Vocal recitals in smaller cities: Changes in supply, demand and content since the 1920's
✍ Scribed by James F. Richardson
- Publisher
- Springer US
- Year
- 1981
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 991 KB
- Volume
- 5
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0885-2545
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
In the 1920s the musical life of small Citiessuch as Akron, Ohio*included appearances by many of the world's leading operatic and concert singers. During that decade assiduous concert goers in Akron had the opportunity to hear more than twenty major performers, some of them, such as soprano Rosa Ponselle, several times. Other no doubt worthy singers whose names have not gone down in the history books also performed there. The tenors included such legendary figures as Gigli, Martinelli, McCormack, Schipa, and Crooks, while many of the sopranos and mezzo-sopranos were of equal reputation.(1) By the 1960s and 1970s, the number of major vocal recitals in the city had diminished to at most one a season, although thanks to the local sponsoring group, the Tuesday Musical Club, the quality remained high. The latest singer to appear under the group's sponsorship was the lovely and accomplished American mezzo-soprano, Frederica von Stade. An equally striking change has occurred in the kind of programs that singers offer. The line between art and entertainment was by no means so firmly drawn in the 1920s and 1930s as it became after World War II, and it may be that the changes are not unrelated.
In any event, explaining the differences between Akron's experience in the 1920s and 1960s and 1970s (and I assume that other smaller cities would show a similar if not necessarily identical pattern) involves consideration of the profound transformation of American musical life wrought by changes in popular taste, the economics of the performing arts, the supply of major singers compared to demand, and the technology and cost of touring.
Before the widespread sale of phonograph records, music was marketed primarily in the form of sheet music for home performance. Every respectable household had a piano, and individual or group singing was standard evening entertainment:(2)The song literature of the nineteenth century for the most part fell within the stringent limits of the genteel tradition, that is it emphasized the sentimental and did not challenge