Wilfrid MellersMusic in a New Found Land
Themes and Developments in the History of American Music
One: The Pioneer and the Wilderness; I: A pre-history of American music:
the primitives, the retreat to Europe and the conservative tradition; II:
Realism and transcendentalism: Charles Ives as American hero; III: Men and
mountains: Carl Ruggles as American mystic; Roy Harris as religious
primitive; IV: Skyscraper and Prairie: Aaron Copland and the American
isolation; V: The Pioneer's energy and the Artist's order: Elliott Carter;
VI: The American frenzy and the unity of serialism: Wallingford Riegger and
Roger Sessions; VII: The retreat from the west: science and magic: Charles
Griffes, Henry Cowell and Edgard Varèse; VIII: From noise to silence: Harry
Partch, John Cage and Morton Feldman; IX: Innocence and nostalgia: Samuel
Barber and Virgil Thomson; X: Today and Tomorrow: Lukas Foss and the
younger generation; Two: The world of art and the world of commerce: the
folk-song of the asphalt jungle; I: Introductory: Music and entertainment
in nineteenth-century America: Stephen Foster, Louis-Moreau Gottschalk and
John Philip Sousa; II: Orgy and alienation: country blues, barrelhouse
piano, and piano rag; III: Heterophony and improvisation: the New Orleans
jazz band and King Oliver; Bessie Smith and the urban blues; IV: From
heterophony to polyphony: from polyphony to the antiphony of the big band:
improvisation and composition in the work of Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll
Morton and Count Basie; V: Jazz polyphony and jazz harmony: Duke Ellington
as composer; VI: From art back to jazz. Modern jazz and the composing
improviser: Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman and John
Coltrane; VII: From jazz back to art. Modern jazz and the improvising
composer: Miles Davis and Gil Evans; Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis;
VIII: From jazz to pop: the decline of the big bands: pianists, cabaret
singers and the "musical"; IX: From pop to art: opera, the musical and
George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess"; X: From art to pop: Marc Blitzstein's
"Regina" and Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story"; the rebirth of wonder;
Epilogue
