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THE 50 UNITED STATES of AMERICA
Composer: Margaret Bonds
Composition: Montgomery Variations
Montgomery Variations is a stirring work that mirrors major developments and historical events in the civil rights movement, composed by a Black woman who lived through it. While Margaret Bonds was not a frequent composer for orchestra (she composed most often for voice), when she did, it made a statement.
It was previously believed that Bonds never heard this work performed, but it has since been discovered that she was able to hear a single performance in San Francisco in 1967, seven years before her passing. This was the only performance of the work in her lifetime.
Composer: John Luther Adams
Composition: Become Ocean
John Luther Adams is perhaps the most singularly influential composer associated with natural landscapes and the depiction of nature via music. He is based in Alaska, which has inspired a great deal of his compositions.
But Become Ocean is by far his best-known work, inspired by the oceans of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Featuring a large symphony orchestra spatially separated in three groups, Become Ocean is closer to an ambient sound bath than it is to a classical symphony. It won him the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2014 for his innovative approach to portraying the natural world through his musical language.
Composer: Ferde Grofé
Composition: Grand Canyon Suite
Best-known for his orchestration of George Gershwin’s jazz influenced masterpiece Rhapsody in Blue, Ferde Grofé was a master unto himself, learning a number of instruments as a child and beginning work on arrangements in his teens. He performed as an accompanist, and as a jazz pianist in bands, being dubbed the “Prime Minister” of jazz by the New York Times in 1932. He was as equally attuned to the musical capabilities of jazz as Gershwin, and especially to how it could be used to express images of Americana. Grofé composed a number of works for film, radio, TV, and the theater, as well as concert works associated with Americana, much like Gershwin. These ranged from Niagara Falls, Death Valley, Hollywood, and most famously, the Grand Canyon, as depicted in this suite.
Composer: Scott Joplin
Composition: Treemonisha
Scott Joplin is mostly known for his contributions to ragtime, with major works like Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer earning him significant renown both in his lifetime and afterwards for their innovative rhythms and catchy melodies as well as for putting rag on the map. But Joplin didn’t only write rags: his compositional voice was a distinct and worthwhile contribution to the burgeoning American classical tradition. In addition to many keyboard works, ranging from waltzes, rags, two-steps, and cakewalks, Joplin wrote a number of vocal works, a first symphony (now lost), a rag ballet, several works for vaudeville and the stage, and two operas, the first of which has also been lost, and the second of which, Treemonisha, has been entirely reconstructed with new orchestrations.
Joplin paid for the first piano vocal score production of the work and performed it himself in a read-through in Harlem in 1915, but the quality of this realization was described as little more than that of a rehearsal. When the score was rediscovered later and finally brought to the stage, it earned Joplin a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize in music in 1976, with some referring to the revival of the opera as a “musical miracle.” The plot itself takes place between Texas and Arkansas, and revolves around the titular Treemonisha, a freedwoman, who is taught to read, and subsequently helps to steer her community away from the influence of superstition and shows them the value of education after being captured by conjurers. It is often referred to as a “rag opera,” though the work straddles between and freely intertwines many musical styles, including late Romantic operatic conventions, proto-blues musical conventions, call and response choral numbers akin to gospel, as well as his iconic penchant for rag, among others.
Composer: Camille Saint-Saëns
Composition: Hail, California!
Camille Saint-Saëns spent very little time in the United States. However, he was named the French musical ambassador to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (itself a celebration of the construction of the Panama Canal), which was held in San Francisco. As a part of his obligation to the exposition, Saint-Saëns composed and conducted Hail, California!, which deftly combines both the Star-Spangled Banner and La Marseillaise, initially in separate discrete iterations, then overlapped and combined in a grand harmonious finale.
Saint-Saëns conducted an ensemble which comprised both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Sousa Band in the work’s premiere. Saint-Saëns’s work incorporated a massive organ that coincidentally misfired in hilarious fashion during the concert, requiring the piece to be completely stopped and started over. It was estimated to be in attendance by around four thousand people.
Composer: Cecil Burleigh
Composition: Four Rocky Mountain Sketches
Born in rural New York, Cecil Burleigh was a composer, violinist, and teacher. He composed in a mostly late-romantic style, and was never very well-known. But his compositions are charming and characteristic impressions of American life and its locales. This set of four programmatic works inspired by the Rocky Mountains, with picturesque titles including At Sunset, The Rapids, Up the Canyon, and The Avalanche, is a welcome contribution in that vein.
Composer: Charles Ives
Composition: Three Places in New England: II. Putnam's Camp
In his lifetime, the Connecticut-born-and-raised Charles Ives was better known as an insurance salesman than as a composer, famously saying, “If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?” (relatable). But his recognition as the pioneering modernist master that he was did eventually come, thanks in no small part to one Leonard Bernstein premiering his second symphony in 1951.
His compositions are full to the brim with references to his life in New England, including hymns, folksongs, fiddle tunes, and marches that he heard in his youth, which he dutifully reproduces on the page… though frequently in different keys and different time signatures at the same time. In doing so, Ives creates a musical effect that feels both real and not real at the same time, like a memory of a place visited long ago.
