Early American Music

From a recording first broadcast on November 30, 1972, Charles Amirkhanian presents a program of early American music, much of which was taken from old, rare 78 rpm recordings. The program begins with Henry Hadley’s “Piano Quintet, Op. 50” followed by six versions of Thurlow Lieurance’s “By the Waters of Minnetonka: An Indian Love Song,” followed by several selections of music by John Knowles Paine. While there is a distinctive Native American melody at the heart of Lieurance’s song, most of the music heard here is by American composers still steeped in the music of Western Europe and lacking that uniquely American flair that would later be apparent in the music of Charles Ives, and other later American composers.