Transatlantic Connections

Evening session at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society sponsored by the Royal Musical Association and Routledge

Chair: Philip Olleson, President of the Royal Musical Association
Venue: Room Liberty D, Sheraton Philadelphia City Center Hotel, Philadelphia US
Date: Friday, 13 November 2009
Time: 8pm, preceded by a reception with wine and antipasti, beginning at 7pm

To celebrate the new partnership between the Royal Musical Association and Routledge in the publication of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association from 2009, we invite you to an evening panel of four papers at this year's Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society in Philadelphia, 12-15 November 2009. Our chosen theme is 'Transatlantic Connections', highlighting a developing research area that links forthcoming articles in the Journal and recent publications such as Nicholas Temperley's Bound for America: Three British Composers (University of Illinois Press, 2008) and Michael Pickering's Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain (Ashgate, 2008). Each of our speakers explores an aspect of musical-cultural exchange between Europe and North America in relation to a broad range of musics from over two centuries, and the session also gives an opportunity for us to update the music-academic community on recent key developments for the Journal.

The papers are as follows:

1. 'Federals and Confederates': British Audiences and the American Civil War

Brian Thompson (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

This paper explores Henri Drayton's stage work Federals and Confederates. The Philadelphia-born Drayton was well known on both sides of the Atlantic as a leading baritone of his era. He had travelled to Europe to study singing in the 1840s and afterwards settled in London to pursue a career in opera. In the 1850s, he created his Parlor Opera Company, which featured himself and his wife, the soprano Susanna Lowe, in newly composed one-act works. Following their success in Britain, the impresario P.T. Barnum brought the Draytons to New York, where they became a sensation. A tour of the South was less successful and the Draytons returned to Britain in the spring of 1861, just as war was breaking out in the United States. Some eighteen months later, Drayton premiered Federals and Confederates, or, Everyday Life in America. This highly political work, in the style of Henry Russell's 'entertainments', proved to be a hit with British audiences. Based on a close study of the libretto, several published songs, and performance reviews, I shall discuss the structure, style, and politics of Federals and Confederates, retrace Drayton's many engagements that year, and attempt to explain some of the reasons for his success.

2. American Music in and around Nineteenth-Century Bristol

Stephen Banfield (University of Bristol)

England enjoyed and encouraged American musical imports for most of the nineteenth century. Yet it is easy to overlook what arrived when, and how, and to make assumptions about popular song in particular based on twentieth-century patterns of exchange. The newly digitised pages of the Bristol Mercury document phases of often forgotten influence in a representative city. First, blackface minstrelsy rapidly increased the awareness of and market for American songs, performance tropes, and cultural images, though later British minstrelsy was hardly a showcase for American popular music (a designation never used). Then the Civil War flagged popular songs as political metonyms. Arguably, though, the most precipitate musical influence of the century, vehicle for a revolution in taste pregnant for the twentieth century, came with Sankey and Moody's gospel hymns, rarely out of the Bristol news after 1873. Finally, preceded by Gilmore's band in 1878, the first 'sound of America' sensation arrived in the 1890s with the two-step (the Washington Post) because this decade reflected new economic and political strategies. Since American art music remained below the horizon throughout the century except at its aesthetic margins, another 'second story' of the nineteenth century here emerges.

3. Exploring the Effect of Prokofiev's Move to America on his Piano Writing

Gary O'Shea (University of Sheffield)

A stylistic development is noticeable in the piano-writing of Serge Prokofiev, between his time studying at the St Petersburg Conservatoire and his move from Russia to America in 1918. The paper will draw upon the progressive looking Sarcasms Op. 17 (1914), and Visions Fugitives Op. 22 (1915-17), which demonstrate heavy influences from Stravinsky and Debussy, and consider why, after he moved to America, he opted for a simpler and less harmonically daring style in the Tales of an Old Grandmother Op. 31 and Four Pieces Op. 32 (both 1918).

To establish what may have prompted Prokofiev to change his approach, I draw on his newly published diaries to analyse his compositional processes at the time, and to discover whether the stylistic change came about through personal choice or necessity. Prokofiev had to make a living primarily as a performer, so was it this that caused him to write simpler music for the more conservative American audiences? To assess the audience reactions of the time, I will present extracts from newspaper reviews of Prokofiev's recitals.

4. Improvising Education: Learning Jazz in 1920s Britain

Catherine Tackley (Open University)

Following the introduction of jazz to Britain, transatlantic connections became increasingly important for British musicians who wished to develop their jazz skills. Although American jazz recordings were obtainable in Britain, the extent to which improvisation was fully understood as an integral part of the music was initially limited. Crucially, American musicians provided live experiences of jazz as well as more direct education for musicians that allowed a more nuanced interpretation of jazz recordings.

Contact between British and American musicians was controlled by increasingly restrictive governmental policies on visiting musicians from both sides of the Atlantic, culminating in a near-total reciprocal ban from 1935. Initially, however, the British government encouraged the employment individual American musicians rather than whole bands. This was immensely beneficial in encouraging much greater interaction between British and American musicians, which defines a formative period in British jazz. This paper will explore the formal and informal activities of American musicians in Britain during the 1920s, and their impact on the development of British jazz. Ultimately, these instances of 'jazz in Britain' provided a basis for a more self-sufficient 'British jazz'.