The Advance of American Music

[This essay is a sequel to “The Advent of American Music” by Mr. Rosenfeld in the Winter number.]

The promise of music of high quality in the style of American life floated in the air of the early ’twenties. Several events emphasized it. One was the piano sonata of the late and lamented Charles Griffes. Griffes’ White Peacock had seemed The Afternoon of a White Peacock—at that, not the first afternoon the peacock had had—and the orientalism of his Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan recalled the Egyptian mysteries of the county fair side shows. But much of the material of the sonata was individually stark. The symphony of Roger Sessions was another exciting phenomenon. An emulation of Stravinsky, to be sure, was plain in parts. The second movement with the antiphonal effects was quite “Nastasia Timofievna.” But the music had an individual thump to it, a “sitting upon the notes” most personal to the composer.