America's Own Avant-Garde movement

Perhaps the best-known American composer during the war was John Alden Carpenter.⁶ He studied with Paine and went to Europe to further study with Edward Elgar.John Alden Carpenter Being able to compete with the European Avant-Garde was the only answer to calm down the uproar on how to create an American identity. Carpenter tried to “fuse together the many diverse racial elements” through song and his music shows his interest in ragtime and jazz. This fusion is evident in his Piano Concertino that was premiered by the Chicago Symphony on March 3, 1916. He described it as “a light-hearted conversation between the piano and orchestra,” the Concertino has touches of jazz and Spanish rhythms.⁷ His interest in diversity led Carpenter to write the song cycle, Gitanjali, in 1914 based on texts by the Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore.⁸ In one of the songs, “The Day is No More,” the lyrics express a world newly at war: “The shadow is upon the earth…In the lonely lane/There is no passer-by… I know not, if I shall come back home.” During the first half of 1916, Carpenter set five Chinese poems translated by Herbert Giles and named the song cycle, Watercolors: Four Chinese Tone Poems. Perhaps his interest in Asian culture was sparked by the French Impressionist music concurrently produced by Debussy and Ravel across the Atlantic. After America declared war, Carpenter urged John Philip Sousa to train young bandsmen at the Great lakes Naval Training Center in May 1917.⁹ It did not take long before Carpenter was assigned to the National Committee on Army and Navy Camp Music and tasked to standardized the songbooks used for training the soldiers.¹⁰ Carpenter’s main goals were efficiency and unity among the soldiers and not about the aesthetics. He tells a reporter,

What we are working on is simply the idea of mass singing among the soldiers and sailors as a stimulus to military efficiency. We are not interested in the question of music as an art or music as a recreation…. What we are trying to do is to help create a spirit and maintain a spirit that will help win the war.¹¹

He further elaborates that he intended to “fuse together the many diverse racial elements” of the army through song and notes that the war would bring forth naturally the emergence of American music.

As a member of the Committee, Carpenter was tasked to standardize lyrics for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Following the idea to create a unique American style, CarpenterCover for the Star Spangled Banner Service edition along with Spalding and the other members of the Commission intentionally did not consider “historic authenticity, for the simple reason that the American people have no interest whatever in ‘authenticity’ and will proceed to sing the song the way they are used to singing it regardless of every document that can be produced to the contrary.”¹² The “Service Version” of the “Star-Spangled Banner” the Committee produced was published by Oliver Ditson Co. with a notice that the minutes of the committee’s deliberation can be found at the University of Wisconsin.¹³ Carpenter’s compositional style also turned to practical considerations. America was now at war and Carpenter obligingly adjusted his work and composed two wartime popular songs: “The Home Road” and “Khaki Sammy.”¹⁴ With their march-like rhythm, these songs were popular among soldiers. Carpenter also composed two other lesser known wartime songs: “The Lawd is Smilin’ through the Do” and “Berceuse de Guerre.” Both set in a lullaby mood, “Berceuse” tried to emphasize America’s connection with France by setting the song in French and using the folk lullaby “Dodo, l’enfant do” as a recurrent refrain.¹⁵

Although Carpenter tried to recreate the American urban scene in his music for the jazz ballet, Krazy Kats, in 1921, he held on dearly to his early training in Classical repertoire. This classical European compositional style made it difficult for him to set himself apart from his European counterparts.

The diversity at home mentioned by Spalding in his 1918 article also implied that America was at a disadvantage compared to Europe because it did not have a single folksong or dance tradition to derive from. This led some composers to look outside America for inspiration. During this time, nothing was more influential in the arts than the ongoing European avant-garde and in order to be accepted among social circles, composers were faced with the question of either going against the popular avant-garde or joining them altogether. Instead of going against the grain, few American composers chose to join them.

