This argument confuses folk music (largely anonymous and non-professional) with popular music (professional, with identifiable composers).
On the contrary, my thesis is that it was the music that each separate group of settlers brought with it, which one can refer to as folk music for convenience but which in fact comprises the musical portion of that particular ethnic/language/social/religious group's portable culture, which in the "melting pot" generated the popular music as you define it. (I have ordered the Hamm book, and another of his, and look forward to seeing what he has to say.) That music often included story songs with moral teachings, story ballads from within each culture, lullabies, play songs, dance tunes, hymns and gospel songs, a very broad expansion of the term "folk music" but a usable one. But this was music made up to fit within the culture, not consciously written to make money from sales of sheet music.
To make a living from their works, popular composers from the pre-recording era had to go where the money, the pianos, and the parlors were. Guess where that was.
Of course, but again you are speaking of the latter developments, not the precursors. And no one in the U.S. could count on making a living from their works until U.S. copyright law was changed (in about 1831) for include, for the first time, copyright protection for music. Stephen Foster belonged to the first generation to be able to take advantage of this new law, although he was not a good enough businessman to make it pay off.
All popular music, from anywhere, at any time, is *by definition* music of the people (that's what "popular" means). You cannot seriously assert that there was no American popular music before ~1850, and therefore a "music of the people" cannot have emerged *ab ovo* after that time.
I do not assert it, but I have read serious speculation that "popular music" in the sense of "music of the people" (and I agree with you completely on this meaning) COULD NOT have existed in class-divided and class-conscious Europe, and therefore, as a musical art form that cut across all societal classes, was indeed a new and essentially North American phenomenon.
As for a supposed insulation from European art music (as opposed, I guess, to American art music or European popular music), see Ch. 4 of Charles Hamm's _Yesterdays_ for the great popularity of Italian opera in the US in the early 19th c.
I look forward to seeing it, but remain for the time being convinced that this would have been in the seaport cities that maintained close connections to Europe, and not in the interior heartland. The riverport and lakeport cities would have been the next to pick up imported culture, and undoubtedly did. That still leaves vast areas that were virtually cut off from the influence of European culture for most of the century.
Hamm's book is the basic text on early American popular music, and it contradicts your highly romanticized interpretation at every turn.
Sure, it's romanticized and highly simplified and suited primarily for an added lecture in a music history course with a textbook that almost ignores popular music entirely. And when I learn something new, I incorporate it.
Thanks for the constructive criticism. (Oh, and while I was on the Amazon website I realized why I had not ordered another book that you recommended. With a list price of $175 and no discounted copies available, it's just a little too rich for my blood!)
John
-- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