Ever hear three cars playing three different songs at the same time, then drive away, thereby producing a doppler effect on each? This kind of chaotic asynchronicity of our daily sound world is taken for granted and discarded as “noise.” But in Putnam’s Camp, Ives dutifully recreates the effect of bands passing through one another as an intended feature, not a bug, placing the listener right at the heart of the chaos and the place he is musically depicting, yet making you feel like a visitor to a memory that isn’t yours at the same time.
Composer: anon., transcribed by Captain George Bush
Composition: Washington’s March
While Delaware is not exactly a hotbed for classical composition, it is thanks to Delaware-born Captain George Bush (no relation to the presidents) that we have a surviving transcript of Washington’s March, a staple of the historic fife-and-drum subgenre of American early music, which has been maintained continuously and fastidiously since its inception in the colonies.
Composer: Frederick Delius
Composition: Florida Suite
Though Frederick Delius was born in Britain, his mercantile family had connections with an orange plantation in Florida. Recognizing that the younger Delius had no interest in their day-to-day business affairs, in 1884 his father sent him off to Florida to manage the plantation.
His time there did not involve much hard work or successful managerial efforts either, but it did lead to his full-time pursuit of composition and much of the inspiration for this work. Composed in Leipzig in 1888, the Florida Suite was delightfully received by none other than Edvard Grieg, who subsequently convinced Delius’s father to relent and allow his son to compose as a full time career.
Composer: Carlos Simon
Composition: Four Black American Dances: IV. Holy Dance
Georgia-grown Carlos Simon’s Four Black American Dances is a newly minted, already iconic work celebrating Black Americana through the lens of dance. While each of the dances relate to a broader culture and historical moment steeped in the lived experiences of Black Americans, Holy Dance has a distinctly personal connection to Simon: it is directly inspired by his time spent in church while growing up in Georgia.
Commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2022, Four Black American Dances was premiered under the baton of Andris Nelsons in 2023. The success of this commission and others led the orchestra to create the Deborah and Philip Edmundson Composer Chair position for Simon specifically, the first position of its kind in the orchestra's entire 145 year history.
Composer: Queen Liliʻuokalani of the Hawaiian Kingdom (arr. Fritz Kreisler)
Composition: Aloha ʻOe
Widely beloved in her lifetime despite being forced to surrender the Kingdom of Hawaii to local insurgents in coordination with American opportunists, Queen Liliʻuokalani was the first and last female monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom before it was annexed by the United States. Inspired by Colonel James Harbottle Boyd humming the Irish folk song The Lone Rock by the Sea, Queen Liliʻuokalani (then only Princess Liliʻuokalani) composed the song Aloha ‘Oe.
Aloha ‘Oe has since become a beloved cultural emblem of Hawaiian heritage, and also a common musical symbol of Hawaii in media and culture, like in Lilo and Stitch. This simple but touching arrangement by violinist Fritz Kreisler puts the classical stamp on one of the most iconic and recognizable Hawaiian cultural artifacts ever composed.
Composer: Eric Scott Alexander
Composition: Sawtooth Sketches
Dr. Eric Scott Alexander is a composer and educator based in Boise, Idaho. He is an associate professor of music, as well as the assistant department chair at Boise State University. Sawtooth Sketches was commissioned and premiered by the Tree City Chamber Players, and is a musical impression of Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley and Sawtooth Mountains, beginning in the valley, ascending to Thomson Peak during a Winter Sun, and then ending in a wildfire.
Composer: Edmond Dédé
Composition: Chicago
Born in New Orleans, Edmond Dédé was a Black American composer based predominantly in France, working mostly as a conductor of various orchestras. Jim Crow laws and poor conditions for people of color pushed Dédé to leave the U.S. and move to Paris, where he spent most of his career, and which was also where he composed this work.
Initially titled simply Grande valse à l'Américaine, Dédé later gave it the additional moniker Chicago to instill listeners with an even more distinctly American impression of the work, with the recently re-built city of Chicago serving as the perfect inspiration (though he had actually never been). He returned only once to the United States in coming back to New Orleans in 1893, where he was celebrated by local artists, though this was not enough to convince him to stick around. He returned to Europe, living there until his death in Paris in 1901. His opera Morgiane is the earliest surviving example of an opera composed by a Black American.
Composer: Darius Milhaud
Composition: Musique pour l'Indiana
If I had a nickel for every French composer on this list who was commissioned to compose a work celebrating a major American milestone or historic event, I would have two nickels. While composer Darius Milhaud is not exactly a household name these days in the same way as say Debussy, Ravel, or Fauré, he was hardly short of commissions in his lifetime, and especially throughout his long and distinguished career as a professor at Mills College in Oakland, California, where he alternated between years teaching at the Paris Conservatoire.
One of these commissions was Musique pour l’Indiana, composed to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Indiana’s statehood. It is not the only work by Milhaud in this vein: Kentuckiana (commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra as one of the first orchestral works to deliberately celebrate musical culture in Kentucky), Music for Boston (commissioned by the Serge Koussevitzky Foundation for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 75th anniversary), and Musique pour la Nouvelle-Orléans (commissioned by the New Orleans Orchestra to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the city) were all major orchestral works commissioned to celebrate American milestones, and each penned with rapt enthusiasm for its source material.
Composer: Antonín Dvořák
Composition: String Quartet No. 12 "American"
Composer Antonín Dvořák famously came to work in America in 1892 as the director of the National Conservatory of Music, a short-lived institution that initially paid him a lavish salary, which was subsequently cut in half in 1894 due to an economic panic. In between teaching duties, Dvořák took respite in a Czech community based in Spillville, Iowa, of all places.
