There is a greater need than pianoforte teachers and singing teachers, and that is a numerous company of writers and talkers who shall teach the people how to listen to music so that it shall not pass through their heads like a vast tonal phantasmagoria, but provide the varied and noble delights contemplated by the composers.

Henry Krehbiel, How to Listen to Music (1896)

American higher education has responded enthusiastically to Krehbiel's alarum of 1896, employing a "numerous company of writers and talkers" on music by including music study in the general curriculum, largely in the name of musica humana. The principal vehicle of their faith that this inner harmony of being can somehow be transmitted through the study of musica instrumentalis is the Introduction to Music Literature class. The music unit on campus sees that same course more pragmatically as the bread-and-butter offering that subsidizes the more expensive specialized work in music and encourages, or requires, student attendance at concerts. Pity the poor faculty member thrust into a classroom with orders to serve both masters: instill a love and understanding of this most abstract art in the students while generating the largest possible number of credit-hours. Assuming that he has the materials (he frequently does not), the training (he may be the bassoonist with hours "left over"), and the desire (or at least the compliance) to fulfill this assignment, he is then faced with an immense swath of time and space to cover (giving special attention, of course, to ethnic contributions and contemporary developments), sometimes in a single semester. On this impossible mission it is often the teacher who self-destructs.

There is no other college course that aims so high while dealing with such heterogeneously prepared students. In one seat is a senior history major who plays string quartets at home and next to him a freshman with no musical experience at all. Here sits a competent pianist, there a self-taught marching band drummer to whom notation is a mystery. They are in class because of their deep love for music or for an easy credit, having been brought by their intellectual curiosity or their curriculum requirements. For whatever reason, and with whatever background, they have come to gain "appreciation" of music, and teaching it is the most demanding job in the music department.

Teaching the amateur how to approach music is not in itself a new idea. Baldassare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano of 1528 and Thomas Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to the Skill of Musick of 1597 both recognized the need for some musical knowledge as a social grace. Laetitia Hawkins, in her Anecdotes, tells of the "theoretic lectures on music" of Marmaduke Overend in eighteenth-century England, and William Alexander Barrett, music critic of the London Morning Post, was a popular lecturer on music in that same city a century later, under the auspices of The Society for the Extension of University Teaching. According to Edmund Jeffers,¹ Frederic Louis Ritter introduced "lectures on the history of music . . . illustrated by . . . distinguished artists," at Vassar College as early as 1868. The lectures of Apthorp in Boston and the long success of Dwight's Journal and other publications of that type helped to feed a surprisingly large market for musical knowledge. This reached a peak in the 1880's, which saw the publication of Amy Fay's Music Study in Germany (1880) and Ritter's Music in America (1884), to cite only two important landmarks.

Credit for the first music appreciation text in this country, though, belongs to the pianist and music journalist William Smythe Babcock Mathews, who published a two-volume work in 1880 under the title, How to Understand Music: A Concise Course in Musical Intelligence and Taste.² The next important American contribution to the field was Henry Krehbiel's How To Listen to Music of 1896, which was so popular that it went through nine printings before 1900, and innumerably more after. Having created the audience as an entity, it was now necessary to train it, an approach that was reflected by Mathews, who wrote in his preface, "[The] prime object is to lead the student to a consciousness of music as MUSIC [emphasis original], and not merely as playing, singing, or theory." It was Krehbiel, with the keen teacher's sense so evident in his music criticism, who warned against writers so pedantic as to be concerned only with forms and rules, or on the other hand, "Rhapsodists," who "present themselves as persons of exquisite sensibilities rather than direct attention to the real nature and beauty of the music itself."³ The pedants were not harmful, he felt, since they were dull and wrote only for their professional colleagues.

Things have not changed too much in the interim, and the guidelines of the 1880's are still valid. Technological change and the increase in the size of the college community, however, have introduced new factors that we are still grappling with. The invention of the phonograph and the radio spurred public awareness and publishing activity after the turn of the century, ranging from William Lines Hubbard's American History and Encyclopedia of Music (Toledo: I. Squire, 1908-10) to Calvin Brainerd Cady's Music Appreciation with the Victrola for Children put out in 1923 by the educational department of the Victor Talking Machine Company.

While "Music Appreciation," the term so much in vogue a generation or so ago, carried the implication that the goal of the course was affective, more recent attitudes have emphasized cognitive learning (a "content" course, as the students say) on the grounds that lasting affective values only grow on a base of solid knowledge. This change may also have been influenced by the pressure to quantify course material over the last fifteen or twenty years, in part to be able to assign more "objective" grades. The atmosphere has changed, though, and some re-evaluation is going to be called for in the near future, if it is not under way already. The raison d'être of this class looks increasingly suspect in the pragmatic, anti-intellectual climate of American society today. If cultivation of the esthetic sense was once generally endorsed as evidence of gentility, it is now generally abhorred as "elitist". Since music apparently adds little of material value to life, and more importantly, bears no relationship to "work", it is classed with bowling as a leisure activity to occupy time left over from the business of living. Furthermore, music is readily available to all as a packaged commodity and no significant benefits seem to accrue to those who "understand" it as opposed to those who merely "like" it.

If the present trend continues, as it shows every evidence of doing, it is not inconceivable that the appreciation of music could go the direction of the appreciation of Greek and Latin poetry. Whether that is good or bad, whether we must change the courses, their rationale, or neither, whether, indeed, such study should be urged on the general college student, and whether it serves any function for the individual or for societythese have suddenly, and a little frighteningly, become pressing questions. The positions taken, the courses taught, and the textbooks used are now matters of general academic concern, not personal preference alone. If we believe in the validity of what we are doing, we must be prepared to justify it very soon in a way that would have been unthinkable a mere five years ago.

On the plus side of the ledger, the standards of scholarship and language in teaching materials for these courses have been steadily rising, and the near-universality of the college music literature program is still a fact. Against that background, then, this article is an attempt to gain an overview of the books published for such use in the past 10-12 years. Those covered in the survey represent almost, but not quite, all of these publications. They fall into four identifiable groups, allowing for a certain amount of overlap and oversimplification: Historical, Structural, Humanities, and Skills. It is recognized, of course, that some instructors broaden their course by choosing a book that has a different emphasis from their class presentation, while others prefer to use a book that reinforces and deepens the class work, so that the book does not necessarily reflect the nature of the total course.

A Checklist at the end of the article brings together the principal introductory textbooks for general music literature published in this country. When one of these is first mentioned, parenthetical reference will be made to its entry number on the Checklist for complete bibliographic information. As an indication of the growth of the music appreciation industry, these books have also been arranged into a chronological list, cross-referenced to the Checklist by number. It is worth noting that out of a total of 122 books in the Checklist, 36 of themapproximately 30%were first published within the last decade.

Historical Orientation

These books organize their material around the flow of history and follow a fairly uniform procedure of introducing terminology and formal concepts in varying degree, then proceeding through music history with stops here and there to examine representative pieces. They constitute the largest and most popular group, probably because the logic of their organization is most apparent and because this approach lends itself readily to lateral excursions into the allied arts, the humanities, or social/political history. They tend to be comprehensive; that is, they attempt to contain all material for the course, covering art music of Western culture and frequently delving into folk, popular, and ethnic areas. A recent development has been to accompany many of them with satellite material in the form of records, teacher's guides, student workbooks, and even pre-designed test questions. This may be ideal for a school using teaching assistants or faculty working outside of their specialty; but I, for one, would dread the thought of climbing into the cab of such an engine and driving it back and forth over the same track for 15 or 20 years. Of course, I must admit that the passengers see the scenery for the first time each trip.

Of those to be discussed, the earliest in wide use, and still one of the more literate, is An Introduction to Music by Martin Bernstein and Martin Picker (7). First published in 1937 by Bernstein alone, it recently appeared in an expanded 682-page fourth edition (1972) with more illustrations, more material, and more detailed treatment of the twentieth century. The book's great strength, besides its clear, intelligent language, is its chronological procedure, in which chronos and logos are both paid full due. As in almost all of these books, the points made discursively are illustrated by compositions for listening, with notated examples of key material printed in the text. Pretty much of a piece with that is Joseph Machlis' The Enjoyment of Music (70), now in its third edition (1970). It comes in a regular 628-page edition and a shorter 501-page version together with a student "Study Guide" (by Bergreen and Castellini), teacher's manual, and record set. Disclaiming chronology in the name of psychology, Machlis organizes the text on a "take-em-from-where-they are" basis, making the assumption that nineteenth-century Romanticism is "where they are," and working chronologically backwards before adding American Music and the Twentieth Century as final chapters. I personally find the reasoning for this particular plan somewhat dubious, but be that as it may, the book is well-written and useful either on the author's plan or in an alternate chronological outline he provides.

Basically similar, but with minor variations, are Walter Nallin's The Musical Idea (88), Charles Hoffer's The Understanding of Music (57), John Gillespie's The Musical Experience (50), John D. White's Understanding and Enjoying Music (117), and Listen, a title so attractive it adorns two separate books, one by Roland Nadeau and William Tesson (86), and a more recent one by Joseph Kerman (62).

Of these, three provide features deserving comment. Gillespie's Musical Experience seems to be aimed directly at those students that give an instructor heartburn. Although they are bright, they are poorly motivated, plagued by perceptual problems not only in hearing, but in reading comprehension as well, and totally lacking in prior contact with music off the AM radio band. If one wishes to reach these students it would take this kind of a book to do it. Extensive use is made of pictures and the language makes minimal demands on the reader. Another book reflecting a pragmatic decision taken in the face of substandard secondary school preparation is Dallin's Listeners Guide to Musical Understanding (23), which dispenses with musical notation entirely on the grounds that few can make any use of it. Dallin also builds his book on a dual matrix of genre and chronology, so that the students are taken over the same ground twice, in different directions.

Similar to these but marked by still stronger historical orientation, is David Boyden's Introduction to Music (11). The text provides more than just continuity, it is really a history of music for the non-musician, much in the style of Cannon, Johnson, and Waite's earlier Art of Music (17). Boyden's book covers more music, though, and is built around the listening experience, while the Art of Music is more concerned with the intellectual/historical context.

Structural Orientation

These books engage the student in the musical forms, often proceeding by genres. This offers the most accessible alternative to historical organization for the reader and, as a matter of fact, was the clear preference of many of the earlier authors. Such a scheme eliminates the need to include everything, although it does not exclude the possibility. Most authors, though, choose to concentrate on the standard body of repertoire.

Dallin's Listener's Guide to Musical Understanding has already. been mentioned in this connection. Another book that collates two different aspects of study is Sacher and Eversole's Art of Sound (95), which is divided into two principal sections, "Aesthetics" and "Genres." Robert Erickson's excellent little book, The Structure of Music (34) must be mentioned here too, even though I doubt whether it could be effectively used as a classroom text because it assumes some sophistication on the part of the reader. While it can hardly even be called recent, the book provides so much in the way of clear schematic diagrams for structural insight and lucid discussion of musical devices cutting across history, that it should be at the hand of everyone teaching a music literature course. Recent reprints of two earlier books point up at the same time the lack of new books using this approach and its continuing usefulness. These are Victor Zuckerkandl's The Sense of Music (122) and Douglas Moore's Listening to Music (84), which has gone through many more printings than his later, historically-based Guide to Musical Styles (83).

Humanities Orientation

This has a built-in market in schools where, either because of curriculum or faculty preference, introduction to music is subsumed within a general Arts/Humanities program, all too often contained in a single course. The strength of this approach as an ideal certainly needs no discussion; its drawbacks in the real world of curriculum distribution, though, can be summed up in a simple equation of inverse proportions: as the humanities content increases, the aural experience decreases.

Thus Joseph Kerman's tandem book with H.W. Janson, A History of Art and Music (58), must work with fewer listening examples and depend more on discursive explanation. In partial solution, Kerman uses schematic diagrams to demonstrate his points, but they are not always well designed, and are dropped in his later (and better) book, Listen, which is addressed specifically to the music literature introductory course. Don. C. Walter, in Men and Music in Western Culture (114), dispenses with music entirely in his text, and only refers to it in a discography at the end of each chapter. Sometimes, in the name of esthetics, these books become clearly tendentious, as Miller's Introduction to Music Appreciation (81), subtitled An Objective Approach to Listening, which even takes on the obligation of making value judgments for the student.

Another kind of book for use in this course is the reader, or anthology of writings about music. This provides material for discussion or exegesis, literary parallels to reinforce the classroom experience, or background material to give a frame of reference which the instructor can assume in presenting the music. Jacques Barzun's old reader, The Pleasures of Music could serve such a purpose, although that was not its primary intent. At least two welcome anthologies for the classroom have recently appeared to serve this need: An Introduction to Music: Selected Readings (48) edited by Walter Gerboth, Stoddard Lincoln, Robert Sanders and Robert Starer, and The World of Music (91), edited by Leroy Ostransky, who also did the earlier Perspectives on Music (90). Gerboth and company present a meatier selection focussing on esthetics, while the Ostransky lives up to its title by providing a potpourri of articles reflecting a broad spectrum of musical activities.

Skills Orientation

In adopting this approach, one must subscribe to five propositions:

1. Music cannot be intelligently discussed with people who cannot isolate and identify musical events.
2. Introductory students do not have the skills to discuss music qua music.
3. Perceptive skills that are sufficient to allow practical application of those skills in class can be achieved during a course.
4. Acquiring some level of skill in listening will encourage more listening and further development after the class ends.
5. Acquisition of these skills supersedes intellectual knowledge about music as a priority, given the pressures on curricular time.

I must confess my own bias in favor of this approach, with class discussion and some supplementary reading used to relate the course to other areas. Two new textbooks have appeared recently representing this line of thinking: The Art of Listening: Developing Musical Perception (13) by Howard Brofsky and Jeanne Bamberger, and Listening to Music (22) by Richard Crocker and Ann Basart.

The Crocker-Basart book uses a systematic notational analogue to represent musical events. This is a powerful tool, and although I find the diagrams fussy and overly-detailed, they still serve the important purpose of focussing the student's attention on what is taking place in the music while confining discursive writing to explanation rather than description. The book concentrates in depth on only eighteen complete works, approaching them from the point of compositional technique rather than chronological sequence. Technical information and historical outlines are relegated to appendices, and a glossary completes the reference material at the back of the book.

The Brofsky-Bamberger text is entirely unique in serving as a study guide for the achievement of skill in aural perception. The text consists of guidance in directed listening to the accompanying records. Chronology is disregarded in the book's organization, which leads the student through a succession of aural experiences that provide a basic vocabulary of musical events and terminology for them. This is buttressed by schematics providing visual reinforcement. Through it all, the instructor of the class is entrusted with the real teaching: relating, interpreting, and stimulating; not just drill or explaining obscurities in the book.

For years music was plagued by an analogy with language as a form of communication. The analogy was false because it attempted to burden music with the function of language. But I think that it can now be profitably revived without danger of falling back into that same trap. There are certain useful parallels in that both are symbolic systems, with the chief difference being that only in music is the medium really the message, McLuhan notwithstanding. Modern linguistics, however, teaches us that the basic unit to work with is not the word, but the sentence, and I think the parallel is that the basic music unit is not the note or even the motive, but what Sessions called the "gesture". The appropriate succession in which material should be dealt with in the introductory music literature course starts from the students' real experience, that of passive audience, and proceeds first through musical rhetoric, then logic, and should only then, if at all, deal with musical syntax and grammar. This is roughly the reverse of the order in which musicians are expected to gain professional mastery, but then, no one teaches the appreciation of Shakespeare through the conjugation of Elizabethan irregular verbs.

It would not be the intent of such a class to teach students about the music nearly so much as to move them along the road from undifferentiated hearing to intelligent listening. That goal could be accomplished through any of the approaches found in the books surveyed above. But I do not think that reverence for Beethoven can be taught. It can be learned by studying his music, but for the layman that can best be done through intelligent listening.

One last thought on the importance of this course: the confident listener makes his voice heard, and we seem to be lacking that audience feedback just now. Not foreseeing that, Krehbiel underestimated the danger of pedantry. Even some composers today write only for their professional colleagues, and advocate disregarding the audience. It is time for our "numerous company of writers and talkers" to declare publicly for the rights of the intelligent audience. Separation from the composer and performer for two hundred years has meant disenfranchisement for the audience. Their response, as always among the disenfranchised, has been to vote with their feet, and music is now paying a steep price for that separation. I am not speaking about new music alone, but about the health of the art of music generally. Right now an intelligent, appreciative audience is a necessity to the continued vitality of music-making, and it appears that the Music Appreciation, Introduction to Music, or Music Survey coursecall it what you willis our last, best hope.

LIST A

A Checklist of American Textbooks
for the Introductory Music Literature
Class at the College Levels

1. Abbott, Lawrence. Approach to Music. New York and Toronto: Farrar and Rinehart, Inc., 1940. pp. 358.

2. Allen, Warren Dwight. Our Marching Civilization: An Introduction to the Study of Music and Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943. pp. xii, 112.

3. Apel, Paul H. The Message of Music. New York: Vintage Press, 1958. pp. v-ix, 496.

4. Baxter, William H., Jr. Basic Studies in Music. Rockleigh, N.J.: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1968.

5. Bernstein, Leonard. The Infinite Variety of Music. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962. pp. 286.

6. . The Joy of Music. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.

7. Bernstein, Martin. An Introduction to Music. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1937. pp. xv, 446.

8. Bockmon, Guy Alan, and William J. Starr. Scored for Listening: A Guide to Music. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1959. pp. xx, 283.

9. Boise, Otis Bardwell. Music and Its Masters (Philadelphia, 1902), reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1971. pp. 206.

10. Bookspan, Martin. 101 Masterpieces of Music and Their Composers. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968. pp. 511.

11. Boyden, David D. An Introduction to Music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1956. pp. xxviii, 554.

12. Brandt, William E. The Way of Music. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1963. pp. x, 595.

13. Brofsky, Howard, and Jeanne Shapiro Bamberger. The Art of Listening: Developing Musical Perception. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1969. pp. xv, 319.

14. Buck, Sir Percy Carter. The Scope of Music. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1924. pp. 135.

15. Buker, Alden. Humanistic Approach to Music Appreciation. Palo Alto, California: National Press Books, 1964. pp. 199.

16. Bush, Geoffrey. Musical Creation and the Listener. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1954. pp. 126.

17. Cannon, Beekman C., Alvin H. Johnson, and William G. Waite. The Art of Music: A Short History of Musical Styles and Ideas. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1962. pp. vi, 484.

