America: Classical Music Around The World

When most people think about classical music, they immediately think about Europe. There is good cause for this. However, a lot of artful music comes from other cultures around the world. Today, we will take a look at American classical music, how it got started, and how it developed.

President John F. Kennedy famously described the United States as a nation of immigrants, and one of the most notable composers from the 1700s was English born immigrant, Alexander Reinagle. He became known as a performer and composer in England and even became friends with Mozart when the young prodigy visited London. In 1786, Reinagle moved to New York and then to Philadelphia, which was the nation’s capital at that time. To these cities, he introduced Haydn, Mozart, and Clementi’s music and composed music that would be enjoyed by Americans. He became friends with President George Washington and even taught his daughter, Nelly Curtis, to play the piano. Enjoy his Philadelphia Piano Sonata today.

As the nation expanded west, music traveled into the wilderness. However, the challenges the settlers faced also affected the way music was enjoyed. American composers chose to write songs instead of sonatas for most of the 1800s. Stephan Foster is known even today for many of his songs that were sung throughout the expanding west. "Oh! Susanna" is likely the most popular, but in his lifetime, he wrote over 200 songs. One reason for his popularity was how accessible his songs were to everyday Americans. Even with little training, a family could sit around a piano and sing together for entertainment. In the playlist, I have included several songs by Foster.

Lastly, we should look at Edward MacDowell. Born in New York in 1860, he began to study music with a Colombian violinist and a Cuban pianist who were friends of his family. At seventeen, he was accepted into the Paris Conservatory in France, where he studied composition and piano. After spending several years in Europe, he returned to America in 1884 and became well known as a composer and piano teacher. He played recitals with the Boston Symphony and eventually was asked to start the music department at Columbia University in New York City. He is best known for his piano compositions, and in the playlist parts of his Woodland Sketches and Sea Pieces are included.

Enjoy these works and hear how American music has been influenced by Europe as well as the frontier nature of America in the 1700 and 1800s. The next post will illustrate how music progressed in the 1900s and began to influence the world on its own.