Classical music in America : a history of its rise and fall / Joseph Horowitz.

Author/creator Horowitz, Joseph, 1948-
Format Book
Edition1st edition.
Publication InfoNew York : W.W. Norton & Co., ©2005.
Descriptionxix, 606 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm
Subjects
Music--United States. --History and criticism.

Contents Book one. "Queen of the arts": birth and growth. A tale of two cities (1893) -- Part one. Boston and the cult of Beethoven. John Sullivan Dwight, Theodore Thomas, and the slaying of the monster concerts. Patrick Gilmore's peace jubilee of 1869 ; John Sullivan Dwight and the framing of a sacred "Classical music" ; The failings of early Boston orchestras ; The triumphs of the Thomas orchestra -- Henry Higginson and the birth of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. George Henschel's enthusiasm ; Wilhelm Gericke's discipline ; Arthur Nikisch's scandalous Beethoven ; Philip Hale and Henry Krehbiel assess Dvorak in Boston -- Building a hall, choosing a conductor. Henry Higginson's high character ; He builds symphony hall ; He hires Karl Muck ; Henry Russell's Boston Opera ; Muck's arrest ; Higginson, Charles Eliot Norton, and the uses of Boston culture -- Composers and the Brahmin confinement. The problem of gentility ; The second New England school ; Amy Beach and salon culture ; George Chadwick and American realism ; Isabella Stewart Gardner, Charles Martin Loeffler, and Boston aestheticism -- Part two. New York and beyond. Anton Seidl and the sacralization of opera. American opera madness ; English-language opera ; Opera and uplift ; The Metropolitan opera, Wagnerism, and the genteel tradition reinterpreted -- Symphonic rivalry and growth. The early New York Philharmonic ; Tchaikovsky and Carnegie Hall ; Wagner at Coney Island ; The Chicago Orchestra and class warfare ; Theodore Thomas dies -- Leopold Stokowski, Gustav Mahler, Arturo Toscanini, and the gossip of the Foyer. Leopold Stokowski in Cincinnati and Philadelphia ; Gustav Mahler in New York City ; Henry Krehbiel and the critics ; Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan opera ; Arturo Toscanini's Metropolitan Opera -- Antonin Dvorak and Charles Ives in search of America. William Henry Fry and Louis Moreau Gottschalk ; Edward MacDowell's arrested development ; Antonin Dvorak and Hiawatha ; Charles Ives and transcendentalism -- Coda: music and the gilded age. "Social control," "Sacralization," and the debunking of gilded age culture ; The coming of modernism ; Arthur Farwell and musical grassroots ; In defense of nostalgia -- Book two. "Great performances": decline and fall. The great schism (1914). Part one. The culture of performance. The big three. The Toscanini cult ; David Sarnoff and NBC ; Leopold Stokowski and innovation ; Serge Koussevitzky and education -- More conductors. Frederick Stock and Fritz Reiner in Chicago ; Artur Rodzinski and George Szell in Cleveland ; Otto Klemperer in Los Angeles and New York ; Dimitri Mitropoulos in Minneapolis and New York -- The world's greatest soloists. Sergei Rachmaninoff and America ; Touring virtuosos ; Jascha Heifetz and Vladimir Horowitz ; Artur Schnabel and Rudolf Serkin ; Van Cliburn, Glenn Gould, and the OYAPs -- Opera for singers. The remoteness of the Met ; Serving Tristan and Otello ; Edward Johnson and the American Singer ; Mary Garden and opera in Chicago ; Gaetano Merola and opera in San Francisco ; The American culture of performance summarized -- Part two. Offstage participants. Serving the new audience. Babbitt and the new middle classes ; The phonograph and the decline of Hausmusik ; Music appreciation ; Arthur Judson, Columbia artists, and community concerts ; Judson and the New York Philharmonic ; Who leads taste? -- Composers on the sidelines. Aaron Copland, modernism, and populism ; Virgil thomson as critic and composer ; Roy Harris as the "White hope" ; Edgard Varese and the "Ultra-moderns" ; George Gershwin and the jazz threat ; The four streams of American music -- Leonard Bernstein and the classical music crisis. Leonard Bernstein succeeds and fails ; Orchestras succeed and fail ; Rudolf Bing at the Met ; Regional opera ; The three tenors and midcult ; Elliott Carter and the stranding of the American composer -- Postlude: post-classical music. Minimalism and postmodernism ; American mavericks ; BAM and the need for change ; Classical music in the year 2000.
Abstract This book is a pioneering history by an award-winning scholar and leading authority on American symphonic culture. The author argues that classical music in the United States is peculiarly performance- driven, and he traces a musical trajectory rising to its peak at the close of the nineteenth century and receding after World War I. He defines the decades of ascendancy as the quest for an American compositional voice, painting vivid vignettes of America's most celebrated performers and such path breaking institutions as the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. He explores a century of decline characterized by illustrious orchestras, conductors, and virtuosos, mostly foreign born, and in a final chapter he exposes a crisis of leadership and suggests new musical directions in our postmodern age. As with his acclaimed cultural histories, Horowitz here fashions a sweeping narrative--packed with personality and incident, textured by literature, sociology, and intellectual history--that freshly illuminates the American experience.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references (pages 541-567) and index.
LCCN 2004027754
ISBN0393057178 (hardcover)

Availability

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Music Music Stacks ML200 .H797 2005 ✔ Available Place Hold
Music Closed Stacks - Ask at Circulation Desk ML200 .H797 2005 ✔ Available Place Hold