While there, he was highly comforted both by the presence of Czech compatriots and the indigenous community nearby, and he was particularly inspired by local birdsong and the Turkey River. This resulted in two of his most celebrated chamber works: his String Quartet No. 12 and String Quintet No. 3, both of which are now dubbed “American.”
Composer: Kirke Mechem
Composition: From the Heartland
Born in Wichita, Kansas, and still kicking at 100 years old, Kirke Mecheme is a lyrical composer who is best known for his operas Tartuffe and John Brown, based on the life of the titular abolitionist, and a suite for baritone soloist and chorus derived from John Brown titled Songs of the Slave. I had the distinct pleasure of rehearsing under Mechem in Boston University’s Symphonic Chorus in preparation for a performance of Songs of the Slave - his attention to our presentation of the text was paramount in his musical thinking. In keeping with his affinity for poignant American narratives, From the Heartland is an orchestral song cycle that speaks directly to his experiences growing up in Kansas, featuring a text he wrote himself.
Composer: Valerie Coleman
Composition: Shotgun Houses
Composer and flutist Valerie Coleman composed Shotgun Houses as the result of a commission for Chamber Music Northwest. The resulting work is directly inspired by her lived experience growing up in one such home in West Louisville, Kentucky, an experience that she shares with boxing legend Muhammad Ali, another source of inspiration for the work.
The title refers to the fact that one could theoretically shoot an entire family living in one such home with a single shot of a shotgun because it is so small, providing commentary on how the dynamics of race and class reinforce one another in the American South.
Composer: Virgil Thomson
Composition: Louisiana Story
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic who, along with composers such as Aaron Copland, Morton Gould, George Gershwin, Charles Ives, and Ferde Grofé, among many others, can be thanked for shaping “the American sound” of classical music. Born in 1896, he was frequently in demand as a composer and highly regarded for his commentary on classical music during his lifetime.
Financed by the Standard Oil Company, Louisiana Story was one of several film scores that Thomson was hired to compose, and it is the only film score to be the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Music to date. Louisiana Story is a documentary that highlights the life of a young boy living in a swamp in Louisiana amidst the backdrop of oil drilling and its effects on the local area, as well as its people and economy.
Composer: John Cage, after Supply Belcher
Composition: Some of the Harmony of Maine
John Cage was a revolutionary composer who existed somewhere at the intersection between mad scientist, composer, and philosopher. Best-known for his composition 4’33,” which utilizes the sound of ambient silence as the basis for its musical content, Cage constantly sought ways to reinterpret music and re-evaluate our relationship to experiencing it. Enter: The Harmony of Maine by 19th-Century composer Supply Belcher, a Maine-based composer who took after William Billings’s style of New England Psalm Singing.
Originally a collection of anthems and hymns contemporaneous with and analogous in style to those by William Billings, Cage selected 13 of them and re-interpreted the works for organ using a chance process to alter the duration of each of the harmonies. This resulted in a work that is starkly juxtaposed to its source material, rooted in early 19th century choral harmonies, yet almost entirely abstract in its character and presentation.
Composer: Carlos Simon
Composition: Feelings About Baltimore
Born in Washington D.C. and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Carlos Simon is a composer deeply interested in conveying his impressions of the American experience, especially through his perspective as a Black American. While he is much in demand for large ensemble commissions, like his Requiem for the Enslaved and the aforementioned Four Black American Dances, Simon has composed for a variety of instrumental forces, including this starkly dissonant yet reflective piece for solo piano. It is a direct reaction to protests related to the death of Freddie Gray in 2015, and is genuinely haunting in character when taken in with the context of its subject matter.
Composer: Charles Ives
Composition: Three Places in New England: III. Housatonic at Stockbridge
Though Charles Ives was born and bred in Connecticut, Massachusetts and its inhabitants were a frequent source of inspiration for Ives, most notably in his “Concord” Sonata, in which he highlighted several distinct transcendentalist thinkers who highly influenced Ives’s thinking and artistry. But it is once again in his composition Three Places in New England that Ives most successfully conjures a sense of place to my ear, in the final movement The Housatonic at Stockbridge.
Ives juxtaposes the serene stillness of the Housatonic River with a dense collage of musical imagery associated with his experiences in the area, once again having the dual effect of creating a sense of place for the listener as well as depicting Ives’s own musical memories, overlaid via a com. Notably, Ives re-worked the movement in 1921 as a song for voice and piano, utilizing poetry by Robert Underwood Johnson that shares the same title. It remains one of the most iconic and distinct musical representations of Western Massachusetts to date.
Composer: Michael Daugherty
Composition: Motown Metal
Michael Daugherty is a living composer whose works are as vibrant and percussive as they are heavily inspired by American culture, people, and locales. His works range wildly in source material, from UFOs, to Superman, to Mt. Rushmore, Alligator Alley in Florida, Route 66… the list goes on. Motown Metal is just one such work. Commissioned by the Detroit Chamber Winds and Summit Brass, Daugherty describes Motown Metal as being “inspired by the sounds and rhythms of industrial Detroit: city of automobile clamor and the sixties Motown sound.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Composer: John Philip Sousa
Composition: Foshay Tower-Washington Memorial March
While best known for his march “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” which is the official National March of the United States, Sousa wrote many, many, MANY marches. It was kind of his thing. At the height of the gilded age, Sousa was well-regarded as a composer and band conductor, and he was commissioned in 1929 to compose and conduct this march for the unveiling of the Foshay Tower in Minnesota, which was itself lifted from a march Sousa had just completed called the Daughters of Texas.
