Conference Agenda

Scholarship on music-making in nineteenth-century America has richly explored how European art music traditions were adapted to reflect emerging American cultural identities and values (Broyles 1992, 2004; Preston 2017, American Nineteenth Century History 24:3 2023). However, this work has overwhelmingly centered the East coast, particularly New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. However, comparatively less attention has been paid to the musical activities of German immigrants, the largest group to the United States between 1840 and 1880, who settled in large numbers predominantly in the territories and young states of the American Midwest. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the role of German musical societies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the early years of Wisconsin’s statehood, focusing on how immigrants used music as a means of cultural edification, identity formation, and civic engagement.

By analyzing archival records, newspaper accounts, and concert programs of European art music in Milwaukee, I show how music-making among German immigrants spanned formal and informal settings from the courthouse (“to a very respectable audience”), homes of wealthy beer barons (“to the Ladies and Gentlemen of Milwaukie”), and taverns (“no disorderly persons will be admitted”). Unlike the predominantly cosmopolitan musical culture of the East coast, these hybrid spaces allowed amateur musicians, intellectuals, and civic leaders to come together for artistic refinement and cultural cohesion. As the new home of many “Forty-Eighters”—humanists who fled the Revolutions of 1848—and other progressives, Milwaukee was uniquely positioned for such developments. The availability of cheap land, the easy transport of goods via Lake Michigan, and the growing beer and iron industries attracted and retained many German-speaking immigrants in the region.

This paper situates Milwaukee’s German-American musical culture within broader nineteenth-century transatlantic networks, considering how repertoire and language choice—from Mozart and Rossini arias in English to settings of American poetry and Protestant hymns—reflected both continuity of European traditions and simultaneous adaptation as immigrants forged new American identities. By highlighting the importance of regional perspectives, the Milwaukee example offers new insights into the active processes of cultural negotiation and hybrid identity formation through music for immigrants in nineteenth-century America.

My paper investigates the musical exchanges located at the heart of diplomatic relations between Canada and Europe during the 1970s. Musicologists acknowledge the crucial role of musical exchange as a form of soft-power in US Cold War diplomacy with Europe (Gienow-Hect, 2012; Fosler-Lussier, 2015; Abrams Ansari, 2018); few, however, have investigated how Canada similarly leveraged instances of musical exchange as a source of soft-power in its own transatlantic diplomatic relations at this time. This period is significant in that it provides evidence of a major shift in Canada’s foreign policy, one which sees a move away from strictly economic, commercial, and political concerns towards viewing musical expression as an asset in reinforcing diplomatic relations with Europe on the one hand, and as a means of distinguishing itself culturally from the United States on the other. Under the auspices of the Government of Canada’s Department of External Affairs’ (DEA) Cultural Affairs Division, performances of Canadian contemporary music were organized during the 1970s as part of a broader strategical foreign policy framework to help legitimize Canada as a centre of cultural—and musical—innovation in the eyes of those European countries it sought to strengthen diplomatic relationships with.

Through an archival analysis of primary source documentation pertaining to the planning activities of the Cultural Affairs Division, my paper focuses on two performances of all-Canadian contemporary music funded by the division: the 1972 first ever performance of Canadian music in Rome, Italy, and the 1977 two-week long festival of Canadian contemporary music, Musicanada, hosted in London, England, and Paris, France. I argue that these two events act as meaningful case studies demonstrating how the works of Canada’s contemporary composers were used for strategic soft-power purposes by the DEA’s Cultural Affairs Division. By funding and planning these events in European cultural centres, the DEA fulfilled its transatlantic diplomatic aims of projecting an image of Canada which was both distinct from its continental neighbour and culturally aligned with its European diplomatic allies at the height of the Cold War.

George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898) was a pillar of the New York musical community for much of the nineteenth century. He excelled at many aspects of musicking, as a performer (violin, organ, and piano), a church musician, choral and orchestral conductor, and educator, and as such was like many workaday nineteenth-century European musicians. But he was also a prolific and accomplished composer—of an opera, several oratorios, a Mass, numerous secular choral works, chamber music, piano compositions, songs, six orchestral overtures, and five symphonies. For over three decades, in fact, he was considered by contemporaries to be one of the most important living American composers.

As a life-long orchestral performer and conductor of both church choirs and large choral ensembles, Bristow was immersed in the European classical repertory. When he turned to composition, he adopted that musical language as his own—even though he never studied in Europe (unlike the next generation of American composers). But although he clearly considered himself a contributing member of the western European musical sphere, he also endeavored to create a musical voice that reflected his nation, not unlike many non-Germanic European contemporaries (Mussorgsky, Liszt, Chopin, Smetana, Grieg, Dvořák). Bristow was outspoken in his support for this idea, and most Americanist scholars today know him only as a vocal supporter of “Americanism,” primarily because his excellent compositions—many of which are nationalistic in orientation—are undeservedly unknown.

In this paper I will attempt to correct that misconception. I will examine events in the late 1840s and early 1850s that involved composer William Henry Fry, French conductor Louis Jullien, and music critic Richard Storrs Willis, all of whom contributed to Bristow’s emerging Americanist identity. This identity crystalized in 1854 and led inexorably to his overt embrace of a nationalistic musical approach for the rest of his career. I will survey some his most important compositions and mention examples of his lifelong support for other American composers and performers. In general, however, my goal—in this, his bicentennial year—is to show why George Bristow was described in the 1880s as “the most distinguished of American composers.”