Early American concert music developed between the mid-19th to late-19th centuries. Notable virtuoso performers like Jenny Lind, Ole Bull, and Louis Moreau Gottschalk toured America, helping grow interest in art music. American composers like Anthony Philip Heinrich were among the first to be popular before the Civil War. The Second New England School, centered around Boston, featured composers like John Knowles Paine, Edward MacDowell, and Amy Beach who embraced German ideals of concert music while incorporating American themes. Antonín Dvořák influenced American nationalism during his directorship of the National Conservatory in New York in the 1890s.

1. Early American
Concert Music

2. Concert Music vs. Vernacular Music
• Vernacular Music
• What is it?
• Examples
• Popular vs. Populist(?)
• Music purely for entertainment
• Music that is entertaining, but still has a purpose/function
• Art Music and Concert Music
• Basically the same thing
• Music for music’s sake; music as art
• Entertainment? Functional?

3. Think outside the box.
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Blurry lines
Can fit more than one genre at the same time
There is always an exception
Modern Examples

4. Time Frame
• Generally Mid- to Late-Nineteenth Century

5. Symphony Orchestras
*warning: overgeneralization alert*
• Europe
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Romanticism: “expressive extremes”
$$$$$$$
Large portion of population
Supply and demand
• America
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Uh…what is Romanticism?
$
…meh
No supply, no demand

6. Solo Recitals
• Much more in demand in America than Symphony
Orhcestras
• What is a virtuoso?
• Idolization
• Superhuman
• Tradition of virtuosos in Europe
• Mozart, Liszt, Paganini
• As virtuosos were becoming less popular in Europe,
they were becoming popular in America
• National concert tours

7. The Swedish Nightingale
• Jenny Lind (1820-1887)
• Born, raised, educated in
Sweden
• Child Prodigy
• On stage at age 10
• 1840: Vocal Health Issues
• 1841-1843: Manuel Garcia
• 1843: Hans Christian
Anderson in Denmark
• His muse
• 1844-1849: Success in
Germany and England

8. Jenny Lind’s American Tour
1850-1852
• 1849: Lind is approached by
P.T. Barnum about an
American Tour
• Financial demands; Barnum
pulls through
• Barnum publicizes
• Lind is famous in America
before anyone had actually
heard her sing.
• 1850: sails over from Europe
and tours for 2 years
• “Jenny Lind Fever”
• “Lind Mania”
• 1850-1851: $350,000
• $7.6 million in today’s currency

9. She donated everything to charity.

10. Ole Bull (1810-1880)
• Born and raised in Norway
• Five extensive stays in America
• Sara Chapman Thorp
• Part of the Nationalist movement
• What is Nationalism?
• “…he offered one thousand dollars to
any American composer who would
write an opera on an American
Subject; no one, however, accepted
the challenge and the company
soon collapsed.”
• How does this quote reflect the
broader attitude about American
Nationalism?
• American Nationalist composers are
trying to avoid sounding like who?

11. Ole Bull (cont’d)
Ole Bull’s Villa on Lysøen 

12. Louis Moreau Gottschalk
• 1829-1869
• The only one of these virtuosos that was
actually born in America (New Orleans)
• (…but he spent most of his career
working outside of the United States.)
• Studied in Paris as a teenager
• Traveled extensively
• Cuba and South America
• He wrote most of the music that he
played in recitals
• American or European or both?
• Nineteenth Century Bieber Fever

13. Gottschalk’s Piano Music
• General Characteristics
• Highly Rhythmic
• Often inspired by dance music
• “Character Pieces”
• Souvenir de Puerto Rico
• Le Bananier
• The Banjo

14. Anthony Philip Heinrich
(1781-1861)
• Born in Bohemia
• First full time American
composer popular before the
Civil War
• Started composing when he
was 36; lost business during the
Napoleonic Wars
• Stranded in 1810 in Boston
• Had no money to return home
• His music was inspired by
America, particularly Native
American tunes
• Ornithological Combat of Kings,
Mvt. III

15. William Henry Fry
(1813-1864)
• First American composer of
opera to have an opera
produced in the US
• Leonora
• Niagra Symphony
• Fought to have American
composers represented in the
concerts of American
Symphonies, particularly the
New York Philharmonic
• “…the American composer
should not allow the name of
Beethoven or Handel or Mozart
to prove an eternal bugbear to
him.”

16. George Bristow
(1825-1898)
• He and Fry supported each
other in the push for
representation of American
composers
• Violinist in the New York
Philharmonic
• Wrote the opera Rip Van
Winkle ten years after Fry’s
Leonora

17. Theodore Thomas
(1835-1905)
• Born in Germany
• Started playing with the New York
Philharmonic at age 19, prior to
playing First Violin in Jenny Lind’s
touring orchestra
• Most famous today for being a
conductor, rather than a composer or
violinist

18. American Concert Music Comes of Age
• Romanticism in Europe
• Strong influence on American composers
• Most American composers want to sound…?
• American Nationalism
• Starts gathering significant support at the very end of the
nineteenth century
• Musical training is still very eurocentric
• You go there or they come here

19. Antonín Dvořák
(1841-1904)
• Born near Prague; then Bohemia,
currently the Czech Republic
• Famous composer in Europe
• Asked by Jeannette Thurber to be
the director of the National
Conservatory of Music in NYC (18921895)
• What is a conservatory?
• Supporter of American Nationalism
• Most famous piece: Ninth Symphony
“From the New World” (1893)
• Supposedly inspired by:
• Native American Music
• African American Spirituals
• Vast openness of America
• Uses pentatonic scale for theme

20. Influence on American Nationalism
• “I am convinced that the future music of this
country must be founded on what are called Negro
melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious
and original school of composition, to be
developed in the United States. These beautiful and
varied themes are the product of the soil. They are
the folk songs of America and your composers must
turn to them.”

21. Second New England School
• AKA: the Boston Classicists, the Boston Six
• Focused in and around Boston
• Boston Symphony Orchestra
• Founded 1881 and enthusiastically supports American
composers, specifically those in the Second New England
School
• Still a focus on German ideals in concert music

22. The Boston Six
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John Knowles Paine (1839-1906)
Arthur Foote (1853-1937)
George Chadwick (1854-1931)
Edward MacDowell (1861-1908)
Horatio Parker (1863-1919)
Amy Beach (1867-1944)

23. John Knowles Paine
(1839-1906)
• From Maine; very music family
• Studied organ/composition in US
with a German teacher; traveled
to Europe to study with another
German teacher
• Toured Europe for 3 years giving
organ recitals
• Appointed Harvard Organist and
Choirmaster
• First professor of music in America
(1875)
• Respected for contributions to
orchestral literature

24. Edward MacDowell
(1860-1908)
• Born in NYC; spent much of his
adolescence and young adulthood
in France and Germany
• Paris Conservatory
• Hoch Conservatory
• Distinctive style
• Embraced ideas of Romanticism
• Different philosophy to nationalism –
“capture the spirit”
• Still utilized the quotation of Native
American and African American
themes
• Second Piano Concerto
• Quote from “Symphony from the New
World”

25. Amy Beach
(1867-1944)
• Born into a distinguished family in
New Hampshire
• Child prodigy
• Family moved to Boston
• Superbly talented pianist; extensive
training
• 1885: Debut as soloist with the BSO
• Almost entirely self-taught as a
composer
• Married surgeon
• Support as professional musician?
• Reviews: a woman composer…
• Romance for Violin and Piano