George Upton's "Women in Music" is the "first of many articles and reviews by prominent male critics which sought to trivialize and undermine the achievements of what was considered an alarming number of new women composers in the realm of 'serious' classical music".[1]
Gussie Lord Davis has his first hit with "We Sat Beneath the Maple on the Hill", making him the first African American songwriter to succeed in Tin Pan Alley.[4]
Patrick Gilmore's Twenty-Second Regimental Band becomes the first fully professional ensemble of any kind in the country to be engaged in performances full-time, year-round.[5]
The Thomas B. Harms music publishing company is established solely to publish popular music, then referring to parlor music.[8]
Tony Pastor becomes an established theater owner on 14th Street in New York City, where he becomes the first person "to bid... for women customers in the variety theater", bringing that field out of "disreputable saloons" and transforming it "into decent entertainment that respectable women could enjoy".[9][10]
A chorded zither called the autoharp is patented in the United States.[16]
Rev. Marshall W. Taylor's Plantation Melodies, Book of Negro Folk Songs becomes the first collection of spiritual, put together by an African American.[17]
The Bethany Oratorio Society is formed in Lindsborg, Kansas, where a famous annual Easter performance of Handel's Messiah is shown today.[18]
The Chinese Exclusion Act greatly limits the immigration of Chinese people to the United States, amid a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment, leading to a reduction in Chinese musical practices.[19]
Norwegian American choirs begin to form organizations, putting together festivals and other periodic gatherings to celebrate Norwegian culture and music.[21]
C. C. Perkins and J. S. Dwight publish the first history of a musical society in the United States, that of the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston.[24][25]
John Slocum, who began preaching revelations the year before, is seen as being healed by his wife Mary's prayers; the Slocums' followers come to create the Shaker Church, of which music is an integral part.[26]
F. L. Ritter publishes the first comprehensive music history of the United States, Music in America.[27]
The Freeman, an Indianapolis, Indiana-based periodical, is founded, soon becoming the primary trade paper for African American theatrical groups.[28]
Gretsch becomes the first drum manufacturer in the United States.[29]
J. S. Putnam's "New Coon in Town" is one of the first hit coon songs to be published.[30]
Charles Fletcher Lummis begins one of the earliest collections of Spanish folk songs soon after he arrives in Los Angeles.[36]
M. Wittmark and Sons is formed to focus exclusively on publishing popular parlor music.[8]
A Hawaiian schoolboy named Joseph Kekuku is credited with inventing the Hawaiian guitar, in which strings are melodically picked and stopped by a metal bar, with the guitar held across the lap.[37][38]
Scott Joplin arrives in St. Louis, Missouri and soon becomes a fixture at the Silver Dollar Saloon, beginning his career which will put "his creative stamp on that great body of music that came to be known as classic ragtime".[39][40] The Saloon is owned by John Turpin, an important patron of ragtime whose son, Thomas Million Turpin is known as the "Father of St. Louis Ragtime".[41]
The Chicago Music Company releases the first opera by an American woman to be published, The Joust, Or, The Tournament, by G. Estabrook[42]
The Anglo-Canadian Music Publishers' Association is formed to protect the copyrights of European music publishers.[43]
(Approximate) Wovoka, a medicine man of the Northern Paiute, articulates the messianic message of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement, which fused Christian (particularly Presbyterian and Mormon) teachings with those of Wovoka's father, Ta'vibo, which revolved around traditionalism and resurrection.[44]
Several Swedish American choirs join together to form the Union of Scandinavian Singers, which becomes a major part of the Swedish American music industry.[21]
The principal international agreement on copyright, the Berne Convention, is signed; the United States will not sign until 1989.[46]
The Dawes Act establishes the reservation system and distributes land to Native American families, destroying the traditional social setup of many indigenous cultures, leading to a reduction in traditional music and dance.[2]
Antoni Mallek forms the Polish Singers Alliance, an influential national Polish American organization.[54]
The composer Edward McDowell premiers his Piano Concerto No. 2 in New York, establishing him as one of the most prominent composers of the era.[55]
W. S. B. Matthews' A Hundred Years of Music in America is the first attempt at a history of "popular and the higher music education" in the country; it hails Lowell Mason as the founder of American music.[24][56]
The first African American woman to compose a produced opera is Louisa Melvin Delos Mars, with Leoni, the Gypsy Queen.[57] She is also one of the three women who each became the first to have an operetta they composed produced, along with Emma Marcy Raymond's Dovetta and Emma Roberts Steiner's Fleurette.[42]
Harriett Gibbs Marshall becomes the first African American woman to graduate with a degree in music from Oberlin College. She will go on to found the Washington Conservatory of Music.[60]
Columbia Records releases the first catalog of recordings, consisting of ten pages worth of cylinder recordings. The catalog is intended primarily for jukeboxes.[63]
The Ghost Dance, a Native American spiritual movement, of which music and dance were integral parts, is banned after the Wounded Knee Massacre.[44]
Sam Jacks' Creole Burlesque Company opens in New York, and is a popular novelty act, unusual for a time in that the cast includes both men and women, and the show's format is more variety than minstrel show.[68]
Samuel W. Cole leads what is probably the first high school production of a full oratorio in the country.[69]
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra forms, with income from backers who pledged $1000 for each of three years. The backers formed an Orchestral Association, which hired a music director. Many cities subsequently used the same model, including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Minneapolis.[6][7]
Leopold Vincent publishes the Alliance and Labor Songster, a pioneering early collection of labor songs.[71]
Carnegie Hall is built in New York City as a venue for classical performances.[72] It will become the foremost concert stage in the city.[73]
Changes in copyright law under the International Copyright Act of 1891 make it impossible to publish foreign music without payment to the original composer or publisher.[74] This stimulates the establishment of American subsidiaries of foreign publishing companies.[75]
A Trip to Chinatown is first published; it can be considered one of the first examples of American musical theater, as it consists of a single plot that the entire production revolves around.[7]
Papa Jack Laine, a white drummer and saxophonist from New Orleans, claims that he is the first to use the first saxophone in the proto-jazz bands of New Orleans. He is sometimes said to have formed the first ragtime band as well.[78] Laine is considered one of the first white jazz musicians.[79]
John Philip Sousa forms a band that set a new standard for American professional bands, having left the U.S. Marine Band.[80] He and his band will be the most prominent and influential professional symphonic group at the peak of popularity for bands of that sort.[7]
Charles K. Harris premiers "After the Ball", a waltz typical of the time,[8] which is said to be the most popular song of the decade,[81] and the biggest hit of the century.[82] It is interpolated into a play, and the sheet music is said to have sold more than five million copies.[8]
Harry Lawrence Freeman becomes the first African American to have an opera he wrote produced, his first work, Epthelia. He will become known for combining secular and sacred African American music with traditional Western opera.[83]
More information Early 1890s music trends ...