One small problem: you might recall a certain infamous stock market crash around the time…so the $20,000 check (roughly $391,000 today) Sousa was awarded for his efforts bounced. Sousa refused to allow the march to be performed again in his lifetime, and it was only when his estate was finally paid its due that the march was allowed to be performed again.
Composer: Florence Price
Composition: Mississippi River Suite
Florence Price was a trailblazing composer of color whose work frequently found favor with audiences in the limited exposure it had in her lifetime; notably, the Chicago Symphony premiered her first symphony in 1933, just after she had won the Wanamaker Prize.
The Mississippi River Suite is a tone poem composed in a similar aesthetic vein to her symphonies, in which she depicts a musical journey down the titular river by deftly integrating a variety of spiritual tunes and folk material with a European symphonic model. It was never performed in her lifetime, as much of her music wasn’t. However, in 2009 a trove of unpublished material was miraculously discovered in her summer home in St. Anne, Illinois, which has generated a steadily increasing interest in Price and her music.
Composer: W.C. Handy (arr. William Grant Still)
Composition: St. Louis Blues
William Grant Still was foundational in establishing the identity of Black American life in the classical music world. His Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American,” was the first symphony by a Black composer to be performed by a leading orchestra for an American audience. Still was a scrappy musician in his younger years, frequently performing in ensembles and arranging works for bandleaders such as W.C. Handy.
Though Handy referred to himself as "the Father of the Blues," it's perhaps more accurate to refer to him as the "Dean of the Blues," given his significant contribution to uplifting the genre to a national profile, rather than his actual invention of the genre. major proponent of Missouri's then burgeoning genre of the blues, now considered an iconic and inseparable cultural marker of Missouri's musical identity and history. As part of his employment with Handy, Still created this band arrangement of St. Louis Blues in 1916.
Composer: Eric Funk
Composition: Symphony No. 2 "Montana"
https://ericfunk.com/recording
While perhaps not a household name nationwide, Eric Funk’s contributions to classical music in Montana cannot be overstated. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Funk led multiple orchestras in Montana, and even came to host his own PBS show about music in Montana called “11th and Grant,” so titled because of the film studio's location.
Shortly thereafter, he was appointed as a music instructor of various musical courses at Montana State University, from which he received an honorary doctorate degree in 2023 following his retirement. His music is lush, cinematic, and picturesque. He describes this work as “his Alpine Symphony,” a composition that speaks to the profound grandeur and natural beauty of his native Montana.
Composer: Andy Akiho
Composition: Sculptures
Andy Akiho is a highly in-demand composer and percussionist. His works typically involve uniquely idiomatic percussion ensembles, and even newly constructed instruments. His symphony Sculptures was co-commissioned by the Oregon and Omaha Symphonies, and directly incorporates artistic sculptures created by Nebraska-based artist Jun Kaneko.
Movements alternate between full orchestra, brass, and sculptures being performed alone by Akiho. It is a unique work that beautifully blurs the lines between visual art, sculpture, performance art, and a classical symphony.
Composer: Eric Whitacre
Composition: Godzilla Eats Las Vegas!
While more widely known for his richly iridescent choral works like Sleep, Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine, and The Seal Lullaby, Whitacre is no stranger to large ensemble works. Whitacre grew up in Nevada and went to school at the University of Las Vegas, where he eventually acquired his bachelor’s (after seven years). In Whitacre’s words, “By the time I graduated, I was ready to eat Las Vegas.”
On his way out, wind band director Tom Leslie commissioned a work from Whitacre which he completed during the first year of his master’s studies at Juilliard. The result was the over-the-top, camp-a-palooza rompfest that is this work, which seems to squeeze every ounce of musical comedy possible from a wind symphony, some Elvis-attired musicians, and a program note.
Composer: Aaron Copland
Composition: Our Town
Aaron Copland is a composer who requires little introduction; his mark on American music history has been firmly established with lasting treasures like Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Rodeo definitively shaping the development of American orchestral music.
A frequent flyer on CRB’s airwaves, Copland’s score to the film Our Town, after the play by Thornton Wilder, is in much the same aesthetic realm. Copland rarely fails to capture the pastoral beauty of the American landscape, and in Our Town, he very much succeeded in conveying life in the fictional small town of Grovers Corners, New Hampshire. Though Grovers Corners may not be real, we are grateful Copland’s aural depiction of New Hampshire is.
Composer: Donnacha Dennehy
Composition: New Jersey
Composed as part of Min Kwon’s America/Beautiful project, which commissioned 76 distinct piano variations on “America the Beautiful,” Irish composer and Princeton professor Donnacha Dennehy interpolated a personal connection with the tune; he lives in New Jersey, where America the Beautiful was composed. In New Jersey, Dennehy reflects on his time spent as a parent and resident in the state, noting that his children are “as much New Jerseyan as they are Irish or anything else.”