18. Chasins, Abram. The Appreciation of Music: A Living Method Course. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1966.

19. Clarke, H.L. Studies in Listening. Palo Alto, California: Pacific Books, 1965. pp. 37.

20. Cooper, Grosvenor W., ed. Learning to Listen: A Handbook for Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957. pp. xiii, 167.

21. Copland, Aaron. What to Listen for in Music. New York: The McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1939. pp. vii-ix, 192.

22. Crocker, Richard L., and Ann P. Basart. Listening to Music. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971. pp. x, 420.

23. Dallin, Leon. Listener's Guide to Musical Understanding. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Company Publishers, 1959. pp. xiii, 320.

24. Darnton, Christian. You and Music. New York: Penguin Books, Inc., 1940. pp. v, 180.

25. Davies, Sir Henry Walford. The Pursuit of Music. London and New York: T. Nelson and Sons, Ltd., 1935. pp. x, 438.

26. Dickinson, Edward. The Education of a Music Lover. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1911. pp. xi, 293.

27. , ed. Fundamentals of Musical Art, 19 vols. New York: Caxton Institute, 1926-1928.

28. Dickinson, George Sherman. The Pattern of Music. Poughkeepsie, New York: Vassar College, 1939. pp. 57.

29. Doust, Len A. How to Enjoy Music; Hints for All Listeners. London and New York: F. Warne and Co., Ltd., 1936. pp. 134.

30. Downes, Olin. The Lure of Music: Depicting the Human Side of Great Composers, With Stories of Their Inspired Creations. New York and London: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1918. pp. 353.

31. Earhart, Will. Music to the Listening Ear. New York: M. Whitmark and Sons, 1932. pp. xiv, 173.

32. Elson, A. The Book of Musical Knowledge; The History, Technique and Appreciation of Music, Together with Lives of the Great Composers. Boston: Houghton, 1915. pp. 603.

33. Erb, John Lawrence. Music Appreciation for the Student. New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1926. pp. xv, 231.

34. Erickson, Robert. The Structure of Music: A Listener's Guide. New York: Noonday Press, 1955. pp. xi, 209.

35. Erskine, John, ed. A Musical Companion. New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1935. pp. v-xvi, 516.

36. . What is Music? Philadelphia and New York: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1944. pp. v, 212.

37. Faulkner, Anne Shaw. Music in the Home, An Aid to Parents and Teachers in the Cause of Better Listening. Chicago: R.F. Seymour, 1917. pp. 155.

38. . What We Hear in Music. Camden, N.J.: Educational Department, Victor Talking Machine Company, 1913. pp. 441.

39. Feldman, Harry Allen. Music and the Listener. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1939. pp. 205.

40. Ferguson, Donald Nivison. Masterworks of the Orchestral Repertoire; A Guide for Listeners. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1954. pp. xxii, 662.

41. . The Why of Music; Dialogues in an Unexplored Region of Appreciation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969. pp. iv, 309.

42. Ferraro, Louis, and Sam Adams. Music: Imaginative Listening. Baton Rouge, La.: Claitor's Publishing Division, 1969.

43. Finney, Theodore Mitchell. Hearing Music. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941. pp. x, 354.

44. Fishburn, Hummel. Fundamentals of Music Appreciation. New York: Longmans, Green, 1955. pp. 263.

45. Fox-Strangways, A.H. Music Observed. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, Inc., 1936. pp. vii-ix, 235.

46. Gammond, Peter. The Meaning and Magic of Music. Wayne, N.J.: Golden Press Western Publishing Co., Inc., 1970.

47. Garvie, Peter, ed. Music and Western Man. New York: Philosophical Library, 1958. pp. v-ix, 328.

48. Gerboth, Walter et al., eds. An Introduction to Music: Edited for the Brooklyn College Music Dept. New York: W.W. Norton, 1964. pp. vi, 214.

49. Giddings, Thaddeus Philander. Music Appreciation in the Schoolroom. Boston and New York: Ginn and Co., 1926. pp. vi, 557.

50. Gillespie, John. The Musical Experience. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1968. pp. xxi, 469.

51. Gilman, Lawrence. Stories of Symphonic Music. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1907. pp. 358.

52. Goetschius, Percy. Masters of the Symphony. Boston: Oliver Ditson Co., 1929. pp. x, 393.

53. Hall, Leland. Listeners' Music. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1937. pp. vii, 222.

54. Hamilton, Clarence Grant. Epochs in Musical Progress. Boston: Oliver Ditson Co., 1926. pp. 278.

55. Hess, Adelaide. A Short Introduction to Music. New York, N.Y.: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1954. pp. 34.

56. Hickok, Robert. Music Appreciation. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1971. pp. vii-viii, 409.

57. Hoffer, Charles R. The Understanding of Music. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1967. pp. xviii, 483.

58. Janson, H.W., and Joseph Kerman. A History of Art and Music. New York: Prentice-Hall, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1968. pp. xxii, 318.

59. Jarvis, Harriette. Music, Listen and Learn. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Co. Publishers, 1972.

60. Karolyi, Otto. Introducing Music. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965.

61. Katz, Adele T. HearingGateway to Music; a Complete Foundation for Musical Understanding. Evanston, Ill.: Summy-Birchard Pub. Co., 1959. pp. 172.

62. Kerman, Joseph. Listen. New York, N.Y.: Worth Publishers, Inc., 1972. pp. v-viii, 392.

63. Kinscella, Hazel Gertrude. Kinscella Music Appreciation Readers. New York: The University Publishing Company, 1926.

64. . Music and Romance for Youth. Camden, N.J.: Education Dept., RCA Victor Co., Inc., 1930. pp. 422.

65. Kirby, Frank E. An Introduction to Western Music: Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Stravinsky. New York: Macmillan, 1970. pp. vii-ix, 456.

66. Kobbé, Gustav. How to Appreciate Music. New York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1912. pp. 275.

67. Krehbiel, Henry Edward. How to Listen to Music: Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art. New York: Ch. Scribner's Sons, 1896. pp. xv, 361.

68. Leichtentritt, Hugo. Music, History, and Ideas. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938. pp. 292.

69. Lowance, Kathleen. Much Ado About Music; A Road to Happy Listening, Illustrated by John Anderson. Atlanta, Georgia: Tupper and Love, 1952. pp. 241.

70. Machlis, Joseph. The Enjoyment of Music: An Introduction to Perceptive Listening. New York: W.W. Norton, 1955. pp. xx, 682.

71. Mason, Daniel Gregory. Ears to Hear. Chicago: American Library Association, 1925. pp. 35.

72. . From Song to Symphony: A Manual of Music Appreciation. Boston: Oliver Ditson Co., 1924.

73. . A Guide to Music for Beginners and Others, Vol. V of The Appreciation of Music Series, 5 vols. by D.G. Mason and Thomas Surette. New York: H.W. Gray, 1909. pp. 243.

74. Mathews, William Smythe. How to Understand Music: A Concise Course in Musical Intelligence and Taste, 2 vols. Philadelphia: T. Presser, 1880 and 1888. pp. 216 and 80.

75. . The Masters and Their Music: A Series of Illustrative Programs, with Biographical, Esthetical, and Critical Annotations. Designed as an Introduction to Music as Literature. For the Use of Clubs, Classes, and Private Study. (Philadelphia, 1898.) Facsimile edition, Philadelphia: Theodore Presser, 1971. pp. iii-vii, 248.

76. McKinney, Howard D. Music and Man. New York: American Book Co., 1948. pp. 405.

77. . The Challenge of Listening. Rutgers College, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1943. pp. 302.

78. and W.R. Anderson. Discovering Music. New York: American Book Co., 1934.

79. . Music in History: The Evolution of an Art. New York: American Book Co., 1954. pp. v-vii, 904.

80. Miller, Hugh Milton. Introduction to Music; A Guide to Good Listening. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1958. pp. 260.

81. Miller, William H. Introduction to Music Appreciation: An Objective Approach to Listening. Philadelphia: Chilton Company Book Division, 1961. pp. xvii, 329.

82. Mohler, Louis. Teaching Music from an Appreciative Basis. Boston and New York: C.C. Birchard and Co., 1927. pp. 159.

83. Moore, Douglas. A Guide to Musical Styles: From Madrigal to Modern Music. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1942. pp. ix-xii, 347.

84. . Listening to Music. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1932. pp. viii, 296.

85. Moyer, Dorothy Tremble. Introduction to Music Appreciation and History, for the Division of University Extension, Massachusetts Department of Education. New York: C.H. Ditson and Co., 1923. pp. vi, 137.

86. Nadeau, Roland, and William Tesson. Listen; A Guide to the Pleasures of Music. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1968. pp. xiii, 446.

87. . Music for the Listener. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1968. pp. x, 484.

88. Nallin, Walter E. The Musical Idea: A Consideration of Music and Its Ways. New York: Macmillan Company, 1968. pp. xviii, 650.

89. Newman, William S. Understanding Music. New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1953. pp. xxii, 330.

90. Ostransky, Leroy. Perspectives on Music. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969. pp. vii-ix, 430.

91. . The World of Music. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969. pp. xii, 243.

92. Randolph, David. This is Music; A Guide to the Pleasures of Listening. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1964. pp. 273.

93. Ratner, Leonard. Music: The Listener's Art. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957. pp. 463.

94. Russell, Myron E. A Guide for Exploring Music. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Co., 1955. pp. vi, 130.

95. Sacher, Jack, and James Eversole. The Art of Sound: An Introduction to Music. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971. pp. xx, 332.

96. Scholes, Percy Alfred. The Listener's Guide to Music, with a Concert-Goer's Glossary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1919. pp. vii, 106.

97. Scholl, Sharon, and Sylvia White. Music and the Culture of Man. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970. pp. v-vi, 307.

98. Schroeder, Ira. Listener's Handbook; A Guide to Music Appreciation. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1958. pp. x, 194.

99. Sessions, Roger. The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950. pp. iv, 127.

100. Skolsky, Syd. Make Way for Music. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1946. pp. 138.

101. Smith, Charles Thomas. Music and Reason; The Art of Listening, Appreciating and Composing. New York: Social Sciences Publishers, 1948. pp. ix, 158.

102. Spaeth, Sigmund Gottfried. The Art of Enjoying Music. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1933. pp. xiv, 451.

103. . The Common Sense of Music. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924. pp. 375.

104. . Stories Behind the World's Great Music. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937. pp. xiv, 373.

105. Spalding, Walter Raymond. Music: An Art and a Language. Boston and New York: The Arthur P. Schmidt Co., 1920. pp. ii, 342.

106. Stone, Kathryn E. Music Appreciation Taught by Means of the Phonograph, For Use in Schools. Chicago and New York: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1922. pp. 175.

107. Strickling, George Franklin. Music Literature; A Practical Music Appreciation Book for Everybody. St. Louis: M.A. Shickman, 1956. pp. 104.

108. Stringham, Edwin John. Listening to Music Creatively. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1946. pp. xx, 479.

109. Taylor, Deems. The Well Tempered Listener. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940. pp. xvi, 333.

110. Thompson, Oscar. How to Understand Music. New York: The Dial Press, 1935. pp. 347.

111. Tischler, Hans. The Perceptive Music Listener. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1955. pp. xxii, 458.

112. Ulrich, Homer. Music: A Design for Listening. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1962. pp. vi, 502.

113. Veinus, Abraham, and William Fleming. Understanding Music: Style, Structure, and History. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958.

114. Walter, Don C. Men and Music in Western Culture. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1969. pp. viii, 244.

115. Weinstock, Herbert. What Music Is. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1966. pp. xxxv, 396.

116. Welch, Roy Dickinson. The Appreciation of Music. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1927. pp. xv, 192.

117. White, John D. Understanding and Enjoying Music. New York and Toronto: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1968. pp. 345.

118. Wilm, Mrs. Grace Gridley. The Appreciation of Music; Ten Talks on Musical Form. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928. pp. xi, 139.

119. Wink, Richard L., and Lois G. Williams. Invitation to Listening: An Introduction to Music. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972. pp. ix-x, 289.

120. Winold, Allen. Elements of Musical Understanding. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966. pp. 404.

121. Wold, Milo, and Edmund Cykler. An Introduction to Music and Art in the Western World. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Co. Publishers, 1955. pp. ii, 320.

122. Zuckerkandl, Victor. The Sense of Music. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959. pp. v-viii, 246.

LIST B

College Music Appreciation Texts
Ordered by Year of Publication,
Including Reference to Reviews
from 1960 to March 1971

Abbreviations keyed to the Music Index.

¹Music for the General College Student (New York, 1944), p. 132.

²AMS Press recently reprinted the fifth edition of this (c1888) with the original title page reading: How to Understand Music: A Concise Course by Object Lessons and Essays.

³How to Listen to Music, pp. 13-14.

A History of Music and Musical Style, by Homer Ulrich and Paul A. Pisk. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963. [viii, 696 p. 8vo; $7.50]

Unflagging concern with actual music, with specific musical ingredients, informs the new history of music by Professor Homer Ulrich, Head of the Department of Music at the University of Maryland, and Professor Paul A. Pisk of the University of Texas. Concentration on style characteristics justifies the full title of the work, A History of Music and Musical Style. Style is thus advanced from its position in the subtitle of The Art of Music: A Short History of Musical Styles and Ideas (1960) by Beekman C. Cannon, Alvin H. Johnson, and William G. Waite. And further implementation is given to Donald Jay Grout's declaration in the Preface to A History of Western Music (1960): "The history of music is primarily the history of musical style."

The book lives up to its title. Each new period is introduced by a straightforward and clarifying chapter such as "The Emergence of Renaissance Style." So for the Baroque and for the Classical, but the last two periods are significantly inflected into the plural: "Romantic Styles" and "Contemporary Styles." Nothing startling is said, but what is said is concrete and available. And this applies to the summaries of style characteristics of individuals, especially those flourishing in the individualistic nineteenth century. Among particular men the plural is reserved for Stravinsky (a "panorama of styles") although it may some day be decided that Stravinsky, like Picasso, really had only one style in diverse guises.

What makes all these style studies come alive is the profusion of musical examples, 230 all told, an unprecedented number for a book of this kind. As never before, American music and twentieth-century music, including the most recent, begin to receive their due. Professor Ulrich's chapter on "Three Centuries of American Music" is valuable and unique among current histories of music. American music needs special, even if segregated, attention of this kind as long as America remembers Janaček and forgets Chadwick, his Leipzig Conservatory classmate of roughly equal talent. Professor Pisk, long active both in Europe and in this country as a composer, has provided a well ordered and wide ranging conspectus of twentieth-century music.

As might be expected, at least in this generation, the only music covered is Western art music. The full force of ethnomusicology is yet to be felt. It so happens that the single reference to the new discipline is one that might astonish its practitioners. In the discussion of the origins of music the sentence appears, "In the twentieth century an entirely new science, comparative musicology (ethnomusicology), seems to have arrived at a more valid theory: music began with singing, independent of language." This theory is far from universally accepted among scholars, ethnomusicological or otherwise.

The bibliography is carefully selected and highly usable, both the general references and those for particular periods. The illustrations are apposite and rewarding, especially those setting the stage for the successive chapters. The index is sensibly arranged. Compositions are listed under distinctive title when there is one. Symphonies and the like appear under the composer's name. A few entries got mysteriously left out. For example, the only Stravinsky ballet in the index is The Flood (1962), although the great ones are discussed in the text. Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges is in, but War and Peace, described as his "most important opera," is out. Riders to the Sea is not listed whereas the Britten operas included in the same paragraph do appear.

The final end paper has a chart of "The Major Musical Forms: Origins and Principal Connections," presented with an unusually keen sense of proportion and perspective. The layman, it is hoped, will be able to surmise that there was really plenty of secular music before the year 1000 and instrumental music before the year 1500, however scanty its survival in written records, which were so largely in the custody of the vocally minded clergy.

Most aspects of music are handled in a straightforward and satisfactory manner. The Greeks and the modes, however, are too much encrusted with theory. Modes are such distinctive things that one ought to name them as effortlessly as the colors of the rainbow. Yet musicians with much training often cannot. For that reason I wish the accepted—if historically suspect—names had been hammered in. Instead, much emphasis is placed on the now disused Greek terminology, and when the church modes are first taken up they are blazoned forth as "protus authenticus," "tritus plagalis," and the like. Only in connection with Zarlino does the "blue" scale get its most needed name: Mixolydian.

Such detail concerning Greek theory and such an excellent reproduction of the drinking song on the tomb of Seikilos, yet no example of Greek music in modern notation. The lay reader, not planning to look music up in the anthologies, should know what scholars believe this engaging song sounds like.

Ulrich and Pisk deserve real credit for rejecting the term "Neapolitan opera." As they say, the term requires modification in the light of recent research. The operas of Alessandro Scarlatti are basically late Baroque—and so are those of his contemporaries throughout Italy. The operas of the next generation, Pergolesi, and Scarlatti's pupils such as Hasse, are fundamentally early Classic—and so are those of their contemporaries throughout Italy. It was the simple, tuneful style of this second generation that Charles Burney had in mind when he used the word "Neapolitan."

The recent research mentioned includes Edward Downes' paper, "The Neapolitan Tradition," discussed at the International Musicological Congress in 1961. Downes points out that Burney grasped the significance of "the epoch-making style-break" between "what we now call late Baroque and early Classical." These are the style divisions that I call the elaborate phase of the Amphonic Period and the experimental phase of the Homophonic Period. Admittedly the two phases overlap, but surely Scarlatti belongs to the earlier one. Characteristically he still sets a driving bass line in opposition to the principal melody.

The opera for which a new term is being sought was composed, as Downes says, after Alessandro Scarlatti's disappearance from the Neapolitan stage. "The Pre-Classical Opera" is a good name for it ("Early Classical" would be still better). Therefore, under the large heading "The Pre-Classical Opera," it is somewhat confusing to find, even with qualifications, the names of Alessandro Scarlatti and indeed of the middle Baroque composer, Provenzale.

This section knocks down one straw man, the "new 'Neapolitan overture,' as it is generally called." Certainly a wide variety of scholars invariably call it the "Italian overture"—and will be glad to keep on doing so. But the important thing is that the book gives welcome impetus to the movement for completely abolishing "Neapolitan" as a stylistic term.

