During its twenty-year lifespan, the Ballets Russes (1909 to 1929) was celebrated for bringing together illustrious artistic and cultural figures to collaborate on exotic productions based on Russian, Spanish, English and French themes. Notable by its absence from the Ballets Russes’ exotic interests is the culture and music of America, and this despite that during the 1920s Americans culture was a source of fascination and unease in the European cultural imagination. The Ballets Russes’ impresario, Serge Diaghilev, is recognized as holding the culture of the New World in disdain, yet nonetheless commissioned a “typically American” ballet score from Chicago composer John Alden Carpenter in 1923, which resulted in a score featuring a skyscraper-inspired machine aesthetic, and the inclusion of jazz and spirituals. Carpenter’s ballet was dropped by the Ballets Russes before production and was ultimately premiered as Skyscrapers: A Ballet of Modern American Life by the Metropolitan Opera Company on 19 February 1926. This thesis seeks to better understand Diaghilev’s perceived disdain for American culture, the reasons that caused him to avoid the inclusion of an American ballet in the Ballets Russes’ repertory, and his motives for commissioning a score from Carpenter. Drawing on archival documents from the Library of Congress, I construct a historical narrative of the commission and offer insight into the complex politics of patronage in the Ballets Russes. Furthermore, I position Skyscrapers as a product of cultural transfer, thus illustrating the manner in which Carpenter conceived of his ballet as an American work for an international audience. Finally, I examine the Metropolitan production of Skyscrapers and how it perpetuated racial stereotypes and participated in the debates about the mechanization of American life during the 1920s.

The purpose of this study is to give some insight into the solo songs of John Alden Carpenter and show their position in the history of song composition in general.

The Birthday of the Infanta, a ballet that was created by John Alden Carpenter, Adolph Bolm, and Robert Edmond Jones, was performed at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago on December 23, 1919 and the Lexington Theatre in New York on February 23, 1920. Despite the positive reviews from daily papers and music journals alike the ballet was only revived once and is not a part of a known ballet repertoire. Although musicologist Howard Pollack discusses The Birthday of the Infanta briefly in his biography of John Alden Carpenter my analysis serves, through its exploration of both primary and secondary sources, to create a more complete and thorough dialogue through the examination of the social, economic, political and artistic factors surrounding the ballet. This analysis also helps to create a better understanding of ballet’s place in America in the early twentieth century.

The lecture recital was given on August 5, 1976. Subsequent to a presentation of some pertinent background material, diverse influences on the compositional styles of five representative composers of the period were discussed. Nine songs by Edward MacDowell, Charles Loeffler, Sidney Homer, John Alden Carpenter, and Charles Griffes were interspersed as musical illustrations. In addition to the lecture recital, three other public recitals were performed. The first solo recital was presented on July 26, 1973, and included works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Richard Strauss, and Wolfgang Fortner. The second solo recital, given on December 3, 1973, was comprised of works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jacques Ibert, Arrigo Boito, and Modeste Moussorgsky. The third solo recital (with Miss Jo Ann Pickens assisting), was presented on June 26, 1974, and included works by Thomas Arne, Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms, Benjamin Godard, Giuseppe Verdi, and Carlisle Floyd.

The main purpose of this study will be to analyze the impressionistic style and techniques of Debussy, how the idiom came to be, and the influence of this particular idiom on two American composers. For thorough understanding, the poetic and artistic backgrounds of impressionism must be brought out; the biography of the man who originated the idiom, as well as his aesthetic theories, must be briefly covered. More objectively, from biographies and various other studies the techniques peculiarly impressionistic will be listed, and analysis will be made of several of the Debussy songs from various periods of his composition.