Making Music American: 1917 and the Transformation of Culture

  1917 is remembered by many as the year jazz exploded on the scene and changed American music forever. In his new book about that year, E. Douglas Bomberger has found a novel way of framing this familiar story. He puts events taking place on stage and in the studio to individual musicians in their historical context. 1917 was the year that America entered the Great War and the war shaped everything. His unique approach to portraying shifts in American musical culture is to follow the lives of eight musicians, some involved with classical music, some with jazz, as they traverse the events of the year and changing public expectations. In classical music, he follows orchestral conductors Karl Muck and Walter Damrosch, violinist Fritz Kreisler, pianist Olga Samaroff,  and contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink, as they each navigate a radical public shift from the idolization of German art music, which had aided their careers, to a suspicion of all things German. Ernestine Schumann-Heink largely maintained an adoring public by holding concerts for the troops. But with sons fighting on both sides she was never beyond suspicion. Walter Damrosch put his patriotism on full display, he was even put in charge of standardizing the arrangement of the "Star Spangled Banner" and premiering it at a concert that December. Others, like violinist Fritz Kreisler had their careers roughly interrupted. Ka