Among those composers was Charles Griffes. Educated in Germany, Griffes’ early works such as Symphonische Phantasie bear influences of Wagner and German Romanticism. However, in 1911, he started to turn away from the German style and opted for French Impressionism instead. One can hear exotic pentatonic scales in hisCharles Griffes Five Poems of Ancient China and Japan Op.10 composed in November 1916 and 1917.¹⁶ There is no record of Griffes composing anything extravagantly reflective of the American war effort, however his three sets of children’s pieces for piano published in 1918 under the pseudonym “Arthur Tomlinson” showcases patriotic songs including “Yankee Doodle,” “Marching through Georgia,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and “Dixie.” By not composing major works to support the war effort, Griffes may have had mixed feelings for the war. After all, his major work, De profundis written in 1915 in a German Wagnerian style ran contrary to popular public opinion. The piece seems to have a brooding feeling reminiscent of his early works. Some scholars have coined the piece as Griffes’ “tribute to Wagner.”¹⁷ Griffes died in 1920 after succumbing to the Spanish influenza.¹⁸

Several American female composers were active during the war and based their works on European idioms. Among them was Mary Howe, who published Old English Lullaby (1913) and Somewhere in France (1918), Marion Bauer, a family friend of Griffes, wrote with peculiar dissonances and rarely ventured into tonality. Bauer would later write the serialist textbook Twentieth Century Music in 1933.¹⁹ Another female composer was Amy BeachAmy Beach. Counted among the Boston Six with John Knowles Paine, Beach was educated in Germany and established a career there as a composer and virtuoso pianist until the outbreak of the war. Her musical skills made her famous and she became the first American woman to achieve international acclaim with her large-scale works for orchestra.²⁰ When war broke out in Europe, she was forced to return to America in 1914 and when asked about her opinion about Germany, she made pro-German statements but immediately clarified that her loyalty to Germany was to “the musical, not the militaristic Germany.”²¹ During the war, Beach continued to write in the German-Romantic style. Although there are no references to American musical idioms such as jazz or popular songs, she did arrange her A Song of Liberty for male chorus to support the war effort. As the only major female American composer during her time, her focus seems to have been on the women’s suffrage movement. She published in 1914 an article in Mother’s Magazine entitled “Why I Chose my Profession: The Autobiography of a Woman Composer,” and another feminist article in 1918 “To the Girl who Wants to Compose.”²²

Another notable female composer was Helen Hagan. Her aspirations to be a successful musician was not only hindered by her gender but alsoHagan in 1918 by her race. Hagan was black. Despite being at odds with the racism that was prevalent during that time, Hagan’s remarkable career began at Yale where she studied composition with Horatio Parker and graduated in 1912. She became the first African American woman to earn a Yale degree.²³ She studied music further in Europe but returned to America in 1914 following the outbreak of the war. The George Peabody College for Teachers appointed her music director in 1918, but it was not long before she was called by the military to entertain black troops in France.²⁴ In early 1919, she Hagan in YMCA uniformfound herself working with other African Americans such as Joshua Blanton and Rev. Henry Proctor under the YMCA. Out of her compositions, her one-movement concerto, Piano concerto in C minor, is the only work that survives. Her style bears hallmarks of a virtuoso pianist and includes Lisztian passages and flowing chromaticism.