Composer: Kevin Puts
Composition: The Brightness of Light
Kevin Puts is one of the leading American composers today, with major collaborators including Renée Fleming, the Metropolitan Opera, and Yo-Yo Ma, not to mention major awards: he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his first opera Silent Night, and a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2023 for his triple concerto Contact.
The Brightness of Light represents the earliest collaboration between Puts and Fleming, which spun out to a grand commission that ultimately became a musical depiction of longtime New Mexico resident Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband (and first art dealer) Alfred Stieglitz. It was premiered by the Boston Symphony under Andris Nelsons at Tanglewood, with Fleming and baritone Rodney Gilfrey as the soloists.
Composer: Leonard Bernstein
Composition: Three Dance Episodes from On the Town: Times Square
There are few musicians as consequential to the musical identity of America as composer, conductor, pianist, educator, and philanthropist Leonard Bernstein. Equally at home on the podium, penning a symphony, playing a piano concerto, or writing a musical, Bernstein was directly responsible for inspiring a love of music across the globe.
On the Town is one of several musicals that Bernstein composed, which, like West Side Story, is also a compelling musical portrait of New York - especially this movement in its concert suite arrangement.
Composer: Jennifer Higdon
Composition: Cold Mountain Suite
Jennifer Higdon is a composer whose compositional prowess is rivaled only in her compelling integration of American stories and personal narratives therein. Her magnum opus blue cathedral is a stunningly picturesque meta-musical depiction of the intertwining lives of her and her brother, which musically reckons with his eventual passing.
Based on the titular 1997 novel, which was subsequently adapted into an award-winning film in 2003, Cold Mountain was Higdon’s first foray into the world of composing for opera. It tells the story of a wounded confederate soldier who deserts the army and travels by foot for months to reunite with his lover in the Cold Mountain region of North Carolina. In this 20 minute suite, Higdon extracts highlights from the opera and synthesizes the work succinctly and beautifully in its symphonic form.
Composer: Tom Porter
Composition: Prairie Wind
Another composer-professor on our list, Dr. Tom Porter is a North Dakota native and a composer and conductor who teaches music theory and sacred music at the University of Mary in North Dakota, where he also leads the choirs. Porter also conducts the Dakota Chamber Chorale and the Bismarck-Mandan Civic Chorus.
His relationship to theology and choir is profound and intimate, and deeply intertwined with his professional, personal, and creative life. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Porter was funded by the North Dakota Council on the Arts to compose and conduct a work for the North Dakota Choir Project 2020. This resulted in Prairie Wind, which he conducted virtually with 140 different participants. The text reflects on the pastoral ambience of the prairies of North Dakota.
Composer: Allison Loggins-Hull
Composition: Grit. Grace. Glory.
Grit. Grace. Glory. is the direct result of Loggins-Hull’s three-year stint as composer in residence at the Cleveland Orchestra, and was especially informed by Loggins-Hull’s own experiences in Cleveland. With the support of the orchestra, she deliberately expanded the position to include visits to the city’s schools, cultural institutions, and historical landmarks.
The piece spans four movements that each reflect either a particular component of the city or her distinct impressions of the culture and people there. They are: Steel (reflecting on Cleveland’s industrial history and the Underground Railroad), Shoreline Shadows (inspired by her time spent with students in local schools), Quip (informed by the stalwart conversational temperament of Clevelanders), and Ode (inspired by Cleveland’s rich musical history as the origin point of Rock n’ Roll).
Composer: Richard Rodgers (Rodgers & Hammerstein)
Composition: Oklahoma!
Composed during the golden age of American musical theatre, Oklahoma! represents a distinct turning point where the American musical began to be considered a more “serious” and dramatic art form with aesthetic goals beyond the scope of pure entertainment. As a result, the music is both topical and personal in its lyricism and content, especially as it relates to its rural setting in Oklahoma, but more through-composed in its construction and sophisticated in its form, and thus is much more indebted to the late-romantic classical tradition than the modern musical is today.
The most noteworthy example of this is the Dream Ballet sequence in Oklahoma!, which was the first of its kind on Broadway, and revolutionary for the development of the American musical, as it moved narrative along solely through music and dance, rather than through lyrical content or dialogue. Oklahoma! was the first of many successful collaborations between the artistic duo Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, who would forever change musical theater and American music as we know it as a direct result of their efforts.
AND
Composer: Louis Ballard
Composition: The Devil’s Promenade
I couldn't choose just one for Oklahoma. Native American musical traditions existed long before any colonists ever set foot in the New World, let alone wrote any classical music. Colonization subjected Native Americans to violence, displacement, and forced cultural assimilation and it wasn’t until the passage of The American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978 that Native Americans were finally able to dance and perform indigenous music uncensored and without legal consequence for doing so. However throughout the history of the United States, indigenous music was in the air and shaping the development of American classical music.
Enter: Composer Louis Ballard. Born in Devil’s Promenade, Oklahoma in 1931, Ballard was of Cherokee and Quapaw ancestry. Considered to be the “Father of Native American composition,” Ballard was deeply committed to integrating elements of Native American culture with classical structures and forms. As Ballard explained, "Dvořák, in 1893, predicted that America should have a form of nationalistic music built upon Indian music and Black slave songs. So I felt that I was in good company when I took up my pen to express the sufferings of my people, their regeneration and hopes for a better future life…"
After his passing in 2007, he left a substantial musical legacy; two ballets, a wealth of chamber and orchestral music, and even a Native American music curriculum for the classroom, one of the first of its kind. His orchestral work The Devil’s Promenade, composed as an ode to his place of birth in Oklahoma, is a personal and compelling depiction of the composer’s roots, both ancestral and musical.
