America's Musical Life: A History [Hardcover]

Richard Crawford (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393048101 | ISBN-13: 978-0393048100 | Publication Date: February 2001 | Edition: 1st

Richard Crawford gives us the story of music in the United States, from the sacred music of its earliest days to the jazz and rock that enliven the turn of the millennium. His book leads us along the widely varied paths taken by American music, beginning with that of the Native Americans; continuing with traditions introduced by Spanish, French and English colonizers, Africans brought to America as slaves, and other immigrants. He shows how the three spheres of folk, popular and classical music continually interact to form a variegated whole. Throughout, the music is set in historical and social context. "America's Musical Life" strikes a balance in presenting the general background, and highlighting individual composers, performers and pieces of music. We learn how sacred music-making coexisted with secular song and dance in the colonies; how 19th-century commerce ruled the publication of parlour music; and how the 20th century introduced an incredibly rich array of styles. Bringing order to a cacophony, this book offers an account of America's rich musical traditions.

Editorial Reviews

Review

When It Comes to American music, America's Musical Life is "the best one-volume history yet on the subject for musicians and enthusiasts, professional or amateur" (Kirkus Reviews). "Well-researched and sensitively constructed" (Library Journal) and "a book that welcomes the reader, who is happy to keep returning for more" (Music Library Association Notes), America's Musical Life tells the story of American music making in rich detail. In chronicling American music's bountiful heritage, this "superb book presents the whole sweep of U.S. cultivated and traditional music--from 16th-century Native American music through late 20th-century hip-hop culture." A substantial cultural achievement, "this definitive history of music in the U.S. is sure to delight music aficionados and history buffs alike, and is a must for anyone interested in what music has meant to America and what America has meant to music" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 704 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (February 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393048101
• ISBN-13: 978-0393048100
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #223,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars America as music and music as America, May 11, 2001

By 

L. Feld "lowkell" (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: America's Musical Life: A History (Hardcover)

In the late 1980s, having passed the US Foreign Service written test, I took the Oral Exam, one part of which was basically aimed at probing - in front of a panel of 3 Foreign Service officers - one's general knowledge of American history, culture, and world affairs, plus ability to think on one's feet. Among other questions, I was presented with the following (without any advance warning): `pretend you are a high school teacher giving a lecture on the history of American music; you have 3 minutes - GO!' Well, all I can say is, I wish that Richard Crawford's "America's Musical Life: A History" had been available back then, and that I had read it, because, let's just put it this way, there's a good reason why I didn't pass the Oral Exam!! Having now read Crawford's book, I feel like asking for a second shot at the question...

Basically, what this extremely learned, intelligent, well-organized, readable (and mercifully free of musicologist jargon) book does is to help us understand America from the perspective of music (i.e., what music meant to America), and also to understand American music from the perspective of its social, cultural, economic, political, racial, geographic, and technological history (i.e., what America meant to music). As Crawford states in his introduction, his goal is to undertake a study from a "broader scope [which] might illuminate parallels and intertwinings that give the country's music...its distinctive identity." Crawford accomplishes this, and more, starting from American music's early origins (Native American, Early Christian, "Old, Simple Ditties," and New England Psalmody), moving on to 19th century music (devotional music, minstrels, parlor songs, patriotic and war songs, classical music, etc.) to the folk, jazz, blues, pop, theatrical, and rock music of the 20th century. Throughout, Crawford makes it clear: 1) that there IS such a thing as "American" music; 2) that this music is extremely diverse, both in its expression and its origins; and 3) that to fully understand America, one needs to understand its music, and vice versa.

In sum, this book represents an obvious labor of love by an extremely well qualified author. I highly recommend it, whether or not you are a Foreign Service candidate!

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "It wasn't like that", April 3, 2002

By 

Robin Elliott (Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: America's Musical Life: A History (Hardcover)

In the 1980s I was a graduate student in musicology at the University of Toronto, specializing in Canadian music. A visit by Richard Crawford was one of the galvanizing moments in my education. He spoke on the theme of "Studying American Music" (the talk was later published in the Newsletter of the Institute for Studies in American Music, vol. XIV, no. 2, May 1985), but his ideas proved to be applicable to any field of music study. I know I have certainly made generous use of them in my own work. So it was with particular interest that I turned to this book, his magesterial (nearly 1,000 pages long!) summing up of a career devoted to the subject.

In the epilogue to the book, Crawford states that the historian is motivated by a disagreement with received ideas - "the gut-level feeling that says, 'It wasn't like that.'" In 40 chapters covering the entire history of music in America chronologically, from pre-historical to modern times, Crawford tells us how it really was. One tribute to the quality of this book is that the chapters on music in which I thought I had no interest (e.g., 18th century psalmody or 19th century minstrel shows) I found to be every bit as engaging as those on music that I love and cherish.

Crawford establishes his theoretical basis in a section titled "Notation, the Great Divide, and American Musical Categories" (p. 227). Previous historians (notably Charles Hamm and H. Wiley Hitchcock) have proposed a binary opposition in American music between Classical and Popular, or Cultivated and Vernacular. In place of this dualism, Crawford proposes a richer three-tiered categorization: Composers' music, which aims for TRANSCENDENCE (i.e. lasting value); Performers' music, which values ACCESSIBILITY; and Traditional music, ruled by CONTINUITY. The first two are notated traditions, the last is transmitted orally. These categories arise initially from considering the classical, popular, and folk traditions respectively.

Crawford later develops his thesis to show that considerable overlap and bleeding between categories has been characteristic of American music, especially in the 20th century. A chapter on the Beatles (No. 38, which otherwise seems glaringly out of place here - why an entire chapter on a British group?) makes the point that popular music since the 1960s has achieved transcendence. At about the same time, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and other composers in the Classical sphere were aiming for accessibility in preference to transcendence. Similarly, jazz arose from popular roots but achieved transcendence, primarily through recordings rather than notation, however.

Crawford's democratic approach gives equal time to the most widely varied styles and genres of music. He treats everything, from hymns to hip-hop and beyond, with scholarly attention that is balanced, scrupulous, and passionate. In the Epilogue, he admits to a grounding in the Classical sphere (and relays a charming story about travelling to a small town to hear his wife Penelope Crawford perform as piano soloist with a community orchestra), but he obviously has a passionate interest in jazz and a respectful attitude towards all types of music. You might want to turn to Hitchcock's *Music in the United States: A Historical Introduction* for a shorter treatment of the subject, or Hamm's *Music in the New World* for a more argumentative approach, but I feel that Crawford's book in time will take its place as the most thoughtful and the most comprehensive of all surveys of American music.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A panoramic view, January 9, 2003

By 

klavierspiel "klavierspiel" (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: America's Musical Life: A History (Hardcover)

Richard Crawford's ambitious book seems a culmination of his previous work, attempting to encompass the whole of American musical activity since the birth of the nation. His basic methodology of dividing American music into three spheres, classical, popular and folk, is a successful tool for making a gargantuan subject more manageable. His chronology makes an attempt to at least cast a glance at each of these areas as it progresses through the centuries.

Some of the individual chapters are, in my opinion, among the strongest essays available on their particular topics. Due to my own lack of previous knowledge in these fields I particularly enjoyed the chapters on the beginnings of organized music making in America, through the church. In particular, the split between the Methodist ideal of polished musical performance and literacy, and the more fundamentalist view that music in worship was direct communication with God, communication hindered by too much technical knowledge--this is a schism whose echoes are still apparent today.

Later on, the chapter on Ives takes a very small corner of the composer's output--six songs--to give a lucid and comprehensive survey of his style, a ingenious solution to the problem of how to give an accurate picture of an enormous, heterogenous body of work in a limited space.

Occasionally during the course of such an enormous work Crawford struggles with his task. At times one has the impression that topics and personages are being included and examined out of a sense of duty rather than real conviction about their significance; one can also quarrel with the choice of emphasis as Crawford approaches the present day. Nor do I think his surprising conclusion, which examines an actual, recent concert performance in which he was personally involved, succeeds in his goal of synthesizing his overall points by looking at them in microcosm, as it were. Still, he hits the the mark at enough points in this sweeping chronology to make it one of the finest works yet to appear on this topic.