Richard Crawford gives us the fascinating story of music in the United States, from the sacred music of its earliest days to the jazz and rock that enliven the turn of the millennium. His book leads us along the widely varied paths taken by American music, beginning with that of Native Americans; continuing with traditions introduced by Spanish, French and English colonisers, Africans brought to America as slaves, and other immigrants. He shows how the three spheres of folk, popular and classical music continually interact to form a variegated whole. Throughout, the music is set in historical and social context. America's Musical Life strikes a balance in presenting the general background, and highlighting individual composers, performers and pieces of music. We learn how sacred music-making coexisted with secular song and dance in the colonies; how nineteenth-century commerce ruled the publication of parlour music; and how the twentieth century introduced an incredibly rich array of styles. Bringing order to a cacophony, this book offers a highly readable and informative account of America's rich musical traditions.
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From Publishers Weekly
In 1846, the director of the Paris Opera told American composer William Henry Fry that Europeans "looked upon America as an industrial country--excellent for electric telegraphs, but not for Art." Over a century and a half later, Crawford (The American Musical Landscape), a professor of music at the University of Michigan and former president of the American Musicological Society, has thoroughly debunked that myth, at least in regard to music. In this ambitious, comprehensive history, Crawford speaks with equal authority on colonial psalmody and ragtime, minstrelsy and Gilded Age classical, and in an effort to highlight forgotten history, sketches biographies of influential individuals and the movements in which they participated. Through 40 chapters, he firmly roots each song, symphony or hymnal in its era, showing the political, environmental and social forces that have shaped composers and musicians, both professional and amateur. From an examination of Native American music to the church-centered song of the Puritan colonies, from the wildly popular minstrel shows to jazz and rock, the reader gets a fuller understanding of the America that produced and listened to the widely varied musical forms of our past. Crawford's book is egalitarian and accessible, and the occasional appearance of musicological jargon won't deter lay readers. This definitive history of music in the U.S. is sure to delight music aficionados and history buffs alike, and is a must for anyone interested in what music has meant to America and what America has meant to music. B&w photos and illus.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Here, Crawford (Glen McGeoch Collegiate Professor of Music, Univ. of Michigan; former president, American Musicological Society) has assembled a comprehensive tome poised to supersede all previous single-volume histories on both American music and American's use of music from other parts of the world. Like Gilbert Chase (America's Music, 1955) before him, Crawford believes in the quintessence of this country's folk and popular traditions. His goal is to "reconcile" that belief with the emphasis of 19th- and early 20th-century music historians on the performance of classics by European composers. Although his treatment of Native American music is somewhat limited, Crawford covers virtually every musical baseDblues, jazz, swing, pop, rock, hip hopDin a highly readable style with economics and history as cultural backdrops. Well researched and sensitively constructed, this is highly recommended for all public and academic libraries.DJames E. Perone, Mount Union Coll., Alliance, OH
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
By klavierspiel
Format:Hardcover
Richard Crawford's ambitious book seems a culmination of his previous work, attempting to encompass the whole of American musical activity since the birth of the nation. His basic methodology of dividing American music into three spheres, classical, popular and folk, is a successful tool for making a gargantuan subject more manageable. His chronology makes an attempt to at least cast a glance at each of these areas as it progresses through the centuries.
Some of the individual chapters are, in my opinion, among the strongest essays available on their particular topics. Due to my own lack of previous knowledge in these fields I particularly enjoyed the chapters on the beginnings of organized music making in America, through the church. In particular, the split between the Methodist ideal of polished musical performance and literacy, and the more fundamentalist view that music in worship was direct communication with God, communication hindered by too much technical knowledge--this is a schism whose echoes are still apparent today.
Later on, the chapter on Ives takes a very small corner of the composer's output--six songs--to give a lucid and comprehensive survey of his style, a ingenious solution to the problem of how to give an accurate picture of an enormous, heterogenous body of work in a limited space.
Occasionally during the course of such an enormous work Crawford struggles with his task. At times one has the impression that topics and personages are being included and examined out of a sense of duty rather than real conviction about their significance; one can also quarrel with the choice of emphasis as Crawford approaches the present day. Nor do I think his surprising conclusion, which examines an actual, recent concert performance in which he was personally involved, succeeds in his goal of synthesizing his overall points by looking at them in microcosm, as it were. Still, he hits the the mark at enough points in this sweeping chronology to make it one of the finest works yet to appear on this topic.