Early 1890s music trends
Irish-American dominance in musical theater ends.[84]
The husband-and-wife duo Dora Dean and Charles E. Johnson, in Sam T. Jack's Creole Show, become probably the first African Americans to perform the cakewalk onstage.[85]
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Alice Fletcher begins her prolific scholarly career with a study of the music of the Omaha tribe of Native Americans.[86][87] The study, done with the assistance of Francis La Flesche, took ten years to complete.[24]
The World's Columbian Exposition, a watershed in American culture,[88] attracts attention to the Chicago ragtime scene, led by patriarch Plunk Henry and exemplified in performance at the Exposition by Johnny Seymour[89] and Scott Joplin[90] Violinist Joseph Douglass achieves wide recognition after his performance there, and will become the first African American violinist to conduct a transcontinental tour, and the first to tour as a concert violinist.[91][92] The first Indonesian music performance in the United States is believed to occur at the Exposition.[93] At the same event, an ensemble of musicians with a dancer known as Little Egypt, is the first exposure to Middle Eastern culture for many Americans,[94] while a group of hula dancers leads to an increased awareness of Hawaiian music among Americans throughout the country.[37]
Philosopher Richard Wallaschek sparks the "origins" controversy when he puts forth the claim that African American spirituals are primarily derived from European music.[98] This will not be solved conclusively until the 1960s, when scholars showed that spirituals were "grounded in African-derived music values yet shaped into its distinctiveness as a direct result of the North American sociocultural experience".[99]
The first Chinese opera theater in New York City is opened in Chinatown.[19]
Ruthven Lang's Dramatic Overture is presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, marking the first time that institution had performed the work of an American woman composer.[101]
More information Mid 1890s music trends ...
Mid 1890s music trends
The massacres of numerous Armenians in Turkey leads to the first wave of large-scale Armenian immigration to the United States, and the beginning of Armenian American music.[94]
The public exhibition of motion pictures, almost always with live music played locally, begins.[102]
The bands of John Robichaux and Buddy Bolden in New Orleans become the top dance bands of the era, and frequently competitive, both economically and in actual performances. These bands are a significant precursor of jazz.[103]
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The Standard Quartette of Chicago becomes the first commercial recording of an African American singing quartet.[104]
The Black Extravaganza, an outdoor concert in New York City, featuring the Four Harmony Kings, the Old South Quartette and other popular African American musicians, a "breakthrough" show in the history of African American music.[105]
Orville Gibson begins selling guitars, his technical innovations helping to spread the instrument throughout the United States.[107]
New Orleans, Louisiana passes a law requiring Creoles to live uptown, thus bringing them and their music into closer contact with African Americans.[103]
Approximate: Dee Dee Chandler is the first "dance drummer to use the foot pedal.[108]
E. B. Marks forms a music publishing company, which will become one of the first to publish African American songwriters with great success.[111]
The Octoroon becomes the first "important black (theatrical) production".[8]
Charles L. Edwards publishes Bahama Songs and Stories, featuring spirituals collected in the Bahamas, much of the population of which, at the time, was descended from African American slaves.[112]
Alice Fletcher makes the first known recordings of the Ghost Dance, specifically the songs of two Southern Arapaho men who were visiting Washington, D.C., Left Hand and Row of Lodges.[26] Some of her previous research had inspired Frances Densmore, who began series of very successful lectures on Native American music.[113]
Permanent orchestras are established in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.[7]
The murder of William Lyons by Lee Shelton in St. Louis will inspire a ballad called "Stagger Lee", which will be recording more than 150 times since 1897, making Lee the most prominent criminal in American folk music.[115]
With The Wizard of the Nile, Victor Herbert launches a string of forty successful operettas, several of which have become staples of the American repertoire and produced a "lasting heritage of popular songs".[116]
Six booking agents pool their resources to form the Syndicate, which came to control theaters in New York and across the country.[122]
The first "distinctively syncopated songs (are) published under the 'ragtime' label".[123] These include "My Coal Black Lady" by W. T. Jefferson and Ernest Hogan's "All Coons Look Alike to Me".[124]
James Mooney publishes a monograph of Native American Ghost Dance songs, which are first commercially released this year by the National Gramophone Company; it is probable that the recordings are of Mooney or his brother Charles.[26]
Ernest Hogan's "All Coons Look Alike to Me" is an immediate hit,[126] and launches a fad for syncopated coon songs that lasts until World War I.[127] The published version carries a caption, describing the second chorus, which is the "earliest association of the word rag (as in ragtime) to instrumental music".[128]
Gussie L. Davis, the most successful African American songwriter in Tin Pan Alley, has his biggest hit with "In the Baggage Coach Ahead".[129]
Homer A. Norris publishes Practical Harmony on a French Basis, a precursor and harbinger of American classical music's upcoming move from a German-oriented style to a French one.[131]
Bob Cole and Billy Johnson compose A Trip to Coontown, one of the productions that helped to establish the field of African American musical comedy.[57] It is the first black show to appear on Broadway.[136]
Buddy Bolden's band begins performing; some will consider this the first jazz band,[127] and Bolden the first jazz musician.[137] Bolden is an influential cornetist in the early history of jazz,[138] and his band innovates the use of the string bass in place of the tuba.[139]
William H. Krell copyrights "Mississippi Rag", the first "published piano piece to include the word rag (as in ragtime) in its title". It is advertised as the first ragtime song.[141] However, Theodore Northrup's "Louisiana Rag", published later in the year, is sometimes considered the first "genuine piano rag".[134][142]Tom Turpin's "Harlem Rag", the first rag composed by an African American to be published, is also published in this year, and the first ragtime recordings are made by Vess L. Ossman and the Metropolitan Band, while Ben Harney, pianist-composer, publishes the Rag-time Instructor.[143] The first actual use of the word in a popular media ragtime is in a Chicago newspaper article this year.[144][145]
New Orleans, led by Alderman Story, sets up a prostitution district called Storyville. Musicians gravitate there, and the area becomes a hotbed of innovation and a major part of the origins of jazz.[103][146]
Henry Sloan, a legendary, little-known bluesman, played the blues as early as this year. He will go on to mentor Charley Patton, one of the earliest bluesmen.[147]
Music education is first introduced into the public school system of New York City.[152]
Victor Herbert's "Romany Life" is the first major American composition in the Hungarian "Gypsy" style.[7]
Puerto Rico becomes a part of the United States, leading to the arrival of numerous immigrants and with them, Puerto Rican music in New York City and elsewhere.[153]
The first African American nationalist composer, Harry T. Burleigh, "to achieve national distinction as a composer, arranger, and concert artist" begins composing.[155]
Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" is published by John Stillwell Stark in Sedalia, Missouri; the song is a "landmark in American music history" and is a great commercial success, unprecedented for a black composer.[157][158] It remains the most famous and popular piano rag,[127] and "establishe(s) a model for classic ragtime that (will be) emulated by all rag composers interested in serious composition". Since its first publication, Maple Leaf Rag has never been out of print.[159][160]
The wildly popular "My Wild Irish Rose" continues the popular Irish song tradition within the United States.[7]
Eubie Blake's "Charleston Rag" is published; it is his "first and most famous ragtime piece", and it will establish his career as one of the top composers of Eastern ragtime.[161]
African-English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor attends a concert held by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, inspiring him to create a collection of African-derived melodies, arranged for the piano. The Bamboula becomes the most popular, and his works make a "marked impression on the American public, particularly in black communities".[162]
Perry J. Lowery becomes the "first black musician to take his vaudeville acts into the circus", with his group's performance in Madison Square Garden for the Sells and Forepaugh Brothers Circus.[163]
The Jewish chorister's union strikes for wages rather than profit shares.[164]
More information Early 1900s music trends ...
Early 1900s music trends
Beale Street becomes the capital for African American culture in Memphis and the entire mid-South.[165]
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Violinist and cornetist Helen May Butler's Ladies Military Band begins touring, bucking "stereotypes of the time by showing that women could endure the rigors of touring life and lease enough paying customers to survive in the music business".[166]
The vaudeville musical theater format begins to take shape.[167]
The first two music education periodicals begin to be issued: School Music and School Music Monthly.[172]
Steel strings for the guitar are introduced, making the instrument more easily heard in crowded and noisy settings, which helps the guitar spread across the South.[107]
Florodora, with music and lyrics mostly by Leslie Stuart, becomes the first piece of musical theatre to be recorded by its original cast.[173]
The first African American to publish a collection of original songs is Charles Albert Tindley, a "pivotal figure in the history of black church music".[177][178]
John Wesley Work II, a professor at Fisk University and the first African American collector of black folk songs, publishes, with his brother, Frederick Jerome Work, New Jubilee Songs as Sun by the Fisk Jubilee Singers.[179]
The librarian of the Metropolitan Opera House makes the first bootleg recordings, though the practice does not violate copyright due to a lack of protection for sound recordings.[180]
The first paper label applied to recorded discs is released. Labels of this sort - record labels - identify a brand name given to a series of recordings released by a particular company.[181]
Charles Ives begins a private career as a composer, forging a new style that was "radically forward-looking in style yet rooted in American musical traditions and celebrating American life."[183] He will become the "most spectacular amateur in musical history".[184]
Oscar Sonneck becomes head of the Music Division of the Library of Congress. He will do "as much as anyone to shape the directions of musicology in the United States".[24]
Ma Rainey incorporates blues into her stage show, eventually becoming one of the most famous performers of the genre in the country.[185]
Enrico Caruso becomes a major star after performing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.[193] He will be the first internationally renowned performer to realize the full potential of audio recording technology.[194]
The first permanent orchestra is established in Minneapolis.[7]
The publication of Francis O'Neill's O'Neill's Music is a milestone in Irish American music history.[195]
J. Berni Barbour and N. Clark Smith found the "first relatively permanent (African American) music publishing" company, in Chicago; it is also "probably the first black-owned music publishing company in history".[196]
Early music performer and instrument maker Arnold Dolmetsch moves to the United States. His work with the Chickering company is a landmark of American early music performed on period instruments.[171]
The United Daughters of the Confederacy of Alabama begin working to change the words to "Dixie", to make them more favorable to the Southern cause. The introduction of new versions at the United Confederate Veterans convention caused an uproar and was denounced as sacrilege. Any hope of changing the words ended when the song's author, Daniel Emmett, died eleven days later.[200]
Hazel Harrison is invited to perform at the prestigious Royal Theatre in Berlin. She will become the "first black woman to make a stir in the musical world as a pianist".[202]
Most blues performers born before this year generally considered themselves musicians whose repertoire included a wide variety of musical styles; those born later will mostly view themselves as playing a distinct genre.[204]
The first large-scale Filipino immigration to the United States begins, thus beginning the Filipino American musical tradition.[205]
Arthur Farwell publishes Folk-Songs of the West and South, a collection of songs that include "The Lone Prairee", which Farwell called the first cowboy song to be printed, both words and music".[206]
Robert Motts founds the first permanent black theater, in Chicago, the Pekin Theatre.[207]
Ernest Hogan creates a vaudeville act that is the "first syncopated music concert in history".[208] The performers are the Memphis Students, organized by James Reese Europe and later led by Will Marion Cook. The show featured a '"dancing conductor", Will Dixon, who danced rhythms to keep the band performing tightly, and the band's drummer, Buddy Gilmore, used unusual noisemaking devices besides drummers. Unorthodox folk instruments are also used in place of the traditional brass and woodwind lineup. The group was the first to "introduce the concept of the 'singing band' to the entertainment world", and performed in a style now known as barbershop music for some songs.[209]
Hallie Anderson begins promoting a well-attended Annual Reception and Ball. She is the first major American woman conductor.[210]
A standardized piano roll, capable of being fitted to any model of instrument, is introduced.[29]
Will H. Dixon was dubbed "The Original Dancing Conductor" by James Weldon Johnson, (Black Manhattan) circa. 1930. "The Memphis Students were the first band or orchestra to play jazz on a New York stage." a direct quote by Johnson.
At a Congressional hearing, John Philips Sousa testifies that the phonograph was discouraging Americans from performing themselves.[211]
The United Booking Office of America forms to connect theater managers and performers in the eastern United States.[167]
Freddie Keppard becomes bandleader of the Olympia Band, soon becoming one of the most prominent jazz trumpeters in that city. He will later turn down a recording contract, fearing it will make his music too easy to steal; the contract will instead be given to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, who will become national stars.[212]
The first African American orchestra in the nation to be incorporated is in Philadelphia.[213]
The Victor Talking Machine Company releases the Victrola, the most popular gramophone model until the late 1920s.[215] The Victrola is also the first playback machine containing an internal horn.[194] Victor also erects the world's largest illuminated billboard at the time, on Broadway in New York, to advertise the company's records.[216]
The Gabel Automatic Entertainer is an early jukebox-like machine, the first to play a series of gramophone records.[217]
The Intercolonial Hall on Dudley Street in Boston opens as a social club for Irish Americans and Canadians. It will be one of the preeminent Irish music venues in the country during the mid-20th century.[219]
Scott Joplin publishes "Gladiolus Rag" with Joseph W. Stern, intending to "reposition ragtime in the sheet music marketplace by playing down its African American roots."[220]
The migration of Japanese-Hawaiians to the mainland United States is banned, preceding a ban on labor emigration in Japan, effectively isolating Japanese Americans on the mainland and in Hawaii, both from each other and from Japan itself.[34]
Florenz Ziegfeld launches the show that will become known as Ziegfeld's Follies, which "enlarged the scope of entertainment with every kind of extravagant presentation, including current topics, comedy routines, and of course, the ever-present gorgeous girls.[222] It will "set the standard and (break) box-office records".[223]
The Green Mill opens in Chicago. As of 2009, it is the oldest extant nightclub in the city.[225]
Arturo Toscanini becomes the conductor of the Metropolitan Opera; he is lauded for "his energy, the command he brought to the podium, his demands for perfection, and his uncanny musical memory."[226]
Scott Joplin publishes the education School of Ragtime, "a landmark in the development and diffusion of classic ragtime".[158]
The first black bandmasters are appointed to the U.S. Army, for the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry regiments.[186]
Edward L. Gruber composes "The Caissons Go Rolling Along", which, as "The Army Goes Rolling Along", will become the official song of the U.S. Army.[227]
Frederick Converse's Iolan, Or, the Pipe of Desire is the first American full opera scores to be published abroad.[42]
N. Howard "Jack" Thorp's Songs of the Cowboys is the first published collection of cowboy music.[228]
Sound recordings, along with photography and cinematography, are added to the Berne Convention, an international copyright agreement which the United States is not yet a signatory to.[46]
The Copyright Act is passed to secure royalties for composers on the sale of recordings and public performances.[229][230] It also required publishers of music to allow mechanical reproduction by anybody if they allow any individual to do so; furthermore, the law is the first in American history to intervene directly into the marketplace by setting a price for the use of private property, requiring payment of two cents to the copyright holder from the creator of each piano roll, recording cylinder and phonograph record.[231][232]
Kurt Schindler organizes the MacDowell Chorus, soon known as the New York Schola Cantorum, one of the earliest ensembles in the country to gain recognition for performing Renaissance music.[171]
The Theater Owners' Booking Agency is founded by the Barasso Brothers, S. H. Dudley and other black theater owner-managers. It will become the primary booking agency for African American performers of the era.[234]
The first use of the word jazz in print, in reference to dancing.[235]
Homer Allen Rodeheaver is hired by Billy Sunday, an influential development in the early history of gospel music. Rodeheaver will be the first gospel artist to record, and will found the first gospel label, Rainbow Records.[241] Music historian Don Cusic has called Rodeheaver the first American chorister perceived as a ladies' man or sex symbol.[242]
John Lomax publishes a collection of cowboy songs, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, a ground-breaking publication that launched his career;[243] he is shortly afterwards elected president of the American Folklore Society.[244] This collection is the first of American folk songs to be printed with the music.[135]
The Mexican Revolution spurs a wave of immigration, mostly to states with large Mexican populations, like Colorado and New Mexico; these immigrants bring with them contemporary Mexican culture and helped to revitalize the indigenous music of the Hispanic Southwest.[246]
The first convention of the Norwegian Singers Association of America is held.[21]
Vassily Andreyev brings his balalaika and domra orchestra to the United States, inspiring a similar orchestra, supported by the Russian Orthodox Church, to form in St. Louis, followed by Chicago and New York in the next two years.[247][248]
R. Nathaniel Dett becomes the "first black pianist to make a transcontinental tour of the nation".[202]
Homer Rodeheaver publishes the first of many gospel song collections that will quickly become a major part of the repertoire for African American churches across the nation.[249]
The Vaughan Quartet becomes first all-white and all-male professional gospel vocal quartet in the country.[250]
"A Perfect Day" by Carrie Jacobs-Bond (1862–1946) sells 25 million copies. Bond becomes America's first woman to make a living as a composer.[251]
Irving Berlin's "That Mysterious Rag" is the first ragtime song to not revolve around explicitly black lyrical themes. Berlin shifts to describing his work in this style as "syncopated", rather than "ragtime".[254] His "Alexander's Ragtime Band" is "conspicuously representative" of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters,[255] and brings about a "brief revival of interest in (ragtime)" despite being the "swan song" of the ragtime era.[256]
Charles Griffes moves away from a German Romantic style and towards a more free-form style that comes to include French, East Asian and other influences.[257]
The first permanent orchestra is established in San Francisco.[7][258]
The term barbershop quartet comes into usage with the release of "Mr. Jefferson, Lord, Play That Barbershop Chord".[259]
The Victor Gramophone Company hires Frances Elliott Clark to create educational materials that could be sold alongside recordings, for the purpose of music education.[32][152]
Henry Cowell's Adventures in Harmony is premiered in San Francisco, an early use of tone clusters in the field of classical music.[260]
Mary Carr Moore composes Narcissa, or The Cost of Empire, with a libretto by her mother, Sarah Pratt Carr, which is "very likely the first grand opera to be composed, scored, and then conducted by an American woman".[261]
A private performance of Treemonisha by Scott Joplin is the first of an African American "folk opera written by a black composer".[186]
Raymond Lawson becomes the first known African American pianist to perform concertos with a symphony orchestra, the Hartford Symphony.[202]
James Reese Europe, the first black bandleader in the country,[73] presents the first Concert of Negro Music at Carnegie Hall, the first "organized attempt" to showcase African American music for mainstream audiences in New York.[24][273]
Lydia Parrish begins going to St. Simons Island in the Sea Islands of Georgia, eventually founding the Spiritual Singers Society of Coastal Georgia.[274]
Within a week of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, songs have been composed about the disaster, one being a ballad being sold by a black, seemingly blind, preacher to A. E. Perkins.[275]
Cyrus H. K. Curtis gives the first public recital of organ music in the United States, in Portland, Maine.[276]
George Whitefield Chadwick's opera The Padrone is rejected by the Metropolitan Opera on the basis that it was "probably too real to life" in its portrayal of "life among the humble Italians". The opera takes place in "the seamy side of Boston (which) Chadwick was the first to dramatize... musically and realistically".[277] It is among the earliest American operas to present its subject realistically.[42]
John Stillwell Stark publishes Standard High-Class Rags, a collection of ragtime songs arranged for small orchestra. It will eventually become known as The Red-Backed Book of Rags, "and as such it (will be) a wellspring of the 1970s ragtime revival".[278]
David I. Martin and Helen Elise Smith found the Martin-Smith School of Music, "one of the most important black musical institutions" of the era.[279]
A series of concerts begin to be held in New York, sponsored by the Clef Club and the Music School Settlement for Colored; these attract large, mixed-race audiences, and inspire other similar concerts in cities around the country. The most remarkable feature is the use of mandolin, banjo and other elements of African American folk culture by the Clef Club Symphony Orchestra.[280]
The first piano-roll recordings of African American performers are made by the QRS company, a subsidiary of the Melville Clark Piano Company.[197]
The word jazz is used in print for the first time, in San Francisco in reference to "speed and excitement" in a game of baseball.[281] The word's first use to describe a genre of music this year as well, in the catalogue for the International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show) in New York,[282] and in reference to US Army musicians "trained in ragtime and 'jazz'".[235]
Frances Densmore's research constitutes the most extensive description of traditional Ojibwe music,[283] and the "largest collection ever published from one tribe".[113]
