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One may ask if this is not rather African than American music, but the response would be that the negro could not have brought forth this music save for his life upon the southern plantation; it is the product of American life and surroundings.
There exist, also, some beautiful folk-songs founded upon this phase of existence, yet composed in the North by a Pennsylvanian. America should ever be grateful to Stephen C. Foster for creating a series of folk-songs as typical, as expressive, as beautiful as any in the world. His southern descent may have caused him to vibrate in sympathy with the southern life which he has portrayed as justly as it has been done in the repertory of the plantation itself.
Few Americans have as yet used this material; no composer of eminence has hitherto employed Foster's themes in symphony or sonata; yet Mr. G. W. Chadwick has effectively developed some dis�tinctly American themes in two of his symphonies, being the first emi�nent composer to elevate our folk-song into the symphonic domain. And the Bohemian, Dvorak, knowing well how much depends on nationality of music, taught our native composers a lesson, during his short sojourn in America, by using plantation themes in both symphony and in classical chamber music.
It is possible that a newer school of folk-music may yet arise in the United States out of the free and unrestrained ranch life of the West. There is much in such an existence to inspire music, but as yet this life has not been shared by a music-producing race. It may be that in the future the descendants of the miners, the cowboys, the farmers, of this section of our country, will create a music that shall reflect the bold and untrammeled life of the West, and add it to our scant repertory. And it is not to much too hope that out of our own typical music there shall eventually grow a great symphony and a school of advanced composition that shall be known as definitely American. |
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