Four Centuries of Great Music July 27, 2024 Forgotten American Composers of the 1920s, 30s & 40s

FCGM 7-21-24   

Forgotten American Composers of the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s

Last Sunday I had a conversation with Gil Rose founder and conductor of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project about composer John Alden Carpenter.  The Boston Modern Orchestra Project had just released a new album of John Alden Carpenter ballet music.  We talked about Carpenter and other American composers of the early 20th century who have disappeared from the American orchestral and chamber music concert halls.  We hear the music of Aaron Copland and Charles Ives a lot but less or nothing from many other talented composers.

We may disagree on the word “forgotten”, but they have all but disappeared from the concert halls.  Over the next few months, I plan a monthly feature on Four Centuries of Great Music  exploring the music of these “forgotten” American composers.

We open with the composer that triggered this series, John Alden Carpenter.  Born into a thriving mercantile family in the suburbs of Chicago, he studied at Harvard with John Knowles Paine, after which he moved back to Chicago where he worked in his fatherís firm, dividing his time between composition and business (much like his almost-exact contemporary Charles Ives did in the insurance business). Among the first to recognize the importance and potential of jazz music as a true, American genre, he employed many of its elements as early as 1915, in his Concertino for Piano and Orchestra. Probably best known for his ballet scores such as “Krazy Kat”, he also wrote other orchestral, art songs and chamber music.  I will refer you to my episode of Evening Eclectic this past Sunday, July 14th with Gil Rose to listen to there of his ballet scores.

Today we will be listening to his “Adventures in a Perambulator”. This was written in 1914 and was inspired by his walks with his baby daughter Ginny

I: En Voiture (All Aboard!)
It is a beautiful day for a walk in the park with sweeping vista of music

II: The Policeman
A jaunty movement with march rhythms about the men in blue but with some seriousness as well with some dark tinges

Ill: The Hurdy-Gurdy

The third movement introduces ambient sound: a hurdy-gurdy player performing favourite music of the day, including opera music (the Miserere from Il trovatore), Italian songs (Eduardo Di Capua’s O Marie), and popular music (Irving Berlin’s Alexander’s Ragtime Band). After the hurdy-gurdy man has been moved on by the Policeman, Baby yearns to hear the ‘forbidden’ music again. Carpenter’s own music often incorporated jazz themes.

IV: The Lake
The Lake, inspired by Wisconsin’s Lake Geneva, gives the opportunity for a very European kind of sound painting. The waves come and go, the land is replaced by water, and the sun dances on the water.
V. Dogs
As the baby discovers dogs, the music barks and jumps, and even swings in circles chasing its tail. Carpenter again gives us opposite music for the doggy meeting, quoting both Septimus Winner’s ‘Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone’ and the German ‘Ach du and Ach, du lieber Augustin’.


VI: Dreams
Just as quickly as they have appeared, the Dogs are gone. Baby falls asleep thinking of the tremendous discoveries of the day: the big Policeman, the music maker, and, finally, Dogs! The movement closes with Mother singing a lullaby.

Adventures in a Perambulator was one of the works that Walt Disney chose to be part of the 1941 edition of Fantasia. Because of the war and the disappointing reception of the original Fantasia, those plans never came to fruition but were forever shelved.


Here is a performance of John Alden Carpenter: Adventures in a Perambulator by National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine conducted by John McLaughlin Williams    from the album American Classics: Adventures In Perambulator/Symphonies Nos.1 & 2. Naxos

Next in this episode of Four Centuries of Great Music featuring the music of forgotten American composers of the 1920s, 30s and 40s is Carl Ruggles.  

Born near Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Ruggles studied violin and composition in the Boston area before moving to New York, where he met Edgard Varèse and found consistent support for his own music in Varèse’s International Composers Guild. It was through this group that Ruggles’ brief but forceful Men and Mountains (1924) had its premiere. The work had staying power in modernist circles; Henry Cowell published it three years later as the first score in his New Music Quarterly.

Men and Mountains makes an imposing first impression. Horns, angular melodies, and large leaps dominate the opening movement, “Men: A Rhapsodic Proclamation.” By comparison, the atmospheric second movement, “Lilacs,” is scored for strings only, and it shimmers and aches. A descending two-note motive begins the movement and recurs throughout, constructing an aura of yearning melancholy.

Although Ruggles’ legacy is that of a headstrong ultramodern, the final movement, “Marching Mountains,” reveals his debt to tradition. There, the aggressive temperament of the first movement returns with drumbeats that, with the help of the movement’s title, suggest marching over a landscape. After a more intimate passage in which brief wind solos compete with strings, the movement’s initial intensity returns. But this time, it is infused with a familiar rhythmic idea—the short-short-short-long pattern from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony leading fatefully to the work’s unforgiving climax.

Here is a performance of Carl Ruggles: Men and Mountains by Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra from the album The Complete Music of Carl Ruggles  


American composer Paul Bowles is probably best known for his literary achievements  such as his novel “The Sheltering Sky” written in 1949.  However, before that he was an avid composer.  Born in New York City, he studies piano, voice and music theory as a youngster.  He would much rather improvise than practice which irritated his father.  He began his studies a the University of Virginia in 1928 where he discovered the music of George Antheil and Henry Cowell.  Within a year he dropped out and bought a one-way ticket to Paris.  He wrote his first major work a sonata for oboe and clarinet in 1930.  In Paris he studied with Aaron Copland and became his lover.  Although their relationship did not last, they remained good friends  throughout their lifetimes.

In the late 30s Bowles returned to the United States and began writing incidental music for the plays produced by Orson Welles and written by Tennessee Williams.  

In 1946 Bowles wrote the 4 song - song cycle “Blue Mountain Ballads” based upon poems by  Tennessee Williams.  The extended harmonic language of the piano part allows a large degree of freedom in all four songs. The tonality in the music may be obscure yet the harmonic language is accessible to an ear of an average audience of classical music and does not require extended listening experience. The meter and tempo varies within each song separately as well as between the songs.

Here is a performance of the four blue mountain ballads: Heavenly Grass, Lonesome Man, Cabin and Sugar in the cane by Thomas Hampson, baritone & Craig Rutenberg, piano from the album. Wondrous Free: Song of America II.  RHM Records




We open this second hour of Four Centuries of Great Music featuring the music of forgotten American composers with George Antheil and his A Jazz Symphony

Antheil born July 8, 1900, in Trenton, New Jersey.  He began piano early and at 16 began composition studies with Constantine von Sternberg, a former pupil of Franz Liszt.   From Sternberg, he received formal composition training in the European tradition.  In 1919, he began to work with the more progressive Ernest Bloch in New York.

His A Jazz Symphony was composed 1925, revised 1955 Premiered on April 10, 1927 in New York, New York

Among the composers on the leading edge of musical practice in the 1920s George Antheil, (1900-1959) was indubitably the enfant terrible of this generation (indeed, his own 1945 autobiography was titled The Bad Boy of Music). Having already scandalized post-war Parisian society with his concerts – which included works with titles such as Airplane Sonata or Death of Machines – Antheil was admired and championed by illustrious contemporaries like Joyce, Pound, and Picasso, who recognized in him many of their own ‘modernist’ ideas.

Long fascinated with jazz, having incorporated elements from it in his Symphony No. 1 or the Jazz Sonata, it wasn’t until A Jazz Symphony of 1925 that he fully integrated that style within a “classical” framework. The result, as he modestly put it, was “…one of the very first symphonic expressions which attempted to synthesize [sic] American jazz as a legitimate artistic expression.” He was fully aware of that other, much more famous attempt by Gershwin to do just that and was forced to begrudgingly admit that his own work post-dated Rhapsody in Blue “only slightly.”

Written in one movement, and here presented in its original 1925 version.  The Jazz Symphony exemplifies Antheil’s striking language from this period of rhythmically propulsive, self-contained blocks juxtaposed with supercharged ostinato patterns. The soloistic piano moments run the gamut from upbeat ragtime tunes to tone clusters. Starting with a comical Latin-inspired tune and ending with a mawkish waltz, with quotes from Scott Joplin and the Rite of Spring thrown in along the way for good measure, Antheil creates a thoroughly original and entertaining score, one that marries unabashedly the vernacular with the highbrow.


Here is a performance of George Antheil: A Jazz Symphony by Rheinland-Pfalz State Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by  Karl-Heinz Steffens with Frank Dupree, piano from the album Antheil: A Jazz Symphony.   Capriccio Records



Next in this exploration of the music of forgotten American composers, we explore the 6 preludes of Marion Bauer.
Bauer was born in Walla Walla, Washington and raised in Portland Oregon at 16 moved to New York City to begin composition lessons in 1898.  There she met French violinist and pianist Raoul Pugno, and developed a close relationship with him and his family.  In 1906 she travelled to Paris and become the first American  student of Nadia Boulanger.  Although never receiving a college degree she began teaching in the music faculty of New York University at the Washington Square campus in 1926 as the first ever  woman faculty member there. She remained there until retiring in 1951.  She also taught at the Juilliard School beginning in 1940. She helped found the American Music Guild, the American Music Center, and the American Composers Alliance, serving on the board of the latter.  In 1937, Aaron Copland founded the League of Composers, and asked Bauer to serve on the executive board of that organization as well. Bauer additionally helped co-found the Society of American Women Composers in 1925.

Her opus 15 Six preludes were written in 1922.

Bauer did receive some prominent performances during her lifetime, but even considering the relative neglect women composers faced at that time in the first half of the 20th century, she did not then, nor does she now, get even the attention or frequency of performances that her contemporaries Amy Beach or Ruth Crawford Seeger receive. Her influence during her lifetime lay more in the areas of teaching as an organizational leader within the community of composers.

But her music is well worth rediscovery and falls between the rich  romanticism of many of her contemporaries and the more experimental music of Henry Cowell and Leo Ornstein.  She was heavily influenced by her experiences in France. For example, echoes of the harmonic sensibility of Debussy or Ravel can be heard in the second and fifth of Bauer’s Preludes. From a very different perspective, Bauer also seems to have known her Scriabin, if the sixth and final Prelude of the set, with its propulsive and passionate mood, is any indication. Others in the set show Bauer’s keen ear for intriguing textures, for example the opening Prelude written for the left hand alone, or the third prelude, a whirlwind for the two hands written in unison two octaves apart, the tonality somewhat adrift until the final and rather shocking D Major cadence. With performers of the present day beginning to truly mine the repertoire of underrepresented composers of the past, we are fortunate that Marion Bauer’s music (in many different genres) is being brought to light once more.

Here is a performance of  Marion Bauer: Six Preludes for piano, Op. 15        Phillip Bush     Concord     Neuma Records


We are going to close todays episode on music by forgotten American composers with the sonata for violin and piano by Roy Harris.  Roy Harris grew up on a ranch in the San Gabriel Valley of southern California.  Began his musical studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and drove a truck to support his musical studies. In the early 1920s, he had lessons from Arthur Bliss (then in Santa Barbara) and the senior American composer and researcher of American Indian music, Arthur Farwell.  Through his connections with Aaron Copland, he was able to study with Nadia Boulanger.  When he returned to the United States he formed associations with Howard Hanson at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester and, more importantly, with Serge Koussevitsky at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  It was the latter that was key in his getting works performed.


Written in 1942, the sonata was premiered in October of the same year. It was first published as four titled individual pieces: Fantasy; Dance of Spring; Melody; and Toccata. When the sonata was published in its entirety, the titles were dropped.
Writing about the first movement, Paul Henry Lang said it is "full of big musical gestures, and the fiddler can lean into them, for there is nothing bashful about them.   The big melody pours out by the bucketful"

The gentle second movement uses the folksong "I'll be True to My Love."

The third movement is chorale-like. The violin line is either an integral part of the chorale or adds an independent lyrical commentary to it.

Lively cross-accented piano vamps and cascades of chords alternating between the hands support the violin's virtuosic acrobatics in the fourth movement, which closes with a long violin cadenza. Although Harris sanctioned cuts in the first and last movements, the performance recorded here presents the sonata in its entirety.

Here is a performance of
Roy Harris
11 Sonata for Violin and Piano_ Maestoso
12 Sonata for Violin and Piano_ Dotted Quarter = 72
13 Sonata for Violin and Piano_ Sustained
14 Sonata for Violin and Piano_ Dotted Quarter = 100
Alexander Ross, violin & Richard Zimdars, piano
Music of Roy Harris
Albany Records