126
SPOTLIGHT ON HISTORYSPOTLIGHT ON HISTORY
Fry and Bristow Defend American Music
W
hen Gottschalk arrived in New York in
1853, that city was about to be caught
up in a heated debate over the merits
of American-made music. A principal voice in the
debate would be William Henry Fry (1831–64), whose
Leonora, an Italian-style grand opera in English, had
premiered in Philadelphia in 1845. After eight years
in Paris (roughly the same years that Gottschalk was
there), Fry had settled in New York, writing music
criticism for the Tr i b u n e and presenting a series of
popular lectures on music with illustrations by an
orchestra, chorus, band, and vocal soloists.
Fry’s last lecture, in early 1853, closed with a
tirade on American musical life, which Fry saw as
hampered by, on the one hand, ignorant audiences
raised on inferior music and, on the other hand, a
dearth of native-born composers, owing to a lack
of fi nancial support and their own artistic timidity.
Having long ago won political freedom, Fry argued,
the United States now needed “a Declaration of Inde-
pendence in Art.” “Until American composers shall
discard their foreign liveries and found an Ameri-
can school” of classical composition, he warned, “art
will not become indigenous to this country, but will
only exist as a feeble exotic.”
On Christmas Eve 1853 Louis Jullien conducted
the premiere of Fry’s new Santa Claus Symphony,
and when a critic dismissed it as undeserving of
serious attention, the composer fi red off a long,
heated reply, sparking a controversy that continued
for months in local newspapers and music journals.
The debate invited Americans to think of concertlife as a form of national expression. Was it enough
simply to hear the music of European masters, or
should a place also be reserved for homegrown
talent? Fry denounced the Philharmonic Society
for never having “asked for or performed a single
American instrumental composition during the
eleven years of its existence.”
Fry’s attack drew a quick rebuttal from a Philhar-
monic member, which was then answered sarcasti-
cally by George Frederick Bristow (1825–98), himself
an American composer, an offi cer of the orchestra,
and one of its violinists: “As it is possible to miss a
needle in a haystack, I am not surprised that Mr. Fry
has missed the fact, that during the eleven years the
Philharmonic Society has been in operation in this
city, it played once, either by mistake or accident,
one single American composition, an overture of
mine.” Bristow wrote symphonies inspired by Men-
delssohn, but with Mendelssohn’s own symphonies
available and still unfamiliar, the Philharmonic
found no reason to perform Bristow’s.
Fry and Bristow’s advocacy of American orches-
tral music had a fi rm ideological basis but made
little headway against the Philharmonic’s cycle of
supply and demand. Rooted in an ample supply of
European masterworks, the orchestra created a
demand for performances of more of the same. In
the mid-nineteenth century, to perform untested
music was risky, and the fragile economic status of
orchestras argued against such risks. Not until later
in the century would American composers begin to
fi nd a place in the concert hall.The beginning of the piece’s longest section is also unconventional. As a
plucked instrument with gut strings, capable of rhythmic energ y but not much
volume, the banjo of Gottschalk’s day called for close listening (see “A Closer
Look: The Banjo,” p. 94). Here it is as if the audience is invited to lean toward the
music, concentrating on the details of Gottschalk’s hushed imitation. Instead of
a melody, he offers a rhythmically energized but harmonically static texture that
evokes the timbre of plucked banjo strings. Though The Banjo was separated by
distance, time, and a host of artistic conventions from direct African infl uence,172028_05_106-131_r3_ko.indd 126 23/01/13 8:21 PM