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Music is a crucial adventure and exploration of an individual’s true identity. It can offer a sense of both collective and self-actualization. This gives rise to an essential term called music nationalism, which refers to the usage of musical ideas mainly characterized by a particular country, ethnic group, and region in the music industry. For instance, Danzon Cubano is applied in Cuban folk dance to give an outgrowth and development of Pan-American culture (Auner 161).
This aspect started way back in the 19th century when political independence movements were prevalent. It was emphasized that it would only focus on the country’s fundamental national elements such as the folk songs, adoption of loyalty aspects of patriotism, folk dances, and symphonic poems. Therefore, each particular country possesses a specific national style in the composition and production of music.
Another national style in American culture is the Afro-American work. The Afro-American symphony is depicted by William Grant Still, who environed the concept of African-American experience to produce his music (Auner 161). Still deliberates on the varied influences he met as a child, speaking contrary to the wish of the public who were advocating for ethnic and vernacular compositions, a traditional concert style (Strunk 1421). However, the national style of music in America also has negative gender stereotypes and racism. According to Baranello, as quoted by Florence Price, “Unfortunately the work of a woman composer is preconceived by many to be light, froth, lacking in depth, logic, and virility” (1).
The national style in America also blends the various ethnic folk songs to establish the country’s traditional heritage and American’s symbol. For instance, “Steal Away” is a mixture of African-American and Caucasian melodies influenced by slave songs composition incorporated from the Abolitionism movement, which pursued to end servitude in the United States (Du Bois 171). Therefore, the national style of American folk songs is a blend of various ethnic, racist, and gender-specific compositions.
Antonín Dvorak is an exemplary composer who has actively incorporated folk elements in his Czech homeland music. Throughout his study, he interpreted the Americanism motivations to the young generation through the National Conservatory of Music (Beckerman and Winter 23). Despite adopting European-inherited styles in music, he greatly encouraged the composers to present their work as purely American created, “the folk songs of America,” by fully endorsing the inclusion of white students into the all-fashioned African American melodies (Beckerman and Winter 23; Beach 265). However, Amy Beach, who was also one of the musicians, had different opinions on Dvorak’s view on music.
She claimed that the great American majority was not the African-Americans nor the Indians, thus, the use of African American melodies in music cannot be a symbol of national unity (Beach 265). Beach notes that the true American roots are the folk songs of the Inuit as shown in her composition “Gaelic Symphony,” which she argues is a native song influenced by the motivation for the huge symphonic arts using old English, Irish, and Scottish phrases (Beach 265). Furthermore, she disclaimed Dvorak’s proposals that in the American style, women were to be excluded from learning and composing music (Burkholder 755). That is when she began doing compositions and became the American symbol of a woman’s creative power.
Works Cited
Auner, Joseph. “Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.” New Music Taking Flight, edited by Frisch Walter, W. W. Norton & Company, 2013, pp. 82-89.
Baranello, Micaela. “Welcoming a Black Female Composer into the Canon.” The New York Times. 2018, pp. 1-3.
Beach, Amy. “To Stretch Our Ears: A Documentary History of America’s Music.” 62: Amy Beach Replies to Antonin Dvorak, edited by Alexander Heywood, W.W. Norton & Company, 2002, pp. 265-266.
Beckerman, Michael, and Robert Winter. “The Real Values of Negro Melodies”. The New York Herald, 1893, pp. 22-23.
Burkholder, Peter. “A History of Western Music”. The Nineteenth Century, edited by Peter Burkholder, Donald Grout, and Claude Palisca, W. W. Norton & Company, 2019, pp. 753-755.
Du Bois, William. “The Souls of Black Folk”. The Sorrow Songs, edited by Edwards Brent Hayes, Oxford UP, 2007, pp. 176-177.
Frisch, Walter. Music in The Nineteenth Century. W. W. Norton & Company, 2012.
Strunk, Oliver. “Source Readings in Music History.” The Twentieth Century, edited by Robert Morgan, W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, p. 1421.
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