To go still further, the general principle of replacing ambiguous geographical terms by inherently stylistic ones is much to be encouraged. The pity is that no one has yet uprooted the hardy notion that a particular generation of Flemish musicians should be dubbed "Burgundian composers" because they were in the service of the House of Burgundy. We are still told that Dufay was a Burgundian composer. Yet his life centered about the cathedral of Cambrai in French Flanders. Only occasionally was he found at the court of the Great Duke of the West. On the other hand textbooks agree in calling the Duke's valet de chambre Jan van Eyck a "Flemish painter" and Antoine Busnois, chapel singer to Charles the Bold of Burgundy, a "Flemish composer." Here is a problem of terminology that still needs to be grappled with.

In general The History of Music and Musical Style maintains a high level of typographical, terminological, and chronological accuracy. Two lines of type misplaced on p. 247 stand out in a work so carefully printed and edited. A bass clef at the bottom of p. 485 throws for a brief instant an eerie light on Brahms' harmony. The B flat in the middle of the first tone row on p. 611 should be a B natural. And I can never be reconciled to spelling the Italian word timpani with a letter that does not exist in the Italian language.

Terms are nearly always well chosen and defined. For example, heterophony (the index should read p. 7) is described as "the appearance of melodic variants which occur when two or more groups sing the same tune simultaneously." It is to be hoped that heterophony will continue to have this useful meaning of simultaneous melodic variants, although some literal minded etymologists want the meaning of hetero to be different.

In considering terminology, however, attention must be called to the fact that a sequence is a special kind of trope, that Java is a particular part of Indonesia, and that the Separatists were quite separate from the Puritans. As a devoted descendant of them both, I like to distinguish between the musically sophisticated Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth and the ballad-minded Puritans who landed at Boston. Confusion on this matter (p. 165) is actually cleared up on p. 633.

In doing away with the image of Okeghem as an ogre of contrapuntal subtlety, the authors go too far in presenting Example 50, an excerpt from his Missa mi-mi, as "non-imitative." It is an excellent example of what might better be called inexact imitation. The description of twelve-tone writing on p. 594 says, "No tone may be repeated before all of the others have been used." A small point, but an important one: no tone may be returned to, etc. The immediately repeated noted is such a cliché of some twelve-tone music that it has been called the "Morse code technique."

A few questions of chronology: Placing the extreme emotions of Gesualdo's madrigals in "about 1585" seems too early (p. 245). I have always thought of Palestrina and Lasso as safely dead in 1594 before this "high point" of pathos was reached. And indeed Alfred Einstein in The Italian Madrigal (p. 698) says that "the true Gesualdo, the Gesualdo who made the impression upon the following generation and upon posterity in general, does not appear until after 1594."

On p. 303 we read that Handel's organ concertos are for manuals alone in keeping with "the English practice of using small organs without pedals in the theater." The suggestion is that church organs in England had pedals in Handel's time, whereas they do not become the fashion until after his death. And finally there is no mention of Darius Milhaud's many years (or at least alternate years) of teaching at Mills College since 1947.

But these objections are a small winnowing indeed after the rich harvest Ulrich and Pisk have provided us. They propel our eyes from the staffless neumes of Gregorian chant to the manuscript of Milton Babbitt's Ensembles for Synthesizer—staffless neumes of the late twentieth century. They carry our ears from the cantillation of the ancient Hebrews to Elliott Carter's metrical modulation. They provide us with a comprehensive history of musical style valuable alike to the layman and to the musician.

A Hundred Years of Music, by Gerald Abraham. Revised Third Edition. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1964. [325 p., 8vo; $6.95]

Many of those who teach so-called "period" courses on Romantic music will welcome the reappearance, in a slightly revised third edition, of Gerald Abraham's A Hundred Years of Music. The hundred years to which Abraham refers is the century between the 1830's and the 1930's, though he comments briefly on the music of Britten, Henze, Harris, Blacher, Messiaen, Copland, Stockhausen, and Boulez.

In the republished preface to the first edition (1938), Abraham makes it clear that his approach to the subject ". . . has been that of the historian of musical style rather than that of the aesthetic critic." He thus neatly defines in advance of the fact the principal difference between his book and the other important book in English on the subject, Einstein's Music in the Romantic Era (1947). Einstein provides hundreds of striking insights into the sociology and philosophy of nineteenth century music while avoiding many of the basic issues of style-criticism. Abraham, on the other hand, spends much of his space offering neat and convincing explanations of such fundamental things as the importance of Bogen structures in Die Walküre, the deliberate thickness of Brahms's orchestration, the quasi-modality of certain Puccini harmonies, and so on.

While A Hundred Years of Music may do little to prick the imagination of the experienced scholar, it is an excellent textbook for the advanced undergraduate and the beginning graduate student. Its literary style is lean without being dull, its content analytical without being tedious.

Lessons from the World: A Cross-Cultural Guide to Music Teaching and Learning, by Patricia Shehan Campbell. New York: Schirmer Books, A Division of Macmillan, 1991. xv + 331 pp. ISBN 0-02-872361-9. 

This volume represents the first truly global view of music education under one cover. Campbell, as one of a small cadre of educators working to knit together the fields of music education and ethnomusicology, is well qualified for the venture that she undertook. She is an experienced teacher in public school music and higher education as well as a well-traveled field researcher in ethnomusicology. She is co-editor of Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education (published by the Music Educators National Conference), along with other ethnic teaching materials, and currently serves as chair of the Education Committee of the Society for Ethnomusicology. The list of acknowledgments to persons who reviewed and advised on the manuscript of this text includes prominent people in both fields. One can be confident that the book is authoritative.

The breadth of the material is evident in the extensive bibliography. Campbell has drawn not only on the literature of music education and ethnomusicology, but also from music history, applied music, education, anthropology, and psychology.

The scope of the book, however, has been delimited by a clearly defined purpose, as stated in the Preface:

This book examines the importance of ear-training and the creative process of improvisation in the history of European art music, in a sampling of world cultures, and in the making of young musicians in contemporary music education settings. It recognizes the value of listening skills without diminishing the importance of notation as a teaching instrument and memory aid. Moreover, it recommends ear-training and creative experiences that lead to the greater musicianship of students in various stages of their development.

The ultimate aim of these chapters is to recognize improvisation as a key component of music performance, to note the role of aural training in developing one's creative capacity to improvise, and to recommend ways of stimulating the creative musical expression of students. Most music educators and instructors agree that there is more to music than can be notated, but the matters of how to realize the score, how to enliven printed music with personal feelings, and how to invent new music spontaneously are sometimes puzzling and problematic. The extent to which observation, imitation, repetition, vocalization, and solmization are employed in the instructional process is surveyed over time (history) and distance (world cultures); then recommendations are made for the application of these teaching and learning techniques to classroom and studio. The instructional strategies emphasize aural training and the oral transmission process; along with performance techniques and an understanding of notation as a learning aid, they lead directly to improvisation and a truly creative musicianship (xii).

The latter part of the last sentence is not an abstract goal. In fact, the development of improvisation and creativity is the primary focus of the book. Many concrete examples are given of learning processes for improvisation in diverse cultures, and specific classroom and studio procedures are illustrated for developing improvisation and creativity.

Campbell defines the audience to whom the book is directed:

This volume is intended for music teachers at every level, but in particular those engaged in teaching kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) general music, conducting choral and instrumental ensembles, and offering private studio instruction. It should be a helpful addendum to books that present the foundations of music education history, philosophy, and contemporary curriculum practices. Its use as an ideas and issues resource in undergraduate methods courses as well as in graduate seminars will inform readers of the nature of music teaching and learning in many contexts (xii).

The breadth of cultures that Campbell explores is one of the strengths of the book. She has left few stones unturned in her survey of both Western and non-Western approaches to a musical education. Some readers who already are quite thoroughly schooled in the history of Western music, in the Orff, Kody, and Dalcroze procedures, or who are experienced teachers in the studio, may become a bit impatient with her review of familiar ground. Nonetheless, it does not hurt to take a fresh look at the familiar from the specific perspective of the development of aural skills and creativity, and to compare that with methodologies of other times and places. The book should be especially helpful to the teacher-in-training and younger teacher in the field, as it broadens one's view of music education, provides a synthesis of many areas of study pertinent to the field, and focuses on an aspect of music training that has been neglected but underlies much of what musicians do—the development of the ear. Campbell notes that, for all the increasing emphasis on performance and musical literacy throughout the twentieth century in America, "the matter of ear-training, although invariably acknowledged as a curricular objective, was often peripheral rather than central to the daily music class, rehearsal, or lesson" (72).

This concern with the importance of the ear as the basis of musicianship has led her to state the following limitation:

This book is not an ethnomusicology text . . . nor is it designed for teaching the world's music. It does not attempt to describe instruments or genres of various world traditions nor to suggest strategies in multicultural music education; there are numerous volumes that address these matters in detail. Instead, the emphasis in these pages is given to the aural and creative components of music teaching and learning as part of a shared human experience. Historical as well as cultural vignettes provide a sampling of music across time and distance as it is experienced through listening, creating, and re-creating (xiii).

Certain themes and issues are carried throughout the book and are the basis for the organization of many of the chapters. Campbell describes them this way:

Issues concerning the techniques of aural learning and imitation, notation and improvisation, vocalization and solmization, and memory strategies are discussed in theory and as they are presently employed; their widespread use suggests that there may be cross-cultural similarities in the way music is taught and learned, regardless of style or culture. The comparison here of traditional techniques of many cultures with current practices in the training of professional musicians in Western-styled schools, universities, and conservatories is designed to present a balance of Western and world tradition and innovation in music education (xiii).

The text is divided into three parts. The first is "Music Learning in the West." The opening chapter sets the philosophical foundation for the contemporary curriculum through a review of a number of innovative projects and symposia, including the Young Composers Project, the Yale Seminar, the Comprehensive Musicianship program, the Manhattanville Music Curriculum Program, the Tanglewood Symposium, and the Ann Arbor Symposia. Campbell concludes that "of particular interest is the extent to which creativity and musicianship, including ear-training, music literacy, performance skills, and listening were advocated by expert musicians and educators alike" (8). She examines the current status of the curriculum in respect to the teaching of performance skills, music reading, aural skills, solmization and vocalization, and creativity.

Chapters 2 and 3 review the history of ear-training and the creative process in European art music from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the present. Campbell covers such subjects as the early choir schools, the development of notation, apprentice musicians, the growth of academies, universities, guilds, and conservatories, and the development of improvisation and virtuosity as evidenced in early times and in the application of such techniques as basso continuo, ornamentation, appoggiaturas, cadenzas, and solmization up to aleatoric modern music. She notes that "the art of classical music in the West thus encompasses not only the composer's genius but also the performer's gifts of listening and expressing creatively" (38).

Chapter 4 traces the history of the teaching and learning of music in America, and Chapter 5 reviews various theories of music learning. The latter chapter distinguishes between enculturation, training, and schooling, then gives summaries of cognitive psychology; developmental psychology; behavioral approaches to learning; aural, visual and kinesthetic modes of learning; theories of creativity; and creativity in musical improvisation and composition. What is most striking about this review is the sense that there is no one "correct" theory of learning, but that some aspects of each of these theories can inform the curriculum. Campbell's discussion also identifies many areas for further research.

In concluding the section on creativity, she states:

Children possess the potential for creative musical behaviors although these abilities may often be held in reserve. School music instruction seldom encourages divergent or critical thinking; instead it emphasizes the convergent thinking needed for performance and knowledge about music . . . . When divergent thinking is encouraged . . . creative music-making through improvisation and composition is well within the capability of elementary and middle school children, as it can also be nurtured in secondary school students (96).

Part II of the book is titled "Music Learning in the World." Chapter 6 looks cross-culturally at the subjects of aural learning and imitation, notation and improvisation, practice and rehearsal strategies, and musical style and oral tradition. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 examine aspects of traditional music learning in Japan, India, Thailand, China, Indonesia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the jazz world. The material is far too detailed to review here in any depth, but the following are some of the subjects covered for the various cultures: philosophical foundations (that is, the connection between music and religious principles); aural learning; the relation between teacher and student, including the teacher as model; the use of notation as a memory aid; oral transmission; various schools of tradition; the vocal foundation of learning and performance; the bases of improvisation; the social context of music; types of lessons and training; the learning progression; concepts of the sources of music; music as life experience; the importance of listening in learning; the kinesthetic aspect of learning and performance; the use of mnemonics; and the meaning and function of text. Among the conclusions that Campbell draws from this world-wide survey are the importance of observation, imitation, repetition, and vocalization as prominent learning strategies (157); the predominant role of the teacher as a source of knowledge, as a model, and as the preserver and transmitter of musical culture (135, 157); and the wide-spread use of improvisation based upon a well-trained ear. "Learning to listen and listening to learn prepare performers of diverse musical cultures and styles for improvisation as the ultimate level of musical performance" (185).

There are two other impressions from these chapters that I would like to highlight. In the chapter on music learning in America, Campbell refers to the note versus rote controversy. No doubt, many teachers view rote learning as a rather mindless imitation of the teacher by students. However, in the rote form of teaching in India, "imitation is viewed as a higher-order aural perceptual skill" (127). "The phrases presented by the teacher in a lesson are used later in improvisations by students" (126). The idea of proceeding from rote to creativity forms the basis of the last part of the book in which Campbell presents applications of teaching techniques from world cultures.

The other pertinent point from chapters 7-9 is the significance of the context of the learning situation. These contexts vary from the intimate guru-student relationship of Indian classical music to the ensemble-based learning of the Indonesian gamelan orchestra to the communal observation-imitation-participation basis of learning in some African cultures. The context of the American school system is different, yet Campbell has done very well in extracting techniques from these various cultures that are adaptable to the American system. One might wonder whether all of the descriptions of the types of musical systems that Campbell covers will be completely comprehensible to persons who are not familiar with the music and who may therefore lack a frame of reference for comprehension. Nonetheless, she has been conscientious in defining terms and has stated clearly the principles and techniques that she has extracted.

In Chapter 10, "Tradition and Change: Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Music Instruction in World Cultures," Campbell focuses particularly on the impact of industrialization, urbanization, international communication, and Westernization on music and music learning in several cultures. She concludes: "But even as traditions change, certain elements are retained because their continued use makes sense to people within the culture. In the training of musicians, the development of aural skills and creative expression through vocalization and memory strategies appears constant across many cultures" (206).

Part III of the book is titled "Classroom and Studio Applications." After the review of learning in world cultures, one might expect that Campbell would propose a revolutionary approach to the curriculum, one that might be difficult to implement. But, in fact, she does not; she does a sensitive job of presenting techniques that can be blended into a curriculum quite readily.

Chapter 11 is "The Music Learning of Children." After brief comments on the current curriculum and basal series, she reviews the teachings of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Carl Orff, and Zoltan Kodály in terms of techniques for kinesthetic learning, aural skills, improvisation, imitation, retention, and notation. She then draws parallels from Western and world cultures. In the remainder of the chapter, she presents twelve "Focus experiences . . . developed with the intention of strengthening the student's listening and performance skills" (230). She notes that the experiences are intended for children in elementary grades, but are adaptable for other levels. The experiences include daily listening, imitation of brief phrases, use of a mnemonics system, pattern recognition and performance, question and answer phrases, tune identification, silent singing, and various improvisatory and creative activities leading to the creation of a complete song. Musical examples are provided, drawn from various cultures.

Chapter 12 is "Music Learning in the Ensemble Setting." Campbell reviews the history of school ensembles, theories of learning in performing groups, and the nature of musical behavior in world ensembles. Again there are twelve experiences, ranging from listening to memory development to improvisation. She suggests ways in which these activities can be accomplished in relatively brief segments of the rehearsal period, such as during the warm-up.

Chapter 13 is similar in format, but devoted to the private studio lesson.

Campbell closes the book with the following observations:

If there was a single message among the Focus experiences, it was that teachers have the potential within their daily schedules to develop a comprehensive musicianship in their students, regardless of the educational setting.

Without impeding music literacy, the use of modeling, imitative devices, improvisation, and strategies for strengthening the memory can lead to greater musical sensitivity in student musicians. This book does not advocate immediate short-cuts to music reading through excessive verbatim exercises, nor does it attempt to nurture functional illiterates who cannot realize rhythms or melodies without modeling, and who cannot think musically and creatively for themselves. Instead, the implication throughout these pages was that the key to musicianship must be a balanced diet of aural and literate exercises, with occasional opportunities for creative musical expression (308).

Lessons from the World is a book that blends well the theoretical and the practical. Readers will find it useful for its concise review of philosophy and learning theories, for its history of the teaching and learning process in music throughout the world, and for its applicability in teaching. It should also encourage many readers to explore a wider range of musics from around the world.

Music Since 1945: Issues, Materials, and Literature, by Elliott Schwartz and Daniel Godfrey. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995. xvi + 640 pp. ISBN 0-06-019046-9.

A review of an extensive review is in essence what the following combination of patter is intended to produce. Not that Music Since 1945, by Elliot Schwartz and Daniel Godfrey, should be considered a review, although it could function very well as such—and more—for those who think themselves to be already well versed in the music of our time. The book is rather an introduction, one that certainly provides an informed, informative and well-rounded condensation of this most complex yet exciting and multifaceted era of musical history and musical invention. Some believe the text leans heavily toward appreciation. If so, this is exactly what is needed in presenting our era to upper-level undergraduate music majors in both professional and liberal arts settings, as well as to graduate music students specializing in music history, theory, composition, performance, or education, and to anyone else. It also supplies user-friendly guidelines for practical musical analysis, and it provides a wealth of historical background on the grand range of recent advanced developments in music. It thus succeeds in leading its readers out of the warmth and familiarity of the masterpiece cave into the light of discovery.

Challenging. Intelligent. As comprehensive as possible. Diverse. Balanced. Like good lawyers, Schwartz and Godfrey ask searching questions. Also like good lawyers, they usually have answers to the questions that they ask.

I once had the blessing of sitting in on the classes of a brilliant philosophy professor. His clever, enthusiastic arguments and defenses of each philosopher's viewpoints were far more than exceptional academic duty. He knew the material so well and had such a command of the various views that he actually "became" the philosopher of the day. Some students never realized this and became emotionally involved when facing "Aristotle" or "Hume." They didn't realize they were up against the "historical figure," not the terrific, otherwise-endearing teacher himself. In fact, after being blasted by "Kant," one student stomped out and never returned. The point here is that Schwartz and Godfrey display the same committed quality when illustrating the vastly different aesthetic goals and compositional approaches of composers at work since 1945. Equally supportive when presenting the inventiveness of Milton Babbitt's hexachordal combinatoriality, Earle Brown's ground-breaking notation and musical forms, Samuel Barber's tonal explorations, Jacob Druckman's elegant collage technique, Donald Erb's innovative command of orchestration, or Mario Davidovsky's remarkable electronic pieces, for instance, this text encourages students to discard prior assumptions and biases as they explore the rich palette of music in our time.

