I intend to make some fairly arrogant-sounding statements here, having to do with impressions of American culture (or lack thereof).
Don’t misunderstand—we have culture. Lots of it. So much we usually don’t even know it. But we do not have a culture. Probably this is a good thing. The whole Melting Pot idea may be best served by not having a monolithic cultural ideal to which we require people to attend, whether they want to or not.
The incredible variety of cultural possibilities here is astonishing. I would not wish to change that.
That said, it hurts to realize how so much of what passes for daily “culture” seems little more than an afterthought.
This morning I listened to a program about Aaron Copland. If you do not know who he was, that is precisely the point of this essay. You should. Yes, I am being prescriptive. As an American, especially if you are someone who likes to soapbox about how great this country is, you have no excuse to live in the kind of ignorance about your heritage that can forget Aaron Copland.
Born in 1900, he studied in Paris and returned to become a composer. His ambition was to create a quintessential American music. Even if you do not recognize the name, you have doubtless heard some of his music. Appalachian Spring has offered background in commercials, informed film soundtracks. It is part of the zeitgeist. Then there is his ballet, Rodeo, a sonic portrait of the vanishing West. One of its pieces, Hoedown, proved an enduring part of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s repertoire, as did Fanfare For The Common Man. But just as significantly, he did create a musical template that went on to define American symphonic music. He wanted to break away from the motifs of Europe, which still seem to dominate film scores, and also the repertoire of most symphony companies.
There lies the problem, of course. Symphonies. I can imagine the frustration of an entire generation of American composers who earnestly labored to craft an American Music to stand as equal to the Europeans (including the Russians) only to see their work fall to the wayside as Americans flocked to the offerings of pop songwriters offering two or three minute earworms that by the Sixties dominated the radio and even began encroaching on what was the last bastion of populist symphonic composition, soundtracks. People like Barber, Piston, Bernstein, Hanson, Ives, Gershwin, and Copland who thought what we needed, what would energize the communal aesthetic and provide a solid artistic heritage worthy of something called a civilization doubtless scratched their heads at the kitschyness of what the American Public seemed to prefer.
There was jazz, of course, which until the Sixties seemed to have a firm position in the American gestalt, but on the surface Tin Pan Alley and the crooners seemed to dominate the “average” American’s musical taste. It seemed at times the only place most Americans got any exposure to what might be called serious music were musicals, where occasionally some exceptional composition had a chance to compete with Popular Music—but always midwived by sophomoric melodrama.
Of the many reasons for the general underappreciation of this area of culture, I think haste is the biggest problem. My entire life, it seems, has been lived among people who could not spare more than five minutes for anything that did not directly concern them in some immediate way. To derive benefit from someone like an Aaron Copland, one has to be willing and able to sit still and be quiet for ten, twenty, sixty minutes and listen. Americans (I can only speak for my community) largely treat serious music as an imposition because it is very poor wallpaper.
We don’t have time.
Consequently, we don’t have the habit of paying attention. I suspect, aside from a desire to stun or shock, pop and rock concerts are so loud because the music has to compete with ongoing conversation…which should not be taking place because music.
Fine art Requires. It requires time, attention. It asks that you sit still, say nothing, attend. But for too many of us, anything too complex to ignore is a bother. The advent of the pop tune fills a desire for something but is not so demanding that one cannot do half a dozen other things at the same time.