Mix experimentation and futurism and you get Leo Ornstein, the most daring composer in America during the early 20th century. Trained in the classical canon of Bach and Beethoven, the Russian-trained Ornstein was surprised himself when he began composing in experimental dissonant and out of touch styles that he questioned himself: "I really doubted my sanity at first. I simply said, what is that? It was so completely removed from any experience I ever had."²⁵ However, it was not long before his experimental style would follow the European avant-garde. With the acceleration of production and machinery in the early 20th century coupled with total warfare imposed by World War I, the emergence of Futurism was nothing to be surprised about.²⁶ Futurism pulled on the heartstrings of extreme avant-garde artists. At the end of the Musical Quarterly’s final issue in 1916, an article entitled “Futurist of Futurists” defended Ornstein as a “composer whose works are exciting the most intense controversy among the world’s great music critics.”²⁷ What set Ornstein apart was his use of tone clusters, a compositional technique that would be popularized by Henry CowellOrnstein in the Early 1900s and Charles Ives. Tone clusters can be heard in Ornstein’s Danse sauvage (Wild Men’s Dance) and the murky bass of Suicide in an Airplane (1913). While composed before the war, Suicide in an Airplane forecasted what was about to happen to pilots during the war. Perhaps its dissonant clusters with ragtime rhythmic inflection hinted at the formation of the Lafayette Escadrille. With war raging on in Europe, Ornstein turned to religious imagery and wrote Two Impressions of Notre-Dame from 1914 to 1915. Traces of Debussy’s “La cathédrale engloutie” can be heard by using parallel chords but Ornstein adds his own dissonant chords to convey intermittent violent outbursts. When America joined the war, Ornstein wrote Poems of 1917, a set of solo virtuosic piano compositions. The set features wartime titles such as: “No Man’s Land,” “The Sower of Despair,” “The Orient in Flanders,” and “The Wrath of the Despoiled.” The set is accompanied by Waldo Frank’s "Prelude to “Poems of 1917,” an introduction that tells of a world out of control. “The Wrath of the Despoiled” is interesting because besides giving the audience an auditory experience of war effects, Ornstein designed the piece to also have a visual effect. The piece begins with four staves that gradually goes into three and then ends with six staves. As Watkins notes, the effect is the appearance and disappearance of hands, perhaps referring to the spectral appearances of dismembered hands in the trenches.²⁸ Ornstein was also influenced by jazz and he travelled to New Orleans in 1916 to explore the genre.²⁹ His radical Cover of Ornstein's Biographycompositions and extreme avant-garde tastes made him renowned in America that a full-length biography of him by Frederick Martens was published in 1918. Martens summed up Ornstein’s style succinctly:

Leo Ornstein to many represents an evil musical genius wandering without the utmost pale of tonal orthodoxy, in a weird No-Man's Land haunted with tortuous sound, with wails of futuristic despair, with cubist shrieks and post-impressionist cries and crashes. He is the great anarch, the iconoclast.³⁰

While Ornstein was in New York, he met a young aspiring composer who would continue Ornstein’s tone cluster style. The young composer was Henry Cowell.

Born in California to an Irish immigrant father, Cowell was introduced to Irish folk songs and Celtic music early on. Cowell’s pieces often includeCowell demonstrating tone cluster piano playing references to Irish folk tunes. He was largely self-taught but acquired formal training in harmony and counterpoint at the University of California, Berkeley with Charles Seeger, Edward Stricklen, and Wallace Arthur Sabin. Cowell started using tone clusters early in his career. His Dynamic Motion written for piano in 1916 asks the performer to play massive chords with both forearms and hold down certain Straight vs. Cross strung pianos. Notice the direction of strings.keys to emphasize the piano’s overtones. Not only was Cowell exploring new harmonies, but he was also exploring the new design and technology of the piano. Many pianos in the early 20th century were converted to cross-strung designs to economize space.³¹ By cross-stringing a piano, harmonies blend more smoothly and there are no timbral differences in register. Thus, the sound is homogenized. Applying Cowell’s idea of letting certain strings vibrate by holding certain keys down, overtones are allowed to vibrate, thereby producing a ghost-like sound. Cowell soon returned to California and scored the music for the theosophical opera, The Building of Bamba, an Irish-themed mythological opera. The prelude, “The Tides of Manaunaun,” would become Cowell’s most famous and widely performed work.³²

 

Another contemporary of Cowell and perhaps the most famous composer of today with a vivid description of the war wasCharles Ives in 1913 Charles Ives. Educated at Yale, Ives studied with Horatio Parker. Parker favored traditional music training and oftentimes assigned Ives to set German texts to original songs.³³ Thus, the insurance salesman turned composer gained his first encounter with music with German repertoire. Ives’ first direct reaction to the war was triggered when the Lusitania was sunk on May 7, 1915. Ives wrote in his diary:

 

