To consider classical music in North America is to come to terms with its vast size and diversity.
The US alone has some 120 professional opera companies, 1,600 orchestras, and thousands of choruses. The story of classical music on this continent is one intertwined with its civil rights struggles, its media and entertainment industries, its religion and entrepreneurial zeal.
It’s a landscape of brash juxtapositions – where Van Cliburn could win a Russian piano competition and receive a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan, and where soprano Renée Fleming could sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl.
North American classical music has lingered deep in Europe’s shadow, especially when it comes to the concert repertoire. Composer Ned Rorem once declared that US composers are either French or German in outlook. And through much of the 20th century, a conductor or soloist had to be foreign-born to achieve a cachet with wealthy patrons and board members of institutions.
In the 1920s, only about 20 members of the New York Philharmonic were native-born. ‘America’s musical high culture has at all times (alas) been less about music composed by Americans than about American concerts of music composed by Europeans,’ wrote cultural historian Joseph Horowitz.
But there’s been a growing recognition of the rugged individualists who have shaped the American identity. Symphonists including Roy Harris, Howard Hanson and William Schuman helped establish a burly aesthetic for a patriotic age. Charles Ives, John Cage and Morton Feldman challenged assumptions about what music is. Minimalists and the West Coast School looked to Asia and Africa while postmodern composers drew on every conceivable style.
Canada shares some of these concerns, with a musical life developed on British and French models. After World War II a Canadian aesthetic began to take shape in works by R Murray Schafer, Claude Vivier and Ann Southam, among others. Similarly, in Mexico, European and indigenous traditions mingled in the works of Carlos Chávez, Manuel Ponce and Silvestre Revueltas.
Spirituals, Native American folk music, ragtime, jazz, Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, Hollywood and the European émigrés – these are just a few of the influences and traditions that have shaped North America’s classical music. Here's an A-to-Z dive into some of the people, places and moments that stand out in this varied history.
A to Z of American Music: A to E
A is for Anderson
On Easter Sunday, 1939, African-American contralto Marian Anderson gave a concert at the Lincoln Memorial, after she was barred from Washington’s Constitution Hall due to a ‘white artists only’ policy. The performance, attended by 75,000 racially integrated listeners, opened with the much-loved American anthem 'My Country, ’Tis of Thee'. Anderson went on to become the first black star at the Metropolitan Opera, among other firsts.
- 'My Country, 'Tis of Thee' features in our list of the greatest American patriotic songs
B is for Broadway
The fortunes of Broadway theatre have ebbed and flowed over the decades, and for every commercial spectacle there has been an innovative game-changer. A partial list of the latter includes Oklahoma!, Gypsy, West Side Story, Hair, A Chorus Line and Rent.
The composer Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George) is perhaps the most significant voice to emerge after the era of great songwriting teams (Ira and George Gershwin, and Rodgers and Hammerstein). He in turn paved the way for imaginative composers like Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa, Jason Robert Brown and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Miranda’s Hamilton, about founding father Alexander Hamilton, has become a cultural landmark.
C is for Carnegie Hall
Two American concert halls are widely hailed as among the best in the world: New York’s Carnegie Hall and Boston’s Symphony Hall. While some give Boston the edge on acoustics, Carnegie has hosted more landmark performances.
Tchaikovsky himself presided over the hall’s opening concert. Leonard Bernstein and Benny Goodman launched their careers here. Vladimir Horowitz, one of the very greatest pianists of all time, made his US debut and farewell on its stage. In addition to its three stages – the Isaac Stern Auditorium, Weill Recital Hall and the subterranean Zankel Hall – the hall recently opened a major new education wing. Despite power struggles, strikes and renovations, Carnegie Hall remains America’s most iconic concert venue.
D is for Dvořák
In the late 19th century, American composers started to recognise that most of their music didn’t sound very American. It took a foreigner – Czech composer Antonín Dvořák – to issue the challenge. Dvořák moved to New York City in 1892 to lead the National Conservatory, where he explored African-American spirituals and soaked up popular culture, from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to Longfellow’s poem, Song of Hiawatha.
Though Dvořák didn’t succeed in creating a truly American aesthetic (a tall order), he had an anthropologist’s curiosity. His Symphony No. 9 ‘From the New World’ contains echoes of spirituals while his String Quartet in F, ‘American’, is the product of a summer holiday in Spillville, Iowa.