Composer: Michael Torke
Composition: West
Michael Torke is the first synesthete composer on this list but not the last. He is best known for works like Bright Blue Music, which highlight his sound-color synesthesia through the exploration of orchestral color, as well as the piece Javelin, which was commissioned by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympics, both to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Atlanta Orchestra, as well as to open the 1996 Summer Olympics, held in Atlanta. West is part of a set of three concerti related to distinct locations that inspired their composition (the others are East and South). Torke writes: “West, for the bassoon, reminds me of the western coast of the U.S., especially in Oregon. South, for the oboe, reminds me of feelings I’ve had in the south of France. East, for the clarinet, reminds me of morning with a hopeful, fresh sun rising in the eastern sky. Where is North, some might ask? It is waiting to be commissioned.”
Composer: Alexander Reinagle
Composition: Philadelphia Sonatas
Not a household name, or even a name known by many musical insiders, the British-born Alexander Reinagle is nonetheless an important contributor to American music: his Philadelphia Sonatas were the very first sonatas of any kind to be published in the United States. He found a staunch admirer in George Washington, and helped introduce the music of Haydn and Mozart (whom he met in the 1760s) to the newly founded United States, spending time in New York before composing the Philadelphia Sonatas in - it may come as a shock - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He later moved to Baltimore, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Composer: Curtis Stewart
Composition: The Gilded Cage
Curtis Stewart is a man who wears many hats: Artistic Director of the American Composers Orchestra, professional classical violinist and composer, and Juilliard instructor are just a few. In his piano quintet The Gilded Cage, commissioned by Newport Classical for the Newport Classical Festival, Stewart reflects on his familial attachment to Newport, and depicts a variety of historical figures in the area. Stewart illuminates further: “I became intrigued by the nature of the Breakers, the spirit of the place. I began to gather music from when my dad lived in Newport - historic themes and songs from the Baptist churches he went to in the area, the music of the people that were likely servicing the Breakers, as well as research on the Vanderbilts that lived there and were eventually removed once the place was deemed unlivable. My favorite quote in this research comes from Paul and Gladys Szápáry’s cousin, Jamie Wade Comstock, who said, ‘The gilded cage was much more interesting when it still had the birds inside it.’”
Composer: George Gershwin
Composition: Porgy and Bess (Catfish Row)
George Gershwin is one of the most iconic composers of American music, period. Gershwin was pivotal in developing a sophisticated and idiosyncratic synthesis of jazz and classical music conventions, and he is widely known for the many jazz standards that he contributed, like I Got Rhythm, The Man I Love, and Summertime, as well as symphonic masterworks like An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue. But it was Porgy and Bess that was his magnum opus. Gershwin called it a “folk opera” that seamlessly combined elements of American musical theater, opera, jazz, and folk music.
While its setting in the town of Catfish Row is fictionalized, it is based on the very real experiences of Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina. To this end, Gershwin mandated an all-Black cast for every performance of the work, treating African Americans as artists to be taken seriously rather than entertainers to be made a spectacle of, as had otherwise been the case historically up to this point. That was as forward-looking as it was controversial at the time of its premiere in 1935, comparable in its practice only to the musical Show Boat, by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. In this symphonic suite arrangement by the composer himself, Gershwin puts his best foot forward, highlighting the broad range of musical styles that he was capable of seamlessly incorporating into his work.
Composer: Michael Daugherty
Composition: Mount Rushmore
Our friend Mr. Michael Daugherty returns with the aforementioned Mount Rushmore. Keen to continue his reverence for American themes in his works, Mount Rushmore is a stalwart musical collage of various texts attributed to each of the American presidents carved on Mount Rushmore in North Dakota, from individual letters to excerpts from the Gettysburg Address and more, delivered by chorus and orchestra.
Composer: Carlisle Floyd
Composition: Susannah
Regarded as the “Father of American opera,” Carlisle Floyd was deeply interested in the expression of American life on the operatic stage. His third opera, Susannah, would become his most well-known. Set in the fictional town of New Hope Valley in Tennessee, the opera mirrors the apocryphal tale of Susanna and the Elders from the biblical Book of Daniel.
One of the first operas to be sung in a Southern American accent, it is a haunting narrative about how far a community will go to punish those it perceives as sinners when mob rule comes into play. Nonetheless, Susannah is a colorful portrayal of rural life in Tennessee that faithfully commits to the world it depicts. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts by former president George W. Bush in 2004 for "giving American opera its national voice in a series of contemporary classics rooted in American themes," and was cited by the National Endowment of the Arts as "the most important American opera composer and librettist in our nation’s history."
Composer: Frank Ticheli
Composition: San Antonio Dances
Frank Ticheli is predominantly a composer of band and choral works that frequently traverse American themes. His An American Elegy was composed in response to the Columbine shooting, his Cajun Folk Songs colorfully interpolate Louisiana folk songs in a charming wind band arrangement, and these very dances highlight the locales of San Antonio, including the Alamo Gardens and the Riverwalk.
