Thanks to the Louisville Orchestra and its First Edition Series, through the aid of Albany Records, a wealth of exciting, very American music is being made available on compact disc for the first time. The works include compositions by Roy Harris, Morton Gould, and Walter Piston. On its own, Albany has also brought out a compact disc of Virgil Thomson's music, and Varese Sarabande offers the world premiere recording of Harris' Symphony No.6 (Gettysburg). Deutche Grammophon also offers a new Leonard Bernstein interpretation of Harris' famous Symphony No.3, and RCA has transferred to CD two of Gould's more recent and delightful compositions: Burchfield Gallery and Apple Waltzes.
All of these works are inimitably American and instantly identifiable as such by anyone faintly familiar with the musical idioms of the twentieth century. They are basically tonal, melodic, open, and inspiriting compositions. Unlike American music of the nineteenth century, they do not feel the heavy weight of European, the especially Germanic tradition. Harris, Thomson, Gould, and Piston, aside from Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber, were American music for the three decades at the heart of this century, and the relative neglect of their music by the recording industry is something of a scandal. It is hard to think of another country that does so little with its musical patrimony in terms of performance and recordings. This might be understandable if mainstream American music had adopted German angst and, with it, Schoenberg's dodecaphony, as it did somewhat after the heyday of these composers. But these works are, for the most part, highly accessible and immediately appealing.
Take the case of Roy Harris (1898-1979). In 1935 a nationwide radio poll and in 1937 a Scribner's magazine poll rated Harris the premier American composer. By the time of his death, he had produced over two hundred works, including fourteen symphonies. A year ago only one of his works was available on CD. Harris' Symphony No.1 was the first American symphony to be recorded commercially, and his Symphony No.3 was called by Serge Koussevitzky "the greatest orchestral work yet written by an American." The Third has achieved classic status and is deeply impressive in Leonard Bernstein's first recording of it in the 1960s with the New York Philharmonic on CBS. This one-movement work exemplifies Harris' organic feel for huge musical structures composed of soaring arches of melody, vivid counterpoint, and chorale. It has a profoundly moving liturgical feel to it, a kind of musical American Gothic or Ansel Adams in sound. Bernstein chose to rerecord the Third with the New York Philharmonic in a live performance under Deutsche Grammophon's auspices (DGG 419-780-2). The epic sense of build and excitement is superior in his older version, but the new CD is also coupled with a fine performance of William Schuman's Third Symphony.
Ecstatic Exuberance
The popularity of Harris' Third Symphony has threatened Harris with the reputation of being a "one work" composer. One could only wonder what most of his other symphonies sound like. Now that we can hear Varese Sarabande's world premier recording of Harris' Symphony No.6 (Gettysburg, 1943-44), we can wonder even more. How is it that music of this majesty, immense breadth, and sweep, music of such deeply ruminative power and ecstatic exuberance could have been neglected? Inspired by the Gettysburg Address, each of the four movements carries a citation from Lincoln's text. They are separately entitled:
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