Any large city in the United States can provide musical choices to satisfy every taste. Performances of jazz, pop and rock bands, symphony orchestras, opera, chamber music, blues, folk, country and blue grass music, and musical theater have become a part of the daily offering at concert halls across the country.
As was the case in American graphic art, this rich musical heritage is also the product of many influences. Strongest has been the interaction — and often conflict between Europe's classical traditions and the vitality of regional and ethnic idioms. In fact, many of America's most talented composers have worked in popular forms.
Edward MacDowell, the nation's finest serious composer at the turn of the 20th century, believed that America needed above all absolute freedom from the restraint.
America's earliest settlers brought their music — folk songs and dances, psalms, hymns and some formal music — with them to their new homeland. Among these, it was the religious music that dominated. The melodies for the hymns were handed down largely in an oral tradition, and served as the basis of much colonial music.