dynamics,
and the harmony is open, consisting of open fifths. This was very much the way that people sang during the Colonial
period. Dominic Vautier 1/7/2011
An interesting sidelight to musical
development in this country was Sacred Harp, an early type of
multiple-part religious music that had developed not only a unique
style, but even it’s own notation. In about 1844, the same time that Steven Foster began to write,
Benjamin Franklin Whate and E.J. King, two Georgians, developed a
songbook using the four-shape notation, which came from England.[1]
In colonial times music instructors found it easier to teach the
musical scale using the syllables fa, so, la, fa, so, la, me, fa. Now we use the familiar do,
re, me, fa, so, la, te, do. In
the four-shape system or fasola[2]
each note has a different shape (the triangle, the square, the circle,
and the diamond) so singers can more easily recognize which line the
note is on. Sacred harp
music was well accepted during the middle of the 19th century
and still is performed today in some areas, mainly the South. Its melody is simple, with no
dynamics,
and the harmony is open, consisting of open fifths. This was very much the way that people sang during the Colonial
period.
The significance of Shape Note music is that it may have contributed some of its harmonies and structure to popular music. The music consisted of standard verses and chorus, and this was part of what Foster observed when he was forming his early musical ideas. There appears to be similarity to Sacred Harp in some of Foster’s early works, and although it cannot be clearly demonstrated, it is more than likely that he used some aspects of Sacred Harp in the eclectic style of music that he was developing.
The Civil War had spurred renewed interest in the brass band, which was America’s most predominant music from about 1865 until 1890. This music became popular largely under the enthusiastic leadership of Pat Gilmore, an energetic young cornet player and band conductor who was said to have composed When Johnny Comes Marching Home. Gilmore organized spectacles involving large numbers of musicians and singers.[3] These Peace Jubilees, as Gilmore called them, sometimes attracted many thousands of people. The largest Peace Jubilee was held in Boston in 1872 and lasted five days. It included over ten thousand voices and over one thousand musicians. The closing number on the last day of the Great Boston Jubilee was The Anvil Chorus, which featured 100 firemen, all beating away handily on large anvils. At the same time all the church bells in Boston were rung and every cannon at every armory fired. It was both a musical performance and an event.
The
Peace Jubilee faded into history as another theatrical piece of
showmanship that so often characterized the 1870’s. It had no lasting significance other than to demonstrate the singular organizational abilities of Mr. Gilmore
himself. The Jubilee did
however awaken an interest in musical marches and band concerts.
John Philip Sousa was the son of Portuguese immigrants and was born six years before the outbreak of the Civil War. Young Sousa lived in Washington DC and was fascinated with the glittering bands that marched through the streets of the capitol. He mastered the violin at a very early age and spent his younger years performing and conducting. He was a very good classical composer, writing waltzes and marches with equal proficiency. In early 1880 Sousa received the prestigious honor of becoming music director for the U.S. Marine Band. This job was one of the most envied at that time because the director was able to play at all White House concerts and official receptions. It was definitely a high profile position and John made good use of it. His two goals were to make band music as appreciated as any music that existed and to write marches that truly reflected the spirit of America[4] As director of the U. S. Marine Band he composed Semper Fedelis, High School Cadets, Washington Post, and many more.
In 1892 Sousa left the position of director of the Marine Band and organized his own band, which became fabulously successful over the next 20 years. He managed to write seven comic operas and well over fifty marches. Today when we think of musical marches, we think of John Philip Sousa.
The march does not fit well within traditional popular music because Foster didn’t like to glamorize combat and he liked marching armies even less. In fact, Stephen Foster wrote only a very few songs that could even remotely be considered marches. De Camptown Races is about as close as he comes to it, but even then, the marching is done horses. The march, as a musical form, was used occasionally in popular music, but only during wartime and only because of its tremendous appeal in the years following the Civil War. It is debatable whether Foster ever felt that the musical form belonged in popular music.
Marches can, at best, be considered novelty music. Whenever there’s a war, out come the marches because we automatically associate the march with patriotism. During the early period of popular music there were no big wars and so there were no marches that achieved million-seller status, not even Washington Post. The Spanish-American War adopted Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight as its theme, but this song is ragtime. In later wars, marches would again become popular. There was Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag(WW1), Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition (WW2), and The Legend of the Green Berets (Vietnam), just to name a few. When we have wars, we get marches.
Classic Ragtime is not popular music at all, and it’s not Jazz or Blues. It’s strictly piano music similar to classic sonata, somewhat like a fugue or baroque counterpoint, but with definite differences. Classic Ragtime contains intimate rhythmic interactions between the left hand treble and the right hand base. The right hand is usually heavily syncopated and melodic in contrast to a straight left hand rhythm. Moreover, a Classic Ragtime piece usually contains three melodies, each with its own rhythm, interacting in different ways.[5] Classic Ragtime can be loosely compared to a dialogue between the left and right hand on the piano. Sometimes they play together, sometimes they fight, but most of the time they just talk to each other in interesting ways.
It is only by listening to Classic Ragtime that one can appreciate its vibrant nature, flowing quality, and unimpeded buoyancy. Two excellent examples of this can be found in the music of Scot Joplin. They are the Swipsey Cakewalk (1900), and Easy Winners (1901), both are representative of his best work.