E is for Ellington
Many of the great big bands of the swing era (roughly 1935-45) fizzled out or became nostalgia acts after World War II. But Duke Ellington and his orchestra kept on creating vital and innovative work into the early 1970s.
All told, the composer, pianist and bandleader wrote more than 1,500 compositions, including such enduring tunes as Satin Doll, Take the ‘A’ Train, and Mood Indigo, plus monumental works like the Black, Brown and Beige suite (premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1943). Ellington was a composer ‘with a feel for orchestral color as sure as anything to be heard in the music of Debussy or Ravel,’ wrote his biographer Terry Teachout.
A to Z of American Music: F to J
F is Film Music
To much of the world, American orchestral music means John Williams’s stirring melodies from Star Wars, Bernard Herrmann’s chilling string cues in Psycho or James Horner’s lush Titanic soundtrack. These composers arrived in the wake of Hollywood’s Golden Age, when Jewish émigrés fleeing Austria and Germany defined the sound of cinema.
The epic grandeur of scores by Miklós Rózsa, Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner has since given way to much more eclectic styles. Among today’s original voices are Michael Giacchino, Carter Burwell and Jóhann Jóhannsson.
G is for Glenn Gould
If there’s a Canadian version of Elvis, it might be Glenn Gould, the brilliant pianist, broadcaster and Toronto native who has inspired a cult-like devotion since his untimely death in 1982, aged 50. Gould’s recordings of JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations – his barnstorming 1955 account and the more patient 1981 version – have enthralled and divided music lovers.
His decision to quit touring, aged 31 and at the height of his fame, to concentrate on studio recording and other media projects has only served to heighten the mythology around Gould. A symbol of Canadian pianism, Gould is remembered today through the Canadian Broadcasting Centre’s Glenn Gould Studio and the Glenn Gould Prize, a $50,000 honour awarded every three years.
H is for Handel and Haydn Society
Founded in Boston in 1815, the Handel and Haydn Society is America’s oldest continuously performing arts organisation, and a surviving example of oratorio societies that were once dotted across the American landscape. The organisation gave US premieres of Haydn’s The Creation, Verdi’s Requiem and several Handel oratorios including Messiah.
The Society has also taken on ceremonial roles, performing at memorial services for Presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Jonathan Cohen was named Artistic Director in 2022 and has led H+H since the 2023-2024 season.
I is for Ives
Leonard Bernstein once described Charles Ives (1874-1954) as ‘our musical Mark Twain, Emerson and Lincoln all rolled into one’. Ives did much to shape American musical sensibilities in the 20th century, composing a body of work that wove together 19th-century forms (symphony, sonata, overture) with Civil War tunes, gospel hymns, ragtime marches and ballads.
Born in Danbury, Connecticut, Ives was a devout New Englander, a trait manifest in pieces like Three Places in New England and the Concord Sonata, whose four movements depict fellow Danbusy residents including the author Louisa May Alcott. Ives presaged the modern workaholic, holding a day job as an insurance executive and writing music on the commuter train. He won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his Third Symphony.
J is for Juilliard String Quartet
The Juilliard School’s quartet-in-residence has made an indelible mark on chamber music, helping to define the vigorous American string quartet sound, distinct from European counterparts. It has coached student ensembles that went on to their own success (including the Tokyo, Emerson, American, St Lawrence, Colorado and Mendelssohn Quartets).
And the group has helped shape the modern quartet repertoire, performing landmark cycles of the quartets of Bartók, Schoenberg and Carter. The Juilliard Quartet was founded in 1946 (the same year as Chicago’s Fine Arts Quartet), experiencing periodic personnel changes along the way. In 2016, cellist Astrid Schween became the first woman and African-American member in its history.
A to Z of American Music: K to O
K is for Kennedy
A former speechwriter once conceded that John F Kennedy wasn’t much of a classical music devotee, relying on an aide to tell him when to clap at concerts. But the President and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy welcomed many musicians to the White House during his tenure, including Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Casals (who they persuaded to come out of exile for a special recital).
After Kennedy was tragically assassinated in 1963, a number of composers penned tributes, including Stravinsky (Elegy for JFK ), Herbert Howells (Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing) and Peter Lieberson (Remembering JFK ). The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts opened in 1971 as the nation’s public memorial to the President.