Composer: Olivier Messiaen
Composition: Des Canyons aux étoiles…
Remember when I said I would have two nickels? Olivier Messiaen is our secret third nickel. He was a French composer predominantly known for three things: his obsession with birds and birdsong, his devout Catholicism, and his relationship with sound-color synesthesia. All of these elements frequently intermingle in his compositions, and Des canyons aux étoiles… is no exception.
Commissioned by American philanthropist and opera singer Alice Tully for the bicentenary of the Declaration of Independence, Messiaen completed the work in 1974, and used his time spent in Bryce Canyon, Utah as direct inspiration, including a variety of locales in the work as well as several indigenous bird calls. His time spent there crafting his musical contribution to Utah's identity even led to a mountain in Utah being renamed Mount Messiaen in his honor.
When he was asked about the possibility of the renaming, Messiaen responded: "I would be very happy and very honored that the mayor and yourself [ have agreed to give my name to a bird walk or a mountain, even a mere pebble in Bryce Canyon, Zion Park, or in Cedar Breaks, or even just a street in Parowan."
Des canyons aux étoiles… was premiered in New York City in 1974, and finally played by the Utah Symphony in 2007, 33 years later.
Composer: Steve Reich
Composition: Vermont Counterpoint
Hallmark minimalist composer Steve Reich is a giant of the classical music world, who continues to compose and inspire others in their compositions to this day. There are few living composers who can claim to have entirely reshaped the development of Western music, but Reich is one of them.
This work for solo flute and pre-recorded tracks, Vermont Counterpoint, is so titled for two simple reasons: Reich happened to own a home in Vermont, and he liked how the title sounded as part of the larger collection of his “Counterpoint” pieces. But I am really, really glad it exists, because just how many pieces do you know that ask a flute player to loop with themselves?
Composer: trad., arr. Carmen Dragon
Composition: Shenandoah
Shenandoah is an iconic tune that has inspired as many people for its immediately expressive melody as for the natural beauty of its namesake, which is not the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia as is sometimes mistakenly believed, but the name of a Native American chief formerly based in what is now New York, which is used as a poetic evocation of the Missouri River (also not part of Virginia). Variously attributed to French-Canadian trappers and canoers in the 19th century, it was nevertheless adopted as a strong cultural marker in the state of Virginia anyway, becoming the regional anthem of the Shenandoah region and the melody which the song “Our Great Virginia” is based on. It developed into a hugely popular sea shanty, among a variety of other forms with many lyrical variants and musical arrangements. This touching orchestral arrangement by composer and Hollywood Bowl conductor Carmen Dragon is just one such arrangement, and a favorite on CRB’s airwaves for its expansive orchestration and endearing treatment of its source material.
Composer: Alan Hovhaness
Composition: Symphony No. 50, "Mt. Saint Helens"
Born in Somerville, Massachusetts, Alan Hovhaness was an American composer who is remembered for his many mountain-themed compositions, as well as his mystical reverence for nature, which he communicated through his musical language by incorporating non-Western subject matter and themes.
He was one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century; he composed 22 more symphonies than Mozart and lived more than twice as long (how’s that for Somerville grit?). He spent much of his life in the state of Washington, and was frequently inspired by its natural surroundings, and especially its mountains, which resulted in this symphonic gem.
Composer: George Crumb
Composition: American Songbook VII: The Kanawha River at Dusk
Another celebrant of American culture and identity, George Crumb was a monumental voice in late modernism, and in American classical music, period. He is mainly known for his string quartet Black Angels, which was a fierce aural critique of the Vietnam War; some allege that its first movement is designed to sonically mimic a hailstorm of bullets descending from an Apache Attack Helicopter. He is also well known for his visually striking scores that are meticulously hand drawn and copied, sometimes featuring shapes such as spirals, circles, and most famously, a peace symbol.
His music avoided typical classification under any one system or school, and instead combined a number of disparate yet idiomatically combined elements, such as experimental performance techniques and non-functional harmonies, to yield highly individual and characteristic impressions of his chosen subject matter. Later in his life, Crumb was highly influenced by the American Songbook, finding a compositional second wind in his career as a result.
He composed seven distinct volumes of compositions after the American Songbook, typically preserving the lyrics and original melodies, but altering the surrounding harmonies, textures, and instrumentation. This work is from the final volume, and intermingles Crumb’s own experience growing up in West Virginia with his aural depictions of America at large, depicting an eerie ambience of the titular Kanawha River at dusk.
Composer: Alicia Rytlewski
Composition: Three Sisters Farm Suite
Wisconsin has had a healthy appetite for classical for a long time, but composers who call Wisconsin home have been few and far between. Enter Alicia Rytlewski, the Milwaukee-based composer, pianist, and educator whose freshman album release When We Were Bears firmly counters that notion.
Educated at Ripon College in Wisconsin, Rtylewski infuses her contemporary classical experience with indie music sensibilities. She composed the material for the album over the course of 8 years, as an attempt to capture the essence of her artistic voice, with compositions on the album reflecting specific memories, events, and relationships that Rytlewski holds dear. The Three Sisters Farm Suite came as a result of her 3-month residency at Three Sister Community Farms in Campbellsport, Wisconsin, and spans three movements that reflect her impressions of the farm: Biodynamics, The Farmers, and Soil Fertility.
