American Identities in an Atlantic Musical World

This dissertation analyzes the impact of musical transatlanticism on the identities of American communities. I do so through case studies in three time periods: seventeenth–century colonial Massachusetts, the post–Revolutionary Early American Republic, and early twentieth–century Progressive–era Chicago. I develop an Atlantic musicology approach that which moves beyond national and nationalist frameworks and traces the strong and lasting musical connections between America and Europe. I explore three kinds of musical transatlanticism: the migration of musicians, the transmission of musical works, and the circulation of ideas about music. Music that crossed the Atlantic Ocean underwent changes wrought by transcription, translation, and contrafacting, and I argue that these changes were instrumental to the self–fashioning of American identity. Intercultural encounter and ideas of difference also drove communities to delineate their conceptual boundaries, although not without ambivalence. Ever in a state of flux, music reflected groups’ self–conceptions both locally and for transatlantic audiences in an ongoing process of conscious and unconscious musical adaptation.