Music lovers filled Crowell Concert Hall this past Friday, ready for the first concert of the weekend-long musical celebration, “Festival of the American Piano.”

The festival consisted of Friday and Saturday evening performances, an open piano master class, a Saturday afternoon concert, and a festival keynote, given by Joseph Horowitz, which briefly contextualized the piano in the history of American music.

The festival explored many questions: what is American music, what has defined it in the past, and what will continue to define and distinguish it in the future?

Horowitz, author of “Classical Music in America: A History of its Rise and Fall,” oversaw the whole weekend. In the “Festival Keynote,” he argued that the piano is a “protean medium for the American experience,” but it has been unfairly neglected. He believes that the study of classical music has unfairly focused on European works, even though America has a large native repertoire of piano music.

“The piano is a neutral and democratic instrument, as amenable to Joplin as to Beethoven, as comfortable in the nightclub as the concert hall,” Horowitz said.

To celebrate these American masterpieces, over seven hours of piano compositions were performed over the course of the weekend. The work ranged from the very classical Louis Gottschalk’s “The Banjo” to Frederic Rzewski’s “De Profundis,” which uses Oscar Wilde’s letter of the same name as text read, shouted, and sung over discordant piano sounds, wailing, chest thumping, and horn honking.

The first part of the concert was called “The Black Virtuoso Tradition,” and honored the great presence and influence of traditional black forms of music, such as jazz and blues. The second half of the concert, entitled “American Mavericks,” explored the experimental side of American music. Although Friday’s three-hour concert was split between these two defining factors of American piano, Horowitz tended to focus more on the “The Black Virtuoso Tradition” during his festival keynote.

The audience responded well to this more experimental second section of the concert. Anthony de Mare, one of the two guest piano virtuosos performing in Friday evening’s concert, explored the more rhythmic aspects of the piano. He reached inside the concert piano to pluck and sweep the strings when performing Lou Harrison’s “Cinna,” and knocked against the instrument’s wood with his chest, his cheeks, and his scalp during “De Profundis.”

“I was impressed with the creative elements of the show,” said Jennie Ehrenhalt ’09. “Creating music with the innards of the piano, knocking on the shelf. Those parts broadened my definition of music.”

“What fascinates me about the piece [”De Profundis“] is the way the piano and performer become extensions of one another,” de Mare wrote in the program. “They become one instrument. This led to an entire genre which I have pioneered—speaking and singing at the piano.”

The other guest performer, Steven Mayer, performed works by more jazzy American composers like James P. Johnson and Jelly Roll Morton. He approached these performances with utter reverence. After a recording of both pieces by Johnson and Morton played over Crowell’s speakers, Mayer then performed them on the piano exactly as the audience had just heard them, right down to the last pick-up note.

“It was a most informative and provocative program,” said Professor of African American Studies Gayle Pemberton. “I only wish more students had been there. The opportunity is rare to see and hear such virtuosity and to understand how scholars and artists make such fascinating connections between composers and pianists of different eras. I learned quite a lot in a very short time.”

One audience member asked Horowitz if he had any advice on how to appreciate the more experimental side of American music. Instead of sharing suggestions, Horowitz told of his own interactions with experimental musician John Cage.

“I enjoyed performing with Cage more than I enjoy listening to his music,” Horowitz replied. “It was fun to turn dials and things.”

The two concerts on Saturday also explored a wide variety of music ranging, from the Gamelan to Copland’s modernism during the cold war. “Harrison and Gamelan, Gershwin and Jazz,” the afternoon concert, included performances from Gendhing Alexander, Steven Mayer, Anthony de Mare, and the Wesleyan Orchestra.

Copland’s testimonies before Senator Joseph McCarthy, as well as his other works about the time period and workers’ struggle, inspired the Saturday evening concert, “Copland and the Cold War.” The Wesleyan Concert Choir lead a sing-along of the workers’ anthem “Into the Streets,” and Music Professor Mark Slobin and John Basinger appeared as Copland and McCarthy, respectively, to perform excerpts from Copland’s testimony.