But on occasion, I found myself asking—you may ask yourself—"yes, but what about . . . ?" Subsequently, my questions were usually answered.

The authors convey their appreciation of the many aesthetic approaches without hinting at their own particular bias. They present works in a positive light. They give all styles—from the ascetic conservative to the cutting-edge avant garde—equal backing and support. This genuine receptiveness is rare and refreshing. It may also prompt criticism from those remaining steadfastly in one camp or another. Perhaps we are beyond that. The book confirms the achievements of many composers of monumental integrity who happen to have arrived at their present levels by having traveled along many routes from different points of departure.

The book is divided into four parts. Part I, "Precedents, Influences, and Early Postwar Trends," beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century and ending in the late 1950s, examines the origins of Modernism in music. Part II, "New Aesthetic Approaches," covers the peak years of postwar Modernism, from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. Part III, "More Recent Developments," is devoted to the development of postmodernism, from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s; and Part IV, "Issues and Directions," deals with persistent themes of the postwar period, such as the role of notation, national traditions, and new approaches to traditional genres. And by integrating the aspects of music—theory, history, literature, and aesthetics—rather than concentrating on only one of those dimensions, Music Since 1945 avoids the pungent whiffs of academic formaldehyde common to myopic, compartmentalized musico-dissection. This text "examines how composers and listeners deal with pitch logic, process, texture, sound color, time, performance ritual, parody/historicism, notation, and technology." These nine factors are used effectively throughout the book's four parts as a means to compare, contrast and illustrate musical topics, similarities and differences.

A major advantage of this text is its inclusion of electronic/computer music. Two of the twenty-one chapters are devoted solely to electronic music. These chapters showcase the authors' direct, communicative style, which elegantly codifies this multifaceted material. Chapter Eight, of Part II: "New Aesthetic Approaches," covers expanding philosophies, the first major developments, the American pioneers, early classical studios and associated composers, synthesizers, and tape music with live instruments. It is introduced with prophetic precedents such as Busoni's famous "Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music" (1907), which "predicted the widespread use of electronic musical machinery half a century in advance."Also noted is Francis Bacon's visionary "New Atlantis" (1624), in which he "imagined a music of 'quarter-tone sounds,' 'rings,' 'warblings,' and 'artificial echoes,' of voices made 'shriller,' 'deeper,' or 'louder' by artificial means, and of sounds conveyed over distances through 'trunks and pipes'—a startlingly accurate foretelling of such phenomena as microtones, reverberation, filtering, amplification, and electrical sound transmission." The musical contributions of Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henri, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Henk Badings, Mel Powell, Luciano Berio, Walter/Wendy Carlos, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Eaton, Morton Subotnick, Terry Riley, and Toshiro Mayazumi, among others, are mentioned along with their techniques of composition. Chapter Seventeen, "Computers and Digital Systems," distinguishes digital from analog technology in a straightforward fashion. Also noted are discoveries and developments in computer music, its capabilities, the computer in live performance, the vanishing boundary between acoustic and digital sound, and future developments—all quite readably chronicled and interwoven with the leading contributions of Paul Lansky, Tod Machover, Charles Dodge, and Max Matthews, et al.

Musical achievements by women composers are also brought to light in this volume, and thankfully notin a separate chapter. Logically interspersed with their male counterparts—imagine that!—we gratefully find Joan Tower, Sofia Gubaidulina, Libby Larsen, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Thea Musgrave, Kaija Saariaho, and others who not only make the pages, but indeed find some of their works and techniques highlighted in the Pieces for Study sections.

This brings us to a problem, not about gender, but about historical significance. I fully identify with the difficulty of determining whom to include and whom to omit but how can Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Brian Eno, and David Bowie land a few pages if Frank Zappa and his lifetime of eccentric contributions are not even mentioned? For one of the few American composers commissioned, performed, and recorded by Pierre Boulez not to receive even a line is a certain oversight that should be remedied in subsequent editions. One could easily cite other prominent, perhaps curious, omissions. Moreover, the "younger generation" paragraphs should be expanded to include a larger cross-section of our truly exceptional, clearly promising composers. The documented wide range of extraordinary talent already evident in the "established" generation lives in the younger composers as well, rising upon the horizon.

The book contains an extensive bibliography, divided into eleven sections, but it is also the select discography that separates this text from others, because at the time of this writing it is still current. The discs are reasonably available and can be found or ordered at the local record store. The at-home or in-the-car aural experience is what students require for future interest beyond academe. The discography is found at the end of the text and is logically organized paralleling the chapters of the text. Musical scores selected by the instructor from the bibliography can be ordered to amplify the students' absorption of the material.

I recommend this text to everyone. Those who know me will find this hard to believe, but I really did read every word of the book. I'm not sure I've ever done that before with any "textbook." It does need supplementing, and an accompanying anthology would be helpful. But it would be a pleasure to use this book, which in essence says with an outstretched hand, "welcome to the excitement and adventure that naturally results from living fully in one's own time."≈

Musicology ("Humanistic Scholarship in AmericaThe Princeton Studies"), by Frank Ll. Harrison, Mantle Hood, and Claude V. Palisca. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963. [xii, 337 p., 8vo; $8.95]

Thirty years ago musicology scarcely existed as far as American colleges and universities were concerned. "You might as well speak of grandmotherology" was the classic remark of Harvard's President Lowell. This book signifies the change that has taken place, for in it musicology takes its place beside its sister disciplines—history, classics, art history, literature, philosophy—in the reports sponsored by the Council of Humanities of Princeton University on the present state of humanistic scholarship in America. The general editor of the series, the distinguished historian Richard Schlatter, defines the role of the humanist scholar thus: as historian to organize our cultural inheritance and make it available to the present, and as critic to judge the present by the experience of the past. The three authors whose essays make up this book, each an outstanding musicologist, look as historian and critic upon musicology itself. The result is a stimulating and informative book, unprecedented as a history and critical examination of American musicology.

Frank Ll. Harrison, now teaching at Oxford but well acquainted with American universities and scholarship, writes on "American Musicology and the European Tradition." Claude V. Palisca, professor at Yale, reports on "American Scholarship in Western Music." Mantle Hood, ethnomusicologist at UCLA, contributes an essay on the growth of his field, "Music, The Unknown." Space limitations forbid a detailed report on everything discussed in these essays. I simply insist that everyone with an interest in music scholarship read this book. Though no textbook, it comes nearer than any to providing an up-to-date survey of the field, and teachers and graduate students will surely profit from it.

I shall limit this review to certain controversial matters raised in the essays by Harrison and Palisca.

Palisca, more than Harrison or Hood, is the spokesman here for American musicology. His approach is more historical than critical, but he begins with one of the most problematic questions of all—what is "musicology?" Palisca finds that American scholars have developed their own brand of musicology, narrowing the limits set by the German pioneers of the last century. Peripheral fields, such as acoustics, psychology, physiology, and pedagogy have been set to one side. Theory is largely left to composers, and esthetics to philosophers. Thus the "scientific" emphasis of 19th century European scholarship has given way to a more humanistic orientation, to which Palisca does not take exception. The definition at which he arrives is admirable: "The musicologist is concerned with music that exists, whether as an oral or a written tradition, and with everything that can shed light on its human context." By this definition, the ethnomusicologist is as much a musicologist as the historian. What about the theorist? To be sure, "theory" is many-sided. Some branches are extensions of the composer's training and activity, in which musicology for better or worse plays little part. There is also the field of speculative, or "pure" theory, closely linked to esthetics and not necessarily scholarly in nature. It too stands apart. We are left with "analytical" theory, systems of analysis based on existing bodies of music, generally within an historical category. Some musicologists are active in this area, but so are non-musicologists. Palisca pulls his punches here, though he does state firmly that analytical theory contributes to musicology. I would have preferred him to state that it is musicology. Analysis of music cannot disregard scholarship, which is the very means by which music of the past is made available to the scrutiny of the analyst. Moreover the historical context is essential to a correct understanding of any art, especially one transmitted by so limited a written language. (Harrison, by the way, insists strongly on a sociological orientation in style analysis—an attitude quite a bit more extreme than Palisca's.) Analysis not carried out within the framework of musicological method and in conformity with its standards is too apt to be amateurish, even dangerous.

Palisca traces the mushroom-like growth of musicology in America in the space of one generation, while underlining the long-held barrier to scholarship maintained by the old-line music faculties. Music in the 19th and early 20th century curriculum was an accessory, with no standing among learned disciplines. As the pressure for graduate degrees increased, the demand was first met by music educationists and conservatory teachers, whose ends were the practical ones of public school teaching and performance. Faculties and administrators often joined forces with them, for they knew that musicologists tended to be "difficult," insisting that libraries acquire basic reference and scholarly books and critical editions of music, and demanding the "dilution" of musical training by historical and liberal studies. This situation persisted throughout the '20's and '30's, and remains true in some schools today—to our sorrow. With the influx of European scholars, who had fled Nazi persecution and the war, these attitudes quickly changed. The new arrivals were accepted by their scholar colleagues. Then, and only then, did music departments open their doors to musicology. Scars of the old hostility still remain, within and without the academic community. Both Palisca and Harrison decry the failure of the publishing industry to meet its responsibility to musical scholarship in proportion to other disciplines.

Harrison's essay is less comfortable than Palisca's for American musicology. Much of it is a resumé—excellent, too—of the development of musical scholarship in Europe, and its transfer to America. Beyond this, Harrison is rather sharply critical of American musicology for adopting too much of the superstructure of European scholarship without its foundation. Harrison believes that the "professional" approach to musicology in higher education, such as is advocated by Bukofzer (in The Place of Musicology In American Institutions of Higher Learning) and practiced in most graduate schools, reinforces the cultural isolation of the scholar. He stresses that the humanist scholar must contribute to social communication, and deepen the understanding of music by nonscholars. The burden of Harrison's criticism properly falls on school and college music, which make the gap between society and scholarship inevitable. "So-called educational music," says Harrison, "is of poor taste and deleterious esthetic value." In most secondary schools "the attitude to the arts amounts to miseducation, because it fails to recognize in them an avenue to emotional maturity and control." By raising an artificial distinction between "popular" and "classical" music, he feels that the schools predetermine the cultural isolation of the musicologist. Lacking thorough undergraduate background in "practical" music, and ill-acquainted with his own cultural inheritance, the American graduate student marches behind his better-prepared European counterparts toward premature specialization.

All of us agree with Harrison's insistence that professional scholarship must be built on sound basic education. But surely musicologists are least to blame for the prevailing situation. Even college music, with which Harrison deals rather harshly, has made great strides in the last decade. Public school music is undoubtedly our Achilles heel, and it is proper that our attention be drawn to it.

Harrison's criticism of American musicology cannot fairly be applied to musicologists alone. Unilateral action by graduate faculties, whether it be introducing jazz into their curriculum, giving credit or degrees in performance, or instituting a course in the sociology of music, will not correct the basic weaknesses that the student brings with him, and might even undermine the standards of the program itself. Corrective action must be undertaken on all levels. It is about time, for example, that we insist upon humanistic as well as professional standards in teacher education.

The process desired by Harrison is moving ahead more rapidly than he may realize. The "appreciation" approach is retreating before solid historical and theoretical training of undergraduates. In addition, the failure of musicology to communicate with the general historian and humanist is also less apparent now than it was a few years ago. However, we all share the blame for whatever cleavage exists between the lay public and musicologists and between their two vastly different conceptions of music.

One example that Harrison cites to point up this lack of communication—even between musicologists and other scholars—is Wallace K. Ferguson's fundamental study of The Renaissance in Historical Thought (1947), which makes no reference to music or its historians. Ferguson's latest book, Europe in Transition, 1300-1520 (1962) more than makes amends, and well illustrates the change that is taking place in the general attitude toward musicology in America. Music is there accorded a place comparable to that of literature and the visual arts. The efforts of Bukofzer, Lang, Leichtentritt, Lowinsky, and Reese (all of whom are cited in the bibliography) have borne fruit in a work that will be widely read by undergraduates and laymen. This event is as important, in my opinion, as the publication of the Musicology volume in The Princeton Studies. Both are hopeful signs of the advancing maturity of American musicology.

New Oxford History of Music, vol. 9: Romanticism (1830-1890), edited by Gerald Abraham. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. xx + 935 pp. ISBN 0-19-316309-8.

It takes temerity these days to write a history of music. The very nature of "history," that ingenious compound of fact, perception, opinion, and bias, is being energetically questioned these days (not, of course, for the first time), and the assumption of expertise across a far-flung subject requires diligence and a spice of chutzpah. It may take even more chutzpah to assemble and edit a collection of heterogeneous chapters on different subdivisions (but how to cut the pie?) of an era (but how to determine where it begins and ends?). And histories are such tempting targets; critics refill their back orders of vitriol and warm up the word processors for a gleeful discourse on how the enterprise might have been wrought better. The bigger the target, the more ebullient the critics, and this is a very large target indeed. Therefore, before I begin cataloguing the sources of my displeasure with this volume, let me first hand out the verbal version of Purple Hearts to all involved in the enterprise and point out that there is much intriguing and useful information to be found here—the fact that there are four entire pages on the works of Ernest Reyer (1823-1909) is symptomatic both of the reigning virtue and vice of this collection.

This book is, like most such histories, massive and skimpy at the same time, massive in the aggregate, puny in the particulars. The volume begins with a minuscule introduction by Gerald Abraham, in which he evades the sticky problem of defining Romanticism, especially with regard to music (après Dahlhaus, this seems all the more problematic), and justifies the choice of the chronological boundary-markers of 1830-to-1890. Romanticism is of course multifarious and notoriously difficult to define, but more is required than one finds here. Citing the elderly Goethe's summations of Romanticism without reference to friendlier witnesses is comparable to asking a Reaganite conservative for a definition of liberal Democratic principles. Abraham's justification for beginning where he does is that the generation of 1830 (Berlioz, Chopin, Schumann, Glinka, Mendelssohn, et alii) was the first generation of full-fledged Romantics, whatever he conceives that to be—stating that it is "a concept [only one?] more easily recognized than defined" may be true, but begs the question. By beginning at 1830, Abraham thereby dodges, albeit unsuccessfully, the uncomfortable problem of so-called "transitional" figures, including Schubert, whose early lieder were indeed composed under the disparate signs of Mozart, Zumsteeg, and Gluck, but whose later lieder are surely Romantic, if anything at all is to be defined as such. Those essayists in this volume who begin their stints by acknowledging whatever in the immediate past bore most heavily on their subject compensate in some measure for the uneasy nature of beginnings and endings imposed on eras (Robert Pascall, for instance, writing of Beethoven's grip on later composers and the increased awareness of Baroque and late Renaissance repertoires). The deaths of Wagner, Liszt, and Franck, along with the impending deaths of Bruckner and Brahms, for Abraham spell the end of Romanticism's heyday and the emergence of various reactions to it.

After Abraham's introduction, the body of the book is divided into ten large chapters by genres, probably a necessary evil in such collections: chapters on orchestral music, chamber music, opera, and piano music, all considered through the twenty-year span from 1830 to 1850 that Abraham considers to be the first stage of Romanticism, followed by chapters on opera from 1850 to 1890, the symphonic poem and kindred forms, the major instrumental forms from 1850 to 1890, solo song, and choral music. "Wagner's Later Stage Works" enjoy a chapter all to themselves, by Arnold Whitall. Some of the chapters are written by a single person (chap. 1, "New Tendencies in Orchestral Music: 1830-1850" by Gerald Abraham; chap. 2, "Chamber Music: 1830-1850" by John Horton; chap. 4, "Romantic Piano Music: 1830-1850" by Willi Kahl; Whitall's chap. 5 on Wagner's later operas; chap. 7, "The Symphonic Poem and Kindred Forms" by Gerald Abraham; chap. 8, "Major Instrumental Forms: 1850-1890" by Robert Pascall; and chap. 10, "Choral Music" by Gerald Abraham), while the chapters on opera and solo song are subdivided into sections by nationality, each section by a different writer. For example, ch. 6, "Opera: 1850-1890," includes sections on German opera by Gerald Abraham, on French opera by David Charlton, on Italian opera by Julian Budden, on Russian and Eastern European opera by Gerald Abraham, and on British and American works by Nicholas Temperley. Much the same cast of characters, but with David Kimbell writing on Italian opera and Siegfried Goslich on German opera, is responsible for the discussion of opera in the second quarter of the century.

No doubt due to the chief editor's special interests, Russian and Eastern European music is everywhere evident, with sections on song in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Russia. Indeed, much of the volume is his contribution, constituting the final essays of an important nineteenth-century scholar; all of those grateful to Gerald Abraham for his considerable oeuvre and expertise will read his chapters, and even the exasperatingly brief introduction, in the valedictory awareness of his passing.

Elegiac sentiments, however, do not entirely mitigate the inequities evident everywhere: for example, Robert Pascall has the unenviable task of encompassing all of the major instrumental forms everywhere (piano sonata, piano variation, organ music, suite, serenade, symphony, and chamber music of all sorts) composed between 1850 and 1890—by anyone's estimation, eventful years—in a mere 114 pages. This is the sort of book that leads one to make quantitative comparisons—how many pages devoted to A versus how many pages devoted to B—and then fuss about the inevitable disparities.

Where there are so many cooks in the kitchen and thumbs in the pie, the quality is doomed to be uneven. Few of the chapters are as good as Whitall on Wagner, but then not many of the contributors had the luxury of a single composer and group of works on which to focus their attention. Consequently, Whitall could bring into his discussion such issues as the nomenclature of and distinction between various stages of Wagner's complicated creative process, the curious relationship between the works and the composer's life, the extent to which Tristan und Isolde is radical in its treatment of tonality, the contrast between Wagner's understanding of Siegfried as a character and ours, the long shadow Wagner cast over those who came after him, and much else. There is less resorting to laundry lists of names and compositions here and more encapsulated ideas and interpretations than elsewhere.

And there are other such pockets of excellence as well. Julian Budden's miniature disquisition on Italian opera from 1850-1890 is a model of its kind, beginning with a brief, clear summation of the historical situation after the revolutionary turmoil of 1848-9 in Europe and continuing with the state of Italian opera at mid-century; the pre-reform operas of Mercadante and Pacini; the resurgence of opera buffa; the reforms of Franco Faccio and Boito; the "Verdian synthesis" and Verdi's later operas; the conservatives and the radicals in late nineteenth-century Italy; and finally, the first hints of verismo. The writing is of a higher order than virtually anywhere else in the book. Budden's nutshell-sized opinions and summations are satisfying in themselves (for example, he invokes the "texture . . . as alive as that of a Beethoven quartet" in Falstaff) and impel the desire for further exploration of the compositions in questions—precisely what is called for in a book of this sort but is so difficult to achieve.

