VII
The principal concern of music in the twenties was the idea of a national or “typically American” school or style and, eventually, a tradition which would draw to a focus the musical energies of our country which, as Rosenfeld once said to Aaron Copland and the author, would “affirm America.” The concern was not limited to composers, and in fact it was sometimes used as a weapon against individual composers by those whose preconceived ideas of what “American” music should be did not square with the music in question. In spite of the abstract and a priori nature of this concern, it was a natural one in view of the historical circumstances.
Actually the nationalist current in our music dates back to a period considerably earlier than the twenties. Its underlying motives are as curiously varied as are its manifestations. Cultural nationalism has special aspects which, since they derive from our colonial past, may be considered as reflex actions, so to speak, of American history. American musical nationalism, too, is complex. In its earlier phases it developed gradually on the basis of a music culture which came to us from abroad. It consisted, as it were, of a deliberate search for particular picturesque elements derived for the most part from impressions received from ritual chants of the Indians or from characteristic songs of the colored people in the South; equally, it included efforts, such as MacDowell’s, to evoke impressions of the American landscape. These and similar elements strongly contributed to the renown of this sympathetic figure, and MacDowell’s name for many years was virtually identical with American music.
A different feature was furnished by a Protestant culture which in the beginning came from England, but developed a character all of its own in the English colonies, especially in New England. Against this background grew our “classic” writers and thinkers, and the character found expression in music and painting, though in the latter it is admittedly less important. Next to MacDowell the most significant figure in the American music of that time was undoubtedly Horatio Parker, who, especially in certain religious works, displayed not only a mature technique, but also a musical nature and profile which were well defined, even though they were not wholly original.
These men, however, did not represent a genuinely nationalist trend, but rather idioms which, in much more aggressive and consistent form, contributed to a nationalist current that was to become strong in the twenties. The figure and the influence of Paul Rosenfeld again comes to mind, yet the question was not so much that of an individual per se as that of a personality embodying a whole complex of reactions deriving from a new awareness of our national power, of the disillusionment of the post-War period, and of a recrudescent consciousness of Europe and European influence on the United States and the world in general.
We know the political effects of these reactions and their consequences for the world. As far as the cultural results are concerned, they led to a wave of emigration which took many of our gifted young writers, artists, and musicians to Europe, especially to Paris. It was a revulsion against the cultural situation of the United States of those years. The same reactions also produced a wave of revulsion against Europe, however, as far as music was concerned, against the domination of our music life by European musicians and European ideas, against the mentioned wave of emigration which seemed to have carried away, if but temporarily, so many young talents and therefore so much cultural energy, a revulsion, finally, against the whole complex world of Europe itself. That European world seemed exigent, disturbing. It was a world from which we had freed ourselves a century and a half earlier, but which for so many years thereafter had constituted an implicit threat to American independence, and which presented itself to American imagination as a mass of quasi-tyrannical involvements from which our ancestors had fled in order to build a new country on unsullied soil. The most pointedly American manifestations were sought for, not always in the most discriminating spirit or with the most penetrating insight as to value; and the effort was made to call forth hidden qualities from sources hitherto regarded with contempt.
The situation indicates an extremely complex movement, partly constructive and based not just on reflex impulses, and has left traces which persist in our culture. As a primary motive, it has long since been left behind; for, though it was an inevitable phase, the time arrived when it no longer satisfied our cultural needs. One may, in fact, observe the manner in which (more obvious here than in Europe since our country is so vast and the distances so great) such a movement tends to shift, also geographically, and finally to die in the provinces where it had survived for a certain period after losing its force in the cultural centers.
From such a background of reflex and impulse the facets of American musical nationalism grew. Let us distinguish three, though perhaps they are overdefined. One is the “folklorist” tendency characteristic of a group of composers of differing types, from Charles Wakefield Cadman to Charles Ives. Folklore in the United States is something different from European or Russian folklore. Here it does not involve a popular culture of ancient or legendary origin, which for centuries grew among the people and remained, as it were, anonymous; here it is something recent, less naive, and, let us say, highly specialized. It consists largely of popular songs originally bound to precise historical situations and the popularity of which, in fact, derived from their power to evoke the memory or vision of these situations—the Civil War, the life of the slaves in the South, or that of cowboys or lumberjacks in the now virtually extinct Old West—only nostalgia remained. Though these songs are in no sense lacking in character, they fail to embody a clear style; and it is difficult to see how, with their origins in a relatively sophisticated musical vocabulary, they could conceivably form the basis of a “national” style. Not only a musical, but also a sociological and psychological basis for such a style is missing. Therefore, apart from jazz—which is something else, but equally complex—folklorism in the United States has remained on a relatively superficial level, not so much for lack of attraction, but for lack of the elements necessary for expansion into a genuine style or at least into a “manner.”
Certain composers such as Henry Gilbert, Douglas Moore, and William Grant Still have made use of folklorism with success. However, even in the music of these composers the element is evocative rather than organic; and the success of their efforts seems commensurable with the degree to which the whole remains on the frankly “popular” level. The extraordinary figure of Charles Ives might be considered an exception. He certainly is one of the significant men in American music, and at the same time one of the most complex and problematical. But among the various elements of which his music consists—music which sometimes reaches almost the level of genius, but which, at other times, is banal and amateurish—the folklorist is the most problematic, the least characteristic.
Another aspect of our musical nationalism is just that evocative tendency. It makes reference to a quasi-literary type in the theater, in texts of songs and other vocal works, or to “programs” in symphonic poems. Many Americans have made use of such reference in a self-conscious manner. However, the term is used here also to refer to an effort to achieve a musical vocabulary or “style” apt, in some manner, to evoke this or that aspect of American landscape or character. Howard Hanson, for instance, in his postromantic and somewhat conventional music, has tried to establish an evocative relationship with the American past as well as with the Nordic past of his Scandinavian ancestors.