Those of us who work in American music history before the twentieth century are constantly reminded that the question of what ‘American’ music should sound like was of continued interest to composers, audiences, performers, and critics from the years of American Revolution to well past the turn of the nineteenth century. A survey of the anthology of writings on the subject, Music in the U.S.A.,Footnote ¹ yields the impression that the issue evolved throughout this period, but that those involved never reached a consensus as to what elements would ultimately define ‘American’ musical style. The target persistently moved, too, so that what one group might settle on in 1800 differed noticeably from what later advocates argued ‘is American music’. A major contributor to the problem of musical identity was that ideas of nationhood remained in flux. The relationship between the USA and Britain particularly complicated Americans’ self-perceptions early on, existing in a sort of love/hate relationship that resulted from English-speaking Americans’ inability to cut ties with the culture with which it fought two wars in just a few decades. As the country and its population grew throughout the nineteenth century, sizeable numbers of immigrants further clouded the notion of what it meant to be culturally American – did one have to be born in the United States to be ‘American’, or trained there, or was it possible to take up residence in the country in adulthood and somehow absorb what it meant to be American?

Music in the United States naturally drew from the varied backgrounds of those who taught, published and performed it. The implications of this variety could be felt not only in large cities, such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia, but in small towns throughout the country. For example, Charleston, South Carolina, experienced a flood of French musicians around 1804 with the fall of Saint-Domingue, and slightly later several families from what is now Germany moved into small towns such as Columbus, Georgia – somewhat of a frontier area at this point. Italian opera troupes toured the country during the antebellum period, introducing audiences to a new repertory that could be heard in concerts alongside the more traditional songs in English by composers such as Henry Bishop. Patriotic fervour rose in times of war, and artistic acknowledgment of the expansion westward, made famous by painters of the Hudson River School, inspired composers to consider geographic features of the United States as themes for their works. All of these influences impacted ideas of national musical identity.

Into this fray steps Douglas Shadle, with Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise. The title describes the essence of the book perfectly. First is the choice of genre, the symphony, which he describes as ‘a central component of nineteenth-century Western musical culture’ (p. 11). Music history texts of this period prize symphonic music, and the lack of literature about American orchestral music in the post-Beethoven age is an oversight that Shadle wishes to rectify. He examines both how and why most symphonic works by American composers of the nineteenth century – about one hundred of them – have not been heard since that time, and many not since their premieres. Shadle situates this phenomenon in notions of American national identity, placing it within or without the Germanic tradition, depending on the example. He addresses the historiography of canon formation and its subsequent influence on American composers, critics, performers and listeners in this context. The entanglement between the domination of the genre by German composers such as Schumann, Mendelssohn and Brahms, and the continued definition of the genre through the symphonies of Beethoven meant that prominent critics such as John Sullivan Dwight and well-placed conductors such as Theodore Thomas refused to acknowledge any composer whose origins were elsewhere.

As the subtitle suggests, Shadle scrutinizes American composers who nonetheless persisted in composing symphonies. He correctly describes it as an ‘enterprise’, because of the significant resources needed to sustain performances with such large forces. He accomplishes this through a series of case studies that focus on the more famous men who wrote symphonies. The ‘Interlude’ that stands for the Civil War roughly divides the book in half. The chronological approach supports Shadle’s methodology, and his emphasis on specific composers is necessary, even if it seems to be replacing one group of white men with another. He forcefully argues that the composers he investigates deserve recognition and performances, despite the unremitting criticism that many of their works have received in the intervening years. As reception history, Orchestrating the Nation interrogates why critics and composers of the nineteenth century disavowed American symphonists, in spite of warm receptions from audiences. Furthermore, the growth of periodical literature allowed critics to exert a more powerful influence on public opinion than had previously been possible. The continued dichotomy between critics and conductors on the one hand and audiences on the other causes Shadle to seek new evaluations of the influences of men whose biased opinions effectively silenced new works throughout the century.