What sort is that, anyway? Reading it, I am reminded of the author-information forms one is required to fill out for presses considering one's works for publication, with their queries about markets and audiences. This is not a textbook, unless the professor wishes to invite being lynched, but a reference work of a peculiar kind, one in which Kleinmeister and little-known works jostle their way from the back burner to the front burner. Unlike in The New Grove, where these same Kleinmeister receive even greater attention, those selected for inclusion here are arranged in chronological juxtaposition and succession so that relationships can be readily perceived. The implicit assumption, not stated anywhere in the introduction, is that the reader can easily find more detailed discussions of the likes of Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Berlioz, but might otherwise be unaware of the context surrounding the works of the acknowledged greats, or what some present-day reformers of historiography are now calling Dead White Males. Consequently, one can find capsule sections on Fromental Halévy's Guido et Ginevra and La Reine de Chypre, Ludwig Spohr's double quartets, the operas of Friedrich Flotow, Bizet's Djamileh, the program symphonies of Joachim Raff, and the songs of Stanislaw Moniuszko, to cite only a few of the more esoteric items.

Confronted with a volume like this, reviewers tend to turn immediately to those sections pertaining to their own field and to find more faults there than anywhere else. I am no exception, and the ninth chapter on "Solo Song" was the first one I read, blue-pencil in hand. The subject is inherently problematic in surveys—those thousands of short pieces, with often-lengthy foreign titles, and poets to acknowledge as well as composers. Space restrictions must be particularly aggravating under the circumstances. With all due sympathy for the writer's predicament, I nevertheless have a few bones to pick with Leslie Orrey, who is responsible for the subsection on the solo song in Germany. He begins by invoking the lied composers active between the death of Schubert in 1828 and Schumann's 1840 "song year," but surely the Berlin composer Bernhardt (not "Bernardt") Klein (1793-1832) is a near-exact contemporary of Schubert. Disappointingly, Prof. Orrey bars certain students from full access to this portion of the chapter by failing to translate the titles of songs; of course, undergraduate and graduate students should be fluent in German if they wish to delve into lieder, but that ideal situation seldom exists. One must turn to the index to find that the poets Eichendorff, Chamisso, Reinick and Kerner all had first names; Marianne von Willemer is given her full name but with a misprint. In a footnote concerning the ninth poem in Chamisso's Frauenliebe und- Leben, Orrey gives as the gist of the poem that "nought is now left but memories" and omits the fact that the woman is now a grandmother speaking to her granddaughter: there is a considerable chronological gap in the narrative. Carl Loewe, in his setting of the poetic cycle, included this poem—and where, one wonders, is Loewe? In the bibliography, yes, and in the chapter on opera from 1830 to 1850 but not in the chapter on solo song in Germany. In a volume where Reyer and Raff have their day in the sun, it seems unfair to omit the ballad composer par excellence of the entire century, someone furthermore whose works are still performed and recorded. Where is Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, whose songs include many of her best works? Significant American scholarship on the lied is in short supply in the notes and bibliography. Gustav Mahler receives a single paragraph of works listed, with no discussion at all. When Orrey refers to the "impressionism" of Brahms's late style and equates impressionism with "colouristic, non-functional [sic] harmony," I shudder. However, the essayist is to be thanked for efforts to resuscitate the unjustly neglected Adolf Jensen, whose compositional abilities Brahms praised; for observing that the influence of Liszt on Wolf has not yet been duly investigated; for noting that there have been few serious examinations of Brahms's songs to date (a situation fortunately en route to alteration); and for an excellent summation.

It is too easy to fall into the trap of expecting historical surveys to be all things to all people. Whatever my disappointment with aspects of this latest entry into the lists, I take great pleasure in gleaning tidbits I would probably not have sought on my own from within its distended covers (the unique characteristics of Meyerbeer's opéras-comiques, for example) and for aperçus galore (Saint-Saëns's proclivity for stolid rhythmic patterns from the Wagnerian mold, for example). If one wants more, that wish is the inevitable pedal point to any perusal of a volume of music history.

Opera on the Road: Traveling Opera Troupes in the United States, 1825-60, by Katherine K. Preston. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993. xvii + 479 pp. ISBN 0-252-01974-1.

Opera in America: A Cultural History, by John Dizikes. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993. xii + 612 pp. ISBN 0-300-05496-3.

Two recent books on opera in the United States examine opera from a sociological point of view. There is almost no musical analysis in either book, but there are ample discussions of who made up the audience at a given time and place and what purposes going to the opera served for these audiences, as well as investigations of matters of social class and taste, demographics, architecture, and economics.

Katherine K. Preston's book, Opera on the Road, examines traveling English and Italian opera troupes in the United States (French and German troupes are excluded from the study) during the period 1825-60. She studies three types of itinerant troupes—troupes built around one or two star performers (Jane Shirreff and John Wilson are the stars she studies in detail), troupes which performed opera in Italian (Max Maretzek and his Astor-Place Opera Company are given a full chapter), and troupes which performed opera in English (the Pyne and Harrison English Opera Company is chosen as the prime example). These categories are convenient, but far from airtight, as Preston herself points out. Singers, at different times, might belong to one or another type of troupe. And while the English and Italian troupes sang in different languages, there was a considerable overlap in their repertories. La Sonnambula and Il Barbiere di Siviglia were warhorses with both Italian and English troupes. And while the Astor Place Opera Company (an Italian troupe) had in its 1851 repertory Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Semiramide, Bellini's Norma, Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Parisina, and Verdi's Ernani, the Pyne and Harrison English Opera Company had in its 1855 repertory Rossini's The Barber of Sevilleand Cinderella, Bellini's La Sonnambula, and Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment, among other works.

Preston amasses a great deal of evidence to prove two important points. First, a considerable amount of operatic activity took place in the U.S. in the antebellum period—and not just in the large cities on the East coast. For example, between November 1855 and May 1856, the intrepid Pyne and Harrison English Opera Company gave performances not only in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond, but also in Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis, Evansville, St. Louis, Cairo, Memphis, Natchez, Mobile, and New Orleans. During that tour they often found that they were just preceding or just following other itinerant troupes in the same city. Second, in much of the antebellum period, opera was a democratic entertainment, not a cultural adornment for a limited few. In her chapter on Jane Shirreff and John Wilson, Preston notes that "disgruntled drama critics used the increasing popularity of opera as incontrovertible evidence of degraded public taste" (p. 75). In her chapter on Italian opera companies she addresses the complex story of "how the wealthy undertook the task of transforming opera from an ordinary component of the popular theater repertory into an art form widely identified as aristocratic and exclusive" (p. 100).

Despite the risks of illness (both John Wilson and Giuseppe de Begnis died of cholera while touring the U.S.) and the perils connected with travel by stagecoach, railroad, and steamboat, itinerant companies performed schedules—sometimes five different operas in a week—that would be hardly conceivable today. Preston's book inspires in the reader a respect bordering on awe for the perseverance, determination, courage, and resourcefulness of the troupes she describes.

John Dizikes' Opera in America: A Cultural History takes on all of opera in America, 1753 to the present, using a fairly broad definition of opera at that, including musical comedy, which he dubs "New York Opera," and minstrel shows. Dizikes claims that his definition of opera "is that of its Italian originators, drama by means of music" (p. xi). But as his lively narrative progresses it becomes clear that he does not distinguish between drama through music (opera), drama with music (musical comedy), and music on stage with no consistent narrative thread (minstrel shows).

With such a broad subject, Dizikes takes the liberty of writing about what interests or entertains him the most, and his enthusiasm for his subject is palpable. What engages Dizikes' interest most of all is singers—Malibran, Lind, Alboni, Sontag, Mario, Grisi, Patti, Nordica, Caruso, Farrar, Flagstad, Anderson, and Callas all receive extensive, colorful treatment. Moreover, Dizikes treats his already broad subject discursively, glancing along the way at various artists and writers (he is particularly fond of Wait Whitman), a treatment which may delight some readers and distress others. For example, after discussing the first performance of Rossini's Otello in New York (1826), Dizikes comments, "In the dawn of American romanticism, in the countryside soon to be made famous by the Hudson River painters, this music drama touched deep feelings of the terrible and the sublime (p. 10). My first reaction to this sentence was that I had never thought of connecting the first performances of Italian opera in New York with the Hudson River painters, but my next thought was, what is the connection—or is the author even saying that such a connection exists?

Dizikes tells the story of opera in America in 47 chapters, grouped chronologically into six "Acts," plus five Interludes and a Finale. Some of these chapters present local history—opera in New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago. One of the most informative chapters, to my mind, was "Local Glories," dealing with the growth of opera houses (and only sometimes of opera performances) across the United States toward the end of the nineteenth century. Every chapter has its share of fascinating facts and arresting anecdotes as, for example, that Enrico Caruso was his parents' eighteenth child and "all the previous seventeen children died in childbirth or in infancy" (p. 395). Unfortunately, many chapters also serve up unsustainable generalizations ("For two centuries, opera meant Italian opera") and arbitrary choices (no mention of Pavarotti, Domingo, or Carreras). The book is in some ways similar to an overedited musical textinsightful but unreliable. One's trust is further eroded by the author's curious manner of citing sources: frequently quotation marks are placed around sentences, but the author does not tell where the quotation comes from.

The history of opera in America is one of occasional artistic successes and frequent financial failures. Both Preston and Dizikes give ample evidence that artistic quality was often one of the least important variables in determining the success of an operatic troupe or establishment. To keep an itinerant opera touring company afloat, a manager needed skills as a publicist, a logistician, and a labor negotiator; Preston's discussion of the abilities of Max Maretzek are revealing in this respect. The success of a resident opera company, on the other hand, depended on securing a sufficiently large, wealthy, and loyal audience. Decisions about repertory played some role in this, but so did financial considerations, such as the price of tickets, and seating arrangements. It sometimes appeared that opera companies rose and fell around the vexing issue of boxes—whether or not to have them, sell them, lease them, and so on. Dizikes' narrative of the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York or the Lyric Opera in Chicago illustrate some of these complexities. I think both authors may be on the wrong track when they seek for particularly American reasons for the failure of opera in a given city at a given time. In all times and places, in the U. S. and in Europe, opera has been a high-risk financial speculation.

These two books, similar though they are in subject and sociological approach, are quite different in style and tone. Preston's book is a scholarly study and Dizikes' is written "for literate common readers, not for specialists." More than one quarter of Preston's book is given over to appendices, notes and bibliography, while notes and bibliography take up only about 6% of Dizikes' book. Preston's prose style is always clear while sometimes a bit dry, whereas Dizikes' style is juicy but often overripe. He is fearless in his use of superlatives. For example, in the space of a few pages we meet "the most influential of modernist composers," "the most discussed American opera for half a century," and "the greatest Italian operatic conductor of the mid-twentieth century." (Do you agree with Dizikes that these are John Cage, Nixon in China, and Tullio Serafin?)

A more striking difference is the manner in which the two authors use sources. Preston's book is scrupulously researched. That she has found and perused acres of newspaper reviews, diaries, playbills, and librettos is in itself admirable. But even better is the healthy skepticism with which she treats her primary sources. She recognizes that critics, then as now, can do no more than report from their own limited points of view. To enjoy Dizikes' book fully one has to let go of certain scholarly scruples, such as expecting the author to use good sources or to separate fact from opinion. I am not convinced that the author's declaration that this is not a book meant for experts relieves him of responsibility for accuracy. In thinking of classroom applications, one can recommend Opera on the Road without reservation as a model of its kind of scholarship. On the other hand, Opera in America could be useful both for kindling a student's interest in opera or for stocking a professor's repertoire of intriguing anecdotes.

Abstract

Sing and Shout! A History of America in Song is a unique approach to a general education course that combines the study of American history with the singing of songs that represent critical times, significant events, and unique cultures in our shared past. A primary goal is for students to understand the use of folk songs as a force for social change, as an expression of spirituality, and as means to build community in the lives of underrepresented populations, thus broadening and enriching their understanding of American history and culture. The communal singing process, the oral transmission of songs, and improvisation and creativity are woven into the instructional process in an effort to provide a comprehensive experience built around authenticity and culture. This article explores content, structure, and modes of instruction enhanced by personal reflections that may assist others in developing community of learners with a deeper understanding of and sensitivity to cultural diversity.

It's a Monday morning and the class is large and noisy. A group of six highly animated university students are standing in a circle surrounded by their 50 classmates. They begin to sing their unique version of the children’s singing game “London Bridge is Falling Down” that blends elements of contemporary dance music and hip-hop with the traditional melody. They add foot-stamping, off-beat clapping and hip gestures to the singing-game movements. Their classmates respond enthusiastically with shouts, responses, and rhythmic clapping and affirm their efforts by applauding loudly at the conclusion of the game.

It’s Monday morning. What just happened? What brought this vigorous engagement to students who typically sleep, text, or tweet during lectures? What could possibly bring joy to 18 to 22 year-olds singing and acting out children’s songs in a university classroom? What could they possibly be learning?

These students are a part of an innovative general education course, Sing and Shout! A History of America in Song, at the University of Connecticut, that shifts some of the content delivery from the presentation of sequential lectures to creative expression using one of the oldest forms of communication, the song. The idea is to integrate academic study, performance, and song writing in order to develop a deeper and richer understanding of our shared history and cultural diversity. American folk history is as varied as it is rich with clearly defined features.¹Communal singing, that includes songs and singing styles transmitted via the oral tradition, and improvisation grounded in creativity are woven into the instructional process to provide a comprehensive experience built around authenticity and culture. This article explores course content, structure, and modes of instruction, enhanced by personal reflections, which result in new perspectives for the students and the instructor.

So, who are these students? Where does music fit into their lives? How can one structure a course to meet their changing needs? How can we ensure that the instructional experiences students receive will accurately reflect the realities of the cultures studied?

Background

Many of the students enrolled in American universities were “millennials,” a term for those born in or after 1982.² Raines described millennials as “sociable, optimistic, talented, well-educated, collaborative, open-minded, influential, and achievement-oriented.”³ They also were digitally connected and accustomed to very high degrees of sensory and mental stimulation. As the first generation to grow up surrounded by digital media, they spent an average of six and a half hours a day juggling multiple data points from cell phones, MP3 players, computers, and televisions.⁴ They created their own “virtual communities” through social networking sites and “virtual environments” to form vast libraries of information, music, video, and art, available to them with the touch of a finger or the click of a mouse.

This “new student” brought with them new challenges for those of us in higher education who taught them. Lectures, rote-memory exercises and single-media learning have been useful in the past and can still be useful, at times, today. However, the “new student” learning style may require that traditional teaching methods be modified or abandoned.⁵ These modified approaches to instruction tend to shift focus to a learner-centered approach that also incorporates active-learning strategies⁶ aimed at expanding the breath and depth of student learning.⁷ Rendón suggested that learning should strive to be authentic, collaborative, creative, and reflective,⁸ thus fostering skills that the National Center on Education and Economy stated are needed in the 21st century.⁹ This sets the tone for some new thinking about what we do as professors and how we do it. So, where does music in higher education fit?

To be fair, many of us, both individually and collectively, have tried to adapt to changing needs by updating and modifying our instructional techniques. However, with minimal research being published on teaching music in higher education, there are few models to follow.¹⁰ Don, Garvey, and Sadeghpour suggested that there might be several reasons for this. For example, those involved in music education were leading the way in research on music teaching and learning, but their efforts primarily were geared toward elementary and secondary education. Other music faculty might choose to publish in their area of expertise or have time-consuming careers as professional performers. Furthermore, not all terminal degrees in music address scholarly inquiry. And, they noted that overall, scholarship in teaching and learning in higher education was a relatively new field.¹¹

There is, however, an interesting light emanating from one sector of the academic music community. Recent publications by theory faculty have focused on “modes of instruction that foster creativity, including cooperative and collaborative methods, compositions assignments and use of improvisation in the classroom.”¹² And, the recent book Teaching Music in Higher Education by Conway and Hodgman addresses these and other facets of music teaching from the studio to the general education course with sections on “Course Planning and Preparation” and “Issues in Teaching and Learning.” My own teaching experiences fall within these parameters.

For the first 15 years of my academic career I taught courses in vocal music education to upper-level undergraduate music majors and graduate students. The philosophic approach that I used emphasized the importance of the voice as the primary instrument¹³, the value of singing for all ages and the use of traditional songs to broaden the cultural-studies approach to music education.¹⁴ Three features were critical to this approach: (1) Students learn to develop music skills by immersion, imitation, and sequential music reading; (2) they weave historical, cultural, and performance constructs together into a whole; and (3) collective teaching methods must facilitate opportunities for creative expression, analysis, and reflection. These have been the skills required to meet the National Standards for Music Education.¹⁵

Over time, I realized that I wanted to create a new university course that would use singing as an artistic means to develop cultural understanding and to make this experience available to all university students, not just music majors. To do this, it became immediately clear that relying solely on the traditional lecture-oriented approach would be inadequate since music-making is rarely included in this format.¹⁶The task of music-making usually falls to performing ensembles that are concert-oriented; however, ensembles often limit participation through auditions that define an exclusive group, many of whose members have benefited from a strong high school music program, private instruction, or both. The challenge was how to integrate lectures with music-making in a way that would be informational, experiential, and engaging.

In 2005, with support from a university grant for the development of original general education courses, I created the course: Sing and Shout! A History of America in Song. In Sing and Shout! all students were welcome, regardless of previous musical experience or skill. Students participated actively by making music in every class, and writing and sharing their own music. The musical content had to be accessible to all, and American folk music—especially folk songs—seemed to be the perfect choice.

The goal for Sing and Shout! was not simply to learn a collection of folk songs. Far more important was to have students gain experiential knowledge of the various diverse cultures and events in American history by their active participation in music-making. University students were familiar with many types of music, but few were aware of the wealth of American folk songs, of family or community singing traditions, or of the oral traditions of their ancestors; therefore, singing these “musics” in class became the core of their experience. But there were other benefits, benefits that extended beyond the boundaries of intellectual fact. Experiential learning, in this case singing repeatedly over the course of the semester, introduced students to the emotional impact associated with the songs they were singing. This provided a context for understanding how people responded to events and conditions in history, how music was connected to contemporary life and social justice, and how new songs were created in traditional styles. These strategies formed the basis for an active-learning culture.

Content and Structure

Sing and Shout! was a seminar, a participatory performance class, and a songwriting course all in one. Historical material was presented with a wide-angle lens, through lectures, videos and readings. Music was experienced intimately, through group singing, listening, moving, and responding. The creative heart of the course was two songwriting projects built around traditional folk genres and styles. At every juncture, reflective practice was included. Goals and objectives were broad and addressed knowledge, skills, and understandings (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Goals and objectives of Sing and Shout!

The course satisfied two general education requirements: (1) Arts and Humanities and (2) Diversity and Culture. There were no music prerequisites. All, however, were expected to sing. Enrollment was capped at 60. Classes met weekly for a two-hour lecture-demonstration and in groups of 20 for a one-hour discussion class led by a graduate assistant. Evaluation was distributed between projects (50%), assignments and examinations (40%) and participation (10%).

The course content blended cultural streams from the British Isles, Europe, West Africa, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Native American traditions. There was no textbook for the course; readings came from a variety of sources (see Figure 2). Recordings and videos, for example, were available from the online Blackboard site or websites such as “YouTube” or “Folkstreams: A National Preserve of Documentary Films about American Roots Cultures” (www.folkstreams.net). The song types included ballads, singing games, play parties, work songs, spirituals, corridos, calypso, and son, with powerful messages that represent important periods in history or underrepresented cultural groups.¹⁷

Figure 2. Selected course readings.

Active-learning strategies based on the folk tradition under study included (1) oral tradition – the transmission of songs from person to person and generation to generation; (2) communal singing–that eliminate the division between performer and audience; and (3) improvisation/creativity–outlets for personal expression within a communal tradition. A critical component of the entire process was having students to reflect on the content, experiences, and instructional process in their group projects, final essays, teacher-constructed formative evaluations and university-sponsored course evaluations.

Oral Tradition

In The Musical Ear: Oral Tradition in the USA, McLucas asserted that, “the power of American music exists chiefly in its oral traditions.”¹⁸ For the most part, American folk songs were transmitted orally, without the use of notation, because they tended to be “short, simple, concise and repetitive.”¹⁹ Teaching the “oral tradition” also linked past practice with current music learning styles, since most young people have learned to sing their favorite songs by ear and were rather good at it.

The class began with students tapping, moving, clapping, and singing along with Bruce Springsteen on “Pay Me My Money Down.”²⁰ For the final chorus, singing continued as the recording was muted and voices fill the room. Next was “Over My Head,” an African American spiritual, sung in call and response style.²¹ This group-singing tradition was familiar to many and the comfort level rises. Some boldly accepted the challenge to create new lyrics and harmonies. A positive energy filled the room, which set the tone for the rest of the semester.

Learning songs orally, either from a person or from field and commercial recordings, made it easier to imitate the vocal quality of the source, whether it be nasal, pure, rich, or whatever its timbre. Oral transmission from an authentic source also helped to develop vocal styles particular to a culture that include sliding and bending tones, anticipation of notes, and addition of embellishments, as well as other adjustments. As one explored the vocal styles of different cultures an awareness of the power of the voice and its ability to express a full range of emotions developed in a variety of ways.

There were several reasons why notation was not used, either as a part of the oral tradition or in the course. First, notation provided only a snapshot of the song, sung in a certain way, at a given time. Some may think it was the “correct” version, thereby limiting the singer’s proclivity for improvisation and the understanding of how folk songs change over time. Second, notational systems rarely represented well the subtle aspects in folk performance that were integral to the style, thereby ignoring the expressive elements of the tradition. Perhaps most important to this course was that notation potentially could create boundaries between those who could read music and those who could not, thus defeating the premise of the course by restricting participation to a select few.

Instead, lyrics for longer songs were written on electronic slides with sustained words or syllables underlined to provide a feeling of meter and rhythm (see Figure 3). Grades were based on participation and knowledge of song lyrics rather than on accuracy of singing. When unencumbered by the constraints of notation, pitch accuracy, or assessment, the voice emerged more freely as an instrument for expression and exploration. For example, one young man sang a gospel solo for the class. His tonal center shifted and the melody fluctuated, but his singing was heartfelt and elicited an enthusiastic response from the class. To them, the emotional commitment to the song was more important than pitch accuracy.

Figure 3. Sample lyric sheet.

Communal Singing

Communal singing, also known as community singing, occurred when a number of people sang familiar songs together in an unrehearsed way.²² Communal singing might take place during religious rituals, celebrations, patriotic ceremonies, sporting events, family gatherings or other formal or informal occasions. These participatory experiences were often quite powerful as voices were united in song for a specific purpose based on shared values, behaviors, or beliefs.

The communal singing of folk songs was the perfect vehicle for giving a voice to underrepresented minorities, enabling singers to reflect on their status and circumstances. These voices included those of women, African Americans, Native Americans, Mexicans and others. Many of those who have been successful at doing this agree. Bernice Johnson Reagon, renown singer and social activist, believed that: “You cannot sing a song and not change your condition.”²³ Likewise Arthur C. Jones argued persuasively that the “very power of singing—any singing—to support the process of emotional transformation” allowed people to express their attitudes and feelings and strengthens their common bonds.²⁴

In Sing and Shout!, communal singing provided a means to recreate the music of another period or culture, to develop as sense of community with peers and to experience firsthand the feelings of inspiration, kinship, and joy—to be emotionally transformed—when voices were joined together in song. By inviting participation right from the start, the class immediately became lively and interactive. As an icebreaker activity, students recalled lyrics to nursery songs, camp songs, and other songs from the past to create a common repertoire. “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” a song they all remembered from childhood television, was sung with great enthusiasm. The experience of uniting their voices in a familiar song from their own past provided part of the foundation for learning about music from other periods and cultures.

As the semester progresses, students were engaged in varied active-learning experiences built around communal singing. For example, one class session focused on Anglo-American singing games that traditionally have been an important part of childhood culture such as “Farmer in the Dell,” “London Bridge,” and “A Tisket, A Tasket.” Continuous singing was needed to keep the game moving in order to move through the sequence of actions needed to reach “the end.” “Winners” were cheered while “losers” were teased, in a friendly way. It appeared that all were reliving the joy of childhood—but many never have played these, or any other singing games, before.

Another class session focused on play parties, a unique American folk tradition that came about in the mid 19th century. According to Spurgeon in “Waltz the Hall: The American Play Party,” play parties appealed to teenagers and young adults who were seeking alternate activities due to religion restrictions against dance.²⁵ He explained that play parties typically were more sophisticated than singing games, have more verses and might replicate square-dancing movements. Course readings provided students with a basic understanding of the play party tradition. However, by singing “Skip to My Lou” and “dancing” with a partner or several, they began to appreciate the play party as a means of entertainment both for young adults in the past and those in the present.

Participation in African American ring plays provided a deeper understanding of African American culture and also strengthens bonds. Students learned that the roots of ring plays were found in traditions from West Africa and from enslaved African Americans that included call and response, syncopation, and improvisation.²⁶Ring plays in America provided a means for those suffering from slavery or its aftermath to be liberated in play. For example, in “Little Johnny Brown,” the lead singer directed the interaction between the circle (i.e., the community) and the center player, who moved freely according to the lyrics, enticed a partner, and improvised motions.²⁷ This collaborative interplay united members as they worked through dramatic confrontations and concerns with joy, humor, and an element of seriousness to make it “all come out right.”²⁸

As we engaged in ring plays in class, students quickly realized that more was expected of them here than in Anglo-American singing games or play parties that had a prescribed sequence of actions. Ring plays, on the other hand, required spontaneous thinking and creative ideas as students acted out roles and improvise lyrics and body movements. For some, this role was liberating, for others, terrifying; but whoever was in the center felt somewhat vulnerable; therefore, affirmation from the community was needed. It was interesting to watch as students in the center became stronger, more liberated and more creative with community support. No one yet had ever made teasing or disparaging remarks during this transformation. Why not? Because the students understood that the ring play was not just a light-hearted game but a unifying cultural experience that connected people from two continents over several centuries. By experiencing the ring play, they were more apt to respect this tradition, the people who created the tradition and each other.

Through communal singing and engaging in singing games, play parties, and ring plays, the class developed a sense of community based on trust, respect, and support, much like the communities they study. Embedded in these activities was the realization that communal singing as experiential knowledge was equally as valuable as textbook knowledge as a means to develop an awareness and understanding of a particular culture. Sometimes songs were sung first to inspire the students to complete the reading assignments. At other times, readings provided a context for the singing experiences. Ultimately, however, there was the recognition that songs have an inherent social significance reflected in their history, musical structure, and lyrics that united the community, making members feel supported and connected and provided a means to explore cultural values and traditions.

Creativity and Improvisation

A folk song might change over time as it was molded by new generations of singers. Many folk songs tended to be “short, simple, concise and repetitive,” qualities that made them easy to memorize.²⁹ By learning songs orally, it was easy for a song to be adapted, either by choice or through incremental “forgettings” and substitutions. Folk song variants were created by these circumstances. Variants might develop over a short or long period of time and for a variety of reasons, including the broadening of geographical boundaries and acculturation of the song into new styles.³⁰ However, this tendency was not universal. Some cultures strived to maintain unadulterated musical traditions. Thus, the stylistic elements for each tradition were studied to differentiate between those that included improvisation and those that did not, and to respond accordingly.

In the class, creativity was embraced from the beginning. Writing new lyrics, improvising harmonic and melodic variations and constructing song endings were all exploratory experiences designed to build scaffolding that supported trust. They also laid the foundation for creative energies in and for two cooperative group projects, one based on the broadside ballads tradition and the other, singing games, and play parties.³¹

Broadsides developed in the mid-sixteenth century in the British Isles where stories and opinions about current events were set to familiar ballad melodies. For this project, each group wrote a contemporary broadside ballad about an issue or current event of interest set to one of three ballad tunes. Topics were chosen cooperatively within the group and lyrics were developed in brainstorming sessions, emails, Facebook, Twitter, and text messages. These broadsides were then published either in traditional style, on a single sheet of paper with illustrations, or electronically, on slides. Song sharing and group reflections were the final steps in the project.³²

The second project was based on the premise that folk songs changed over time. The goal was to create a contemporary variant of an Anglo-American singing game or play party. Each group updated a traditional singing game (e.g., “Little Sally Water”) or a play party (e.g., “Skip to My Lou”) using a contemporary musical style, with the lyrics and games that reflected contemporary life. A log documented the creative process, which concluded with song-sharing and group reflections.

Results

One goal of Sing and Shout! was to acquire a deeper understanding of the history and culture by participating in folk singing traditions in an academic setting. Participatory music-making and the associated creative activities required a substantial amount of class time; therefore, less content was covered than via traditional methods in lecture-based courses. However, the act of being actively engaged in recreating cultural traditions seemed to motivate learning (see Figure 4A), enriched understanding of people and their circumstances (see Figure 4B), and deepened understanding of the role of music in uniting people (see Figure 4C).

Figure 4. Sample final examination responses.

Group projects provided the rare opportunity for students in a general education course to collaborate on an artistic product. The broadside ballads have ranged from clever and funny—such as parking challenges at the university—to poignant and moving on subjects such as sexually transmitted diseases, suicide, and drunk driving, with chilling statistics incorporated into the lyrics or slides. As this process unfolds, students learned to discern between events that provided lasting stories and those that disappeared quickly and to share their point of view in a way that engaged and moved their colleagues. Group singing fostered both an intellectual and emotional response that strengthened that commitment to an issue (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Sample group ballad reflection.

The variant project has been an overwhelming favorite, every semester. This was due, in part, to the students’ familiarity with contemporary music styles and the issues addressed (e.g., hip-hop, country, pop, heavy metal, etc.). By playing the original game or play party repeatedly students learned to let changes emerge organically, an approach that replicated how changes happen over time in the original cultural context. By negotiating timing, tempo, rhythm, lyrics, melody and movements, a unique singing game or play party was created that appealed to a wide age group. Logs provided a record of the creative process as new ideas emerged, with some saved and others discarded, but all treated with respect. The singing game, “A Tisket A Tasket” became a hip-hop song “A Laser A Tazer,” about the latest cell phone at the time and “Little Sally Water” became “ Sally Dance” when blended with Justin Timberlake’s “Rock My Body” (see Figure 6).

Figure 6. Sample variant projects.

Reflective writing provided a means to “articulate what was learned.”³³ As a part of reflective practice final essays addressed whether or not perspectives about a specific culture have been modified as a result of participation in the course. Students shared their assumptions about one culture covered in class (e.g., Anglo American, Counter-culture, African American, Tejano, Native American, Cuban, or Trinidadian) and then described how their perspective might have been influenced by readings, lectures, and experiences.

Sadly, although the “institution of slavery” was taught in numerous high school and university American history classes, information about “slave culture” seldom was shared. Yet the culture was what defined the people. Culture included music, arts, customs, and beliefs, all of which were interrelated. For example, learning that slave traders sought Africans who were skilled in specific farming techniques such as rice cultivation brought another level of awareness (see Figure 7A). The coded messages in African American spirituals changed perceptions of slaves from being victims to being incredibly resourceful people who devised intricate ways to communicate under dire circumstances (see Figure 7B). The preservation of cultural traditions from Africa and adaptation of these traditions to reflect current circumstances gave new meaning to the importance of cultural identity (see Figure 7C). And awareness of the Gullah people brought about a respect for their numerous contributions to African American culture and our American society (see Figure 7D).

Figure 7. Sample final essays.

Instructor Reflections

In developing Sing and Shout! I recognized immediately my own need to develop new pedagogical and musical skills. Initially, I worked closely with the Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Connecticut to organize content, structure, and assessments, and studied “Understanding By Design” to create course experiences that “make ideas real” through authentic music-making, group assignments, and reflective practice.³⁴ Participation in the Natural Voice Workshop Leadership Training led by Frankie Armstrong at Kinnersley Castle, Herefordshire, England broadened my vocal ability so that I could more accurately reflect diverse folk styles.³⁵ In addition to these studies, I learned how to organize seamless electronic presentations that integrate course content with audio, video, and other visuals for weekly lectures.

When I developed Sing and Shout! colleagues questioned whether students who were not music majors would actually sing and any males would join. I, too, had these concerns. However, the first class of freshmen students welcomed every music activity with energy and enthusiasm, which set the standard for subsequent classes (see Figure 8A). Course enrollment typically is at capacity, with 40-60% males—who sing.

Figure 8. Sample formative assessment responses.

Each semester there were students who struggle with pitch--some sing softly, others in full voice. However, all were embraced regardless of skill. Those more experienced students openly encouraged and assisted the novices. Assessments have not indicated that anyone has felt marginalized for lack of singing ability. Quite the opposite, some have mentioned finding their voices for the first time (see Figure 8B).

On a personal level, if I were to model behaviors that would encourage sensitivity and awareness, I had to examine my own fears, habits, and biases. I openly shared that we were on this “journey” together as a community of learners to explore American history and culture through song. I tried to be flexible, open-minded, supportive and understanding (within reason) because then students were more apt to ask questions, offer ideas, take risks and work to meet the academic and artistic standards for the course. And, once students discover the fascinating relationship between song and history in America, their curiosity tended to increase.

I ended with an “essential teaching question”: What difference does this course make in the lives of my general education students?³⁶ So far, the results have been greatly encouraging and justify the basic premise of the course—that participatory musical experiences can inspire learning about and understanding of American history and culture. Equally important, these experiences seem to be “valuable for the processes of personal and social integration that make us whole.”³⁷ With sincerity and joy, the students have shared their musicality and creativity, bringing a new dimension to a general education course by becoming a genuine community of learners who have deeper understanding of themselves, more respect for others, a broader awareness of history and more confidence in their creative abilities. And thus, the folk tradition known as “communal re-creation” continues in a large university classroom with twenty-first century millennials.

To this day, Sing and Shout! has remained one of my most influential and creative classes (Gabrielle Reynolds, unsolicited email message to author, May, 9, 2013).

Acknowledgements: Funding to design this course was provided by a University of Connecticut Provost General Education Course Development Grant.

Notes

¹“American” is used in the pan-American sense rather than relating solely to the United States.

²Howe and Strauss, Millennials Rising.

³Raines, Connecting Generations, 172.

⁴Gallagher, Rapt.

⁵Conway and Hodgman, Teaching Music in Higher Education. Frand, “The Information Age Mindset,” 14-24. Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do.

⁶Bonwell and Eison, Active Learning.

⁷Wiggins and McTighe, Understanding by Design.

⁸Rendón, Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy.

⁹National Center on Education and Economy. Tough Choices or Tough Times.

¹⁰Conway and Hodgman, Teaching Music in Higher Education, xi.

¹¹Don, Garvey, and Sadeghpour, “Signature Pedagogies in Music Theory and Performance,” 93-94.

¹²Ibid, 88.

¹³Lois Choksy. The Kodaly Method I: Comprehensive Music Education.

¹⁴Dunbar-Hall, “Colliding perspectives? Music Curriculum as Cultural Studies,” 33-37.

¹⁵Consortium of National Arts Education Associations, National Standards for Arts Education.

¹⁶Music-making refers to “singing, moving, chanting, playing instruments, listening, composing, creating and improvising” Conway and Hodgman, Teaching Music in Higher Education, 123.

¹⁷The corrido is a narrative song about current events (similar to a broadside ballad) sung in Spanish. Son is the quintessential Afro-Cuban musical form that refers both to a song and dance style. Calypso is a style of Afro-Cuban music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago and also a song in this style.

¹⁸McLucas, The Musical Ear, 1.

¹⁹Nettl, Folk Music in the United States, 32.

²⁰Springsteen, Bruce. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (SONY BMG Music Entertainment, 2006).

²¹Cadwell, African American Music, 37.

²²“community singing” Miriam-Webster, accessed January 15, 2012 from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/community%20singing

²³Pellett, The Songs are Free.

²⁴Jones, “Sweet Chariot: The Story of the Spirituals.”

²⁵Spurgeon, Waltz the Hall, 6.

²⁶Price, Kernodle, and Maxile, Encyclopedia of African American Music, 347.

²⁷Jones and Hawes, Step It Down, 92.

²⁸Ibid., xv.

²⁹Nettl, Folk Music in the United States, 32.

³⁰Ibid., 33.

³¹Cooperative groups work on instructor-designed projects; collaborative groups work by consensus. Elizabeth Barkley, et al. Collaborative Learning Techniques, 5.

³²For more information on the broadside ballad project see Junda, “Broadside Ballads.”

³³Conway and Hodgman, Teaching Music in Higher Education, 121.

