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Then I laboriously went through and listed the number of references given for each of the subject headings. The group with between thirteen and sixty references—forty-two entries, twelve composers, no Americans. So I thought, OK, I'll trudge on and keep counting. Headings mentioned eight to twelve times (remember this was used until 1943)—seventy-two entries, fifteen composers, no Americans. I thought, well, I'm still looking for my colleagues. Subject headings with four to seven references—we are doing better here—six Americans referenced. Edward McDowell had the most references, and that's interesting because we don't hear much McDowell; he's not studied very much now. The rest of the references were mentioned one to three times, and there were a few more Americans. I did a little checking to see if the way we were studying music was reflected here, and so I looked for jazz. You know that jazz has had a hard time making its way into the academy. There were three references to jazz. I looked up the woman composers, and in fact women composers are listed in this book, all in one paragraph on page 196 as a list. About fourteen woman composers are mentioned, but only four examples of their music were recorded. I looked under African American composers—nothing. I looked under "black," nothing. I looked under "negro," and there were nine references to negro. In the index there are tree types of negro music: the work song, the spiritual, and sorry, senior moment, one other. I looked for William Grant Still, not mentioned. I looked for Florence L. Price, not mentioned. I looked for Henry Burleigh, who was mentioned as an arranger of spirituals. George Gershwin was mentioned under "negro" because of Rhapsody in Blue. And folk music—many references, and the way folk music was approached was by country, so Irish music, Spanish music, everything except German and French and English music. And usually under a sign like an emotion, so happy Irish music. What's so astounding to me is that such a boxed set of music was used until 1943 in the schools. It formed music education. From it we derived our approach to the elements of music, beat, rhythm, harmonic function; they are all derived from this core repertoire, which went along with the gramophone. Eventually because of transcontinental road races, after Horatio Nelson Jackson made it across the country, all the car companies got interested, because they wanted everybody to buy cars. In 1903 one in eight thousand Americans owned a car. The population was something like eighty million. They wanted a car in every garage. Now we have two plus cars for every family in America. Between 1903–1913 amateur radio stations increased megafold. In 1901 there were five hundred amateur radio stations, by 1908 there were ten thousand stations, with lots of patents being registered. By World War I radio telegraphy was a very important means of communication. When the war began the Navy took over all the radio stations; all the amateur radio stations were put out of business so that the Navy could control the war communications. At the end of World War I the Navy would not give up control of the radio stations; the government and the Navy decided that they would run the radio stations, and that's what happened. They schemed to create what would become NBC in 1926. The National Broadcasting Corporation was a combination of Westinghouse, AT&T, RCA, and the United Fruit Company, a radio company created so that we could communicate from South America, even from a banana tree. These companies combined to create NBC, and NBC was a government controlled network of radio stations. What happened to radio sales is quite amazing. The Marconi Company predicted in 1916 that by 1922 they would be able to sell one hundred thousand radio music boxes, basically radios that you could plug into your wall, and in 1922 they sold eleven million; in 1923 twenty-two million; in 1924 fifty million. People just bought radios. And what was being broadcast over those radios? They broadcast sports, and they found that they could broadcast music. KDKA in Pittsburg put a gramophone in front of the transmitter and transmitted music out of the air; people received it, and liked it, and so music began to be transmitted over the air, first through records, and then live music began to be broadcast over the air. And eventually opera. People wanted to take the music with them, and so they began to put radios in their cars. You basically just bolted your receiver to your car and set up your own antenna. People began to listen to radio all over the world. And then politicians got interested. Once politicians got involved the government and radio came together, NBC was formed, the whole canon that was developed by the Victor Record became the education canon for NBC, the canon that then informed the way we developed our music education system, and the way that we developed our concert system in the country. Where are my colleagues? They were never there. All of my work on behalf of American composers in the orchestral world is pioneering work. All of us who worked so long to place the American composer in an American orchestra now know what it is. We thought we were there and then we got thrown out. We were never part of the canon. Where are the young people? In their cars. I'm in my car. I listen to music in my car. It's one of the only quiet private spaces for listening to music. Can I listen in the same span of time that I would listen in a concert hall? Only if I pull off to the side of the road. Does that affect the way that I listen to classical music? Yes, it does. Does the sound of produce music, music that is mixed on a sound board, affect how we think of classical music? Yes, it does. Are orchestra halls building sound systems to remix the music? Yes, they are. They won't tell you, but they are. Is there a difference in the way we perceive classical music because of sound and transportation? Yes, there is. And that is the end of this speech. Libby Larsen is one of Americas most performed living composers. She has created a catalogue of over 220 works spanning virtually every genre from intimate vocal and chamber music to massive orchestral and choral scores. Grammy Award winning and widely recorded, including over 50 CDs of her work, she is constantly sought after for commissions and premieres by major artists, ensembles, and orchestras around the world, and has established a permanent place for her works in the concert repertory. She is currently completing a book, The Concert Hall That Fell Asleep and Woke Up as a Car Radio and her next major opera work, Every Man Jack. |
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