depression

    3. Text consists of a line that repeats followed by a line that rhymes with the first.

    4. Melodies used "blue notes," flatted third, seventh, and sometimes fifth scale degrees of the major scale.

    5. Chords in the guitar, piano, or band were in European triadic harmony, eventually evolving to a pattern of tonic, subdominant, and dominant chords over a period of twelve measures (see etude, p. 547 in CHWM).

    6. An instrumentalist improvised the "breaks" at the ends of lines, like African choral responses.

    7. Example: St. Louis Blues (CHWM, ex. 22.2) by W.C. Handy (1873–1958) with Louis Armstrong on cornet

  3. Jazz

    1. Jazz evolved from ragtime and blues, ca. 1915.

    2. Improvisation on an existing tune or scheme is the essence of jazz.

    3. New Orleans jazz
      1. Players practiced group improvisation, with a counterpoint of improvised melodic lines alternating with improvised solo sections.
      2. Example: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band of the 1920s
      3. Typical ensemble consisted of cornet, clarinet, trombone, piano, banjo, and drums (see illustration p. 549, in CHWM).

    4. Big bands
      1. Developed in the 1920s for dancing in large venues.
      2. Both white and black band leaders organized big bands, based on swing of black bands.
      3. Typical instrumentation consists of sections of trumpets, trombones, and saxophones and sometimes other instruments, with a rhythm section of bass, piano, guitar, and drums.
      4. Solos were improvised but the arranger wrote down most of the song as a chart for the band.
      5. Later repertoire included more and more popular songs for solo singer with the band accompanying and embellishing.
      6. Swing developed from black bands rhythmic style of uneven interpretation of a series of equal note values.
      7. Duke Ellington (1899–1974) composed some works that were not meant for dancing, such as Mood Indigo (1930) and Concerto for Cootie (1940).

    5. Bebop
      1. Bebop or bop (1940s and 1950s) was more improvisational than big band music.
      2. Bop music was not for dancing, and included dissonances and complex rhythms.
      3. Bop demanded a lot of attention on the part of listeners.
      4. Bop recordings, such as those of Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker, have become classic.

  4. Country Music

    1. Developed in the southeast, based on traditional Anglo-American ballads and fiddle tunes

    2. Became country-and-western after record companies marketed music that combined Eastern hillbilly music with cowboy themes and manners, for example, Gene Autry's music.

    3. Singer strums the accompaniment on guitar.

    4. Bands, when used, were dominated by violins and guitars and adapted some of the practices of jazz.

    5. Nashville's Grand Ole Opry radio show promoted more conservative music, such as that of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash.

  5. Rhythm-and-Blues

    1. The post-World War II urban black counterpart to country music

    2. Small groups consisting of a solo vocalist or a vocal quartet, with keyboard, guitar, bass, and drums.

    3. The rhythmic style is more insistent than blues, with an emphasis on the second and fourth beats.

    4. Example: Hound Dog, by Willie May ("Big Mama") Thornton (1926–1984) and Elvis Presley (1935–1977).

  6. Rock-and-Roll

    1. Combined rhythmic style of rhythm-and-blues with country-and-western guitar.

    2. Launched in 1955 with Rock around the Clock by Bill Haley (1925–1981), which was featured in the film Blackboard Jungle.

    3. Elvis Presley was successful with a southern version of the amalgamation.

    4. Texts were about teenage love and sex.

    5. Instrumentation consisted of guitar for both rhythm and melody, with jazzlike rejoinders by a saxophone.

    6. The British group The Beatles sang a creative version of rock-and-roll from 1964 to 1970.

  7. Musical Comedy (Broadway musical)

    1. Stage music with the plot built around songs, vocal ensembles, and dances

    2. Most composers collaborated with the same lyricist on several productions.
      1. Richard Rodgers with Lorenz Hart, and later with Oscar Hammerstein
      2. Frederick Loewe with Alan Jay Lerner

    3. Leonard Bernstein, conductor of the New York Philharmonic, composed music for On the Town and West Side Story.

    4. Many of the songs from Broadway musicals remain standards for jazz improvisation long after the original musical is forgotten, such as Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and All the things You Are.

    5. George Gershwin incorporated aspects of musical theater in his works, and composed a folk opera, Porgy and Bess, that works as both a musical and as an opera.

© 2002 W. W. Norton & Company | Credits