³⁴Wiggins and McTighe, Understanding by Design, 233.

³⁵For more information on the Natural Voice Practitioners Network, see http://www.frankiearmstrong.com/index.php/voice-workshop-leader-training

³⁶Ciccone, “Forward,” xiii.

³⁷Turino, Music as Social Life, 1.

Bibliography

Bain, Ken. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Barkley, Elizabeth, K. Patricia Cross, and Claire H. Major Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.

Bonwell, Charles C., and James A.Eison. “Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom.” AEHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1. Washington, D.C.: Jossey Bass, 1991.

Caldwell, Hansonia. African American Music: Spirituals, 3rd ed. Culver City, CA: Ikoro Communications, 2003.

Choksy, Lois. The Kodaly Method I: Comprehensive Music Education, 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.

Ciccone, Anthony A. “Forward” in Exploring Signature Pedagogies: Approaches to Teaching Disciplinary Habits of Mind edited by Regan A.R.Gurung, Nancy L.Chick and Aeron Haynie, xi-xvi. Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2009.

Consortium of National Arts Education Associations. National Standards for Arts Education. Reston, VA: Music Educators National Conference, 1994.

Conway, Colleen M., and Thomas M. Hodgman. Teaching Music in Higher Education. New York: Oxford, 2009.

Don, Gary, Christa Garvey, and Mitra Sadeghpour. “Signature pedagogies in music theory and performance,” in Exploring Signature Pedagogies: Approaches to Teaching Disciplinary Habits of Mind edited by Regan A.R.Gurung, Nancy L.Chick and Aeron Haynie, 81-98.Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2009.

Dunbar-Hall, Peter. “Colliding Perspectives? Music Curriculum as Cultural Studies. Music Educators Journal, 91(4), 2005, 33-37.

Frand, Jason L. “The Information Age Mindset: Changes in Students and Implications for Higher Education.” EDUCAUSE Review Magazine 35(5), 2000, 14-24.

Gallagher, Winfred. Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.

Howe, Neil, and William Strauss. Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.

Jones, Bessie, and Besss Lomax Hawes. Step It Down: Games, Plays, Songs and Stories from the African-American Heritage. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

Jones, Arthur C. “Sweet Chariot: The Story of the Spirituals.” The Spirituals Project, http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals/Survival/sorrow.cfm (2004).

Junda, Mary Ellen. “Broadside Ballads: Social Consciousness in Song,” in General Music Today, 26 (3) http://gmt.sagepub.com/content/26/3/18.refs (2013): 18-24.

McLucas, Anne D. The Musical Ear: Oral Tradition in the USA. Burlington, VT; Ashgate, 2010.

National Center on Education and the Economy. Tough Choices or Tough Times: The Report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2006.

Nettl, Bruno. Folk Music in the United States, 3rd ed. Detroit, MI: Wayne State Press, 1976.

Pellett, Gail (Director). The Songs are Free: Bernice Johnson Reagon and African-American Music. Public Broadcasting System, 1991.

Price, Emmett G., Tammy L. Kernodle, and Horace J. Maxile. Encyclopedia of African American Music, vol. 3. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011.

Raines, Claire. Connecting Generations: The Sourcebook for a New Workplace. Boston, MA: Axzo Press, 2003.

Rendón, Laura I. Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice and Liberation. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2009.

Spurgeon, Alan L. Waltz the Hall: The American Play Party. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.

Turino, Thomas. Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Wiggins, Guy, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design, 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2005.

The World of Music, David Willoughby. 7th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012.  ISBN: 978-0078025167

In his book The World of Music, David Willoughby, former head of the Music Department at Susquehanna University, presents a concise, yet comprehensive, history of music. By avoiding excessively technical jargon, Willoughby is able to connect to readers with differing levels of musical knowledge. This book is clearly intended for a course in general music, such as Music Appreciation. I would also recommend the title for anyone who wants to brush up on their musical vocabulary and history without the daunting task of reading through more thorough, detailed historical surveys.

The World of Music is divided into thirteen chapters, which are grouped into four topical parts. Part 1, “Preparation for Listening,” begins with a summary of basic musical concepts in Chapter 1 called, “Introducing the World of Music.” Topics such as music labels, music in culture, ethnic diversity in music, artists and artistry, and the business of music are discussed in brief summation. Chapter 2, “The Nature of Music: Vocabulary for Listening and Understanding” truly provides the backbone of information for the remaining chapters, and rounds out Part 1.

Part 2, “Listening to American Music: Folk, Religious, Jazz, and Pop” is devoted to music that is typically more mainstream than Western European classical music. Willoughby begins this delineation of musical history with “Folk Music Traditions” in Chapter 3, which is then followed by “Religious Music Traditions” in Chapter 4. This is advantageous to the general music student, as most likely, he or she will have already heard many of, if not all, the genres Willoughby presents. A potential disadvantage, however, is that this approach does not provide a chronological development of music, and students may become confused thinking that perhaps American folk or jazz music are older than a Mozart opera.

Willoughby then provides his readers with a rather detailed history of jazz in Chapter 5, followed by a discussion of popular music in Chapter 6. Chapter 5 is much more comprehensive than other chapters, paying homage to the complexity of jazz music and its importance to American music as a whole. Several styles of jazz are included, such as New Orleans and Chicago jazz, stride, boogie-woogie, swing, big band, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, and others. Chapter 6 is more condensed than Chapter 5, as Willoughby brings up Tin Pan Alley, country music, Motown, rock, rap, and other genres all within the same chapter. Perhaps a more complete view on American popular music would be beneficial here, as much detail seems to be missing.

In Part 3, “Listening to World Music,” Willoughby presents a rich variety of musical examples from other cultures. Chapter 7, “Music of the Americas” provides a short glimpse into the music of Native Americans as well as music from South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean; genres explored include reggae, zydeco, indigenous folk culture and dances from South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. In Chapter 8, “Music Beyond the Americas,” Willoughby expands further with a consideration of music from India, Japan (including gagaku and kabuki), sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and Indonesia (including gamelan and popular music). Willoughby rounds out the chapter, and Part 3, with a brief summary of Jewish cultural, liturgical and klezmer music, as well as Celtic music. Together, these chapters provide the student with an opportunity to study previously unfamiliar music. Many students I have taught appreciated Willoughby’s efforts to show how the musical styles can be so vastly different from their own, while others tie the similarities of music such as reggae and klezmer to their own musical interests.

Part 4, “Listening to Western Classical Music,” is separated into five chapters covering music from the five main eras: Chapter 9, “Music to 1600,” Chapter 10, “Music of the Baroque Period,” Chapter 11, “Music of the Classic Period,” Chapter 12, “Music of the Romantic Period,” and Chapter 13, “Music of the Twentieth Century.” Significantly, this comes at the end of the book rather than at the beginning. This is beneficial to the student because, by the time these subjects arise over the course of a semester when this book is used, he or she will already have at least a novice’s ability to talk about the classical forms.

Finally, Willoughby includes two appendices: Appendix A contains a list of recommended DVDs and videos, while Appendix B is a classification of instruments organized according to methods of tone production. The book also contains a glossary of all highlighted vocabulary terms throughout the book.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this book, from an educator’s standpoint, is the Connect Music feature. Connect Music provides the educator with a web-based assignment and assessment platform, interactive listening guides for all students and instructors using the course software, quizzes on listening identification, and critical listening and comparison activities. All of these features can be integrated into an institution’s online education platform, such as Blackboard. The instructor can still tailor quizzes, exams, and assignments, as formats and question types are both vast and flexible. Having utilized both the textbook and the online capabilities for nearly two years, I can confirm that it is incredibly user-friendly.

A significant shortcoming in this book is the selection of musical examples. While every educator should seek ways to supplement the text he or she chooses, it is nice to have supplemental material within the text. Willoughby provides 36 listening examples throughout the book, with a wide variety of choices and, more importantly, examples of musical idioms discussed in the chapters. These examples come with “Listening Guides” which provide the student with background information on the artists, structural and analytical information, second-by-second descriptions of the parts, and, when necessary, lyrics and translations. Willoughby’s examples, however, fall short in terms of how they represent the genres being discussed. There are only two listening examples from operas, yet three examples of chant. Perhaps an opera chorus, ensemble, and more differentiation among the styles would be beneficial. If used as the required text for a course, instructors will need to spend time gathering multiple examples of audio and video to enhance the audio/visual experience.

While most of the content in this book is meant to be concise, The World of Music lacks enough detail in two important genres of musical history: opera and musical theatre. I appreciate that the author explains musical theatre by describing different styles and forms that occur within the genre, but we never really get a solid description of its development. The same can be said of opera, for when we get to the part titled “Listening to Western Classical Music” little is presented in terms of operatic development over time. By contrast, Willoughby explains the processes of sonata form development and changes in orchestral instrumentation, but ignores opera. If the instructor chooses to teach these forms/genres, he or she will want to find a definitive resource and use the class textbook as a supplement.

In sum, Willoughby’s seventh edition of The World of Music is an outstanding resource for general music courses in both high school and college. If followed from beginning to end, the student can learn about music by starting with what they most likely already know rather than the more common chronological approach that follows a typical discussion on musical concepts. While listening examples will need to be supplemented by instructor choices, students will benefit from the useful interactive listening guides provided by Connect Music.

Introduction and Background

The history survey of Western art music is traditionally taught in a two- or three-course sequence in most undergraduate music degree programs in the United States. At The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, this sequence consists of three courses: Music History I covers antiquity through the Baroque; Music History II spans the Enlightenment to around 1875; and Music History III, the turn of the twentieth century to the present. Course objectives for this sequence are threefold: to learn the historical, aesthetic, cultural and philosophical framework that lies at the heart of music history (context); to understand how that information relates to musical compositions (application); and to show an understanding of the appropriate methodological tools of scholarly inquiry through some type of research project (scholarship). And in a music history course, application means studying style characteristics in musical scores and hearing those characteristics within the music. All of these objectives must be met in order to achieve the overall goal of any music history course, which is to produce better musicians through a comprehensive understanding of musical style.

Traditionally, and perpetually, music history courses are taught primarily by strict lecture, supplemented by homework assignments of readings and/or musical score analysis.¹ Baumer, Matthew (2015). A Snapshot of Music History Teaching to Undergraduate Music Majors, 2011-2012: Curricula, Methods, Assessment, and Objectives. Journal of Music History Pedagogy, 5(2), pp. 23-47  My frustration with this method of teaching is that class time is dominated by providing students with the context, leaving little time for practical application. Moreover, due to the current costs of textbooks, score anthologies and sets of recorded CDs or music streaming packages, classroom discussion and score study is often ineffective, as many students do not participate simply because they do not have the resources to purchase these materials, and are therefore unprepared for class. Leaving the important task of score study to students in homework assignments can also be ineffectual, as their work often tends to be unsatisfactory either because of a lack of guidance, motivation or effort.

Therefore, the current project involves “flipping,” so that the context is learned outside of class, by means of online video, readings and e-materials, and class time is then spent assessing student progress, and, more importantly, in application of the learned information through discussion and the study of musical scores. All of this is accomplished by means of iPad technology, as all of my students use iPads in both the online and in-class portions of these hybrid classes.

This teaching transformation began in the spring semester of 2013, when the university undertook an iPad Pilot Project, whereby several faculty members were issued iPads for themselves and their students in order to study the effects of this type of technology on the teaching and learning process. After training on the devices and apps in the spring, I spent the summer of 2013 preparing video lessons, assembling readings and other online materials, and designing in-class activities for the Music History III course. I decided to flip the course sequence in reverse order for two reasons. Since the third course in the sequence was not scheduled until the spring of 2014, it would give me enough time to make sure I had created a well-conceived pedagogical package. A second reason for flipping in reverse order is that it provided me with a natural cohort of students that had begun the sequence with the traditional method of instruction, and could therefore provide me with valuable data for comparison. In subsequent summers I flipped Music History II, and finally Music History I.

The Flipped Music History Class

Today, my music history classes are vibrant, engaging, noisy and dynamic, with students enthusiastically involved in learning activities during class, and yet still receiving the necessary contextual information, but on their own time. Outside of class, students watch video lessons based on slideshow presentations and receive all other class materials through Apple’s outstanding course delivery system iTunes U. In class, students engage in collaborative and project-based learning by dividing into groups to answer analytical questions about representative musical scores.

Online

Removing lectures from the classroom environment and making them available online is one of the main ingredients of today's flipped classroom.² Bergmann, J., and Sams, A. Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Eugene, OR, and Washington, D.C.: International Society for Technology in Education, 2012  There are many ways to do this. Some who have flipped their classrooms simply videotape their lectures, or create screencasts, and then post them online. Instead, I used my own pre-existing Keynote slideshows, recorded commentary as mp3 files, imbedded these files into the individual slides, and then saved the slideshows as QuickTime movies. This method of creating online lectures gives the instructor total control over the finished product, and also allows one to change part of a lesson without having to re-record the entire presentation. It is important to understand, however, that creating these types of lessons is more time consuming than simply recording a lecture. Because these video lessons are available on iTunes U, students can stream or download them to their iPads for viewing at any place and at any time of the day.

Study scores and audio files can similarly be placed in iTunes U for regular and repeated student access. Public domain musical scores, such as those from the Petrucci Music Library website, can be downloaded from iTunes U into a music reading app such as piaScore or forScore, where students can mark annotations, structural analyses, chordal analyses or other pertinent information. Likewise, audio files can be streamed directly to the iPad, and even downloaded to the iTunes U app for listening when WiFi is not available.

Incidentally, all audio files posted in iTunes U can only be accessed through the iTunes U app on the iPad (or any iOS device, including iPhone and iPod Touch), and cannot be downloaded or streamed to any other app. Therefore the music cannot be illegally shared or copied. And when the semester is over, these audio files are no longer accessible to students, unless they have purchased them through iTunes. In fact, when considering copyright issues, it may be helpful to understand that iTunes U features both public and private courses. When navigating through the iTunes U app on an iOS device one can freely access the many public courses available from universities and other educational institutions around the globe. However, iTunes U also hosts many, many more private courses that are available only to those with an enroll code, which Apple supplies to the instructors and students in a particular class. These courses are invisible to one who might be casually searching through iTunes U, however since they are closed to outsiders, they are no different from closed physical classrooms, except that they are digital. In this respect, they offer more protection with regard to the educational use of copyrighted material than public courses. The American Library Association has provided a comprehensive guide to copyright issues with regard to Fair Use and the TEACH Act for courses such as this.³Distance Education and the TEACH Act (n.d.). Retrieved from the American Library Association website: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/copyright/teachact

And then there are many, many additional materials that music history instructors commonly make available to their students. These may include study guides and tips, translations of vocal texts, book chapters, journal articles, opera librettos and synopses, films of operas, ballets or orchestral concerts, or even interviews with composers and performers. Traditionally, these materials would be placed on reserve in a university library, or made available for a small fee as a “professor packet” in a university bookstore. However, in this flipped music history class, all of these materials are conveniently placed in iTunes U and are available to the student on the iPad. This “one-stop-shop” aspect of iTunes U is one of the features that my students like best. Everything they need for their course is on the iPad, and resides in iTunes U.

In Class

Of course, the online portion of a flipped class is only half the story. Flipping also involves relocating traditional homework or active learning assignments to the classroom, where an instructor can monitor the learning process. Accordingly, my students engage in project-based and collaborative assignments, but also discussion and assessment, on a daily basis.

In my flipped music history classes, discussion of the prepared material takes place at the beginning of each session. I ask that each student come to class with at least two questions, and if they are hesitant to speak, I will randomly call on several to ask their questions. This will usually stimulate a short discussion, or at least a clarification of the prepared material. Next is a short assessment using an app called Socrative, which is offered in both teacher and student versions for the iPad. From the teacher app, an instructor can wirelessly send a short quiz to all of the students in a class, and then Socrative instantly scores the quiz. Furthermore, the teacher app shows real-time assessment, so the instructor can see at a glance which students probably did and did not adequately prepare for the class, and also which questions posed the most problems. This type of daily formative assessment is valuable on many levels, not the least of which is that the instructor will be alerted to a general misunderstanding of course material, and can address the problem immediately.

The majority of class time is spent analyzing musical scores appropriate to the topic of the day. I divide my classes into groups of four or five students and then pose a series of analytical questions to each (see Image 1).

Image 1 (above): “Team Mozart” working together on a set of analytical questions, with other teams in the background.

Before each class, students are requested to download the scores for the day into their music reading apps (piaScore or forScore). I prepare the analytical questions in advance and save them as PDF files in my iPad, and then in class I send the files wirelessly to the students’ iPads through AirDrop. At this point, the “teams,” begin to work by answering the questions and marking annotations in their scores (see Image 2).

Image 2 (above): This photo shows analytical questions on the left iPad, and a student writing her answers in the score on the right, in consultation with other students in her group.

The attractiveness of this procedure is that the instructor is available to circulate from group to group, answering questions and guiding the process. Finally, each group makes a presentation to the class by projecting the annotated scores onto a large video screen by means of AppleTV and AirPlay (see Image 3). If time allows, the music can be played through classroom loudspeakers while an annotated score is displayed on the video screen.

Image 3 (above): This team spokesperson presents his group’s efforts to the class.

Why Flipped?

Placing course materials in iTunes U is a much more efficient method of content delivery because students can access them anywhere and at any time. My students consistently tell me in end-of-course questionnaires that this is the feature of the flipped class they like best. Students can also apply the learned information more effectively by studying scores in the classroom, with the instructor guiding the process and fellow team members available for collaboration. Furthermore, student engagement is one of the most important reasons for implementing a flipped class such as this. Here are some typical comments from my students concerning engagement:

I feel that the learning is more in my hands than it would be in a traditional lecture style class.

Very interesting, never boring, appealed to the three learning ways of seeing, hearing and physical interaction.

I seem to learn easier and gain a better understanding using technology. I was more engaged throughout the course than I ever had been.

I feel like with this new approach that I’m not just learning the information to pass the class. I feel like I will carry this information with me in the real world.

Honestly, when you told us the way the class was set up at the beginning of the semester, I thought this would be a nightmare. But I can honestly say this has been a great experience. This is (the) most I feel like I have learned in a music history class, or any history (class) for that matter.

Thus far, only three students from a total of one-hundred and seventy have indicated they prefer the old method of classroom lecture, resulting in a student approval rating of almost 99%. And frankly, those three dissenting students were from my first two flipped classes. Each time I have taught this new method, I have made improvements to the approach based on personal experience and student feedback. In the last three class offerings, I received no indications that students would prefer another teaching method (see Image 4).

