WWI MusicJoanne Huang

To Serve or Not to Serve

• Eager male musicians to fight:Maurice Ravel, Anton Webern, Bela Bartok, George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst-what does this say about musicians?!- trained soldiers in music skills

• Eager female musicians: women instrumentalists filled gaps in hotel orchestras and other ensembles “You’d Better Be Nice to Them Now”Lili Boulanger founded the Franco-American Committee of the National Conservatory to offer $$$ and morale to musicians fighting in the war

Longing to Stay• Reluctant musicians:

Alban Berg (2nd __ __) was asthmatic and basic training was too much for him inspired his Expressionist opera, Wozzek (a soldier who was driven to murder and suicide by an inhumane army captain and a sadistic army dr)Arnold Schoenberg discharged for poor health Irving Berlin (Tin Pan Alley Composer) was drafted and wrote, “Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning”

To Play or Not to Play• Berlin Philharmonic decided that works by composers

from enemy nations could be performed, as long as the composer had died before 1914

• Pittsburg Symphony banned all German music while Chicago Symphony continued to showcase German repertory until 1917, Arnold Schoenberg could not go to NY to perform

• Artistic loss resulting from bans and restrictions• Debussy refused to sign a proclamation banning

performances of German music in France (1916)• Many musicians changed their names ex: Basil

Hindenburg became Basil Cameron in England

Hyphen-Americans• United States exhibited hostility to foreign-born

performers• Wilson had a speech addressing hyphen-Americans:

people who had become naturalized US citizens but who still acknowledged their ancestry with terms such as “German-American”. “Italian American”, etcex: German-born Karl Muck had been conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1960Star Spangled Banner AffairMust prove he never served for Germany + Swiss citizenarrested w/o specified charges & accused of being alien so had to be imprisoned for the “duration of the war”

The “Christmas Truce” of 1914

• December 24th, 1914 (Xmas Eve): A spontaneous, unsanctioned cease-fire across the trenches

• Enemies all sang carols together known to both sides—”Silent Night”, “O Christmas Tree”, “O Come All Ye Faithful”

• Listened to both sides perform music like German and British anthems

• Was not repeated in 1915, no more holiday spirit

To Create or Not to Create

• Debussy (France) and Schoenberg (Germany) suffered creative blocks during wartime

• In other cases, it prompted creativity:-support charity: Belgium’s King Arthur refused to let Germany invade Belgium yet they did so Hall Caine and London’s Daily Telegraph gathered essays + other contributions for a charity book called King Albert’s Book proceeds donated to Belgium fundEngland’s Edward Elgar wrote a choral piece for this book called Carillon, Debussy overcame writer’s block and composed Berceuse heroique

Edith Wharton: The Book of the Homeless

• Support American hostels for refugees and also helping a group that assists Belgian war orphans

• Igor Stravinsky contributed a piece called Souvenir d’une marche boche (Recollection of a Kraut March) recollection is a phrase from a Beethoven symphony = irony?

Commemorating the Fallen

• Memorial pieces that usually contained a short poetic quotation, or an epigraph (I feel like epitaph would also work)

• Elgar used dedicatory titles “To the Fallen”, “To Women”, and “The Fourth of August”

• Ravel wrote Le Tombeau de Couperin • Tombeau: a “tombstone” or “grave” in

French, but is used in music to describe a lament

Why is the Packet so Depressing?

• The finale of Le Tombeau de Couperin is “Toccata” and dedicated to Captain Joseph de Marliave, who died during the war

• Who would perform it for the first time? The pianist, Marguerite Long

• ….His now widow.• The finale sounds like loops and spirals of a plane as it

is in a dogfight and a sudden silence before end of piece = stall in the engine

• Toccata: Baroque era characteristic that describes virtuosic, animated pieces that often sound improvised

Works About and For Soldiers

• Some responded to the war in general, not specific towards any group of people or individuals

• Sometimes subtle references• Pianist Paul Wittgenatein wrote music for

disabled veterans, his right arm was amputated from a war injury commissioned pieces for the left hand only (composers who wrote these pieces for him used to be his enemies)

Popular Music—From Tin Pan Alley to the

Trenches• NY Evening Post asked “New Songs of

War, Vulgar and Cheap?” They said the songs were vulgar and cheap but produced morale and other sentiments that gave it quality. It is better for people to sing “shabby, faulty” songs than no songs at all.

• Much of music was sentimental—war time experiences, tributes, distance between battlefield and home

It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary—Jack

Judge• Became famous when Irish regiment sang it while

marching through France• George Curnock (reporter for London’s Daily Mail)

witnessed this and reported about it• Became a favorite song of British forces

even played @ Buckingham Palace after armistice was signed

• Ironically, Judge never ever even went to Ireland but his grandparents had lived there so he heard stories about it

• Air of longing despite peppy rhythm, verse-chorus form, duple meter suited for marching, our recording has fermatas but soldiers singing would have omitted them

Worship and Lamentation

• Wartime music conveyed religious faith or deep feelings of grief

• France’s Rheims Cathedral was destroyed by the Germans, which was an observation post but also where French kings have been declared king by the Church Cathedrale de Reims showed French heartbreak

• John Jacob Niles discovered African American troops and was inspired by their singing “Grave-Diggers”

• Songs addressed losses to come and aftermath

Laughing it Off? • Comic songs produced laughter for the soldiers• Famous ex: Quand Madelon (When Madelon)

-a duple meter song that became popular-Madelon was a flirtatious waitress in a bar who cheers up her soldiers. When a corporal asks for her hand in marriage, she says, “why settle for one man when I can love the whole Regiment? I need my hand to pour everyone a drink!”