Everybody who came into the office, whether they spoke about the disaster or not, showed a realization of seriously experiencing something. (That it meant war is what the faces said, if the tongues didn’t.) Leaving 346 / The United States of America the office and going uptown about six o’clock, I took the Third Avenue “L” at Hanover Square Station. As I came on the platform, there was quite a crowd waiting for the trains, which had been blocked lower down, and while waiting there, a hand-organ or hurdy-gurdy was playing in the street below. Some workmen sitting on the side of the tracks began to whistle the tune, and others began to sing or hum the refrain. . . . The hand-organ man wheeled the organ nearer to the platform and kept it up fortissimo (and the chorus sounded out as though every man in New York must be joining in it). Then the first train came in and everybody crowded in, and the song gradually died out, but the effect on the crowd still showed. Almost nobody talked—the people acted as though they might be coming out of a church service. In going uptown, occasionally little groups would start singing or humming the tune. Now what was the tune? It wasn’t a Broadway hit, it wasn’t a musical comedy air, it wasn’t a waltz tune or a dance tune or an opera tune or a classical tune, or a tune that all of them probably knew. It was (only) the refrain of an old Gospel Hymn that had stirred many people of past generations. It was nothing but—In the Sweet Bye and Bye. It wasn’t a tune written to be sold, or written by a professor of music— but by a man who was but giving out an experience.³⁴

Later photos of Hanover square train station platform The effect was overwhelming for Ives that he set out to compose From Hanover Square North at the End of a Tragic Day the People Again Arose. Ives begins the piece with a reverent-sounding “Te Deum” followed by imitations and fragmented use of the melody of “In the Sweet Bye and Bye.” Using “In the Sweet Bye and Bye” not only serves to recreate what Ives heard on the train platform, but also functions as a gospel funeral hymn. The hymn promises that “the Father waits over the way, to prepare us a dwelling place” and concludes with a refrain: “In the Sweet Bye and Bye, We shall meet on the beautiful shore” may be taken as a response to the shipwreck as well as the imagery of a distant shore representing the future destination of American soldiers.³⁵ The attack on the Lusitania fanned anti-German flames in America. For Ives, the simple train platform at Hanover Square became the centerpiece for people to unite and express their reactions as a community.

Ives’ songs composed during the war strive to evoke nostalgia and capture American life. Ives infused his background with a mosaic of popular tunes associated to the main theme of the song. For instance, in “The Things Our Fathers Loved” composed in 1917, Ives meshes together “In the Sweet Bye and Bye,” “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” and “On the Banks of the Wabash.” Though these pieces often alternate freely between tonality and atonality, traditional and experimental, the folk song quotations are clearly heard. Ives would also do something similar with military tunes. American political rhetoric 1916 was increasingly patriotic and Ives followed suit by composing the first two movements of Three Places in New England and three of the four movements of the Holidays Symphony.³⁶ These pieces feature locales that have strong connections to military significance and sometimes blended with Ives’ own life. The first movement of Three Places in New England, “The ‘St. Gaudens’ in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment),” memorializes Colonel Robert Shaw, a fallen Union officer in the Civil War. Shaw led the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the first all-black regiment to serve in the Union Army.³⁷ Using Civil War imagery, Ives connects the present conflict in Europe to the issue of Liberty, a key word that Ives uses in the song to signify nationalism. For Ives, Liberty is what sets America apart from Europe. The use of Liberty is a common motif in Ives’ wartime songs. The word liberty was also used to promote pro-war sentiments during the war effort. In “St. Gaudens,” Ives paraphrases African American spirituals and patriotic songs as a way to create a uniquely American style.³⁸ The second song, “Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Military band on paradeConnecticut,” celebrates the site of a Revolutionary War battle. Ives infuses this song with more patriotic songs to create an atmosphere of Independence Day celebrations. It is interesting to note how Ives lets two songs blend into one another and in different keys in order to recreate the experience of attending a parade and listening to two different marching bands playing different songs and in different keys. The simultaneity of playing in two different keys evokes Ives’ experience of how no sooner one marching band had begun moving away from the listener when the next marching band started marching towards him.³⁹ Later on, Ives writes an unexpected dissonant chord at the end of the Star-Spangled Banner. Writing before America’s entry into the war, Ives perhaps writes a dissonance at the end of a patriotic song to question the American public on what they thought of the European conflict. Was there any merit in fighting for nationalism in Europe when their countries were not founded on the constitutional democratic principle of liberty?

