THE GREAT AMERICAN SYMPHONY

Chapter:

CHAPTER 11 In Search of the “Real” America

Source:

MUSIC IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

What ultimately killed off “symphonic jazz” was not so much snobbery or bigotry as it was the advent of the Great Depression of the 1930s, which abruptly put an end to the “jazz age” or “roaring twenties,” the decade of postwar hedonism that had sustained the experimental fusion of genres both in Europe and in America. The times now demanded not “American hustle” and “metropolitan madness,” but a music that could sustain faith with eloquence. Again Stravinsky set the tone in Europe, with his Symphony of Psalms (1930), an austerely rapt three-movement cantata that he composed in response to a commission from Koussevitzky for a symphony to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Citation (MLA):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 11 In Search of the “Real” America." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 16 Jun. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-011005.xml>.

Citation (APA):

Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 11 In Search of the “Real” America. In Oxford University Press, Music in the Early Twentieth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 16 Jun. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-011005.xml

Citation (Chicago):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 11 In Search of the “Real” America." In Music in the Early Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 16 Jun. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-011005.xml