Commemoration, Creation, and Sounding the Nation’s Future at St. Louis’s Bicentennial Horizons of American Music

Abstract The 1976 Bicentennial of American Independence was a watershed moment in the history of American memorialization and commemoration. Taking place against a backdrop of national decline and cultural fragmentation, the bicentennial produced several efforts to unite the nation’s hopes for the future in a celebration of its past. By centering the commemorative vision of Elizabeth Gentry Sayad, the indefatigable organizer of St. Louis’s Bicentennial Horizons of American Music (BHAM), this article examines an approach to the bicentennial that feted 1776, not in the hope of returning to a golden age in American history, but with the intention of synthesizing the sounds of the nation into a united forward-looking future. Dynamic and internationally oriented, Sayad’s leadership of BHAM adds regional texture to the national bicentennial story from an on-the-ground perspective. And it showcases an alternative, conservative multicultural path for engagement in historical commemoration in the late-twentieth-century United States.