Casual historians incorrectly argue that Classic Ragtime had a significant effect on the course of popular music. This is not the case. There was only one Classic Ragtime hit, Maple Leaf Rag, that made it to the million-seller mark, and it wasn’t very good ragtime. All the other successful ragtime music, such as Hello, My Baby, Bill Bailey, and Alexander’s Ragtime Band were popular ragtime, a very different kind of music altogether. Maple Leaf Rag was considered a novelty song because nobody could figure out exactly what to do with it. They couldn’t understand a song that wasn’t very danceable and had no words. This was the case, essentially, with all Classic Ragtime. There were virtually no popular songs of this era that contained the signatures of true Classic Ragtime, that is, music without words, having difficult or undanceable syncopation.
Contrary to popular belief burlesque is not a chorus line of
scantily clad girls, but rather, a short play or skit that relies
heavily on parody and farce. It
was not performed by itself much after 1860, but was usually part of a
bigger structure, such as a minstrel show, revue, or vaudeville act.
Nonetheless, burlesque remains a valuable part of this
discussion.
One example of burlesque is a take-off on the famous French actress Sarah Bernhardt, called Serah Heartburn, which often featured a lady dressed in outlandish robes, who sang horribly and was finally driven off the stage by tomatoes and cabbage thrown by other actors planted in the audience.
Shakespearean material was a great favorite of burlesque: Omelet, a version of Hamlet in which all the swords break, Roman-Nose and Julie-ate, in which Julie-ate falls off the balcony, and Oh Tally-Ho (Othello) in which Othello gets bed bugs from Ders-de-Money (Desdemona). These were all popular burlesques.
By the 1880’s burlesque had introduced a sexual element and the skits became quite suggestive. Large bosoms and big behinds became very common and successful burlesque, and making grand remarks about a particularly buxom lady always got a good laugh from the crowd. Burlesque songs also became a mainstay of vaudeville. The most famous burlesque song of this time was Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay (1891).
Ridicule, imitation, and farce have always been important elements of popular music, and these ingredients had their roots in burlesque. Tin Pan Alley made it a common practice to ridicule popular songs, especially the tearjerkers, because they made such obviously good burlesque. As soon as the lugubrious Cradle’s Empty, Baby’s Gone appeared, it was immediately burlesqued with Bottle’s Empty, Whiskey’s Gone.
The sexual aspects of burlesque also had an important influence on popular music. Although vaudeville is usually considered the main source of the sexual content for early popular music, vaudeville originally got much of its material from burlesque.
The
British musical invasion of America started in 1878. The
Operetta or Light Opera was strictly an English import, usually a
comedy, featuring complex and often convoluted plots, intricate musical
scores, and very lighthearted themes. The music was a blend of slow ballads and fast tongue twisters,
which relied heavily on clever rhyme and verse, far too rich for the
American palate. In an
indirect way however, the English operetta played a key role in American
popular music development.
In 1878, H.M.S. Pinafore opened in Boston. Its immense popularity brought a whole new clientele to the theater, namely entire families, men, women and children. Before Pinafore, the stage was looked upon with suspicion by most respectable families.[7] After Pinafore, the stage became a legitimate source of family entertainment, bringing in many new customers and producing more revenue, thereby attracting better-quality subject mater. The result of this evolution was the creation of a market, i.e., the development of enormous possibilities for making money, not just from operettas, but from any type of theater. This suddenly-expanded market caused vast amounts of new material to be fed into the entertainment machine, which also, of course, served as grist for the popular music mill.
The revue, which began around 1890 and lasted almost 40 years, was a type of musical pageant. Modeled somewhat after the Extravaganza of the late 1860’s, the revue featured more girls, more songs, more showmanship, larger stages, more elaborate sets, and extremely forgettable music. Whereas the musical comedy moved toward the integration of music and story, the revue did exactly the opposite, preferring to patch together songs to form a loosely organized thematic presentation.
The revue usually consisted of a lavish and flamboyant pageant with lots of pretty girls, flashing lights, sparkling rhinestones, and pink ostrich plumes, amid the splendor of winding staircases, pools, water falls, horses, carriages, and sometimes elephants. These flashy sets appeared nonstop, one after another, and the effect was to overwhelm the audience with lights, tinsel, and glitter. No real effort at story development or musical unity was attempted. There was just a theme that recurred throughout the production, but which often got lost amid all the razzle-dazzle. Still, people liked what they saw. Some of the very best revue music actually was good enough to become popular.
Florenz Ziegfield was the champion of this genre with his highly successful Ziegfield Follies, which ran from 1909 until 1929.[8] We will see more of Ziegfield in chapter seven.
All of these sources contributed to popular music in some way. Obviously, missing from this list are Jazz and the Blues, both of which were to have profound effects only after 1915.
[1]
Buell E. Cobb Jr., The Sacred
Harp (Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1978), 4.
[2]
For more information see fasola on google.
[3]
Carroll C. Calkins, ed. The
Story of America
(New York: The Readers Digest Association, 1975), 393.
[4]
Burton, 55.
[5]
Some feel the definitive work on Classic Ragtime is They All Played Ragtime, Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis (New York: Oak
Publications, 1971). Others
feel the book is revisionist.
[6]
W.S Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan, H.
M. S, Pinafore, 1878.
[7]
David Ewen, New Complete Book
of the American Musical Theater (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1958), xxii.
[8]
Irving Berlin worked for Ziegfield. Some of his songs were quite good.