The scope of Shadle’s work helps him make a sound case for re-evaluating these works. Looking at performances of American music not only in the United States but also abroad allows him to gauge reception of these works across national styles. He carefully distinguishes each of the composers, so that the reader does not perceive that there is one solution to defining ‘American’ in music – one of the points the author carefully makes. This approach reflects the country in general but is common in oversimplifications about American music. The attention to separate cases provides him with personal motivations for each composer, rather than a simple generalization of the American symphony in the nineteenth century. George Frederick Bristow’s tenacious pursuit of American compositions being placed on the New York Philharmonic’s programmes differed considerably from Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s ventures before Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking audiences south of the United States. Anthony Philip Heinrich’s self-identification as American, even though he was born in Bohemia and spent considerable time touring Europe, is another example of the individuality each chapter explores.

Shadle writes beautifully with a sophistication that is at once scholarly and easy to comprehend. His use of a wide-ranging bibliography signals a thorough understanding of the big questions that have plagued an analysis of this repertory, questions that could only be answered by strategic positioning of disparate elements into a single narrative. Seven composers receive their own chapter titles, with descriptors that signal Shadle’s reading of their contributions. These names will be familiar to scholars of American music history but perhaps not to musicologists in general: Heinrich, William Henry Fry, Bristow, Gottschalk, John Knowles Paine, Ellsworth Phelps and Antonín Dvořák. The last of these, of course, is the most familiar and certainly not American. But Dvořák inflamed the question of ‘American’ music when he arrived in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, as Shadle notes: ‘He ruffled feathers, particularly in Boston, after making public pronouncements about how to construct an American national style’ (p. 242). His inclusion in the book is necessary, and Amy Beach’s famous reaction to Dvořák can be better understood in the context of the preceding chapters.

The website accompanying Orchestrating the Nation makes available recordings of pertinent excerpts that Shadle highlights in his text. Such audio examples have thankfully become more common in recent years, which contribute substantially to those of us who consider the performance and the listener as part of the study. The labels that Shadle gives many of his musical examples are a bit distracting, being subjective interpretations that do not necessarily link to those of the composer. For example, the first two of the three excerpts from Gottschalk’s symphony À Montevideo (p. 155) are given as ‘Languid Duet’ (Example 7.9) and ‘“Ennobled” Duet’ (Example 7.10), which seem to suggest that Gottschalk may have named them such in the score. These can be distracting and even misconstrued, as in the case of Example 7.10. While ‘horn fifths’ do traditionally signal something along the lines of heroism, they can also emblematize nature or other ideas, not necessarily ‘ennobled’.

This is a minor criticism, however. More problematic is the focus on New York and Boston within the concept of addressing the idea of nationhood. Scholars in different specialties label it ‘Massachusetts Myopia’ or the ‘New-Englandization’ of history. Here Shadle falls into the habit of describing ‘American’ culture, identity, and self-perception through a small slice of the population that cannot be said to represent the whole. Granted, orchestras in these two cities were considered to represent the ‘best of the best’ by most of the educated populace, and composers sought recognition by having their works performed by these institutions. On the other hand, the history of symphonic music and orchestras in the United States is richer than this. Symphonic works by Beethoven were performed in Charleston as early as 1805, and cities in the Midwest sought to establish their own orchestras throughout the nineteenth century. In the 1870s Maria Dillon Kowalewski, a woman of Irish descent who took over the Mobile Musical Association (from German immigrants Joseph Bloch and Sigmund Schlesinger), programmed more instrumental music on concert series than their audiences had ever heard. In the same period, Savannah had its own orchestra, run by a German violinist. The diversity of experiences available in New Orleans might provide a keen counterweight to the preference for German music in Boston and New York, in both the penchant for French music and the numerous musicians of colour active in the Negro Philharmonic Society (whose numbers ran as high as one hundred). How musicians from the Crescent City contributed to the idea of nation through orchestral music – or not – would enrich this study further. Indeed, instrumental music in New Orleans is often overlooked but seems to have been alive and well until the latter decades of the century. The French connections that musicians in the city had might prove an effective counterpoint to the German-dominated musical culture of the north.

These points only serve to demonstrate how vital Shadle’s book is to our understanding of American music history. When a book stimulates its readers to ask more questions and to consider more deeply the matters it addresses, it proves its success. Orchestrating the Nation redefines how musicologists tell the story of American music. Shadle’s unremitting exploration of major concepts through exhaustive research sets a new standard for cultural analysis, fusing elements that signal a new understanding of not only American music, but music history in general. That he manages to do so in such an engaging manner yields a remarkable example of scholarship that will be seen as exemplary for future work in the field.