From my latest contribution to www.NewMusicBox.com:
"The core story of Western art music is the invention, development, and disintegration of harmony, the progress from plainsong to modal harmony to tonality to post-tonality. America had no role in that history. Harmony went from Perotin to Palestrina to J.S. Bach to Wagner to Webern entirely without American input. Of course, the European invention called harmony is now globally ubiquitous. And that means that, in some sense, classical music is also global and therefore (nominally at least) American. But it's also Indian, Afghani, Indonesian, Egyptian, Japanese, etc. It's everybody's and nobody's.
"Examples can be found throughout the United States of iambic pentameter, Sufism, polo, and Korean food. That doesn't make any of them American. Soccer is played in America, but no one calls it an 'American' sport. So, why do we keep insisting there can be such a thing as American classical music, as opposed to classical music that happens to be made in America?"
To read the entire thing, go here:
www.newmusicbox.com/article.nmbx?id=5703
- KLF
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