Leonard Bernstein on NPC American Music

Leonard Bernstein on NPC American Music
Name
Institution affiliation
Date

Bernstein enters into a lecture about what exactly makes American music distinguishable as American music. It is now similar in any way to any other music, and several features make it so. He goes ahead to play the song, Americans in Paris, composed by Gershwin (Bernstein 2018). He says that anyone on the globe can distinguish this music as undeniably American regardless of where in the world they were watching the show. It is not because of the title, “Americans in Paris” nor is it because the composer is an American. Instead, it is because of the type of music that is being played. You feel its American origins when you hear it. Bernstein echoes that every single country has its kind of music that is undeniably and distinguishably theirs and everybody can relate that music to its country of origin. Therefore, the pertinent question is why some music seems to belong to America.
He reiterates that the type of music that is undeniably identified as belonging to a specific country is known as ‘nationalistic’ music (Bernstein 2018). The type of music could range from complex musical compositions to simple folk songs, to the banging of the drums in Congo as a prayer for rain. It could be the primitive chanting of the people from Arabia, or the Mazurka from Poland, which is a dance type of music, or the Tarantella from Italy. All these are undeniably ‘nationalistic’ compositions.
Bernstein plays the Spanish Rhapsody by Ravel and asks the audience to identify what is the country of origin.

A child answers that it is Spain and Bernstein comments how he would never forget the tune in his life. He explains that the reason such music is so easy to identify is that the songs and compositions were passed down from generation to generation and the only way one generation feels closer to its predecessors is through playing the types of songs that the predecessors used to play.
Bernstein identifies the issue with American folk music is that the American forefathers came from so many different origins making it hard to point out what exactly is American folk music. Because with all the different forefathers, what music have they inherited? Most American composers were imitating European composers, and it took Dvorak, a Czechoslovakian composer to point this out. He tried using original Indian compositions to make symphonies, which ended up sounding more Czech than American (Bernstein, 2018).
Dvorak made more compositions such as “Going Home” that challenged American composers (Bernstein 2018). The composers all rushed to writing songs with Indian and Negro melodies. Composers such as MacDowell and Gilbert all made great music with negro and Indian tunes, but it is hard to call this music natively American. Then it happened after the First World War. Music that was so undeniably American in origin was born, jazz. Composers such as Aaron Copland began writing jazz music for the theatre.
Then came Gershwin with his Rhapsody of Blue in the year 1924. The jazz song was a phenomenal hit that rocked New York then the USA and finally the world at large. Jazz had syncopations that were very accidental and were not part of the music but just occurred. However, in the later 1930s, these syncopations became an active part of the music. So much so that the tune that emerged came out of Jazz and did not sound like jazz at all. The melody is what we now can refer to as the American ‘nationalistic’ tune.
References
Bernstein, L (2018). Young People’s Concert, What is American Music? Retrieved from https://leonardbernstein.com/lectures/television-scripts/young-peoples-concerts/what-is-American-music