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Discovering Unknown Masters
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16504 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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11 / 1989 |
2,029 Words |
| Author
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Robert R. Reilly
Robert R. Reilly's second part of his article on English music
appears in the August 1990 issue of The World & I. |
Thanks to the Louisville Orchestra and its First Edition Series, through the aid of Albany Records, a wealth of exciting, very American music is being made available on compact disc for the first time. The works include compositions by Roy Harris, Morton Gould, and Walter Piston. On its own, Albany has also brought out a compact disc of Virgil Thomson's music, and Varese Sarabande offers the world premiere recording of Harris' Symphony No.6 (Gettysburg). Deutche Grammophon also offers a new Leonard Bernstein interpretation of Harris' famous Symphony No.3, and RCA has transferred to CD two of Gould's more recent and delightful compositions: Burchfield Gallery and Apple Waltzes.
All of these works are inimitably American and instantly identifiable as such by anyone faintly familiar with the musical idioms of the twentieth century. They are basically tonal, melodic, open, and inspiriting compositions. Unlike American music of the nineteenth century, they do not feel the heavy weight of European, the especially Germanic tradition. Harris, Thomson, Gould, and Piston, aside from Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber, were American music for the three decades at the heart of this century, and the relative neglect of their music by the recording industry is something of a scandal. It is hard to think of another country that does so little with its musical patrimony in terms of performance and recordings. This might be understandable if mainstream American music had adopted German angst and, with it, Schoenberg's dodecaphony, as it did somewhat after the heyday of these composers. But these works are, for the most part, highly accessible and immediately appealing.
Take the case of Roy Harris (1898-1979). In 1935 a nationwide radio poll
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