Today our band director brought up an interesting question: Why is it that we don't know the early American composers as well as we know the heavy-hitting European composers? Everyone has heard of Mozart or Beethoven or Brahms, but how many of us know Amy Beach, William Grant Still, or Anthony Philip Heinrich.
Heinrich was the first American composer to write a symphony orchestra. Amy Beach was the first American woman composer. William Grant Still was the first African-American to write for orchestra, among many other achievements. These people should be recognized. They paved the way for Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein.
But today, I have another early composer on my mind. Charles Ives (1874-1954) took popular, nationalistic melodies, like America (My Country 'tis of Thee), and gave them a unique individualism. He is best known for his innovative use of polytonality, which means he would have a melody played in two keys at once.
There is a part in his Variations on 'America' where the theme is played in F major by half of the band and Eb major by the other half. So you hear the melody in minor seconds. For the un-music theory initiated, that's really crunchy sounding. Go to a keyboard and play a black key and a white key (that are right next to one another) at the same time and you'll get an idea of what this kind of polytonality would sound like.
It's interesting that Ives was doing this kind of thing before Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky is amazing, by the way, but I will have to save that for another nibble.
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