Music Since 1900 (review)

D. J. Hoek

Notes, Volume 59, Number 1, September 2002, pp. 51-53 (Review)

Published by Music Library Association

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/not.2002.0126

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/25108

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]
Book Reviews
jor European collections had been given.
Users should note that microfilm runs of
Sotheby and of Puttick and Simpson auc-
tion catalogs are available for loan to bor-
rowers from institutions that belong to the
Center for Research Libraries in Chicago.
Coover would have been well served by a
knowledgeable copy editor. Comparison
with the NGD2 list alone should have
raised some flags and allowed for correc-
tion of some petty errors and some major
omissions.
The remainder of this review will be de-
voted to an attempt to provide some impor-
tant corrections. Since this book should
provide long and useful service to scholars,
it is essential to add the following missing
citations for collectors represented in this
bibliography. I will not try to list omitted
collectors because they are too numerous,
(but remind users that the lists in MGG2
and NGD2 will enhance their searches for
additional collections), nor will I note the
myriad minor typographical errors. I have
used the first item number under a given
collector’s name when adding additional
citations.
Item 89 lacks: Adler, Guido, Verzeichniss der
musikalischen Autographe von Ludwig van
Beethoven : sowie einer Anzahl von alten
grossentheils vom Meister mit eigenhändigen
Zusätzen versehenen Abschriften im Besitze von
A. Artaria in Wien. Wien: Artaria, 1890.
Item 283 lacks: Seebass, Tilman, Musikhand-
schriften der Bodmeriana: Katalog. Cologny-
Genève: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1986.
Item 382 lacks: La Collection Sébastien de
Brossard, 1655–1730: catalogue (Département
de la musique, Rés. Vm8. 20), édité et présenté
par Yolande de Brossard. Paris : Biblio-
thèque nationale de France, c1994.
Item 547 lacks: Kümmerling, Harald, Franz
Commers Abschriften älterer Musikwerke. Köln:
Arno Volk, 1973.
Item 1177 lacks: Geil, Jean, “American
Sheet Music in the Walter N. H. Harding
Collection at the Bodleian Library,” Notes
34, no. 4 ( June 1978): 805–13.
Item 1798 lacks: Mischiati, Oscar, “Padre
Martini e la sua biblioteca,” in Collezionismo
e storiografia musicale nel Settecento: la
quadreria e la biblioteca di Padre Martini.
Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1984, 127–42.
Item 2004 lacks: Letters in the Nydahl Col-
lection (Stiftelsen Musikkulturens främjande)
Georges Bizet; edited by Lesley A. Wright.
51
Stockholm: Kungl. Musikaliska akademien,
c1988.
Item 2138 lacks: Engler, Klaus, Georg
Poelchau und seine Musikaliensammlung:
ein Beitrag zur Überlieferung Bachscher
Musik in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahr-
hunderts. Diss., Tübingen, 1984.
Item 2540 lacks: Schilling, Ulrike, Philipp
Spitta: Leben und Wirken im Spiegel seiner
Briefwechsel: mit einem Inventar des Nachlasses
und einer Bibliographie der gedruckten Werke.
Kassel; New York: Bärenreiter, c1994.
Item 2852 lacks: Schmid, Manfred Her-
mann, “ ‘Das Geschäft mit dem Nachlass
von C. P. E. Bach,’: neue Dokument zur
Westphal-Sammlung des Conservatoire
Royal de Musique und der Bibliothèque
Royale de Belgique in Brüssel,” in Carl
Philipp Emanuel Bach und die europäische
Musikkultur, edited by Hans Joachim Marx.
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1990, 473–528.
Lenore Coral
Cornell University
Music Since 1900. 6th ed. By Laura
Kuhn; Nicolas Slonimsky, editor emer-
itus. New York: Schirmer Reference,
2001. [xvii, 1174 p. ISBN 0-02-864787-
4. $175.] Index.
While Nicolas Slonimsky was preparing
the first edition of Music Since 1900 (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1937), Henry Cowell
advised him that, although the idea for the
book was “perfectly stupendous,” the title
was “dry” and would “appeal only to high-
brow librarians” (Nicolas Slonimsky, Perfect
Pitch: A Life Story [Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1988], 154). Despite Cowell’s re-
marks, Slonimsky did not alter the book’s
name, and, though the title perhaps lacks
the clever turn of phrase associated with
Slonimsky’s writings, it has served well to
define the chronological parameters of
each edition, from the first edition’s thirty-
seven-year scope to this sixth edition’s cov-
erage of the entire twentieth century. The
latest edition of Music Since 1900, com-
pleted by Laura Kuhn following Slonim-
sky’s death in 1995, maintains the four-part
organization of the fourth (New York:
Scribner’s, 1971) and fifth (New York:
Schirmer, 1994) editions, including a de-
scriptive chronology, a collection of letters
52
and documents, a dictionary of terms, and
an index. Kuhn’s brief preface, which pre-
cedes reprints of Slonimsky’s prefaces to
the fourth and fifth editions, does not spec-
ify how this rendering updates the fifth edi-
tion beyond its obvious coverage of the
transpiring years. Comparison with the pre-
vious edition, however, reveals that each
section indeed includes new information
but that, outside of the chronology, few
additions have been made.
Comprising the bulk of the volume, the
descriptive chronology lists premieres,
deaths of composers and performers, and
various important or otherwise noteworthy
musical events in an essentially day-by-day
listing from 1 January 1900 through 14
December 2000. This catalog remains the
book’s most distinctive feature, and Kuhn,
who presumably completed most if not all
of the entries that update the chronology
from that of the fifth edition, maintains
Slonimsky’s criterion of “when in doubt, do
not delete” (p. xiii) by detailing events both
renowned and obscure. Though such ex-
tensive treatment is impressive, a scan of
the chronology reminds the reader how
much the study of music has changed since
the first edition, and since there has been
little apparent revision of entries from ear-
lier editions, the chronology is rendered
somewhat uneven in its topical scope. In
her review of the fifth edition, Joy Haslam
Calico observes that “[t]he events Slonimsky
deemed noteworthy and the manner in
which they are described reveal trends that
parallel developments in musicology as a
discipline, such as increased awareness of
the significance of popular music, the con-
tributions of composers outside of Western
Europe, and the existence of women com-
posers” (Review of Music Since 1900, 5th ed.,
by Nicolas Slonimsky, Fontes Artis Musicae 42
[1995]: 387). With the sixth edition, Music
Since 1900 seems to continue its response to
changes in musicological thought by broad-
ening the range of music considered in the
chronology, but such efforts lack the rigor-
ous reportage aimed at customary modes of
American and European art music.
While Calico highlights problems with
the fifth edition’s treatment of women
composers, the present edition additionally
shows spotty coverage of jazz. Although the
passing of both Carmen McRae and Sun Ra
Notes, September 2002
are recorded in the chronology, no men-
tion is made of the deaths or lives of more
prominent and celebrated innovators like
Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk. This in-
congruity is noted here not to evaluate the
book’s merit as a jazz reference tool but,
rather, to illustrate its arbitrary treatment
of repertories that have gained scholarly at-
tention during the latter decades of the
past century.
The chronology’s thorough documenta-
tion of music in the concert tradition, how-
ever, provides a level of detail that is un-
matched by any other source. Slonimsky,
ever a champion of the experimental and
avant garde, offered precise citations and
lively descriptions of new works throughout
the previous editions of Music Since 1900,
and these same qualities persist in the sixth
edition. While the coverage of new music
also includes detailed program summaries
of International Society for Contemporary
Music festivals, a mainstay since the book’s
inception, noticeably absent are listings of
international awards in composition, such
as the Pulitzer Prize (referred to only once
in relation to Ernst Toch’s Third Sym-
phony) or the more recently established
Grawemeyer Award. For better or for worse,
these recognitions of achievement affected
the development of music in the twentieth
century, and the inclusion of such awards
would enhance the chronology’s historical
survey and the book’s overall utility as a
reference source.
During the course of his research,
Slonimsky sought out and assembled a
broad range of primary documents relating
to music since 1900, and such materials,
though essentially supplementary to the
chronology, comprise another key section.
Totaling forty items in this edition, the col-
lection includes a statement from Arnold
Schoenberg on the origin of twelve-tone
technique; a handful of manifestos on fu-
turism; various papers relating to the politi-
cal sanctioning of music in the United
States, Germany, the Soviet Union, and
China; and personal letters to Slonimsky
from Anton Webern, George Bernard
Shaw, Edgard Varèse, and, most numer-