Ragtime is a major part of a brief craze for social and ballroom dancing, which spurs the rise of two well-known dancers, Vernon and Irene Castle, especially after their performance in Watch Your Step the following year.[284] They work with James Reese Europe, whose band becomes the first all-African American dance band to receive a commercial recording contract,[237] recording "Down Home Rag" this year.[127] Europe and the Castles are best known for introducing the castle walk, turkey trot, bunny-hug, Castle rock and fox trot.[284][285]
The Italian Luigi Russolo publishes L'arte dei rumori, "in which he (views) the evolution of modern music as parallel to that of industrial machinery", a basis for futurism, a movement "identified with technology and the urban-industrial environment... "seeking to enlarge and enrich the domain of sounds in all categories".[286] The foremost proponent of futurism in the United States is Leo Ornstein, who composes Dwarf Suite this year; it is the first of his "anarchistic" and highly dissonant pieces.[287]
James Mundy begins founding community groups in Chicago, and staging "mammoth concerts" at the Coliseum and Orchestra Hall. Choruses led by Mundy and J. Wesley Jones will sing at "all important occasions in Chicago that called for the participation of blacks" into the 1930s, when the duo's choruses attracted wide attention for their rivalry.[162]
Bill Johnson founds the Original Creole Orchestra featuring Freddie Keppard, who become the first African American dance band to make transcontinental tours, on the vaudeville circuit. This band carries the "jazz of New Orleans to the rest of the nation".[290]
W. C. Handy publishes "St. Louis Blues", "the most widely popular and enduring commercial success of all blues songs"[296] It will carry "the blues all over the world".[267]
R. Nathaniel Dett composes and publishes one of the first "anthemized" versions of a spiritual, specifically "Listen to the Lambs".[301]
The first permanent professional orchestra is established in Baltimore.[7]
The Hardanger Violinist Association of America is established in Ellsworth, Wisconsin to preserve and celebrate the traditions of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. The Association's main activities are fiddling contests known as kappleikar.[21]
Freddie Kreppard, a jazz cornetist, takes his Original Creole Orchestra to California, causing a popular sensation with his music, which he calls jass.[302]
Jewish American choirs begin springing up in urban areas across the country, many of them associated with socialism.[303]
James P. Johnson publishes "Carolina Shout", the song that will make him famous and launch his career as one of the big composers of Eastern ragtime.[278]
Nicola A. Montani organizes the Society of St. Gregory of America to assist in implementing the musical reforms of the Motu proprio encyclical issued by Pope Pius X in 1903.[171]
Tom Brown becomes the first white jazz performer to leave New Orleans to make a career in Chicago.[304]
More information Mid-1910s music trends ...
Mid-1910s music trends
The United States begins to become an "outpost where new European works were seldom heard into an important international center for the presentation of new music."[305]
The Panama-Pacific Exposition is held in San Francisco, and Hawaiian performances lead to unprecedented interest for Hawaiian music, as well as the ukulele and the Hawaiian guitar, which eventually becomes the steel guitar used primarily in country music. The song "On the Beach at Waikiki" is usually credited with sparking the craze.[37]
Jerome Kern receives his first "major success with a musical comedy", with Very Good Eddie with lyrics by Schuyler Greene and a libretto by Guy Bolton, based on a farce written by Phillip Bartholomae.[308]
"Jelly Roll Blues" by Jelly Roll Morton becomes the first published jazz arrangement. Morton, one of the first jazz pianists,[309] will come to be regarded as "the first true jazz composer" in that he was probably the first to write down his jazz arrangements in musical notation.[310]Clarence Williams claimed to be the first to use the word jazz on sheet music, for the song "Brown Skin, Who You For?", which he described as a "Jazz Song".[235]
Marie Lucas' Famous Ladies Orchestra begins performing, soon making Lucas the best known of the "female leaders of syncopated orchestras".[210]
Charles Demuth begins a series of jazz-themed paintings that are a "definitive contribution to the early history of jazz.[282]
Tom Brown forms a white band, Brown's Dixieland Jass Band, for the Lamb's Club in Chicago; this dance orchestra was the first group to "formally introduce the music called jazz or jazz" to white Americans. African American ensembles did not use the word jazz consistently until the 1920s.[282]
The Howard Theater.the most prominent African American music venue in Washington, D.C., opens.[312]
African Americans begin moving to northern cities, especially Chicago,[313] in large numbers, bring with them their distinctive forms of music.[314]
The founding Musical Quarterly, with Oscar Sonneck as chief editor, gives musicologists their first "specialized forum" in the country.[171]
Harry T. Burleigh arranges a series of spirituals, artistically composed to fit within the Western classical hymn and aria traditions,[259] in Jubilee Songs of the United States of America. He is the first to arrange a spiritual for solo voice,[186] and is also credited with "starting the practice of closing recitals with a group of spirituals".[178]
Lucie Campbell becomes the music director of the National Baptist Convention's Sunday School and the Union Congress of the Baptist Young People; during her career, she will compose a number of important hymns, including "Heavenly Sunshine", "Something Within", "He Understands, He'll Say 'Well Done'" and "The King's Highway".[315]
English folklorist Cecil Sharp begins collecting Scottish and English folk songs in the southern Appalachian region, and is surprised to discover that the "cult of singing (British) traditional songs is far more alive than it is in England, or has been, for fifty years or more".[228][317][318]
The first Lithuanian American song festival is held, predating the first similar festival in Lithuania by eight years.[21]
A bookstore in New York is opened by Myron Surmach, becoming one of the major institutions of the Ukrainian American music industry.[319]
Irish American music's commercial recording begins in earnest with the work of Ellen O'Byrne DeWitt in Boston.[320]