• Existing songs were rewritten with new lyrics, the grimmer = the betterex: “The Hearse Song” do you remember?

Music to Persuade• Constant repetition and simplicity =

good propaganda • Songs have these elements so they

can be used as propaganda• Some families were pacifists, varying

reasons, don’t want children being sent to fight and die

I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier—

Alfred Bryan• Dedicated to every mother, everywhere (subtitle)• Tempo is marziale = march-like = recruiting tune

for parents??• Probably most influential pacifist song but also

called “anti-military propaganda”• Song withdrew when Lusitania sunk, and USA

entered war• Verse-chorus form, chromaticism during verses is a

emphasis on mother’s pleas, barbershop harmony

Recruitment Songs• Encouragement, recruit and sustain

soldiers’ morale• Promoted patriotism and support for

the war• Ex: America’s “What Kind of American

Are You?” sheet music was “in your face” pg. 126

Anthems and Patriotic Songs

• Sung for morale, especially when soldiers are leaving the front (CELEBRATING THAT THEY SURVIVED)

• England’s “God Save the King” and USA “Star Spangled Banner” are in triple meter so not really fun for marching but still played with increasing regularity

• Theatrical entertainments also organized near encampments—singing, dancing, and skitsEX: Germans tried to justify Belgium invasion with plays that showed Flemish lasses and German soldiers together (Flemish are Germanic race that deserved independence from Belgium)

Music for Marketing or the Corniest

Songs Ever• Shortages of consumer goods and

restrictions on materials • Rationing schemes were limited, but

encouraged citizens with songs• “Keep Cool! The Country’s Saving Fuel! (And I

Had to Come Home in the Dark)” Save fuel by walking, not driving

• “I’ll Do Without Meat and I’ll Do Without Wheat But I Can’t Do Without Love”

Over There—George M. Cohan

• Cohan describes this piece as “all he’d done was to dramatize a bugle call” bugle associated with military call

• Donated the royalties from the song to war charities• Patriotic references: “Son of Liberty, Yankee Doodle,

red-white-and blue” • Internal rhymes, verse-chorus form, duple meter for

marching• FUN FACT: Nora Bayes, the singer of a popular

version of “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier” also sang “Over There”

• British adjusted last two lines

Groundbreaking Music

• Americans had mixed feelings about non-white combatants in USA armed forces, even though soldiers of colored served in Revolutionary War

• WWI Colonel Linard of American Expeditionary Force sent “Secret Information Concerning Black American Troops” to the French military leadership to tell them not to treat black as equals or else they will expect that treatment when they come back to the USA

• French didn’t listen to him

Groundbreaking Music

• “The Ragtime Volunteers Are Off to War”• “They’ll Be Mighty Proud in Dixie of Their Old Black

Joe”• “When the Lord Makes a Record of a Hero’s Deeds,

He Draws No Color Line”• “You’ll Find Old Dixieland in France”• Native Americans received less attention from

songwriters:“Indianola” condescending, patronizing, stereotype-filled?

On Patrol in No Man’s Land

• Written by James Reese Europe with the helf of Noble Sissle and Eubie Black

• Europe had been born in Alabama (the person, not the continent) and moved to DC, where he was living a few doors from John Philip Sousa

• Europe studied piano and violin b/c members of Sousa’s Marine Band gave music lessons to African American children w/ musical promise

On Patrol in No Man’s Land

• He led a NY professional orchestra and helped found the Clef Club, a union for black musicians, which appeared at Carnegie Hall (1912—first time a black orchestra appeared there)First black orchestra to have a contract w/ major label

• Enlisted as a private for the NY National Guard and was called upon to develop the finest band in the US Army

• Encountered racism and segregation in USA so were transferred to French Army as US reinforcements “HELLFIGHTERS”

On Patrol in No Man’s Land

• Europe was first African American to lead his troops into combat in WWI, No Man’s Land, suffered gas attack, wrote a song the next day

• Looks like Tin Pan Alley song:-intro-vamp-verse -repeated refrain: synonym for a repetitive chorus in verse-chorus form

• We do not have the nuances Hellfighters added

On Patrol in No Man’s Land

• Voice and instruments simulate mortar attack• Drums mimic explosions• Bright tempo goes on = life goes on?• Lyrics have contemporary sayings to ease the

soldiers• Genuine military terms• During repetition of refrain, instruments stop and

listeners hear sounds & shouts and also German pleas of “Comrade”

Happy Ending• Tin Pan Alley never heard a piece like

this• It resembles the Expressionism

settings in classical music• One of the band’s most popular pieces

Never Mind• Europe’s name is not really known to

us because he died at a young age• His mentally unstable drummer,

Herbert Wright, felt unappreciated so while Europe reasoned with him, Wright stabbed Europe

• NYC officials made his funeral public– the first one granted to a black American in the city’s history