The Need for Research in the History of American Music

Abstract

IF WE JUDGE from the amount of music consumed in the United States each day, we shall suppose that ours is the most musical nation on earth. Music comes with the air we breathe, in season and out of seasoxl, to inspire the alert consciousness and to dull the senses of those to whom it is palliative rather than challenge. We have brought this about owing to our genius in matters technical whereby rivers of sound are made to reach flood proportions. NYhile taking credit for harnessing music of the spheres to every dashboard and bedside table, we also face the charge that one of the most precious gifts of communication conferred on men has developed, through our urgency, all the potentialities of a dire threat to man's peace of mind. We sell in the marketplace that which is to be sought in solitude on the mountaintop; we uphold as a shining example of mass production that which accompanies the prayer of contemplation. Hitherto rare moments of inspired communication now lighten the load of household duties and chase away the blues. Arrayed beside these questionable influences are substantial temples of unexcelled grace wherein the muse is attended with consistent devotion and men's lives are made purer and holier. There is ample reason to look upon the progress of music in America as one of the most remarkable examples of cultural growth and maturity the world has ever known. To what extent do these virtues and faults derive from, and contribute to qualities which we consider indigexlously American in idea and practice? Every well-recognized type of music, whether it satisfies our personal taste or not is indigenous to our culture, and each type, whether we approve or not, will be of concern to scholars in 2 ,058 A.D. when they appraise the merits of civilization in these United States of America. At present, however, we are distressingly uninformed regarding important and revealing changes of taste which took place among us prior to the twentieth century. Nor have we conclusive means of analysis today, except as business associations promulgate them for their own special uses. Glancing at our library shelves we find a sort of pseudo-literature written from the standpoint of someone's roseate, inaccurate memory with results too often giving the impression that America was discovered in 1892 and first settled about 1914. A recent list of books on American civilization selected for information libraries abroad includes several admirable works on literature and the visual arts, but none on music, the implication being either that we have no musical tradition or that-as this paper intends to prove it is insufficiently documented and, therefore, incorrectly interpreted. If we draw on reputable historians whose textbooks are used almost exclusively to instruct young people in our colleges and universities we shall learn but little about music in America.