In Holidays Symphony, each movement memorializes military victories from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Marinated in quotations from military tunes, “Decoration Day” and “The Fourth of July” put together Ives’ memories of his childhood from the past and the resurgence of American military identity in the face of the present conflict. The unmistakable marks of conflicting emotions of patriotism and tragedy are just some hallmarks of Ives’ music composed right after America entered the war. His first response was to write three war-based songs that became part of his 114 Songs Collection: “Tom Sails Away,” “The Things Our Father Loved,” and “In Flanders Fields.” “In Flanders Fields” proved to be the more famous of the three songs. Premiered on April 15, 1917 during a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for the managers of Ives’ insurance firm, “In Flanders Fields” again collaged patriotic songs and set John McCrae’s poem of the same name to music.⁴⁰ Numerous composers would follow this idea and fifteen other composers would set McCrae’s text to music by 1919.⁴¹ Ives seesaws between tragedy and heroic feelings in the piece. At the start, dissonant intervals in the low register of the piano provide an ominous feeling, while heroic elements introduce hymn tunes. “Tom Sails Away” and “The Things Our Fathers Loved” follow the same idea of “In Flanders Fields.”⁴² While these songs are sentimental and perhaps reflect Ives’ initial pacifism, Ives would compose only a month later on May 30, 1917, “He Is There!”⁴³ This was an updated version similar to his earlier “Sneak Thief.” Musical quotations again form the core of “He Is There!” and one can hear dashes of popular tunes including, “Tenting Tonight,” “Battle Cry of Freedom,” and “Marching through Georgia.” Just like in previous songs, Ives inserts references to well-known wartime songs to recall the country’s history. Ives provides an auditory slideshow of American history from the Revolutionary War with “Yankee Doodle” to the War of 1812 with the “Star-Spangled Banner” and the Civil War with “Dixie.” Ives also quotes the rhythm of the popular bugle-like opening of George Cohan’s “Over There.”

While Ives continued to compose war-time songs, the over-aged forty-four-year old Ives made the surprising decision to enlist on September 4, 1918 as an ambulance driver but was rejected because of his poor health and age.⁴⁴ His decision seems to have been more for show rather than practical. Ives then zealously worked on Liberty Loan drives and joined celebrities to support the war effort.⁴⁵

Perhaps the most famous work for piano Ives composed was the Piano Sonata No. 2 also known as the Concord Sonata. Although the piece was not to be published until 1920, most of the sonata was composed between 1915 and 1919.⁴⁶ Thus, most of it was composed during and immediately after the war. It is no surprise that Ives infuses the sonata with American folk tunes and patriotic songs just as he did for his other wartime pieces.⁴⁷ Just like his other wartime pieces, he adds against-the-grain elements in the sonata. First, by entitling it after Concord, Massachusetts, Ives recalls the “shot heard ‘round the world,” the first armed confrontation between the colonists and the British troops on April 9, 1775 during the Revolutionary War. This “shot” also recalls the opening shot of World War I when Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated. Second, the subtitles are named after the leaders of the American Transcendentalism movement. Combining ideas from German Romanticism and Indian beliefs, Transcendentalism was considered revolutionary in Christian America.⁴⁸ By referencing Transcendentalism, Ives was perhaps showing his pacifist side by associating himself with Thoreau who advocated nonviolent resistance in his book Civil Disobedience (1849). Third, Ives quotes notably the first four notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. He consideredThe world-famous Beethoven motif Beethoven’s motif as a “human faith melody” that stands as the core of the sonata.⁴⁹ Viewed in the context of high anti-German propaganda, the Beethoven motif may imply that Ives still maintains ties to European music and he is not confident in entrusting America with full autonomy over its own musical culture.

