AMERICA’S MUSIC PART T WO

FROM THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH WORLD WAR I

A

fter the Civil War, the United

States entered a phase of geo-

graphic expansion, as western

territories became states; popu-

lation growth, with an attendant

increase in the size and number

of major cities; and economic development, as new

technologies spurred the nation’s industrialization.

Connected to these changes, and in contrast to the

antebellum years, America’s musical culture in the

period from the Civil War to World War I witnessed

a more pronounced separation between the three

spheres of music making. In the classical sphere,

the establishment of permanent orchestras, opera

companies, and music conservatories provided the

institutional support for new generations of skilled

composers and performers. In the popular sphere,

e By 1900, innovations in printing made colorful sheet music covers the norm for popular song

publishers.

publishers of parlor songs laid the groundwork for

a popular music industry in which sheet music, the

standard stock in trade, was eventually joined by

new products that resulted from emergent technol-

ogies: piano rolls and phonograph records. In the

traditional sphere, pioneering ethnologists created

the fi rst archives of folk music, revealing the abun-

dance of music making outside the classical and

popular marketplaces. From the music of American

Indians to the British ballads of Appalachia, and

from the Spanish songs of the Southwest to the spir-

ituals of former slaves, American folk music began

to be written down, recorded, and studied as part

of the nation’s cultural heritage. Despite this height-

ened differentiation, however, the three spheres of

classical, popular, and traditional music continued

to interact in complex and mutually enriching ways.

1891 Leopold Vincent, Alliance and Labor Songster

1892 John Philip Sousa forms the Sousa Band

1893 Alice C. Fletcher, Study of Omaha Indian Music

1896 Edward MacDowell becomes the fi rst professor

of music at Columbia University, composes Woodland

Sketches

1896 Ernest Hogan, “All Coons Look Alike to Me”

1896 Plessy v. Ferguson legalizes segregation

1896 Boston Symphony Orchestra premieres Amy

Beach’s Gaelic Symphony

1903 Will Marion Cook’s In Dahomey opens on Broadway

1909 Revision of copyright law grants composers rights

to mechanical royalties

1911 Alice C. Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, The

Omaha Tribe, a pioneering work of ethnomusicology

1914 Irene and Vernon Castle, Modern Dancing

1916 Harry T. Burleigh, Jubilee Songs of the United

States of America

1917 Cecil Sharp and Olive Dame Campbell, Folk Songs

of the Southern Appalachians

1918 Frances Densmore, Teton Sioux Music

1918 Sinbad, starring Al Jolson, opens on Broadway

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