MUAR 392 Notes May 1 st
What is “Popular Music”? What do people mean when they call
something “authentic”?
Normative Why is authenticity thought of as a good
o Popular music is an inferior type
thing?
Negative When did people start caring about
o Popular music is that which is authenticity? When did it become a
not “folk” or “art” music
positive characteristic?
Sociological
o Popular music is associated Johann Gottfried Herder
with a particular social group
German philosopher, theologian, and
Technologico-economic
o Popular music is disseminated writer
by mass media and/or in mass Argued against universalism of the
market French Enlightenment
Positivist Different cultures were not better or
o Popular music that is popular worse, but simply different
Essentialist Therefore what was most culturally
valuable was not the high culture that
o Music that is mass-produced,
standardized OR authentic, claimed universality, but rather the
spontaneous, real, honest culture of the Volk – the Folk or the
People
When does Popular Music begin? Why?
What was authentic was, then, what
actually came from the folk/people
The French Revolution and the rise of Major influence on growth of nationalism
the Bourgeoisie and romanticism.
o Famously began July 14, 1789
with the storming of the Bastille Folk Vs People
Ludwig Van Beethoven
o Born 1770 in Bonn “Folk” from the German Volk
o Died 1827 in Vienna “People” from the Latin populous
o The first musician as “artist” but Why different connotations?
NOT the most popular
composer of the early 19th Authenticity and Its Problems
century
o Gioachini Rossini was the Definitions
“popular” one o Of authority, authoritative;
entitled to obedience or respect
What happens to music that is NOT art?
o Entitled to acceptance or belief,
Especially forms of music that “come from as being in accordance with
the people”, not literate composers writing fact, or as stating fact; reliable,
for the elite? trustworthy, of established credit
o Original, first-hand prototypical;
The invention of Popular Music required as opposed to copied. Real,
various things actual, genuine
o Really proceeding from its
Mechanical Reproduction
reputed source or author; of
Mechanical Instrumentation undisputed origin, guanine
Mechanical Transportation o Belonging to himself, own,
proper.
o Acting of itself, self-originated,
automatic
Key Concept for Course: Authenticity
The Field of Cultural Production Development of The Music Industry (up to
What was Tin Pan Alley?
1920)
How did people experience music prior Center of North American music
to the proliferation of it in recorded form? publishing business located in midtown
Manhattan
o ALL music was life
o Music was ephemeral – it was Collection of music publishers who
played and then was gone supplied songs to Broadway shows, the
vaudeville circuit and sheet music-
o “The Talking Machine” – 1877
The year Edison invented the buying amateurs
phonograph Music industry at this time was primarly
First ever sound about selling sheet music, recordings
recording – 1877 very secondary
First music recording –
Piano and cornet Some Tin Pan Alley songwriters
arrangement of Arthur Irving Berlin
Sullivan’s song “The
Lost Chord” George Gershwin
Jerome Kern
Technological Determinism Hoagy Carmichael
Scott Joplin
Argument Harry Von Tilzer
o Technologies emerge from Fats Waller
study and experimentation and
Johnny Mercer
then change the society into Etc.
which they are introduced
o But for Edison music was NOT
Two types of music popular in 1890s to
the primary purpose; instead he 1920s
saw business dictation and
recording voices for Victorian-style ballads and waltz songs
preservation after their death as
Ragtime: Syncopated new style created
primary use primarily by African-American musicians
o Originally used wax cylinders
that allowed both recording AND Questions about popular music 1890s-1920s
playback – later replaced by
non-recordable discs Who was Irving Berlin? What was his
o Radio originally two-way cultural background?
medium but later becomes o One of the most successful Tin
almost exclusively one way Pan Alley song writers
His Master’s Voice (HMV) o Born Israel Isodore Baline in
modern Belarus the son of a cantor; immigrated to New York
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