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Group of modernist American composers
The
American Five
is a collective name applied by some writers to the
modernist
American
composers
Charles Ives
(1874?1954),
John J. Becker
(1886?1961),
Wallingford Riegger
(1885?1961),
Henry Cowell
(1897?1965), and
Carl Ruggles
(1876?1971).
[1]
[2]
They were noted for their modernist and often
dissonant
compositions which broke away from European compositional styles to create a distinctly American style.
[3]
The name was coined in imitation of the group of
Russian
composers called
The Five
.
[4]
The origin of the term "The American Five" is unclear. The five composers, although many of them were known to each other, did not work, or publicise themselves, as a group. According to Don C. Gillespie, "the first use of the phrase [an 'American Five'] seems to have been made by the composer
John Downey
in 1962, the year following Becker's death."
[5]
However, Stuart Feder credits Gillespie, saying that, "Gillespie has called them 'the American Five.'"
[6]
Gilbert Chase says that Gillespie, "the leading authority on Becker," credits Becker as "'the first person to promulgate the theory of the "Ives group," or "The American Five," as it is often called today.'"
[7]
Stephen Budiansky credits Becker, saying that he, "began insisting that he was one of the 'American Five' great modern composers."
[8]
Peter Garland has written that
Dennis Russell Davies
organized "the 1980
Cabrillo Music Festival
around my [i.e. Garland's] thesis-idea of 'The American Five'", and found a supporter in
Lou Harrison
.
[9]
The music historian
Richard Taruskin
notes that a group of composers including Becker, Riegger and Ruggles, and also
Dane Rudhyar
and
Ruth Crawford Seeger
, became associated with Cowell during the period when he published the magazine
The New Music Quarterly
(1927?1936). The magazine was financed by Ives. Taruskin (who does not use the term 'American Five' in his survey) comments that "the members [of this group] shared both a technical orientation and an expressive purpose which, like Ives's own may be jointly summed up as
transcendental
maximalism
."
[10]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Chase, Gilbert. "American Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present."
Music & Letters
, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Oct., 1988), pp. 542-545.
- ^
Antokoletz, Elliott (2014).
A History of Twentieth-Century Music in a Theoretic-Analytical Context
, p.166. Routledge.
ISBN
9781135037307
. "[Riegger and Becker] were grouped with Ives, Ruggles, and Cowell as the 'American Five'."
- ^
New York Public Library Guide to the John J. Becker Papers
- ^
USD Symphony Program Notes
Archived
May 9, 2008, at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
Gillespie, Don C. (1977).
John Becker: Midwestern Musical Crusader
, p.iii. Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina.
- ^
Feder, Stuart (1992).
Charles Ives, "my Father's Song": A Psychoanalytic Biography
, p.346. Yale.
ISBN
9780300054811
. "During the early 1930s, the five composers most 'conspicuously concerned with innovation' were Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, Becker, and Wallingford Riegger." See also Feder's
ISBN
9780521599313
.
- ^
Chase, Gilbert (1992).
America's Music, from the Pilgrims to the Present
, p.462. University of Illinois.
ISBN
9780252062759
.
- ^
Budiansky, Stephen (2014).
Mad Music: Charles Ives, the Nostalgic Rebel
, p.231. ForeEdge.
ISBN
9781611683998
. "Placing himself alongside Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, and Riegger."
- ^
Garland, Peter; ed. (1987).
A Lou Harrison Reader
, p.94. Soundings. "(Ives-Ruggles-Riegger-Cowell-Becker)."
- ^
Richard Taruskin,
Music in the Early Twentieth Century
,
Oxford University Press
(2010),
ISBN
978-0-19-538484-0
, p. 295.
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Orchestral works
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Concertante
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Chamber music
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Piano works
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Vocal music
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Other compositions
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Named for Ives
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Related articles
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