L is for Library of Congress
With more than 21 million items, the Library of Congress holds what it calls the world’s largest music collection. Among its some 600 archival collections are the papers (scores, manuscripts, letters, etc) of Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, George and Ira Gershwin, Sergey Rachmaninov and Arnold Schoenberg.
The Library’s Music Division gives out awards (the annual Gershwin Prize for Popular Song), holds exhibitions, and hosts a chamber music series in its Coolidge Auditorium. One of its popular initiatives is the National Recording Registry, an ‘ultimate playlist’ of great American recordings that is updated annually.
M is for Minimalism
With roots in Lower Manhattan lofts and California campuses during the 1960s, Minimalism used techniques of phasing, looping and repetition to boldly challenge the modernist status quo. By the mid-1970s, it produced its first masterpieces, Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach and Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians.
John Adams later treated minimalism as a tool rather than a movement; European composers, including Louis Andriessen and Michael Nyman, added global elements. Though Minimalism has seen its share of identity issues – Glass and Reich don’t believe the label applies to their current work – it has gone from fringe to mainstream, influencing TV commercials and film scores (some written by Glass himself).
N is for Native American Music
The US has never had the equivalent of Bartók, a composer steeped in ethnomusicological fieldwork. But from about 1880-1920, practitioners of the Indianist movement sought to incorporate Native American melodies and rhythms into their concert works.
Spurred on by Dvořák, composers Arthur Farwell, Amy Beach and Edward MacDowell fashioned well-meaning, if fairly superficial homages (Farwell was perhaps closest to the mark with his Navajo War Dance). Today, young composers from the Chickasaw, Mohican, Navajo and other tribes are bringing their own voices to classical music.
O is for Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy was music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1938 to 1980, a strikingly long stretch by modern standards, and one that yielded the plush ‘Philadelphia Sound’. Building on the innovations of his predecessor, Leopold Stokowski, he emphasised opulent string textures, even in works by Bach or Handel.
- The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the US's 'Big Five' orchestras
Ormandy conducted US premieres of works by Shostakovich, Barber and Rachmaninov and he led the orchestra’s landmark 1973 tour to China. While other conductors arguably had a larger impact in US culture, Ormandy made the Philadelphia Orchestra sound like no other ensemble.
A to Z of American Music: P to T
P is for Pulitzer Prize for Music
No prize for art music draws as much attention and scrutiny as the Pulitzer. The $10,000 annual award – which is one of up to 21 Pulitzers given out in a range of disciplines – honours a piece that premiered during the previous year. Starting in 1943, when William Schuman received the first Pulitzer for his Secular Cantata No. 2, the award was strictly reserved for classical music.
But the eligibility criteria has broadened since the late 1990s, and winners have included three jazz works
as well as non-traditional classical pieces like Caroline Shaw’s a cappella work Partita for 8 Voices (2013). The most famous Pulitzer Prize winner to date might be Copland’s Appalachian Spring, the recipient in 1945.
Q is for Quebec
Pop superstars like Celine Dion, traditional Celtic fiddling and a French-inspired orchestral tradition are a few strands of Quebec’s freewheeling musical culture. The Montreal Symphony and Montreal Opera are twin pillars of the province’s largest city (both in residence at Montreal’s Place des Arts). They coexist with numerous smaller ensembles (Orchestre Métropolitain, Les Violons du Roy) and prominent artists including conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, pianists Louis Lortie and Marc-André Hamelin, and violinist Angèle Dubeau.
R is for Ragtime
Ragtime, the wittily syncopated jazz style, originated in African-American communities of St Louis, Kansas City and Chicago, with Scott Joplin as its greatest exponent. In the early 1900s, the form caught on with classical composers in Europe, inspiring Cubist-like pastiches by Stravinsky (Piano-Rag Music, Ragtime for 11 Instruments) a Teutonic parody by Hindemith (‘Ragtime’ from his suite 1922), and several French homages (by Debussy, Satie and Milhaud). Interest in ragtime rekindled in the 1970s (reintroducing not only Joplin’s The Entertainer but his opera Treemonisha), and inspiring homages in film (The Sting) and on Broadway (Ragtime).
