The New York Composers' Forum Concerts, 1935-1940

Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-1-58046-426-0
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 103, 302 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 635 g

Reihe: Eastman Studies in Music

The first detailed narrative of the Composers' Forum, documenting the vast array of composers, musical styles, ideologies, and audience responses in New York in the 1930s.

The New York Composers' Forum was a weekly series of new-music concerts sponsored by the Federal Music Project and Works Progress Administration. It showcased the music of modern American composers such as Aaron Copland, Amy Beach, Henry Cowell, and Ruth Crawford Seeger, and included question-and-answer sessions between the composers and audiences. These sessions led to discussions, arguments, and sometimes even riots, all documented in nearly complete transcripts.
This book is the first to tell the story of the Composers' Forum. Following the fascinating threads of dialogue from the transcripts, Melissa de Graaf explores the remarkable diversity of composers and musical styles represented, including numerous composers who have since been ignored or forgotten. She also examines the composers' and listeners' attitudes toward modernism, politics, gender, race, and American identity. In this important study of a unique and overlooked American institution, de Graaf shows that "modern" aesthetics in the 1930s comprised far more diverse styles and thought than we imagine today.

Melissa J. de Graaf is Associate Professor ofMusicology at the University of Miami.

Autoren/Hrsg.

de Graaf, Melissa J

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Geschichte der Musik Geschichte der Musik: Klassische Musik des 20./21. Jahrhunderts
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Musikwissenschaft: Rezeption, Einflüsse und Beziehungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Musikveranstaltungen und -organisationen, Aufführungspraxis
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Einzelne Komponisten und Musiker

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: The Significance of the Composers' Forum
The Composers' Forum in Context: Modernism and Diversity in the 1930s
Reactions to Modernist Style and Ideas
The Gendered Reception of Modern Music
Orientalism, Jewish Music, and the Search for Spiritual Authenticity
White Composers and Representations of Race: The Forum as Battleground over Issues of Authenticity and Appropriation
Creating American Identity: Folk Song and Nationalism
Conclusion: The Demise and Impact of the Composers' Forum
Appendixes
Composers and Works
Student Composers and Works
Composers' Forum Selection Committees
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Melissa J. de Graaf is a professor of musicology at the University of Miami and author of articles on Aaron Copland, Ruth Crawford, Johanna Beyer, and, most recently, Paul Bowles's opera Denmark Vesey (published in Blackness in Opera, 2012).