Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio 
Fall 2001

        Henry Cowell in the early 1930s wrote perhaps the most succinct definition of an American composer: someone who lives in the United States and writes music. For classical music programmers, this definition is considerably too broad to be useful. Nevertheless, there are many top-notch American composers you should consider regularly programming on your station.
        In his book America’s Music, Gilbert Chase divides American composers of the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s into various groupings, including Americanists, Eclectics, and Traditionalists. The ranks of the first group include some of the world’s most popular composers—George Gershwin and Aaron Copland. Like Bartok, Kodaly, Janacek, and Szymanowski in Europe, these composers used folk songs, dances, and lore in a way which kept the original character of these native materials. This was a different approach than that of Grieg, Dvorak, and MacDowell in the previous century, who treated their native materials as subjects to be worked out in a general romantic way. Although this style went out of fashion among composers after World War II, Gershwin and Copland have maintained their popularity with audiences, and others writing in the same vein can easily be programmed. These Americanist composers include William Grant Still, Jerome Moross, Morton Gould, Roy Harris, Elie Siegmeister, and William Levi Dawson.
        Eclectic composers are the norm rather than the exception in the United States. These composers derive their material from a variety of sources, including Impressionism, early music, and frequently American materials, including jazz. Virgil Thomson is perhaps the most prominent composer on Chase’s list, while the early works of Roger Sessions also fit comfortably in this category. Other “eclectic” American composers from this era include William Schuman, Randall Thompson, Paul Creston, Norman Dello Joio, Alan Hovhaness, and Leonard Bernstein.
        The Traditionalists are headed by Samuel Barber and the indefatigable Howard Hanson, whose Second Symphony was designed to be, in the composer’s words, “young in spirit, lyrical and romantic in temperament, and simple and direct in expression.” Their neo-classic or neo-romantic expression may already fit like an old glove on your radio station; if so, you might want to consider other composers in this category such as David Diamond, Irving Fine, Peter Mennin, Walter Piston, Ned Rorem, and Leo Sowerby.
        Although serial composers took firm control of academia in the 1950s and ‘60s, many of the composers listed above continued to write in the manner to which they had become accustomed. Others such as Robert Muczynski and Lee Hoiby ignored the often turgid academicism of music of that time. Younger composers such as Terry Riley, John Corigliano, and the iconoclastic Frank Zappa rebelled against serialism by using simpler harmonies and repetition—ideas from the world of pop and rock music—as major elements in their compositions. And, in more recent times, a plethora of composers, including Eric Ewazen, Katherine Hoover, Lowell Liebermann, and Paul Schoenfield have written “radiophonic” compositions in a variety of styles.
        Why should we should program American music? Here are several reasons.

        The quality is at least equal to that of European classical music. People respond in an extremely positive way when they hear music by Copland and Barber. If they’re exposed to works by Moross, Creston, Fine, Muczynski, and Ewazen, to name a few, they should respond similarly.
        It reminds the audience that we as classical music performers, programmers, and audiences are part of a living, breathing tradition. We are not museum curators exhibiting the  “Eurodead.”
        Here are just a few examples of less well-known American works that you might consider programming: