Indianist movement
Encyclopedia
The Indianist movement was a movement in American
classical music that flourished from the 1880s until the 1920s. It was based on attempts to synthesize American Indian
musical ideas with some of the basic principles of Western music. Chief practitioners of the form included Charles Sanford Skilton
, Arthur Nevin
, Arthur Farwell
, and Charles Wakefield Cadman
; many other composers were also involved in the craze at various points throughout their careers. In his book Imagining Native America in Music Michael Pisani argues that there was no such thing as an "Indianist" movement in American music, but that American composers' borrowing melodies of native America (beginning around 1890) was simply one part of a larger interest in the use of folk musics of all ethnicities on American soil. (A similar interest can be found in the work of several classical composers of Central and South America at this time as well.)
, although its musical roots go back much earlier; examples of music on "Indian" themes can be found dating back to the early years of the seventeenth century, and stories relating to the conquest of the Americas were popular with composers through the late eighteenth century as well. It bears many similarities with the cult of the noble savage
, espoused by writers such as James Fenimore Cooper
and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
. Edwin Forrest
, too, influenced the movement with his star performance in the play Metamora
. At least one composer, Anthony Philip Heinrich
, a contemporary of these artists, is recorded as having spent some time among the Indians on the American frontiers; he was also the first to set Longfellow's Hiawatha
to music. He did not, however, use Indian musical themes in his work.
and in folklore
later in the nineteenth century, much information was gleaned and collected about various American Indian cultures. In 1880 Theodore Baker
transcribed songs from a number of tribes, publishing them two years later in a German-language dissertation for his doctorate from the University of Leipzig
. Edward MacDowell
borrowed themes from Baker's work when composing his Second (Indian) Suite for orchestra
in 1894. Further impetus came with the arrival, in 1892, of Antonín Dvořák
to teach in New York City
. He exhorted American composers to stop imitating European models, and to turn instead to indigenous sources. Composer Frederick Burton took the idea to heart, and transcribed some Ojibway melodies which he later turned into art song
s. Later work by ethnographers and musicologists helped to build a body of notated music by Indians, and this aided some composers in searching for musical sources. Some, such as Carlos Troyer
, notated their source material themselves in an attempt to be as authentic as possible. Others, such as Harvey Worthington Loomis
, borrowed from already-published sources. Charles Sanford Skilton
was probably the composer who did most to establish the stereotypes of the genre, with pieces such as his Suite Primeval for orchestra.
Opera composers, too, attempted to use Indian themes in their work; among Indianist operas were Poia, by Arthur Nevin
; Victor Herbert
's Natoma; Kalopin and The Sun Bride by Charles Skilton; Alberto Bimboni
's Winona; and Shanewis, by Charles Wakefield Cadman
, the only one of the group to have any measure of success. Even so, both Bimboni and Skilton were awarded the Bispham Memorial Medal Award
for their operas.
was perhaps the most important composer involved in the Indianist movement at the height of its influence. He professed interest in all forms of American music, "notably, ragtime, Negro songs, Indian songs, Cowboy songs, and, of the utmost importance, new and daring expressions of our own composers, sound-speech previously unheard." He seemed, however, to show particular interest in American Indian music. Farwell was also the founder of the Wa-Wan Press
, which did much to further the cause of Indianist music in America. As a composer, he chose not to view American Indian music as a novelty, viewing it instead as a profound source of inspiration for his work.
. This coupled with the growing influence of jazz
and popular music
, and a lack of interest in Romanticism, to spell the end of the formal Indianist movement in music. Nevertheless, Indian subjects have continued to interest composers, both in the United States and abroad, through the end of the twentieth century and beyond.
Composers who wrote works based on Indian themes, and who are sometimes grouped under the "Indianist" label, include:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
classical music that flourished from the 1880s until the 1920s. It was based on attempts to synthesize American Indian
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
musical ideas with some of the basic principles of Western music. Chief practitioners of the form included Charles Sanford Skilton
Charles Sanford Skilton
Charles Sanford Skilton was an American composer, teacher and musicologist. Along with Charles Wakefield Cadman, Blair Fairchild, Arthur Nevin, and Arthur Farwell, among others, he was one of the leading Indianist composers of the early twentieth century.-Life:Skilton was born in Northampton,...
, Arthur Nevin
Arthur Nevin
Arthur Nevin was an American composer, conductor, teacher and musicologist. Along with Charles Wakefield Cadman, Blair Fairchild, Charles Sanford Skilton, and Arthur Farwell, among others, he was one of the leading Indianist composers of the early twentieth century.-Biography:Born in Edgeworth,...
, Arthur Farwell
Arthur Farwell
Arthur Farwell was an American composer, conductor, educationalist, lithographer, esoteric savant, and music publisher.- Biography :Farwell was born in St Paul, Minnesota...
, and Charles Wakefield Cadman
Charles Wakefield Cadman
Charles Wakefield Cadman was an American composer.Cadman’s musical education, unlike that of most of his American contemporaries, was completely American. Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, he began piano lessons at 13...
; many other composers were also involved in the craze at various points throughout their careers. In his book Imagining Native America in Music Michael Pisani argues that there was no such thing as an "Indianist" movement in American music, but that American composers' borrowing melodies of native America (beginning around 1890) was simply one part of a larger interest in the use of folk musics of all ethnicities on American soil. (A similar interest can be found in the work of several classical composers of Central and South America at this time as well.)
Origins
The Indianist movement could trace its roots to certain trends in nineteenth-century American RomanticismRomanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
, although its musical roots go back much earlier; examples of music on "Indian" themes can be found dating back to the early years of the seventeenth century, and stories relating to the conquest of the Americas were popular with composers through the late eighteenth century as well. It bears many similarities with the cult of the noble savage
Noble savage
The term noble savage , expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider , and refers to the literary stock character of the same...
, espoused by writers such as James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...
and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
. Edwin Forrest
Edwin Forrest
Edwin Forrest was an American actor.-Early life:Forrest was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of Scottish and German descent. His father died and he was brought up by his mother, a German woman of humble origins. He was educated at the common schools in Philadelphia, and early evinced a taste...
, too, influenced the movement with his star performance in the play Metamora
Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags
Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags is a play originally starring Edwin Forrest. The play was written in 1829 by John Augustus StoneIt was first performed December 15, 1829, at the Park Theater in New York City....
. At least one composer, Anthony Philip Heinrich
Anthony Philip Heinrich
Anthony Philip Heinrich was the first "full-time" American composer, and the most prominent before the American Civil War. He did not start composing until he was 36, after losing his business fortune in the Napoleonic Wars. For most of his career he was known as "Father Heinrich," an emeritus...
, a contemporary of these artists, is recorded as having spent some time among the Indians on the American frontiers; he was also the first to set Longfellow's Hiawatha
Hiawatha
Hiawatha was a legendary Native American leader and founder of the Iroquois confederacy...
to music. He did not, however, use Indian musical themes in his work.
Beginnings of the movement
With the rise in studies both in ethnologyEthnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
and in folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
later in the nineteenth century, much information was gleaned and collected about various American Indian cultures. In 1880 Theodore Baker
Theodore Baker
Theodore Baker was an American musicologist.Born in New York, Baker studied business but turned to music as a career, becoming an organist in Concord, Massachusetts. In 1874 he moved to Germany and obtained his doctorate at Leipzig in 1882...
transcribed songs from a number of tribes, publishing them two years later in a German-language dissertation for his doctorate from the University of Leipzig
University of Leipzig
The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...
. Edward MacDowell
Edward MacDowell
Edward Alexander MacDowell was an American composer and pianist of the Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites "Woodland Sketches", "Sea Pieces", and "New England Idylls". "Woodland Sketches" includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose"...
borrowed themes from Baker's work when composing his Second (Indian) Suite for orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
in 1894. Further impetus came with the arrival, in 1892, of Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
to teach in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. He exhorted American composers to stop imitating European models, and to turn instead to indigenous sources. Composer Frederick Burton took the idea to heart, and transcribed some Ojibway melodies which he later turned into art song
Art song
An art song is a vocal music composition, usually written for one voice with piano or orchestral accompaniment. By extension, the term "art song" is used to refer to the genre of such songs....
s. Later work by ethnographers and musicologists helped to build a body of notated music by Indians, and this aided some composers in searching for musical sources. Some, such as Carlos Troyer
Carlos Troyer
Carlos Troyer, born Charles Troyer, was an American composer known for his musical arrangements of traditional Native American melodies....
, notated their source material themselves in an attempt to be as authentic as possible. Others, such as Harvey Worthington Loomis
Harvey Worthington Loomis
Harvey Worthington Loomis was an American composer. He is remembered today for his associations with the Indianist movement and the Wa-Wan Press....
, borrowed from already-published sources. Charles Sanford Skilton
Charles Sanford Skilton
Charles Sanford Skilton was an American composer, teacher and musicologist. Along with Charles Wakefield Cadman, Blair Fairchild, Arthur Nevin, and Arthur Farwell, among others, he was one of the leading Indianist composers of the early twentieth century.-Life:Skilton was born in Northampton,...
was probably the composer who did most to establish the stereotypes of the genre, with pieces such as his Suite Primeval for orchestra.
Opera composers, too, attempted to use Indian themes in their work; among Indianist operas were Poia, by Arthur Nevin
Arthur Nevin
Arthur Nevin was an American composer, conductor, teacher and musicologist. Along with Charles Wakefield Cadman, Blair Fairchild, Charles Sanford Skilton, and Arthur Farwell, among others, he was one of the leading Indianist composers of the early twentieth century.-Biography:Born in Edgeworth,...
; Victor Herbert
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...
's Natoma; Kalopin and The Sun Bride by Charles Skilton; Alberto Bimboni
Alberto Bimboni
Alberto Bimboni was an Italian-born American composer and conductor. He is remembered today, if at all, for his opera Winona; consequently, he is sometimes grouped with other composers of the Indianist movement in American music....
's Winona; and Shanewis, by Charles Wakefield Cadman
Charles Wakefield Cadman
Charles Wakefield Cadman was an American composer.Cadman’s musical education, unlike that of most of his American contemporaries, was completely American. Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, he began piano lessons at 13...
, the only one of the group to have any measure of success. Even so, both Bimboni and Skilton were awarded the Bispham Memorial Medal Award
Bispham Memorial Medal Award
The Bispham Memorial Medal Award was an award for operas written in English which was presented annually by the American Opera Society of Chicago from 1921-1932. The award was named for baritone David Bispham, who was a great proponent of performing opera in English in the United States. It was...
for their operas.
Arthur Farwell
Arthur FarwellArthur Farwell
Arthur Farwell was an American composer, conductor, educationalist, lithographer, esoteric savant, and music publisher.- Biography :Farwell was born in St Paul, Minnesota...
was perhaps the most important composer involved in the Indianist movement at the height of its influence. He professed interest in all forms of American music, "notably, ragtime, Negro songs, Indian songs, Cowboy songs, and, of the utmost importance, new and daring expressions of our own composers, sound-speech previously unheard." He seemed, however, to show particular interest in American Indian music. Farwell was also the founder of the Wa-Wan Press
Wa-Wan Press
The Wa-Wan Press was an American music publishing company founded in 1901 by composer Arthur Farwell in Newton Center, Massachusetts. The firm concentrated on publishing compositions by so-called Indianist movement members—composers who incorporated traditional Native American music into...
, which did much to further the cause of Indianist music in America. As a composer, he chose not to view American Indian music as a novelty, viewing it instead as a profound source of inspiration for his work.
Decline
The Wa-Wan Press began losing subscribers around 1908, and folded in 1912 after being acquired by G. SchirmerG. Schirmer
G. Schirmer Inc. is an American classical music publishing company based in New York City, founded in 1861. It publishes sheet music for sale and rental, and represents some well-known European music publishers in North America, such as the Italian Ricordi, Music Sales Affiliates ChesterNovello,...
. This coupled with the growing influence of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
, and a lack of interest in Romanticism, to spell the end of the formal Indianist movement in music. Nevertheless, Indian subjects have continued to interest composers, both in the United States and abroad, through the end of the twentieth century and beyond.
Indianist composers
Among the major Indianist composers were:Composers who wrote works based on Indian themes, and who are sometimes grouped under the "Indianist" label, include: