A Question of Taste.

The distinction between "popular" and "serious" music—a distinction that Americans take for granted today—originated in the late nineteenth century. While it is impossible to pinpoint an exact moment at which highbrow and lowbrow diverged, it is possible to examine the forces and personalities that drove the popular-music industry in its early years.

The Industry.

Lyricists, composers, and publishers flocked to Manhattan during the 1880s and 1890s, but not until the early twentieth century did music makers consolidate around Twenty-eighth Street—prompting one critic to dub the thoroughfare "Tin Pan Alley," after the tinny sound of music-room pianos. Decentralization characterized the music industry in the pre-Tin Pan Alley era. No self-respecting city of the 1880s lacked an "opera house" (or, by the 1890s, a "vaudeville theater") for the staging of light musicals. While public performance marked one facet of...