Sonneck Society for American Music
Bulletin, Volume XXIV, no. 1 (Spring 1998)
Reviews of Books
Edited by Sherrill V. Martin, University of North Carolina at Wilmington
The Music of Morton Feldman
Edited by Thomas DeLio. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. ISBN 0-3130298033; Pp. 260;
$59.95 (cloth). New York: Excelsior Music Publishing Co., 1996. ISBN 0-935016-16-3; Pp. 242;
$24.95 (pbk.).
Given composer and theorist Thomas DeLio's dedicated work in the area of new music, I eagerly anticipated
The Music of Morton Feldman as the first book published in English on this problematic
composer. Unfortunately, the eclectic collection of essays edited by DeLio does not live up to
its impressive title, one that suggests comprehensive scholarly research. On the other hand,
one can be thankful that an English-language book on Feldman has finally been published at all.
Five complex analytical essays (including DeLio's exhaustive twenty-page analysis of a one-page
piece) comprise the book's main body. The essays were chosen because they span Feldman's career, though
it might have been worthwhile to include a composition after 1982, given the radical nature of
Feldman's late works. Noteworthy are Paula Kopstick Ames's essay, Piano (1977), which
approaches analysis as a tool for performance practice, and Wes York's formal analysis of the
structurally rich composition, For John Cage (1982). A primary achievement of this book is
the juxtaposition of contrasting theoretical approaches.
The analytical essays are prefaced by DeLio's extremely brief introduction, in which he mentions three
times that Feldman is remarkable. One wishes for more details. The introduction is followed by John
Cage's mesostic, Scenario for M.F. (previously published in MusikTexte 22, in 1987), an
engaging deconstruction of Feldman's aesthetic by Belgian musicologist Herman Sabbe, and three of
Feldman's previously published (and re-published) essays. Given the composer's frequent references,
allusions, and inconsistenties in his writings, these essays would have greatly benefited from
explanatory footnotes. The appendices include an incomplete list of compositions (lacking, for
instance, Feldman's music for a 1987 production of Beckett's Words and Music), a thin
bibliography (overlooking many foreign-language sources), and a discography.
The individual essays are thought-provoking, but the book as a whole perpetuates a common misconception
of Feldman's music as something in desperate need of analysis. Yet it reflects the current state of research
in America: Feldman is a case for theorists. The essays do little to dispel the myths that
Feldman's music is elusive and detached from relevant themes of American music history. Furthermore,
the book fails to approach his work -- an immense body of work influenced by a personal distillation of
European humanism and American experimentalism -- by evaluating the cultural context of his long
career or the rich artistic relationships he enjoyed. Finally, the publication suffers from
incomplete citations and printing errors, including the misspelling of "twentieth century" and
incorrect accents for Varèse already on the second page. Regretfully, and perhpas by no fault
of the editor, The Music of Morton Feldman is limited in its usefulness.
--Amy C. Beal
University of Michigan
Alfredo Barili and the Rise of Classical Music in Atlanta
By N. Lee Orr. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. ISBN 0-7885-0137-2. Pp. xiv, 292.
Professor Orr's tribute to Alfredo Barili (1854-1935) offers not only a biographical account of
one of Atlanta's most important musicians, but also a description of musical life in Atlanta during
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Barili was born in Florence, Italy. A member of the famous Patti-Barili clan, his aunt was the
legendary soprano Adelina Patti. His father Ertore was an opera singer, and came to New York with
his family shortly after Alfredo's brith. During his teens, Alfredo became known as a pianist of
exceptional ability. He returned to Europe to study in Cologne, and while in Germany, he married
another American studying in Europe, Emily Vezin.
In 1880, the Barilis settled in Atlanta, and Alfredo quickly gained an exceptional reputation as a
pianist and teacher. His abilities as a pianist and his willingness and ability to share his
talents with generations of students made him a legend during his own lifetime. Orr details Barili's
significance in the establishment of Atlanta's musical life through events such as the 1883 Atlanta
Music Festival and the founding of the Polymnia Club. He places Barili's contributions within the
context of other musical activities of the city, a large number of which were directly affected by
Barili. He also documents visits by musicians such as Theodore Thomas and Adelina Patti, in addition
to performances by traveling opera troupes. All of this is done from the viewpoint that it was Barili
more than anyone else who was responble for the increasingly high level of artistic achievement in
Atlanta.
Photos provide visual images of Barili's life, while appendices include programs from significant concerts in
Barili's career and a list of extant compositions by Barili. This book chronicles several significant
decades in the musical heritage of Atlanta and honors the persone to whom much of that city's
musical success can be traced.