Composer: Charles Wuorinen
Composition: Brokeback Mountain
Though it originated as a brief short story published in the New Yorker in 1997, Brokeback Mountain exploded into the public consciousness when it was released both as a book and a film in 2005, marking a wider social shift in conversation surrounding queer identity in America.
This led composer Charles Wuorinen, himself a gay man, to adapt the story for an opera. He collaborated directly with its writer Annie Proulx, who served as the librettist of the work. This is not typical in the opera world by any means. Composing a libretto is a specialized skill that is usually taken up by librettists who interpret an author’s work. Wuorinen and Proulx’s efforts resulted in a highly fortuitous collaboration, and is exemplary of what human beings can accomplish when giants stand shoulder to shoulder.
THE EXTENDED INHABITED TERRITORIES
Composer: Morton Feldman
Composition: Samoa
While not at all indicative of anything musical in American Samoa, Samoa is a chamber work originally composed as a film score for a documentary titled American Samoa: Paradise Lost? which examined the social and cultural effects of U.S. colonial administration on the islands.
It is a quirky outlier in Feldman’s body of work, as it is one of his few film scores, and it is far more tuneful and extroverted and less distinctly abstract than some of his other works, perhaps reflecting some intuitive musical inspiration from its source material, as well as listener sensibilities for film.
Composer: Jack de Mello
Composition: The Music & Legends of Guam
In this arrangement, composer/arranger Jack de Mello presents an honest and compelling orchestral portrait of Guam's musical history. Commissioned by the Guam Economic Development Authority, it features 37 distinct tracks, each using musical materials from Guam and incorporating folklore and stories into the compositions themselves to give an even more detailed depiction of the local culture.
Composer: Alton Adams
Composition: Virgin Islands March
Born in St. Thomas while it was still maintained by Denmark, Alton Adams was the first Black bandmaster in the United States Navy, whose compositions were performed by none other than John Philip Sousa and his bands, among others. He was deeply steeped in musical culture, contributing articles about Samuel Coleridge Taylor as early as 1910 and becoming the dedicated band columnist for Boston's Jacobs' Band Monthly in 1915, as well as the musical editor for the St. Croix paper The Herald in 1916.
He started his own band, the Adams Juvenile Band, on the islands, which quickly dominated the local musical scene, and was subsequently entirely subsumed by the U.S. Navy following the United States’s acquisition of the Virgin islands from Denmark in 1917. Composed jointly between Adams and Sam Williams in the 1920s, his Virgin Islands March served as an unofficial anthem of the islands until a legislative act passed in 1963 cemented it as the official anthem of the territory.
Composer: German folk song, lyrics composed jointly by Jose and Joaquin Pangelinan
Composition: Gi Talo Gi Halom Tasi (In the Middle of the Sea)
Much like the national anthem of the United States, the regional anthem of the Northern Mariana Islands was also adapted from a pre-existing song that seemingly has little to do with its lyrical counterpart; in this case, a German folk song. Contrary to our national anthem, however, Gi Talo Gi Halom Tasi has two sets of lyrics that correlate with two of the dominant languages of the Northern Mariana Islands; Chamorro, spoken by the indigenous Chamorro people, and Carolinian, spoken by those who trace their roots back to the Caroline Islands. The Chamorro lyrics were composed by brothers Jose and Joaquin Pangelinan on the heels of WWII in the 1940s, while the Carolinian lyrics for the anthem were composed in the 1970s by David Kapileo Peter "Taulamwaar" immediately prior to the signing of the covenant which bound the Northern Mariana Islands to the United States’s stewardship.
Composer: Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Composition: Souvenir de Puerto Rico
Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an outstanding composer-pianist based in New Orleans, Louisiana, who made a name for himself touring across the globe in performances of his own works alongside others - Chopin was an early admirer of Gottschalk, hearing his Paris debut when Gottschalk was just 15 years old and predicting that Gottschalk would become the “king of the pianists.” His music was infused with the culture of everywhere he went, and is particularly noteworthy for its early adoption of Afro-Cuban rhythms and musical conventions, anticipating trends in music of the late 1800s and into the 1900s by nearly half a century. Souvenir de Puerto Rico is one such work. Composed in 1857 while Gottschalk was touring there, and published in 1860 with the subtitle Marche de Jíbaros, Gottschalk used a local Jíbaro Christmas tune as the musical basis of the composition, bringing together the seemingly incongruent vernacular music of Puerto Rico with the European romantic piano performance tradition into this multi-cultural gem.
A Note on Native American Music and its Composers
BONUS:
The Star-Spangled Banner (arr. Igor Stravinsky)
Igor Stravinsky is another composer who requires little introduction - the effect Stravinsky’s compositional voice had on music of all kinds, and especially orchestral music, has never left the compositional lexicon, with iconic ballets like The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring firmly cementing his name in the annals of history. What may require some introduction, however, is his infamous arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner. Arranged in 1941, the story goes that Stravinsky was hired in 1944 to conduct his arrangement with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Allegedly, Boston police intervened, deeming the arrangement a technical violation of state law. Luckily for Stravinsky, this was based on a misunderstanding. The law apparently forbade using the national anthem for dance music, exit marches, or medleys - none of which Stravinsky had done. The infamous “mug shot” photo that is frequently shared is in fact a visa application photo, and not a mug shot.
