Front cover image for Classical music in America : a history of its rise and fall

Classical music in America : a history of its rise and fall

Classical Music in America is a pioneering history by an award-winning scholar and leading authority on American symphonic culture. Joseph Horowitz argues that classical music in the United States is peculiarly performance- driven, and he traces a musical trajectory rising to its peak at the close of the nineteenth century and receding after World War I. He defines the decades of ascendancy as the quest for an American compositional voice, painting vivid vignettes of America's most celebrated performers and such path breaking institutions as the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. He explores a century of decline characterized by illustrious orchestras, conductors, and virtuosos, mostly foreign born, and in a final chapter he exposes a crisis of leadership and suggests new musical directions in our postmodern age. As with his acclaimed cultural histories, Horowitz here fashions a sweeping narrative--packed with personality and incident, textured by literature, sociology, and intellectual history--that freshly illuminates the American experience. Stating that classical music in the United States is largely performance driven, a chronological history documents its rise at the end of the nineteenth century and decline after World War I, covering such topics as the quest for an American compositional voice, the nation's top performers, and the author's recommendations about a postmodern musical direction
Print Book, English, ©2005
W.W. Norton, New York, ©2005
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xix, 606 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
9780393057171, 9780393330557, 0393057178, 0393330559
57044141
bk. 1. "Queen of the arts" : birth and growth
Introduction : a tale of two cities (1893)
pt. 1. Boston and the cult of Beethoven
John Sullivan Dwight, Theodore Thomas, and the slaying of the monster concerts
Henry Higginson and the birth of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Building a hall, choosing a conductor
Composers and the Brahmin confinement
pt. 2. New York and beyond
Anton Seidl and the sacralization of opera
Symphonic rivalry and growth
Leopold Stokowski, Gustav Mahler, Arturo Toscanini, and the gossip of the foyer
Antonín Dvořák and Charles Ives in search of America
Coda : music and the Gilded Age
bk. 2. "Great performances" : decline and fall
Introduction : the great schism (1914)
pt. 1. The culture of performance
The big three
More conductors
The world's greatest soloists
Opera for singers
pt. 2. Offstage participants
Serving the new audience
Composers on the sidelines
Leonard Bernstein and the classical music crisis
Postlude : post-classical music