S is for Steinway & Sons
From its humble origins in a Manhattan loft in 1858, Steinway became a music industry powerhouse. Today its instruments are used by 98 per cent of concert pianists, according to the company’s website. Detractors say that aggressive marketing plays into this, though few would dispute the pianos’ sensitive touch or rich tones (the instruments are still made by hand in factories in Queens and Hamburg).
In recent years Steinway has set its sights on emerging markets, notably China, as sales have slowed in the West. According to The New York Times, for two months in 2015, the company sold more grand pianos in China than in the US.
T is for Tanglewood
North America has plenty of scenic music festivals, and Tanglewood is no exception, nestled in the pastoral Berkshires region of Massachusetts. But this 210-acre summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is more than a glorified picnic spot.
The Tanglewood Music Center, an elite summer academy, hosts some 150 students annually, and according to one estimate, its graduates make up 20 per cent of US orchestra musicians. The school’s leadership has included Serge Koussevitzky, Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. Among Tanglewood’s other programmes are the Festival of Contemporary Music, the Boston Pops series and concerts of jazz and popular music.
A to Z of American Music: U to Z
U is for the US Marine Band
The US military is the largest employer of musicians in the country, with 130 bands across its five branches. The United States Marine Band, known as ‘The President’s Own’, sits atop of the heap. Founded in 1798 by an Act of Congress, the band gives some 500 performances a year, principally for presidential ceremonies. Its most famous director was John Philip Sousa, who composed Semper Fidelis and Hail to the Chief during his tenure.
V is for Van Cliburn
A lanky, 23-year-old pianist from Kilgore, Texas became a media sensation after winning the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958. Against a backdrop of Cold War tensions, Van Cliburn’s victory was commemorated with a ticker tape parade in New York City, the cover of Time magazine and a recording contract for RCA Victor.
It launched a whirlwind concert career although, by the late 1970s, Cliburn had gradually withdrawn from performing. While a return to the concert stage a decade later was only partially successful, his enormous legacy includes the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, established in Fort Worth in 1962. Cliburn died in 2013 of bone cancer.
W is for the West Coast School
Before ‘world music’ became a fashionable term, a group of composers dubbed the West Coast School were infusing American musical identity with pan-Asian influences. Standing apart from East Coast ‘uptown’ styles were Lou Harrison, who displayed an interest in the Indonesian gamelan; Henry Cowell, an experimentalist who plucked and thumbed the strings inside the piano; and Terry Riley,
a founder of Minimalism who drew on Indian classical music and a hippie sensibility. Californians John Adams and John Cage travelled to both coasts for inspiration and career opportunities.
X is for Xylophone
This mallet instrument injected a shot of orchestral colour into the country fiddling ‘Hoe-Down’ movement of Copland’s Rodeo. The exuberant piece was one of several ballet scores from Copland’s beloved populist period. Another was Appalachian Spring, which also used the xylophone, albeit in a more lyrical vein. The xylophone may have travelled to the US via the Latin American slave trade.
Y is for Young People’s Concerts at the New York Philharmonic
From 1958 until 1972, Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts on CBS were a cultural touchstone for American television, spanning 53 episodes on topics such as ‘Humor in Music’ and ‘The Latin-American Spirit’. The charismatic Bernstein took to the role with gusto, hosting his first episode just two weeks into his New York Philharmonic tenure (the topic was ‘What does music mean?’).
Avoiding condescension or stuffiness, he once illustrated the Mixolydian mode by singing ‘You Really Got Me’ by The Kinks. The series continued after Bernstein’s tenure, and his appearances are preserved on DVDs and on YouTube.
Z is for Zappa
We reach the end of our A to Z of American music with a true master from leftfield. You might not know it with titles like ‘Dog Breath Variations’ and ‘Hot Rats’, but Frank Zappa had a deep and ongoing interest in the classical avant-garde. Inspired by Varèse, Webern and Satie, the iconoclastic rocker took up symphonic writing around 1970 with his score to the cult film 200 Motels. It was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta.
In the 1980s, Zappa’s orchestral music was championed by conductors such as Kent Nagano and Pierre Boulez, who recorded it with the London Symphony Orchestra and Ensemble InterContemporain, respectively. Zappa’s final project was The Yellow Shark, a commission from the Ensemble Modern.
This article first appeared in the February 2016 issue of BBC Music Magazine