In today's Washington Post, I spied an article by Jonathan Yardley (who
is NOT their music critic, BTW), discussing a review of the New York
Philharmonic's 10 CD set entitled "An American Celebration".  The original
review of this set of NYPO archival recordings that Yardley refers to is
by Jay Nordlinger, in the National Review magazine.

Since I refuse to read the NR (especially since their printing a few years
ago of a cover that was racially offensive to myself and to many Asians I
know), I only refer to Yardley's article, which can be read via this URL:

   http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/feed/a1313-1999nov15.htm

As it is dangerous for me or anyone else to try to summarize an article for
the rest of the members of the List, I'll only list points gleaned from it
that are of personal interest to me, and hope that others will join in with
their own thoughts, preferably after they've read the article:

1) defining "American music" in Eurocentric terms is (almost) always
going to be disadvantageous to the former, as it can often only be a "pale
imitation" of the great classical music of the European masters.  The only
music Yardley mentions that might be worthy of this standard is "Rhapsody
in Blue" and "Appalachian Spring".

2) defining "American music" in terms of the concert hall and the symphony
orchestra is far too limiting.  It leaves out the vast contributions of
popular American composers, jazz etc.  In these areas, American music can
stand with anything else, but because it is often derided as "popular", it
gets no mention in such anthologies.

My own take on the article is of a skeptical bent--anything put out by
the NYPO on "American Music" is likely to refer to the symphonic side of
things, and this shouldn't by itself be the subject of a polemic, any more
than a jazz or a rock'n'roll (or Country and Western for that matter)
anthology is likely to be genre-centric.

I also wonder if the comparisons being made are between music from
different eras.  American symphonic music is dominated by 20th century
composers, and in this sense 20th century CM tends to get unfavorable
comparisons with the 3Bs, or Mozart, Chopin etc.  whatever the country
of origin?

That said, "classical" American Music also includes chamber and piano
music, songs, Broadway musicals (at least to me) and similar scaled works
that don't make it into the concert hall per se.  And don't get me started
on the fact that we are only beginning to tap into the vast amount of
music written in the America(s) centuries before the notion of a symphony
orchestra existed-- music that was definitely European in form, but
often with native and African elements mixed in.  Perhaps this earlier,
pre-symphonic music has much more in common with jazz and other popular
American musical idioms than we think?

Bill H.