Ernest Bloch comes to America. His subsequent work will mark "the crux of the Hebraic impact in America's art music".[321]
Sherman Clay begins publishing Hawaiian sheet music in San Francisco, greatly improving distribution for Hawaiian music on the mainland, while Ernest Ka'ai publishes a ukulele instruction book, The Ukulele: A Hawaiian Guitar and How to Play It, the first of many to come throughout the following decade.[37]
Charles A. Tindley's New Songs of Paradise is a popular work,[322] the "first publication of a collection of gospel hymns written by a black songwriter".[186]
Emma Azalia Hackley becomes one of the first African Americans to record, though the results are never released.[179]
Nathaniel Clark Smith begins his teaching career at Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Missouri. He will go on to pioneer the African American "master teacher" phenomenon, in which a public school teacher contributes an "enormous amount of time to developing the skills of talented young people". Smith becomes a local legend, and his students include many of the "leading jazz and concert artists" of the mid-20th century.[323]
John Alden Carpenter's Concertino for Piano and Orchestra is the first work by a white composer to use elements of ragtime.[324]
The U.S. Navy appropriates the St. Thomas Juvenile Band, led by Alton Adams; this is the first black band and bandmaster in the Navy.[326][327][328]
The Original Dixieland Jazz Band makes the first jazz recordings,[132][282][329][330] though the white band's style is meant for white audiences with little awareness of African American music practices, and the band is unable to impress black audiences or jazz enthusiasts.[295][331][332]
English folk song collector Cecil Sharp publishes an anthology of songs from western North Carolina, Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians, with Olive Dame Campbell;[333] this is the "first major scholarly collection of the mountain people's music".[334]
The October Revolution in Russia leads to political change, soon resulting in state support for professional, virtuoso balalaika orchestras; these groups come to be seen as "role models" by similar groups in the United States.[247]
The Supreme Court rules that the "public performance of music contributed to the ability of an establishment to make profits even if no special admission was charged for that music".[74]
With the United States' entry into World War 1, warrior customs among the Plains Native Americans are briefly revived, as many ceremonies and rituals are allowed, after many years of being banned, for the duration of the war.[2]
The Navy shuts down Storyville, the prostitution district of New Orleans, because the Secretary of the Navy believed it threatened the moral integrity of the armed forces;[330] the result is an exodus of black musicians, who had played in the bars and clubs of Storyville, to cities like Memphis and Chicago.[314] Many of the musicians are hired by Northern bands because their style was considered a novelty that is thought to increase an ensemble's commercial potential; the Northerners, however, tended to adopt the "hot", bluesy style themselves.[285]
Leo Sowerby, bandmaster of service bands during World War I composes "Tramping Tune".[328]
The most famous riverboat bandleader of the early jazz era, Fate Marable, forms his first band. He will play with a wealth of well-remembered recording artist, though he will only play on one record, from 1924.[336]
Art Hickman, a San Francisco bandleader, publishes "Rose Room". Hickman and his pianist-arranger, Ferde Grofé, are influential figures, who "are generally given credit for inventing the type of dance band which" dominates American popular music for the first half of the 20th century; they were among the earliest to "write separate music for the reed and brass sections, combining the higher and lower instruments in each section into choirs... for dancing rather than listening." Hickman was also probably the first to hire three saxophones, enabling the use of more complex and richer harmonies.[337]
More information Late 1910s music trends ...
Late 1910s music trends
The wind ensembles that have dominated local community bands since the Civil War begin to decline in importance.[80]
More than 60,000 African Americans from Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas move to Chicago, especially in the city's South Side. The black population boom "ushered in the city's jazz age, widening the market for black musical entertainment", including cabarets, dance halls, and vaudeville and movie theaters.[338]
Tin Pan Alley songwriters capitalize on the Hawaiian music fad, creating songs with thematic elements evoking Hawaii.[37]
The Cotton Club is founded in Harlem, soon becoming the most prominent jazz venuesof the era.[340]
Henry Cowell, an ultramodernist, while working under Charles Seeger, writes New Musical Resources, and "important compositional and theoretical primer".[341]
Charles N. Daniels' "Mickey (Pretty Mickey)" is one of the first pieces of music written expressly for a film, for the movie of the same name starring Mabel Normand.[74]
The first permanent professional orchestra is established in Cleveland.[7]
The Million Dollar Theater is opened in Los Angeles, eventually becoming one of the premier avenues for Spanish language performances in the Western hemisphere.[201]
A Kansas woman named Nora Holt becomes the first African American to complete a master's degree education in music, from the Chicago Musical College.[342]
The Pace and Handy Music Companymusic publishing, a firm for African American composers, co-owned by W. C. Handy, relocates to New York and becomes a leading local institution.[343]
Charles Tomlinson Griffes' Sonata for Piano is considered his "most original... most complex and ambitious work", and a "powerfully creative and consistently conceived work that (stands) as a peak for neo-Romantic expression in American music for piano".[344]
Shanewis by Charles Wakefield Cadman is the "most notable" of the Native American-themed operas then popular; it will run for eight shows in two seasons, setting a new American record for opera.[345]