--William Everett
Washburn University
Pro-Musica: Patronage, Performance and a Periodical -- An Index to the Quarterlies
MLA Index and Bibliography Series. Number 28. By Paula Elliot. Canton, MA: Music Library Association,
1997. ISBN 0-914954-52-0. Pp. x, 112.
In the 1920s, two of the champions of contemporary music in the United States were the Franco-American
Music Society1 and its successor, Pro-Musica, Inc. French pianist elie Robert Schmitz was the
prime-mover for both organizations, which were "devoted to introducing American audiences to the works of
living European composers, and to the composers themselves. New American music was also promoted" (p. 1).
Regional chapters in the United States as well as Europe carried on much of the business of publicizing
composers and musical activities, and two journals served as their main avenues of communication: the
FAMS (Franco-American Music Society) Bulletin, published as a quarterly from September
1923 to March 1925, and its successor, the Pro-Musica Quarterly, which began in June 1925
and continued to October 1929, the month of the great Wall Street crash. Author Paula Elliot has
distilled each of the twenty-two issues of these two titles into a series of concise and
informative annotations with content notes. The whole is indexed separately by subject and by
author-translator. A list of advertisers, foiur appendices (three with illustrations), and a
bibliography are also provided.
Even without the published issues at hand, one can get from this reference work a sense of the
excitement and directions of the contemporary music scene of seventy years ago. Charles Ives, for
example, is covered in a laudatory Pro-Musica Quarterly article of March 1927, two decades
before he won the Pulitzer Prize for his Third Symphony. The October issue of the same year mentions
microtones as the "logical extension of the semitonal system" (p. 44). In the next issue (December
1927) it was reportd that the Theremin, a new electrical instrument controlled by hand movements,
"will revolutionize music" (p. 48). The same issue includes an account of the premieres of William
Grant Still's Negro Spirituals and Edgard Varèse's Octandre in Paris. Since few
libraries in the United States report holdings of original issues or microfilm copies, it is timely
to call, barring legal restrictions, for a republication of these two short-lived by very au courant
journals. The author deserves a hand for her comprehensive bibliographic work.
--John E. Druesedow
Duke University
NOTE
1. The term "Franco-American," indicative her of the cordial relationship between France and the
United States in the wake of World War I, had some currency even before the war; there as the Franco
American Guide, a quarterly published in Paris, beginning in 1894, and even a Franco-American Rag, for
voice and piano, composed by Jean Schwartz (1878-1956) and published by Jerome H. Remick & Co.
(New York) in 1909.
Source Readings in American Choral Music: Composers' Writings, Interview, and Reviews
Monographs and Bibliographies in American Music, no. 15. Compiled by David P. DeVenney. Missoula,
Montana: The College Music Society, 1995. ISBN 0-9650647-0-0; Pp. xii, 258; $25.00 (cloth). ISBN
0-9650647-1-9; Pp. xii, 258; $15.00 (pbk.).
This unique monograph is a valuable addition to the study of American music, providing original sources
to the history and roles of American choral music, and "reflections on the nature and purposes of choral
music . . . critical responses to landmark works, and instructions on performance practice" (p. xi).
Source Readings in American Choral Music is a book for every choral scholar and should be placed
in academic libraries, on the shelves of choral educators, and required as an ancillary text for
students in choral methods/survey courses. I found DeVenney's inclusion of "A Chronology of American
Choral Music" of less interest and importance than his "Select Bibliography for Further Study," an
immeasureably rich research tool.
Divided into three parts, the collected documents are presented historically from the 1640 Bay
Psalm Book to a 1987 interview with Kirk Mechem, dealing especially with the sacred genre and school
choirs. Each article excerpt is carefully and "lovingly" annotated by the editor, providing beneficial
introcutions for the reader. Readers will rarely read from cover to cover (although this was the
reviewer's modus); however, this book is well-indexed, aiding the inquisitor.
It is difficult to find fault with DeVenney's volume. The convenient size is important, and the
editor/scholar, well-versed and published in the subject area, made tough decisions for inclusions/exclusions.
This reviewer questions some absence of content referring to the importance of choral music in
America, e.g., choral conductors, composers and arrangers, such as f. Melius Christiansen, John
Finley Williamson, Fred Waring and Roy Ringwald, the latter two especially important in the
popularization of choral performance in the mid-twentieth century. Charles Ives is conspicuously neglected.
Source Readings in American Choral Music's format provides a unique opportunity to telescope the
growth of choral music and singing quality over this land's much more than two-hundred-year history.
There are humorous moments along the way, but much "de ja vous all over again" in reading the now
conveniently made words of America's choral history. For example, I empathize with thise words of Theodore
Thomas in 1881: "Concerts do not appeal to the general public; they are for this advanced class, and
are well supported. But this class does not grow in numbers as rapidly as it ought. The steps
by which the people can be lead up to the plane of these concerts are lacking" (p. 92).