Two composers stand out as taking cues from pure American soil: Arthur Farwell and Frederick Converse. Both composers worked with the US government to promote singing in the camps during the war.

Arthur Farwell Arthur Farwell began his musical career by teaching music at Cornell University from 1899 to 1901. It was here that he discovered Alice Fletcher’s Indian Story and Song from North America.⁵⁰ Farwell found that he could use these songs as a medium to create unique American music that would set America apart from European traditions. His interests in Native American music culminated with the publication of his American Indian Melodies. Unsuccessful in finding a publisher willing to publish his book, Farwell established his ownCover of Farwell's American Indian Melodies Wa-Wan press, an Omaha Indian phrase meaning “to sing to someone” and self-published his book.⁵¹ In his 1907 essay, “The Struggle Toward a National Music,” Farwell declares his opinion about creating American music:

The solution can take place only along one line; that is, a line which brings the composer closer to his Folk, to his own people.

He suggests that the American composer “may draw upon the qualities of Indian and negro songs.”⁵² He was also influenced by Hispanic music and later on published Spanish Songs of Old California with Charles Lumnis in 1925. Creating a grassroots campaign against European music, Farwell was confident that “national American music” would be easily recognized “by nothing else than its freedom of manner and spirit.”⁵³ From 1910 through 1920, Farwell was involved in establishing community music projects.⁵⁴ Perhaps these experiences prompted the U.S. Army to hire Farwell to serve as the Army’s first consultant on group singing.⁵⁵ Shortly after, Farwell’s success in Army group singing led him to proclaim the “international democracy through song,” as reported by the Los Angeles Times with the heading “Kaiser’s Defeat by Singing Army Seen.” Farwell continued his community singing projects outside the army and led public singing in local movie theaters.⁵⁶ After the war, Farwell produced a Fourth of July pageant, The Chant of Victory and continued to lecture around the country advocating community singing and how it could shape American musical identity. Merging his interests in community singing and American nature, Farwell led community singing in the Hollywood hills as early as 1919. This was the precursor of the Hollywood Bowl.⁵⁷

Frederick Converse, another composer influenced by homebred American tradition, studied traditional European repertoire with Paine at Harvard. However, it would not takeFrederick Converse long before he would turn away from traditional repertoire and write his first cantata, The Peace Pipe, in 1915. The text comes from Henry Longfellow’s Hiawatha, which tells the story of Gitche Manitou the Mighty and the peace pipe. The thematic material, soaked in whole tones, sounds Indian-like.⁵⁸ On September 5, 1916, Converse composed Ave Atque Vale (Hail and Farewell). In line with the ongoing casualties in Europe, Converse writes in the dedication that the work is intended to be “a subjective expression of the feelings of one who bids farewell at the call of duty to all that is infinitely loved and cherished.”⁵⁹

Shortly after, Converse enlisted in the Massachusetts State Guard on August 2, 1917 and was commissioned as lieutenant of the Thirteenth Infantry Regiment, Third Brigade. Converse was called to New York in December 1917 to attend a meeting of the National Committee on Army and Navy Camp Music. At this time, discussion on designing the pocket-sized song book, Army Songbook, for the military was in the works. In addition, Converse was also involved in reorganizing military bands for the Committee. Towards the end of Cover for Converse's Answer of the Stars the war, the Commission on Training Camp Activities assigned John Alden Carpenter and Converse to complete an orchestral arrangement of the "Star-Spangled Banner." Converse composed several patriotic songs in 1918 and his two most popular songs published at this time were The Service Stars Are Shining and Under the Stars and Stripes. Just like Farwell, Converse was also actively organizing and conducting community choruses during the war.⁶⁰ His second cantata, The Answer of the Stars, was written for the Harvard Alumni Association commencement day on June 19, 1919.⁶¹ The dedication bears a post-war message: “In Honor to American Soldiers and Sailors of the Great War.” By the summer of 1919, Converse returned to orchestral composition with his Symphony in C minor. The symphony bears the wounds of post-war America. In his program note he states that: “The two main themes of the first movement, suggesting the high resolve of the youths and the tenderer feminine traits of the maidens, the wives and the mothers, move through the whole work, like characters through the varied situations of a drama.”⁶² Converse connects with the emotion of young Americans during the stressful war years. Nothing escaped the war.

