Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

in the preface to his collection, The New England Psalm Singer, words thatforeshadow that later New Englander Emerson’s famous essay “Self-Reliance”:Perhaps it should be expected by some, that I should say somethingconcerning rules for composition; to these I answer that Nature isthe best dictator, for all the hard, dried, studied rules that were everprescribed, will not enable any person to form an air … It must beNature, Nature must lay the foundation, Nature must inspire thethought … For my own part, as I don’t think myself confined to anyrules for composition, laid down by any that went before me, neithershould I think (were I to pretend to lay down rules) that any onewho came after me were in any ways obligated to adhere to them,any further than they should feel proper; so in fact, I think it best forevery composer to be his own carver.And so, as the 18th century drew to a close, in villages and townsacross New England, compilations of music came off the presses in greatnumbers, in oblong-shaped, leather-bound editions that, in battered andbruised condition, can occasionally still be found in used bookstores today.Much of what was produced is of little artistic merit, as one might expectunder such circumstances. The compositions consisted of the reworkings ofEuropean clichés or attempts that reached beyond the technical prowess ofthe composer. Yet in the finest of this music, a new sound was created, onewith Old World roots but grown and formed in the New World atmosphere.These Yankees wrote mostly sacred vocal music, usually in three orfour parts. The pieces were short and structurally simple. The three majorforms used were the plain tune, in which a melody was harmonized, theanthem, and the fuging tune, a two-section piece, with voice entrances ofthe second part more or less imitating the voice of the first.The composers’ melodic sense was colored by the Anglo-Americanfolk music around them. Harmonically they had little interest in the intricaciesof their European models. Their pared-down style included unprepareddissonances, parallel-perfect intervals, unconventional voice leadings, andidiosyncratic and modal-tinged chord progressions. These and other suchsounds had long been banished from the conservatories of Europe but probablyexisted in the folk harmonizing of New England. When counterpointwas attempted, it was of a rough and ready nature.What is the effect of this music? Drawing on the memories of herchildhood in Litchfield, Connecticut, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote in a storycalled “Poganuc People”:84