Tuesday Tones

Continuing with our exploration of music with a water theme or inspired by water, we look at the early days of American classical music.

America didn’t really “come of age” musically until the 20th century, with the arrival of jazz and the passing of Romanticism; those two events allowed America’s voice to finally develop into something that went beyond the standard Germanic style of music that most American composers of the 19th century produced. But to note the limited nature of that whole century of American music isn’t to downplay it or suggest it’s not worth hearing, because a lot of it is. Such is the case with this work (which I happened to catch on the radio when I left for work one morning).

John Knowles Paine was the first American composer chiefly noted for his large-scale orchestral music. His sound is typically dark and European, and so are his forms and his inspirations. Poseidon and Amphitrite: An Ocean Fantasy is a typical tone poem in the European style, with dense scoring that recalls Liszt. The inspiration is, of course, the Greek God of the Sea and his wife, who spurned his advances at first and fled before being convinced by a dolphin to return. Paine’s work is moody and evocative and at times thrilling; as with many such works, it doesn’t merit a spot in the standard repertoire…but neither does it merit its obscurity, either.