Similarly, Cowell started New Music Quarterly Recordings with the intention of documenting new American music for which big labels saw no commercial potential. In 1927 he founded the New Music Quarterly subscription publication to make available otherwise unobtainable scores by emerging young composers such as Henry Brant, Carlos Chávez, Ruth Crawford, Lou Harrison, Wallingford Riegger, Dane Rudhyar, and Stefan Wolpe, as well as elder statesmen like Ruggles and Ives. George Gershwin, of course, was an early example of what we label “crossover” product today and a best seller.Įrican concert music came into its own, major labels clearly weren’t ready to embrace that faction of composers representing modernists, futurists, experimenters, and the avant-garde. Both Olga Samaroff and Myra Hess recorded Griffes’ “The White Peacock.” On the orchestral front, Willem Mengelberg led the New York Philharmonic in Ernest Schelling‘s A Victory Ball for the Victor label.

Piano fans could find encore-type fare by Horatio Parker and Fannie Dillon played by Josef Hofmann, and Leopold Godowsky in Macdowell. The catalogs, to be sure, listed light vocal chestnuts by salon moderns like Chadwick, Nevin, and Parker. That wasn’t quite the case in the 1920s and early 1930s. It’s all too easy to take for granted the overwhelming abundance of American concert music available on records today. Aha! I know! You work in the record business!”īe careful who you tell that joke to, for more composers than you’d imagine have helped shape the industry from the days of 78s through the latest downloading software. You’re bald, you’re slimy, and you have no ears. “Hmm,” says the rabbit, “this is difficult. I’ll bet you’re a rabbit!” Elated to learn his identity at last, the rabbit gropes the serpent. “Hmm, you’re all furry, you’ve got bushy tail and long ears. The serpent wraps himself around the rabbit, and makes a guess.

Neither knows what kind of animal they are. One of my favorite musician jokes involves the blind rabbit and the blind serpent that collide on the jungle floor.

Masterworks software guerillas