James Reese Europe's band for the 369th Infantry is the only African American military band of World War 1 sent on a special mission to perform for troops on leave in Aix-les-Bains. The band performs throughout the area, and is very well received.[346] The band popularizes ragtime in France.[347][348][349]
E. F. Goldman organizes the "first American competition for serious concert band work". Percy Grainger and Victor Herbert serve as judges.[350]
Congress, on the suggestion of General John J. Pershing, authorizes the creation of twenty additional bands for the duration of World War I. Pershing also increases the size of bands to allow for full instrumentation, setting the standard lineup for future military bands, relieves bandsmen of all non-musical duties, and establishes a band school at Chaumont in France.[351]
The first attempt to cross-promote a song and film comes from Mickey, a film whose title song, "Mickey", is written by Charles N. Daniels.[352]
Popular bandleader James Reese Europe is murdered; he becomes the first African American honored with a public funeral in New York City.[353]
Tin Pan Alley publishes songs that spark a fad for blues-like music; these songs include syncopated foxtrots like "Jazz Me Blues", pop songs that were marketed as blues like "Wabash Blues", as well as actual blues songs.[354]
Prohibition begins, driving the consumption of alcohol into secret clubs and other establishments, many of which became associated with the developing genre of jazz.[355]
The first permanent orchestra is established in Los Angeles.[7][258]
Carl Seashore's Measures of Musical Talent is a system of assessing musical aptitude that becomes widely adopted but also inspires controversy.[32][152]
Merle Evans begins leading the Ringling-Barnum Band, becoming the most famous circus bandleader in the country, especially known for leading the other performers with one hand while simultaneously playing the cornet.[356]
Irving Berlin's "You Cannot Make Your Shimmy Shake on Tea" is one of many songs from the era that expressed opposition to Prohibition. Other songs, like "Drivin' Nails in My Coffin (Every Time I Drink a Bottle of Booze)" expressed support for the abolition of alcohol.[357]
James Sylvester Scott publishes three rags, "which are among the most demanding of all published piano ragtime": "New Era Rag", "Troubadour Rag" and "Pegasus: A Classic Rag".[358]
Greene, Victor R. (2004). A Singing Ambivalence: American Immigrants Between Old World and New, 1830–1930. Kent State University Press. ISBN0-87338-794-5.
Hansen, Richard K. (2005). The American Wind Band: A Cultural History. GIA Publications. ISBN1-57999-467-9.
Hardie, Daniel (2002). Exploring Early Jazz: The Origins and Evolution of the New Orleans Style. iUniverse. 0595218768.
Heskes, Irene (Winter 1984). "Music as Social History: American Yiddish Theater Music, 1882–1920". American Music. 2 (4). University of Illinois Press: 73–87. doi:10.2307/3051563. JSTOR3051563.
Hinkle-Turner, Elizabeth (2006). Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States: Crossing the Line. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN0-7546-0461-6.
Hitchcock, H. Wiley; Stanley Sadie (1984). The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, Volume II: E - K. Macmillan Press.
Klitz, Brian (June 1989). "Blacks and Pre-Jazz Instrumental Music in America". International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music. 20 (1). Croatian Musicological Society: 43–60. doi:10.2307/836550. JSTOR836550.
John Shepherd; David Horn; Dave Laing; Paul Oliver; Peter Wicke, eds. (2003). Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume 1: Media, Industry and Society. London: Continuum. ISBN0-8264-6321-5.
Souchon, Edmund (June–July 1957). "Jazz in New Orleans". Music Educators Journal. 43 (6). MENC: The National Association for Music Education: 42–45. doi:10.2307/3388229. JSTOR3388229. S2CID143404512.
Southern, Eileen (1997). Music of Black Americans. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN0-393-03843-2.
Ukpokodu, Peter (May 2000). "African American Males in Dance, Music, Theater, and Film". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 569 (The African American Male in American Life and Thought): 71–85. doi:10.1177/0002716200569001006.
Caldwell Titcomb (Spring 1990). "Black String Musicians: Ascending the Scale". Black Music Research Journal. 10 (1): 107–112. doi:10.2307/779543. JSTOR779543.
Wisconsin Hometown Stories: Janesville. Wisconsin Public Television. WPNE-TV. 2008-01-17. 45 minutes in. See also reference to "A Perfect Day" published by Bond in 1910 infra.
Abel, pgs. 50–51; William Lewis Cabell, the United Confederate Veterans' Vice-President denounced it as sacrilegious onstage at the convention, while others voiced similar sentiments to the newsmagazine Confederate Veteran
Sanjek, David and Will Straw, "The Music Industry", pgs. 256–267, in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Sanjek and Straw claim that this was the "first time in the country's history (that a) price for the use of a piece of private property was codified by federal law"
Crawford, pg. 546; Crawford points out that this leads to dancing becoming an integral part of popular music in the United States, and that more than 100 new dances were introduced between 1912 and 1914.
Walton, Lester A.; White, L. H.; A. W. K; White, Lucien H. (1978). "Black Music Concerts in Carnegie Hall, 1912–1915". The Black Perspective in Music. 6 (1): 71–88. doi:10.2307/1214304. JSTOR1214304.
Crawford, pg. 569; Crawford notes that the event was so controversial that it was still a topic of conversation among the Harvard University faculty in 1919, when Virgil Thomson began studying there.
Cowdery, James R. and Anne Lederman, "Blurring the Boundaries of Social and Musical Identities", pgs. 322–333, in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
Preston, Katherine K.; Susan Key, Judith Tick, Frank J. Cipolla and Raoul F. Camus. "Snapshot: Four Views of Music in the United States". The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. pp.554–569.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Fife, Austin E.; Alta S. Fife (1966). Songs of the Cowboys, by n. Howard ('Jack') Thorp: Variants, Commentary, Notes and Lexicon. New York: C.N. Potter.
Sharp, Cecil J.; Maud Karpeles (1924). English Folk Songs From the Southern Appalachians. London: Oxford University Press.
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