The American Founders And The Classics

As urban America of the nineteenth century grew and prospered, it became anxious to show itself civilized and "cultured" along the lines of established European culture. And so it was that the music of America's founders – the untutored but vigorous religious music of Colonial America, and the rugged, folk-derived spiritual song of the countryside – was more or less banished from polite society. The middle classes preferred (or were told to prefer) major-key hymns in "correct" four-part harmony. Funny stereopticon slides were published showing country yokels at an old-fashioned "singing school," presumably caterwauling some anthem by a disgraced eighteenth century like Billings or Read. Standard American music history texts, some even in use today, wrote off these repertoires, dismissing them in a few lines, or even ignoring them entirely.

As urban America of the nineteenth century grew and prospered, it became anxious to show itself civilized and "cultured" along the lines of established European culture. And so it was that the music of America's founders – the untutored but vigorous religious music of Colonial America, and the rugged, folk-derived spiritual song of the countryside – was more or less banished from polite society. The middle classes preferred (or were told to prefer) major-key hymns in "correct" four-part harmony. Funny stereopticon slides were published showing country yokels at an old-fashioned "singing school," presumably caterwauling some anthem by a disgraced eighteenth century like Billings or Read. Standard American music history texts, some even in use today, wrote off these repertoires, dismissing them in a few lines, or even ignoring them entirely.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestras. The founders' ambition was to build an orchestra the equal of any European or American rival. Between 1932 and the Second World War the LPO was widely judged to have succeeded in this regard. After the outbreak of war, the orchestra's private backers withdrew and the players reconstituted the as a self-governing cooperative. In the post-war years, the orchestra faced challenges from two new rivals; the Philharmonia and the Royal Philharmonic, founded respectively in 1946 and 1947, achieved a quality of playing not matched by the older orchestras.