On the suggestion of a loyal listener, who alerted me to the fact that Sir Arnold Bax’s Symphony No. 7 was dedicated to “The People of America,” I thought I would take a different tack this year when putting together my show in honor of Independence Day, which I will observe tomorrow morning on WPRB.
Instead of targeting the strike zone of American patriotism that encompasses composers who came of age during the Great Depression and World War II (much of whose music I admire and even love very much), we’ll view America and the American experience through a foreign sensibility. Some of the composers will be immigrants, excited and even grateful to have made the United States their home, and some will be visitors. Some, such as Richard Wagner, who wrote his dreadful “American Centennial March” for the 1876 celebrations in Philadelphia, will merely have been looking to cash a paycheck.
Not all of the music will sound American (eg. Bax’s Symphony No. 7, given its premiere in conjunction with the 1939 New York World’s Fair); some of it will be self-consciously so (Ernest Bloch’s “America”).
Join me tomorrow, as we welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of the world’s composers, yearning to celebrate the United States, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. I’ll be stirring the musical melting pot, on Classic Ross Amico.