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Just as America was observed in French literary and political
commentary, we find representations of America in French music,
dance, and theatre which serve as the focus of this volume.
Following the American Revolution, French authors often viewed the
United States as a laboratory for the forging of new practices of
liberte and egalite, in affinity with France's own Revolutionary
ideals but in competition with lingering anti-American depictions
of an inferior, untamed New World. The volume examines French
imagining of America through musical/theatrical portrayals of the
American Revolution and Republic, soundscapes of the Statue of
Liberty, homages to Washington, Franklin and Lafayette and
negotiations of Francophone identity in New Orleans. The subject of
race features prominently in paradoxical depictions of slavery,
freedom, and revolution in the United States and French Caribbean
colonies of 'Amerique' and in varied interpretations of American
music and gendered identity. Essays consider French constructions
of the Indigenous American and Black American 'exotic' that
intersect with tropes of noble, pastoral savagery, menacing
barbarism and the 'civilising' potency of French culture. Such
French constructions reveal both a revulsion of racial alterity and
an attraction to the expressive, even subversive, freedom of
Americanness. Investigations of French conceptions of America
extend to critiques of American orchestral music, Gottschalk's
Louisianan-Caribbean Creole works, Buffalo Bill's spectacles and
the cakewalk in Paris. With scholarly contributions on music,
dance, theatre and opera, the volume will be essential reading for
students and scholars of these disciplines.
During the nineteenth century, nearly one hundred symphonies were
written by over fifty composers living in the United States. With
few exceptions, this repertoire is virtually forgotten today. In
the award-winning Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century
American Symphonic Enterprise, author Douglas W. Shadle explores
the stunning stylistic diversity of this substantial repertoire and
uncovers why it failed to enter the musical mainstream. Throughout
the century, Americans longed for a distinct national musical
identity. As the most prestigious of all instrumental genres, the
symphony proved to be a potent vehicle in this project as composers
found inspiration for their works in a dazzling array of subjects,
including Niagara Falls, Hiawatha, and Western pioneers. With a
wealth of musical sources at his disposal, including
never-before-examined manuscripts, Shadle reveals how each
component of the symphonic enterprise-from its composition, to its
performance, to its immediate and continued reception by listeners
and critics-contributed to competing visions of American identity.
Employing an innovative transnational historical framework,
Shadle's narrative covers three continents and shows how the music
of major European figures such as Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner,
Liszt, Brahms, and Dvorak exerted significant influence over
dialogues about the future of American musical culture. Shadle
demonstrates that the perceived authority of these figures allowed
snobby conductors, capricious critics, and even orchestral
musicians themselves to thwart the efforts of American symphonists
despite widespread public support of their music. Consequently,
these works never entered the performing canons of American
orchestras. An engagingly written account of a largely unknown
repertoire, Orchestrating the Nation shows how artistic and
ideological debates from the nineteenth century continue to shape
the culture of American orchestral music today.
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