William Grant Still was the first African American to conduct a professional American symphony orchestra and the first to have aWilliam Grant Still symphony performed by a major orchestra.⁶³ Though he received traditional training in counterpoint at Oberlin College, he saw more opportunities in pursuing American jazz than following European models. In 1916, Still worked as an arranger for W.C. Handy and successfully published Handy’s Hesitating Blues.⁶⁴ When America joined the war, Still served in the U.S. Navy.⁶⁵ Still continued his music career after the war and found himself working with other prominent black musicians such as Eubie Blake and James Reese Europe. Recognizing his wide-ranging talents as an arranger and composer, Paul Whiteman hired him as his arranger in 1929. Still achieved recognition that he caught the attention of Aaron Copland. Copland included him in his list of “the American school of composers of our own day.”⁶⁶ The achievements of African-American composers during the World War I whether on the battlefield or at home fueled their self-confidence and would place into motion a new generation of black artists in the 1920s now known as the Harlem Renaissance. They were determined to create a positive change in the arts and their contributions to jazz still influence modern-day audiences.

 

 

 

 

Notes:

6. Watkins, p. 336
7. From Grove article on Carpenter
8. Pollack, p. 93
9. Bierley, p. 77
10. See the “Training the Soldiers” section for more information.
11. See Pollack, Skyscraper Lullaby, 158.
12. Pollack, Skyscraper Lullaby, 159.
13. At the top of the first page of the printed score the other members of the Committee of Twelve were identified as “John Alden Carpenter, Frederick Converse, Wallace Goodrich, and Walter R. Spalding, representing the War Department Commission on Training Camp Activities; Peter W. Dykema, Hollis Dann, and Osbourne McConathy, representing the Music Supervisors’ National Conference; C. C. Birchard, Carl Engel, William Arms Fisher, Arthur Edward Jonstone, and E. W. Newton, representing Music publishers.”
14. Pollack, p. 159
15. Debussy also used this folk lullaby in his “Jardins sous la pluie” from Estampes and “Rondes de printemps” from Images. Watkins provides an excellent analysis of the lyrics. See Watkins, p. 339
16. It is reported that Griffes was associated to Michio Ito and Roshanara, two Japanese dancers, and Ratan Devi, a British singer of Hindu folk-songs. Perhaps Griffes was following the avant-garde of the day – Impressionism. Bauer, p.369
17. Meister, p.59
18. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/griffes-on-record
19. Grove article on Bauer
20. Beach first became successful in 1892 with the premiere of her Mass in E-flat.
21. Fried Block 1998, p. 196
22. Mother’s Magazine, 11/Feb (1914), 7–8 and The Etude, 35 (1918), 695 respectively
23. Schiff, Judith. "A banner year for black students". The Yale Alumni Magazine. Retrieved 2018-09-23
24. Grove article on Hagan
25. Broyles and Von Glahn (2007), p. 4.
26. Founded in 1909 by Filippo Marinetti in Italy, Futurism emphasized speed, technology, and nationalism. They wanted nothing about the past and encouraged violence as a way to push their way towards originality. (Manifesto of Futurism)
27. Quoted from Watkins, p. 343
28. Watkins, p. 345
29. Broyles and Von Glahn (2007), p. 6
30. Martens, p. 9
31. The first patented use in grand pianos in the United States was by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859. (Steinway
by Ronald Ratcliffe, Stuart Isacoff). In the late 19th century, cross-stringing gradually took the place of straight-stringing, in which all the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard. Thus, the strings do not overlap.
32. Hicks (2002), p. 85.
33. Watkins, p.346
