Outlines:

1. New England
   
   
   1. John Knowles Paine's students help to keep New England an Important center.
      
      
   2. Self-taught Musicians were also active, for example Amy Cheney (Mrs H.H.A. Beach; 1867–1944; NAWM 140).
      
      
2. Charles Ives (1874–1954)
   
   
   1. Biographical background
      1. Studied music with his father, a bandmaster and church musician
      2. Studied at Yale with Horatio Parker and served for a time as a church organist in New Haven
      3. He worked in the insurance business after deciding he could not work with the musical establishment.
      4. His isolation allowed him to create highly original works, most of which were not performed or published in his lifetime.
      5. Most of his compositions were composed between 1890 and 1922, and public recognition came after 1930.
      6. Second Piano Sonata, Concord, Mass., 1840–60 (1916–19), is his best-known work.
         
         
   2. Conventional and unconventional elements are mingled in Ives's works.
      1. He used borrowed material for formal and expressive purposes.
         1. Borrowed melodies introduce works and then are transformed.
         2. Two or more familiar tunes appear together for humorous or shocking effects.
         3. Quotations from familiar tunes reinforce the text.
      2. Example: "They Are There!" NAWM 141
      3. He influenced younger composers by his music and writing (see vignette in CHWM).
         
         
3. Carl Ruggles (1876–1971)
   
   
   1. Composed atonal music using his own methods.
      
      
   2. Best-known composition is Sun–Treader (1926–31).
      
      
4. Henry Cowell (1897–1965)
   
   
   1. Born in California
      
      
   2. Balanced the northeastern composers' European orientation with influences from the Midwest and Asia
      
      
   3. Piano music
      1. He experimented with new effects from the grand piano.
      2. The Aeolian Harp (1923) requires the performer to strum the strings.
      3. The Banshee (1925) requires an assistant to hold the damper pedal down while the pianist plays glissandos and sometimes rubs the lower strings along their length.
      4. Tone clusters achieved by striking the keys with the fist or forearm
         
         
   4. In his later works he used folk music, fuguing tunes, and non-Western music.
      
      
   5. He published his own and others' scores in New Music, a periodical.
      
      
5. Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901–1953)
   
   
   1. Composed in Chicago in the 1920s and in New York in the 1930s
      
      
   2. Example: NAWM 142, Violin Sonata (1926)
      
      
   3. Collaborated with folklorists and published American folksongs.
      
      
6. Edgard Varèse (1883–1965)
   
   
   1. Born in France and moved to New York in 1915
      
      
   2. Amériques (1918–21) uses fragmentary melodies and loose structures in the tradition of Debussy, but anticipates his later interest in sound masses.
      
      
   3. Other works use masses of sound and unusual timbres (CHWM, ex. 22.3).
      
      
7. Aaron Copland (1900–1990)
   
   
   1. Studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris
      
      
   2. His early works use jazz idioms and dissonance, for example, Music for the Theater (1925).
      
      
   3. His later works reflect his desire to appeal to a wider audience.
      1. Simpler, diatonic harmonies
      2. Traditional songs, such as Mexican folksongs in El Salón México (1936) and cowboy songs in the ballets, Billy the Kid (1938) and Rodeo (1942)
         
         
   4. Appalachian Spring (1944) was written as a ballet for a small group of instruments but was arranged as an orchestral suite.
      1. NAWM 143, 'Tis the Gift to be Simple variations
      2. The wide spacing of chords and open fifths and octaves suggest country fiddling.
         
         
   5. Many of his later works do not have programs, and he adopted some features of twelve-tone technique.
      
      
8. Other American Composers
   
   
   1. Roy Harris (1898–1979) was a more self-conscious nationalist
      1. Some of his works use folk themes, such as the choral Folk Song Symphony (1940).
      2. He portrays the American West through modal melodies and transparent counterpoint.
         
         
   2. Virgil Thomson (1896–1989)
      1. He studied with Nadia Boulanger and admired Satie's playfulness, directness, and simplicity
      2. He set Gertrude Stein's libretto, Four Saints in Three Acts (1928), with a tongue-in-cheek mix of Protestant hymns, patriotic tunes, and other types of music (see vignette in CHWM).
      3. The Mother of Us All (1947) (CHWM, ex. 22.4)
         1. Resulted from another collaboration with Gertrude Stein
         2. Based on the life of suffragist Susan B. Anthony
         3. Uses repetitive stripped-down triadic accompaniments.
            
            
   3. William Grant Still (1895–1978)
      1. Afro-American Symphony (1931), NAWM 144, incorporates blues in its first movement.
      2. The third movement incorporates banjo accompaniment.
         
         
   4. Florence Price (1888–1953) composed music incorporating elements of her African-American heritage, for example, Piano Concerto in One Movement (1934) and the First Symphony (1931).
      
      
   5. Most American composers blended European style with American elements.
      1. American subjects, for example, American Festival Overture (1939) by William Schuman (1910–1992) and his William Billings Overture (1943)
      2. Ulysses Kay (b. 1917) is subtly nationalistic.
      3. Howard Hanson (1894–1976) was an avowed neo-Romantic.
      4. Walter Piston (1894–1976) composed in a neo-Classic idiom, as in his Third Symphony (1948).