An Introduction to America’s Music

ABOUT THE LISTENING GUIDES

The book’s eighty-eight Listening Guides highlight important features of the musi-

cal selections that accompany the text as CDs or streaming audio. Every selection

has an easy-to-follow guide of events aimed at developing the critical skills that can

deepen a listener’s enjoyment of music.

PREFACE xix

Headnote calls

out information

on song writers,

performers, date of

composition and/or

recording.

Head includes CD

and track numbers,

Listening Guide

number, Title, and

Composer

“W hat to Listen For”

boxes spotlight the big

ideas.

Moment-by-moment

descriptions, with

cumulative timings and

formal sections, guide

student listening. Text

and translations are

included as appropriate.

“Listen & Refl ect”

questions stimulate

thinking about musical

styles and traditions.

date: 1911

performers: Billy Murray, vocal, with

studio orchestra

genre: ragtime song

meter: duple

form: verse and 32-bar abac chorus

Listening Guide 10.2 “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” IRVING BERLIN

timing section text comments

0:00 introduction 4-bar instrumental introduction based on the

opening phrase of the verse.

0:10 vamp A 2-bar phrase, played twice.

0:17 verse 1 Oh, ma honey... Mild syncopation on “honey.”

0:44 chorus

a

Come on and hear... Modulation to the subdominant resembles the

similar modulation in a typical march.

0:58 b They can play a bugle

call...

Melody resembles a bugle call in bars 3–4.

1:11 a Come on along... Music is identical to the fi rst a, with different lyrics.

1:25 c And if you care to

hear...

Quotation of “Old Folks at Home.”

1:40 introduction and

vamp

Return to beginning.

1:54 verse 2 Oh, ma honey... The music of verse 1 repeats, with new lyrics.

2:21 chorus Come on and hear... As before.

3:16 chorus

They can play a bugle

call...

Instrumental version of the chorus’s a section, using

Sousa-style countermelodies and woodwind trills.

The vocalist sings only b and the second half of c

(not indicated in the sheet music).

note Edison cylinder, 1911.

Listen & Refl ect

1. “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” uses only the mildest syncopations—the same ones used, in
   fact, in Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” As recorded here, the song gains even further
   ties to Sousa in its use of a military-style band. Yet the song was widely received by listen-
   ers at the time as a ragtime song. Why?


2. And what does that reception suggest about the attitudes of the musical public in 1911?

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

• instrumental accompaniment that resembles
  a military band


• key change at chorus, similar to that at the
  trio of a march or rag


• lyrics in stage Negro dialect

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