--D. Royce Boyer
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Notes in Passing
Sherrill V. Martin, University of Carolina at Wilmington
Leaving Everything Behind: The Songs and Memories of a Cheyenne Woman
By Bertha Little Coyote and Virginia Giglio. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press,
1997. ISBN 0-8061-2984-0. Pp. xvii, 166. $29.95 (cloth); $12.95 (compact disc); $40.00
(compact disc and book set).
Bertha Little Coyote, an important Cheyenne traditional singer, and ethnomusicologist Virginia
Giglio, who studied with Little Coyote, have made another significant contribution to the study
of Indian music and culture in Leaving Everything Behind. Little Coyote, eighty-four years
of age, provides memories and songs of her experiences at a government boarding school, Cheyenne
life and customs, dreaming important dreams, and her contemplations of death, in both the book and
the accompanying compact disc.
Giglio includes song transcriptions and translations (originally published in her book, Southern
Cheyenne Women's Songs, 1994), in Appendix A. Since the Cheyennes do not have an indigenous
music notation system, she transcribes them into standard Western European notation, complete with
orthography and notation symbols. Appendix B is comprised of 49 round dance, scalp dance and war dance
songs compiled by Daniel Houston Hodges in his Ph.D. dissertation from the University of Oklahoma;
notation symbols used for Hodges's transcriptions are also given. Other song transcriptions and
translations, previously published in David Graber's Tsese-Ma'heone-Nemeototse: Cheyenne
Spiritual Songs, include five Cheyenne hymns, with appropriate orthography and notation marks
used in hymns.
Texan Jazz
By Dave Oliphant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. ISBN 0-292-76044-2; Pp. ix, 481;
$55.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-202-76045-0; Pp. ix, 481; $24.95 (pbk.).
Oliphant states that his objective for Texas Jazz is to "recognize in jazz history those
Texans who made their mark on the music as major figures or who participated as sidemen inmany of the
important bands and movements during hte principal periods of jazz's development" (p. 5). Although
Texas musicians made significant contributions to jazz in ragtime, blues, and boogie-woogie, these
musicians are seldom identified as texans because of their work in Chicago, New York, Kansas City, and
Los Angeles. This conprehensive study of hte lives, careers, and recordings of these reclaimed
Texas musicians from the origins of jazz to the present day includes such personalities as Scott
Joplin, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Jack Teagarden, Hot Lips Page, Red Garland, Kenny Dorham, Ornette
Coleman, John Carter, and many others. Of particular importance, Oliphant records the significant
jazz contributions made by African-Americans in Texas Jazz, the first major published book
on this topic.
Dave Oliphant, Editor of The Library Chronicle at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
at the University of Texas at Austin, provides extensive notes for his carefully researched volume,
a selected bibliography, and an index.
The Guitar in Jazz: An Anthology
Edited by James Sallis. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-4250-6.
Pp. xiv, 210. $30.00.
In this excellent anthology of essays, Sallis presents the rich, entertaining history and development
of the guitar as a jazz instrument. Some of jazz's leading historians and critics trace the
evolution of jazz guitar performance from the pioneering style of Nick Lucas (written by Nick
Lucas and Jas Obrecht) and Eddie Lang (James Sallis) through the innovations of a contemporary
master such as Ralph Towner (Charles Mitchell). Illustrations are included of Django Rheinhardt
with the Quintette of Hot Club of France, George Van Eps, Eddie Lang with Bing Crosby, Eddie Lang, Charlie
Christian, Lonnie Johnson, Oscar Moore, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Joe Pass, John
Abercrombie, Herb Ellis and Mike Stern.
They Heard Georgia Singing
By Zell Miller. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-86554-504-9. Pp. ix, 342.
Zell Miller, governor of Georgia, chronicles his state's rich musical heritage in They Heard
Georgia Singing. In 1984, Miller began to compile brief musical biographies of those who had
made major contributions to Georgia's musical history as native sons and daughters, or as major
personalities within the context of Georgia's music. When the Georgia Music Hall of Fame opened in
Macon in 1996, he revised and added many new biographies, bringing the number of musicians noted
in They Heard Georgia Singing to more than three hundred. INcluded in these biographies are
such diverse and legendary musicians as opera singer Jessye Norman, gospel singer Thomas Dorsey,
soul singer James Brown, country singer Alan Jackson, folk singer Hedy West, and symphony and choral
conductors Robert Shaw and Yoel Levi.
In addition to this volume, the only ready reference work to many of Georgia's great musicians, Miller
has also compiled the Appalachian Archives of Georgia, a collection of books, records, cassettes, and
video tapes of the history, ofe, music, and customs of the Southern Appalachian region. This collection
is housed at the Mountain Regional LIbrary in Young Harris, Georgia.
--Sherrill V. Martin
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
Updated 4/20/98