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
Crawford's superb book presents the whole sweep of US cultivated and traditional musics--from 16th-century Native American music through late 20th-century hip-hop culture. The author (Univ. of Michigan) approaches America's music from the standpoint of "composer's music," i.e., classical music in which the performer rather strictly follows the composer's intentions; "performer's music," popular music where the "notation is intended as an outline to be shaped by performers as they see fit"; and folk music, music handed down through oral tradition. Crawford has the ability to make broad connecting leaps between and among his subjects, and his felicitous writing style invites the listener deep into his narrative. Abundant illustrative materials and a sweeping, inclusive bibliography add substantially to this excellent history. John Tasker Howard's Our American Music (1931), Gilbert Chase's America's Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present (1955; Crawford wrote the introduction for th e third revised edition, 1987), and Charles Hamm's Music in the New World (CH, Jun'83) stand as early models of studies of music in America. Crawford's book is every bit their equal and, in its own way, it establishes a new model for inclusiveness. An impressive summation of the vast musical "stew" that constitutes American music, this book is indispensable for all music collections.
Format:Hardcover
In the 1980s I was a graduate student in musicology at the University of Toronto, specializing in Canadian music. A visit by Richard Crawford was one of the galvanizing moments in my education. He spoke on the theme of "Studying American Music" (the talk was later published in the Newsletter of the Institute for Studies in American Music, vol. XIV, no. 2, May 1985), but his ideas proved to be applicable to any field of music study. I know I have certainly made generous use of them in my own work. So it was with particular interest that I turned to this book, his magesterial (nearly 1,000 pages long!) summing up of a career devoted to the subject.
In the epilogue to the book, Crawford states that the historian is motivated by a disagreement with received ideas - "the gut-level feeling that says, 'It wasn't like that.'" In 40 chapters covering the entire history of music in America chronologically, from pre-historical to modern times, Crawford tells us how it really was. One tribute to the quality of this book is that the chapters on music in which I thought I had no interest (e.g., 18th century psalmody or 19th century minstrel shows) I found to be every bit as engaging as those on music that I love and cherish.
Crawford establishes his theoretical basis in a section titled "Notation, the Great Divide, and American Musical Categories" (p. 227). Previous historians (notably Charles Hamm and H. Wiley Hitchcock) have proposed a binary opposition in American music between Classical and Popular, or Cultivated and Vernacular. In place of this dualism, Crawford proposes a richer three-tiered categorization: Composers' music, which aims for TRANSCENDENCE (i.e. lasting value); Performers' music, which values ACCESSIBILITY; and Traditional music, ruled by CONTINUITY. The first two are notated traditions, the last is transmitted orally. These categories arise initially from considering the classical, popular, and folk traditions respectively.
Crawford later develops his thesis to show that considerable overlap and bleeding between categories has been characteristic of American music, especially in the 20th century. A chapter on the Beatles (No. 38, which otherwise seems glaringly out of place here - why an entire chapter on a British group?) makes the point that popular music since the 1960s has achieved transcendence. At about the same time, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and other composers in the Classical sphere were aiming for accessibility in preference to transcendence. Similarly, jazz arose from popular roots but achieved transcendence, primarily through recordings rather than notation, however.
Crawford's democratic approach gives equal time to the most widely varied styles and genres of music. He treats everything, from hymns to hip-hop and beyond, with scholarly attention that is balanced, scrupulous, and passionate. In the Epilogue, he admits to a grounding in the Classical sphere (and relays a charming story about travelling to a small town to hear his wife Penelope Crawford perform as piano soloist with a community orchestra), but he obviously has a passionate interest in jazz and a respectful attitude towards all types of music. You might want to turn to Hitchcock's *Music in the United States: A Historical Introduction* for a shorter treatment of the subject, or Hamm's *Music in the New World* for a more argumentative approach, but I feel that Crawford's book in time will take its place as the most thoughtful and the most comprehensive of all surveys of American music.
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