This section contains 521 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) |
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Classical Models.
Within the classical arena, the latter decades of the nineteenth century were a period during which there was little new in American music. The most respected American composers of the age—John Knowles Paine (1839-1906), Dudley Buck (1839-1909), Silas Gamaliel Pratt (1846-1916), Arthur W. Foote (1853-1937), Edward MacDowell (1860-1908), Horatio William Parker (1863-1919), and Mrs. H. H. A. Beach (1867-1944)—wrote wellreceived pieces that were derivative of European classical music, often from earlier periods. MacDowell's First Piano Sonata, known as the Tragica, typifies the genre: composed in 1891-1892, the Tragica was played frequently at concerts and parlor gatherings and inspired one leading critic to compare MacDowell to Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). A century later MacDowell and his Tragica are all but forgotten by the music establishment. Yet even as MacDowell and his contemporaries busied themselves emulating European models, a...
This section contains 521 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) |
![]() |