34. Charles Ives, Memos, ed. John Kirkpatrick (New York, 1972), 92–93. Although Ives wrote three war songs: “Sneak Thief,” “Marching Through Georgia,” and an unnamed sketch with quotations from “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Reveille,” these songs were more of a protest against Germany’s violation of Belgium’s neutrality rather than a direct call to arms.
35. Magee, p. 120; Watkins points out that had Ives completed “Hanover Square” earlier, the imagery of the distant shore could have been used as a propaganda tool for pro-war activists. Watkins, p. 348; Ives only finished the piece in 1919 and fully orchestrated it in the 1920s.
36. Magee, p. 125
37. "54th Massachusetts Memorial on the Boston Common." Gettysburg Daily. 2010-08-12.
38. One can hear the strains of Massa's in the Cold Ground and Old Black Joe, and the patriotic Civil War songs Marching Through Georgia and The Battle Cry of Freedom.
39. Quotations include The British Grenadiers; Marching Through Georgia; The Girl I Left Behind; Arkansas Traveler; Massa's in the Cold Ground; The Battle Cry of Freedom; Yankee Doodle; Columbia, Gem of the Ocean; Hail, Columbia; Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!; The Star-Spangled Banner; and interestingly, Richard Wagner's The Ride of the Valkyries.
40. Quotations from “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” “America,” “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” and “Reveille” can be heard “In Flanders Fields.” However, the melodies were well hidden from plain sight that neither the soloist, McCall Lanham, nor his accompanist could make “head or tail of it.” Ives, Memos, 271; and Frank Rossiter, Charles Ives and His America New York, 1975), 153 –154
41. McCrae’s text was set in 1918 by at least eight composers including John Philip Sousa, and in 1919 by fifteen composers including Arthur Foote. See Vogel, World War I Songs, 195.
42. Ives exploits his idea of clashing ideologies in World War I by writing conflicting genres. In “The Things Our Fathers Loved,” the hymn tune “In the Sweet Bye and Bye” is heard clearly in the vocal line but the piano accompaniment plays sweeping chromatic arpeggio lines reminiscent of late-Romantic German repertoire; “Tom Sails Away” and “The Things Our Fathers Loved” were lithographed. This may imply Ives’ interest to have these two pieces distributed widely to support the war effort. Magee, p.131
43. Perlis, p.224
44. Magee, p. 138-140; Ives’ decision to enlist seems vague knowing that his own frail health would not allow him to serve in the battlefield. Magee offers the explanation that perhaps Ives wanted to join Walter Damrosch in setting up a training school for American musicians in France. Damrosch was funded by the YMCA and charged to train American and French bandleaders and bandsmen in a music school in Chaumont, France.
45. Watkins, p. 351
46. Magee, p. 132
47. Some of the American tunes heard are "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean," "Loch Lomond," "Missionary Chant," and "Massa's in De Cold Ground." However, there are traces of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde and Lohengrin, and Debussy's Children's Corner.
48. Versluis, Arthur (2001), The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance, Oxford University Press p.3
49. Magee, p. 134
50. LOC article on Farwell https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200035729/
51. Levy, p. 25; However, G. Schirmer agreed to publish the score in 1914.
52. Farwell, pp.567 and 558
53. Levy, p. 65
54. Farwell was appointed Supervisor of Municipal Concerts in New York by Mayor William J. Gaynor in 1910 and composed music for community pageants. In 1916, he co-founded the New York Community Chorus (the first community chorus in the country), the first of its kind.
55. LOC article on Farwell https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200035729/
56. Levy, p. 66
57. Levy, p. 71
58. Garofalo, p. 62
59. Quoted by Garofalo, p. 63
60. Garofalo, p. 63
61. Garofalo, p. 63
62. Quoted by Garofalo, p. 65
63. Kuhl, pp. 200-204
64. Grove article on Still
65. Smith, p. 70
66. Copland, 1933, 90