American Indian Music
Piano Works
PREMIERE
Native American Piano Solos, Songs, and Chants
by John Funk
Native American music, with its centuries-old heritage, has served as a fascinating source of inspiration for several composers of solo piano and vocal works, (not to mention its outstanding contribution toward orchestral thematic material). Many haunting and timeless themes deeply rooted in American culture have been based on authentic American Indian melodies. We have devoted this issue to the Native American Indian in the hope of encouraging our readers to discover the deeply spiritual music, its historical, as well as musical significance, and how it applies to the world of piano music.
During one of his American tours, on March 25th 1910 from Columbus, Ohio, Ferruccio Busoni, (the great piano virtuoso and composer), wrote to his wife, Gerda:
"I spoke to a Red Indian women. She told me how her brother (a talented violinist) came to New York to try to make his way. But he could not associate his ideas with the question of daily bread. How much good it does one to hear of such sentiment in the United States! Then she said that her tribe ought to have an instrument something like this: A hole should be dug in the earth and strings stretched all round the edges of it. I said (in the spirit of the Red Indians): An instrument like that ought to be called ‘the voice of the Earth.’ She was quite enthusiastic about this. Miss Curtis was formerly my pupil in harmony. Do you remember her in New York? She has devoted the whole of this year to the study of Red Indian songs and has brought a beautiful book out."
The Miss Curtis whom Busoni Mentioned is Natalie Curtis (1875-1921), a passionate ethnomusicologist and author of "The Indians Book", a pioneering documentary about the songs of North America’s indigenous population. Curtis interested Busoni with listenings and detailed accounts of the American Indians. For the maestro, this completed an artistic description of a fascinating culture that had long been nurtured. In 1913, Busoni began composing his Indianische Fantasie Op. 44 for piano and orchestra. It was completed in 1915 and included five authentic Indian themes borrowed from Curtis’s book including: "He-Hea Katzina Song" (Hopi tribe), "Song of Victory" (Cheyenne), "Blue Bird Song" (Pima), "Corn-Grinding Song" (Lagunas), and "Passamquoddy Dance Song" (Wabanakis). That same year, Busoni composed the Indianische Tagebuch (Book I) for solo piano and Indianische Tagebuch (Book II) for small orchestra, subtitled "Song of the Spirit’s Dance". Book I bears the subtitle of "Vier Klavierstudien". Of these four Studies, three derive their theme directly from the Fantasie.
The Etude Music Magazine, in starting a series of articles surrounding Famous Concert Songs, selected "By the Waters of Minnetonka" by Thurlow Lieurance as one of the featured songs for the June 1932 issue. This is an example of a beautiful Indian theme that Mr. Lieurance adapted for piano and voice. Thurlow Lieurance was born at Oskaloosa, Iowa, March 21st, 1878. Although Mr. Lieurance did obtain a meager musical education from the College of Music in Cincinnati, Ohio, he spent most of his life in Kansas serving as the Chief Musician of the 22nd Kansas Infantry during the Spanish-American War, and later gave piano and voice lessons in a small town. It was at his home at Neosha Falls, Kansas where an accident rendered him a cripple for life. Mr. Lieurance had a tremendous love for Native American music and suffered many physical sacrifices in order to record songs of the American Indians. One of these injuries occurred in 1912 as he was traveling between the Crow and Cheyenne Indian Reservations in Montana.
During his convalescence, he wrote many compositions; the first of which, entitled "A Prayer", was published by the Theodore Presser Company. While visiting his brother, a physician among the Indians on the Crow Reservation in Montana, Lieurance became interested in the ceremonies and songs of the Indians. He began to capture the splendid thematic material of the Red Man by noting themes in score then making records. Thurlow Lieurance recorded hundreds of Indian songs, and his records demonstrate that he recorded themes from approximately thirty different tribes in North America. He gave several hundred of these records to the Smithsonian Institute, as well as sending many to museums abroad and several to the New Mexico Museum. In 1932, the Theodore Presser Catalogue contained nearly one hundred of his harmonized compositions, the themes of which were all recorded from American Indians. Mr. Lieurance went on many tours with his wife, Edna Woolley, whose beautiful soprano voice delighted thousands. The story of his most famous song setting, "By the Waters of Minnetonka", (undoubtedly performed by he and his wife), goes as follows:
"Seated around a campfire one October evening of 1911, across the Little Big Horn from the Custer Battlefield in Montana, were a number of Crow, Cheyenne, and Sioux Indians, and with the aid of the Edison phonograph we recorded their songs and flute melodies. Sitting Eagle, a young Sioux, sang a love song and also played its melody on his cedar flute. (This melody became the basis of the song setting.) He explained that this was a song ‘many moons’ old, and he translated the story, which furnished the material for the poem. The story ran thus: Moon Deer loved Sun Deer. They loved through tears, because daughters of the Moon Clan according to tribal law married into the Eagle Clan and not the Sun Clan. Sun Deer and Moon Deer ran away, far to the East and North. They came to a beautiful lake, Minnetonka (‘Minne’ in Sioux, means ‘water,’ and ‘Tonka’ means ‘large and round’). They were unhappy there, because their traditional enemies, the Chippewas, lived across the lake. Tragedy ahead—the lovers vowed to die together. They were lost forever, as the waves engulfed them. And the legend concludes with The waters of Minnetonka will forever sing their love song."
(A Compact Disc recording of "By the Waters of Minnetonka" by Thurlow Lieurance is available on the Nimbus Label with Ernestine Schumann-Heink and Herbert Witherspoon, performers.)
Early American music included contributions from the American Shakers when they established their colonies here during the 18th and 19th centuries. The Shakers were a religious sect that came from England and were known for practicing celibacy, singing in unknown tongues, wild shaking and chanting, as well as producing some of the most elegantly simple furniture and crafts. When looking through their collections of tunes, one finds, in addition to a most fascinating and unique harmonic system, many examples of authentic and inspired Indian melodies. Some of these include the Ritual Song-Chants, "Squaw Song", "A Little Pappoose Song", "An Indian Tune", and "Indian March." During periods of so-called "manifestations" many "native" songs were received from Indian spirits. When Indian spirits came into the Shaker Church, the Brothers and the Sisters (referred to as instruments), would become so "possessed" that they sang Indian songs, whooped, danced and behaved generally in the manner of savages. An eye-witness account describes a meeting which took place at the Watervliet colony in New York, 1843:
"Mother Ann (the spiritual leader of the sect) has sent two angels to inform us that a tribe of Indians had been around there two days, and wanted the Brothers, and Sisters to take them in...the Indians were a savage tribe who had all died before Columbus discovered America; but had been wandering about ever since...The next dancing night...the Elder invited the Indians to come in...The Elders then urged upon the members the duty of ‘taking them in’ whereupon eight or nine of the Sisters became possessed of the Spirits of Indian Squaws and about six of the Brothers became Indians: then ensued a regular ‘Pow-Wow,’ with whooping, yelling, and strange antics, such as would require a Dickens to describe. The Sisters and Brothers squatted down on the floor together, Indian fashion, and the Elders, and Eldresses, endeavored to keep them asunder. At the same time, telling the Indians that they must be separated from the Squaws, and otherwise instructing them in the rules of Shakerism. Some of the Indians then wanted some ‘Suckatash’ which was soon brought them from the kitchen in two wooden dishes, and placed on the floor, then they commenced eating it with their fingers, and thus continued the performance till about ten o’clock when the Chief Elder desired the Indians to go away, and they would find some one waiting, to conduct them to the Shakers in the Heavenly world. At this announcement every man and woman became themselves again…"
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