Euro American Musics
European and American musics coexist within an interdependent environment. A typical music store might house an assortment of regional folk and popular tunes, European classical repertories, as well as music that evolved during the 20th century such as jazz or rock.
Light music from Europe is also abundantly represented here, from medley overtures and potpourris to dances, quadrilles, and easy piano versions.
Origins
Euro American music refers to musical styles influenced by European culture that are popular in America, such as classical, folk and pop music. Europop bands such as Roxette, Eiffel 65 and Spice Girls were extremely popular during the 80s and 90s in America; their style featured loud lyrics with dark themes that danceable melodies made popular during this era.
At the dawn of the 19th century, light music from Europe was an indispensable staple in American publishing. When new operas by composers such as Johann Strauss, Jacques Offenbach and Felix Mendelssohn opened in the United States they would be published with overtures, potpourris, polkas, quadrilles, easy piano versions of major arias/ensembles from them as well as full-length ballet scores published as accompaniments.
As America became a more populous place, immigrants brought with them instruments and styles from their respective homelands. Eastern European Jews in particular contributed to creating Klezmer music; ethnic Mexicans of Texas developed conjunto music which combined elements from Spanish and American musical genres.
Forms
At their root, Euro American musics emerged out of European traditions. Classical composers like Vivaldi had an enormous effect on European traditions as well as other regions’ and their own countries’ musical composition. Johann Strauss and Jacques Offenbach’s light music became immensely popular across America too; for instance in medley overtures, potpourris pieces, “easy piano” versions of operetta, dances and quadrilles.
Today’s musical landscape is significantly different. There is still much local folk music being produced locally; however, more recently pop artists from non-English speaking countries (like Sweden and Italy ) are enjoying chart success in England and Canada.
Influences
As Europeans immigrated to America, they brought with them their music: drinking songs, theater songs and religious hymns that have since influenced American music through call-and-response patterns and cantillation techniques.
Church music had the strongest impact, especially the works of William Billings and Lowell Mason which featured European influences in their church music. Other forms of influence included American composers experimenting with Romantic European conventions as well as classical composers like Stravinsky and Schoenberg before Minimalism was brought about with Philip Glass and John Cage as pioneers.
Light music was another staple in American publishing, featuring medleys and potpourris that students found easy to learn and interpret.
Conclusions
People identify strongly with music. From childhood songs to recordings and beyond, people use their musical tastes as an identity marker – connecting homeland and here-land through an intricate web of sound.
Focusing on the European corpus, it should be noted that second-position syncopations rates among English and Scottish books, when measured solely according to onset pattern (i.e. a note on a half-note beat or dotted half-note unit in 3/4) and notational conventions, is comparable with French, German, and Italian corpora – suggesting national differences are not solely determined by rhythmic characteristics. Unfortunately this holds true only for second-position syncopations whereas 16th level syncopations appear very rarely among continental corpora; thus to adequately characterize these patterns other musical features must be taken into consideration in order to characterize properly their nature.