ously, Charles Ives. Readers familiar with
the fifth edition of Music Since 1900 will
note one substantial addition to this sec-
tion: a complete transcript from the 1985
Book Reviews
United States Senate hearings on record
labeling. These hearings, which explored
and debated the effects of rock music on
American youth, included passionate testi-
mony from Frank Zappa, John Denver,
Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, and others. As
a document that grapples with the issues
surrounding freedom of expression, this
transcript is an apt supplement to the other
items included in this section. These mate-
rials could be better served, however, with
more complete information in the book’s
table of contents, which lists only the titles
of documents. Entries like “Letters from
Charles E. Ives” are self-explanatory; others,
such as “What Is Atonality?,” would invoke
far greater interest if their author, in this
instance Alban Berg, was prominently
identified.
After Slonimsky coined “pandiatonic” in
the first edition of Music Since 1900 (p.
205), the wide adoption of the term “en-
couraged [him] to follow up with addi-
tional neologisms that may prove useful”
(6th ed., p. xxvi). Although none of his
subsequent offerings so successfully at-
tained familiarity in musical parlance, Slo-
nimsky compiled a large catalog of terms
that succinctly and, in many cases, wittily
characterize musical developments of the
past century. The dictionary of terms,
which includes definitions for many stan-
dard terms interfiled with Slonimsky’s in-
ventions, features two new, fitting entries
in this edition: “counterpoetry,” which
describes “the use of multiple unpitched
voices in strict measurement” (p. 1054),
and “minimalism,” a term conspicuously
absent from the glossary of the fifth edition.
The most regrettable aspect of this edi-
tion is the index. Though extensive, it is
rife with errors, some of which stem from
the lack of reconciling differences in the
forms of names used between this edition
and its predecessor. In the chronology for
the sixth edition, Terry Riley’s middle
name, Mitchell, is included in each new en-
try citing the composer’s recent work, while
entries carried over from the fifth edition
simply list Riley by his first and last name.
Though inconsequential in the chronol-
ogy, this change in editorial policy, when
combined with literalistic, word-for-word
indexing of the text, results in two index
entries for Riley (one for “Riley, Terry,” an-
53
other for “Riley, Terry Mitchell”), the for-
mer referring to entries reprinted from
the fifth edition, the latter referring to
entries added for the sixth edition. Since
this example, like the similar dual listings
for David (Leo) Diamond and Robert
(Lawson) Shaw, places the entries in se-
quential alphabetical arrangement, users
will probably locate both entries in spite of
the flawed indexing. Readers seeking infor-
mation on David Del Tredici, however, are
less likely to find all references to his music,
since three works by Del Tredici are filed
under “Del Tredici, David” while another is
found under “Tredici, David Del.” In addi-
tion to problems with authority control,
a cursory examination reveals that many
works mentioned in the text are altogether
missing from the index. Del Tredici’s
Happy Voices (p. 705) is absent (under ei-
ther Del Tredici entry), and Daniel Lentz’s
Love and Conception, which is not only men-
tioned in the chronology (p. 629–30) but is
also highlighted in Kuhn’s preface (p. ix),
likewise receives no listing in the index.
While errors and omissions like this are
troubling in any book, such faulty indexing
in the sixth edition of a standard reference
source is unwarrantable.
Although its treatment of some styles and
topics is uneven and its value as a reference
tool is compromised by an unreliable in-
dex, Music Since 1900 remains unparalleled
in its meticulous account of Western art
music since the beginning of the previous
century. Both the dictionary of terms and
the collection of documents, though with
little new information in this edition, are
handy repositories of facts and commen-
tary, and the chronology, unequivocally the
book’s most unique and useful component,
is particularly notable for its exceptional
coverage of very recent music. Notwith-
standing the criticisms registered here, the
sixth edition of Music Since 1900 maintains
the title’s precedent of presenting its super-
abundant content in an engaging manner,
and, for this, it will be of interest to stu-
dents, scholars, and librarians, both high-
brow and otherwise.
D. J. Hoek
Kent State University