Image 4 (above): Music history students with their iPads.

In addition to efficient content delivery, effective score study, and student engagement, there are other positive outcomes from implementing a hybrid course such as this. First is the cost factor. Course materials in a music history class are usually quite expensive. There are three types of course materials that each student must have: a textbook, scores for study, and music for listening. Bar Graph 1 compares retail and pre-owned costs for these materials with the costs for my students in the flipped music history class.

One textbook covers the entire content of the sequence from the first course through the last. My chosen textbook costs $182 retail and around $70 used. Although one textbook will suffice for all three courses, students must purchase a separate score anthology for each course at about $100 each, for a retail total of $300 for the sequence. Likewise, students must purchase a different set of CDs for each course, for a total of over $500 retail cost. In sum, students must pay about $1000 retail (or over $400 used) for materials for the three-course sequence. However, because I can populate my lessons in iTunes U with up-to-date materials and can “push” new materials throughout the semester to my students, I don’t feel the need for them to purchase the most recent edition of the textbook. In fact, I encourage them to purchase earlier editions, which they can find online for less than fifteen dollars used. In addition, I post public domain musical scores and audio files on iTunes U for my students to download and stream to their iPads, at no cost. It should come as no surprise that this is also one of the most popular features of my flipped classes.

Finally, there is one unintentional, but attractive, consequence of this new method of teaching music history. These classes traditionally consume large amounts of paper, from the twelve-page syllabus on the first day of class to the multi-page research paper to the final exam. In the flipped music history class, I use absolutely no paper at all. Everything, from course materials to tests to written assignments, is accomplished digitally on the iPad.

A Recent Enhancement

In the past year, I have begun to more deeply explore the many and varied pedagogical uses of iPad technology in an attempt to further improve the learning experience for my students. A  more recent, and particularly successful, enhancement to the course is a new approach to the research paper. When I moved to the flipped method of instruction, I continued to require research papers from my students, and although I asked them to submit their efforts digitally as Word, Pages or PDF files, the resulting works were still traditional term papers. Since my students were using iPads in all other aspects of the class, I began to wonder how I could use this device to make the process of researching, writing and especially the presentation of the term paper more engaging for the student and reader.

My search for the “next-generation” term paper led me to The Mozart Project, a multi-touch book available for purchase on the Apple iBooks Store. This book, written by several leading Mozart scholars including Cliff Eisen, Neal Zaslaw and John Irving, is a masterful blend of scholarship and design. The multi-touch experience greatly enhances the discovery process in a book such as this. Readers are able to access hyperlinks to information both within and independent of the book, parenthetical and footnote pop-ups, galleries, interactive time-lines, digital search features, and embedded audio and video. In describing the experience of an interactive book, the producers of The Mozart Project, James Fairclough and Harry Farnham, wrote: “Every curious need or direction can be satisfied and explored in ways which are limited only by imagination. With interactive books, the relationship between reader and content could become much more visceral and personal than ever before.”

Moreover, the availability of new and powerful software applications, like Apple’s iBooks Author, has allowed writers to make use of these interactive features without having to master  programming. Again, from Fairclough and Farnham: “Suddenly we could become the builders of a book that was limitless in its potential without any of the programming hurdles or outlandish software costs.” If Fairclough and Farnham could put together a book such as The Mozart Project, why not me, or my students? In creating my own interactive book (see “A Final Word” below), I found that the process involved in creating an interactive book was straightforward and uncomplicated. After completing my book in the fall of 2015, I added a multi-touch book assignment to my Music History III class, in lieu of a traditional term paper, the very next semester. But unfortunately, my students could not use iBooks Author. Being a full-featured app, it can be used only on a Macintosh computer, not an iPad with its less-powerful processor. Therefore I began a search for an app that would allow students to create interactive books on the iPad, and my search led me to Book Creator.

Book Creator is a product of Red Jumper Limited, and while not as robust as iBooks Author, it still is capable of creating impressive, multi-touch books without difficulty and with little to no cost to the student. Indeed, my students can produce their first book for no charge with Book Creator, but afterward they must pay a fee of only $4.99 for all subsequent books. And while the app works beautifully on the iPad, it is not limited to that device. Book Creator is cross platform, and therefore available to users of Android, Windows and Apple.

The results of this experiment were quite encouraging. Students approached this assignment with an excitement and energy that I had never before seen for the traditional term paper. And although not all the books were of superior quality, I was happy with my students’ overall efforts and enthusiasm. From the books my students have now produced in two different courses, I am convinced that all music majors can benefit from such an assignment. Creating a book such as this compels the university music student to develop the skills of working with images, audio and video, in addition to the customary research and writing skills. And these are all skills that the future musician–either performer, educator or scholar–will need for twenty-first century jobs.

Results

In order to create a fully hybrid course sequence, and because of the time involved in preparing online videos, I found it necessary to flip one class at a time. As mentioned above, I began by flipping Music History III first, and then proceeding backwards, flipping the first course in the sequence last. Because I created the hybrids in reverse order, I was able track several cohorts of students who began the sequence with the traditional lecture style, and yet ended the sequence with the flipped classes. Bar Graphs 2 and 3 show grade distributions for the first two of these cohorts, both lecture and flipped.

These charts show significant migration from the “C” category to the “B” and “A” categories, but not much movement in the “D/F” categories. One conclusion that may be drawn from this data is that the motivated student is able to rise to the next level with the flipped class. However, I was not pleased with the large number of unmotivated “D/F” students, and so I continued to make minor adjustments in each successive class based on my own perceptions and student suggestions. 4, a pie chart, shows a marked improvement in the “D/F” categories from a more recent Music History III class. More data is needed, and will continue to be collected over the next few years. Even so, while these preliminary results may be inconclusive, they are certainly encouraging.

A Final Word

In spite of the promising results shown above with regard to student performance, it must be understood that my principal reason for moving to a flipped-class approach was not to raise student grades, although that has certainly been a pleasant consequence. Rather, my primary motivation was to more fully engage my students.

Too often, students experience various degrees of boredom in the typical music history lecture class. They are often inattentive in class but will usually learn enough to pass the tests and assignments, yet will promptly forget most of it. And that is a pity, because the content is exciting, the music is compelling, and the knowledge is necessary for a successful career in music.

I encourage anyone who desires a higher level of engagement for their students to try this method of instruction. And, in order to help those who might be interested, I have written a guidebook for creating the type of hybrid music history course that has been described in this article. Teaching Music History with iPad is a multi-touch, interactive book available for free from the Apple iBooks Store.

If we, as teachers, can instill enthusiasm for the subject matter in our students, it just might produce in them a desire for knowledge, an excitement for discovery, and an eagerness to continue learning once the class has ended. With the flipped music history class, I am now beginning to experience this type of reaction in my students. While it is true that the initial preparation of a flipped class takes more time than usual, I have found the results to be well worth the effort.

Notes

¹ Baumer, Matthew (2015). A Snapshot of Music History Teaching to Undergraduate Music Majors, 2011-2012: Curricula, Methods, Assessment, and Objectives. Journal of Music History Pedagogy, 5(2), pp. 23-47.

² Bergmann, J., and Sams, A. Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Eugene, OR, and Washington, D.C.: International Society for Technology in Education, 2012.

³ Distance Education and the TEACH Act (n.d.). Retrieved from the American Library Association website: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/copyright/teachact

Bibliography

Baumer, Matthew (2015). A Snapshot of Music History Teaching to Undergraduate Music Majors, 2011-2012: Curricula, Methods, Assessment, and Objectives. Journal of Music History Pedagogy, 5(2), pp. 23-47.

Bergmann, J., and Sams, A. Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Eugene, OR, and Washington, D.C.: International Society for Technology in Education, 2012.

Brownlow, A. (2015). Teaching Music History with iPad. Retrieved from Apple iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/teaching-music-history-with-ipad/id1050306740?mt=11

Eisen, C., Beales, D., Irving, J., Wallfisch, E., Feldman, D. H., Stafford, W., Zaslaw, N., Till, N., Keefe, S. (2015). The Mozart Project. Retrieved from Apple iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-mozart-project/id844639558?mt=11

Petrucci Music Library (n.d.). Retrieved from the International Music Score Library Project website: http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

Sales, A. (2016). Multi-Touch Books in Higher Education. Retrieved from Apple iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/multi-touch-books-in-higher-education/id1159709140?mt=11

Courses in the history of women in music have become more acceptable and available in colleges and universities throughout the country, but faculty faced with teaching in this field still find that they are charting new areas. There are no precedents, no textbooks, and there are few recordings and scores at hand. Perhaps for these reasons the session titled "Teaching the History of Women in Music at the College Level," held at the First National Congress of Women in Music at New York University on March 27, 1981 was widely attended and enthusiastically received. The 45 people who attended included representatives from many states, Puerto Rico and Europe.

The session featured four scholars who had recently taught courses about women in music at various institutions of higher education: Carol Neuls-Bates, Brooklyn College, CUNY; James R. Briscoe, Butler University; Joan Herrenkohl, Diablo Valley College; and Nancy Vedder-Shults, University of Wisconsin at Madison. Nancy B. Reich, Manhattanville College, chaired the session. A decision was made to focus on sources and materials and judging from the response it was the right one. The bibliographies, discographies, and other lists of resources disappeared in minutes.

What follows here, for the readers of SYMPOSIUM and those who may be called on to teach about the history of women in music, is a brief summary of the comments made by the four panelists and a list of resources selected from the materials prepared by the panelists and the chairperson. Margot Fortunato Kriel, University of Minneapolis, was not able to be present but submitted the syllabus created for her course, "Women in Three Arts: Painting, Music and Literature."

Those on the panel unanimously declared that teaching a course in this new field had been a gratifying and stimulating experience. Students were motivated and enthusiastic. Relationships between music and the social sciences were made clear. Patterns and parallels in all the arts were brought to light. A change in attitude towards the contributions of women to the arts was discerned, not only in students but also in instructors and fellow faculty members. Moreover, as Nancy Vedder-Shults pointed out, a course of this kind provides an opportunity to do some critical and objective thinking about conventional references, texts, readings, and opinions.

Some of the courses were designed for graduate music majors, some for the student not majoring in music, and still others for mixed groups. In developing the courses each instructor found that imagination and flexibility were key requisites. Some teachers concentrated on women composers, others studied women conductors, performers, patrons, writers on music, and folk and jazz artists as well. Almost all found that they were giving unorthodox assignments in addition to the usual lectures, readings, research papers, and listening assignments. Since few recordings were available, many in-class performances were presented by students and faculty. For those works for which no modern performing editions were available, students were called on to prepare scores. Among the invited guest lecturers were local music teachers and administrators, composers, and performers. Concerts and workshops given in the community were utilized as required listening and became the basis for class discussion. Research opportunities in such varied locales as convents and night clubs were mentioned. Several instructors called on the resources of the "Meet the Composer" program. Others interviewed women musicians—in class and out—to get first-hand comments on their experiences; additional projects involved preparation of programs for local radio stations and other groups.

Since many instructors encountered resistance from hard-pressed and skeptical administrators, the suggestions made by James Briscoe for sources of funding for necessary new materials were eagerly accepted. He advised approaching such groups as the National Women's Studies Association, state and local arts councils, and mentioned two or three private foundations known for encouraging women's studies, governmental agencies concerned with equal rights (whether this is still a possibility is doubtful), and local music clubs. His proposal for bartering a recital for a small grant was greeted with great enthusiasm.

Many instructors had already traded notes, unpublished papers, reading lists, and discographies in an informal way. The panel provided an opportunity for a more structured and a wider exchange. In collating the references submitted by the panelists, I found that all had used the same basic body of readings. The article by art historian Linda Nochlin, "Why Are There No Great Women Artists?" was used as a focal point by almost all the participants. It is currently available in two anthologies (see below). Other basic resources were the articles by Jane Bowers and Jeannie Pool published in 1977 (see below). About the same time (1977) the first recordings devoted exclusively to the work of women composers were produced by Gemini Hall; since then many reference works have been rushed into print. Da Capo Press is publishing a series of scores by women composers. Recordings by women composers have been produced and featured by record companies, dealers, and radio stations. Women in American Music: A Bibliography of Music and Literature published in 1979 (see below) has been used by many teachers as a model of scholarly work in this new field. At the Congress session two forthcoming works, both potential college texts, were announced: Carol Neuls-Bates, editor, Women in Music: An Anthology of Source Readings from the Middle Ages to the Present, New York: Harper and Row, 1982, and Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, editors, Women Making Music, Studies in the History of Women in Western Music, Berkeley: University of California Press.

A list of recent reference works and bibliographies, general studies on women in music, studies of individual women, and discographies follows. These have been selected from the materials prepared for the session by the panelists, the chairperson, and Margot Fortunato Kriel. To avoid duplication, individual books and articles cited in Bowers' and in Pool's bibliographies are not listed here. Note that most of the works cited have been published during the last ten years. Individual syllabi and bibliographies prepared by Joan Herrenkohl and James Briscoe are available on request from Nancy B. Reich, Department of Music, Manhattanville College, Purchase, N.Y. 10577.

REFERENCE WORKS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Block, Adrienne F. and Carol Neuls-Bates, editors. Women in American Music: A Bibliography of Music and Literature. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979.

Bowers, Jane. "Teaching About the History of Women in Western Music," Women's Studies Newsletter (Summer 1977), pp. 11-15. Includes discography.

Hixon, Donald L. and Don Hennessee. Women in Music: A Bibliography. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1975.

Neuls-Bates, Carol. "Sources and Resources for Women's Studies in American Music: A Report," Notes XXXV (Winter 1978), 269-283.

Pool, Jeannie. Women in Music History: A Research Guide. Ansonia Station, N.Y.: Published by the author, 1977. Includes discography.

Skowronski, JoAnn. Women in American Music: A Bibliography. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1978.

Smith, Julia, editor. Directory of American Women Composers. Chicago: National Federation of Women's Clubs, 1970.

Stern, Susan. Women Composers: A Handbook. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1978.

Williams, Ora. Black Women in the Arts and Social Sciences: A Bibliographic Survey. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1975.

Women and Folk Music: A Select Bibliography. Washington: Archive of Folk Song, Library of Congress.

Women and Music. Special issue of Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics 10 (1980). New York: Heresies Collective, Inc. (225 Lafayette Street, New York, N.Y. 10012).

Wood, Elizabeth. "Review Essay: Women in Music," Signs VI (Winter 1980), 283-297.

GENERAL AND HISTORICAL STUDIES

Ammer, Christine. Unsung: History of Women in American Music. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Arnold, Denis. "Orphans and Ladies: the Venetian Conservatories (1680-1790)," Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association (1962-63), pp. 31-48.

Bagnall, Anne D. Musical Practices in Medieval English Nunneries. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1975.

Bogin, Meg. The Women Troubadours. New York: Two Continents Publishing Co., 1976.

Borroff, Edith. "Women Composers: Reminiscence and History," College Music Symposium XV (1975), 26-33.

Driggs, Frank. Women in Jazz: A Survey. New York: Stash Records, 1977. (P.O. Box 390, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11215).

Drinker, Sophie L. Music and Women: The Story of Women in Their Relation to Music. (1948) Reprint, Washington: Zenger Publishing Co., 1976.

Neuls-Bates, Carol, editor. The Status of Women in College Music: Preliminary Studies. College Music Society Report No. 1, 1976.

Nochlin, Linda. "Why Are There No Great Women Artists?" Women in Sexist Society, Gornick and Moran, editors. New York: Basic Books, 1971. Also published in Art and Sexual Politics, Hess and Baker, editors. New York: Collier Books, 1971.

Oliveros, Pauline. "And Don't Call Them 'Lady' Composers," New York Times, September 13, 1970.

Pool, Jeannie. "Women in Music: Up from the Footnotes," Music Educators Journal 65 (January 1979), 28-41. Includes discography. This issue of MEJ includes five articles on women in music.

Renton, Barbara Hampton. The Status of Women in College Music, 1976-77: A Statistical Study. College Music Society Report No. 2, 1980.

Rosen, Judith and Grace Rubin-Rabson. "Why Haven't Women Become Great Composers?" High Fidelity/Musical America 23 (February 1973), 46-52. Includes discography.

Tick, Judith. Towards a History of American Women Composers Before 1870. Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 1979.

Tick, Judith. "Women as Professional Musicians in the United States, 1870-1900," Yearbook for Interamerican Musical Research (1973), pp. 95-133.

Van de Vate, Nancy. "The American Woman Composer: Some Sour Notes," High Fidelity/Musical America 25 (June 1975), 18-19.

A SAMPLING OF RECENT STUDIES OF INDIVIDUAL WOMEN

Barth, Prudentia et al. Hildegard von Bingen: Lieder. Salzburg: Otto Mueller, 1969.

Bates, Carol Henry. The Instrumental Music of Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1979.

Borroff, Edith. An Introduction to Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre. Brooklyn: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1966.

Bradshaw, Susan. "The Music of Elisabeth Lutyens," Musical Times (July 1971), pp. 653-656.

Daughtry, Willia E. Sissieretta Jones: A Study of the Negro's Contribution to 19th Century American Concert and Theatrical Life. Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1968.

Friedland, Bea. Louise Farrenc, 1804-1875: Composer, Performer, Scholar. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981.

Gaume, Mary Matilda. Ruth Crawford Seeger: Her Life and Work. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1973.

Grant, Barbara. "Five Liturgical Songs by Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)," Signs V (Spring 1980), 557-567.

Kendall, Alan. The Tender Tyrant: Nadia Boulanger, A Life Devoted to Music. Wilton, Conn.: Lyceum Books, 1977.

Raney, Carolyn. Francesca Caccini, Musician to the Medici, and her Primo Libro (1618). Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1971.

Reich, Nancy B. "Louise Reichardt," Ars Musica, Ars Scientia: Festschrift Heinrich Hueschen. Köln: Gitarre & Laute Verlag (1980), 369-377.

Rosand, Ellen. "Barbara Strozzi, virtuosissima cantatrice: The Composer's Voice," Journal of the American Musicological Society XXXI (Summer 1978), 241-281.

Rosenstiel, Leonie. The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978.

This survey concerns available texts for the college History of Music course and includes only single-volume books in English, dealing with Western music, published or revised after 1950, and comprehensive in scope.

It would be hard to take issue with Jack A. Westrup's description of the obligation of the historian. "The historian tries to treat events in an orderly sequence and see patterns without imposing them, to study causes, results and the interactions of events, and finally to make all this interesting and stimulating."¹ In general the authors of the books under consideration have fulfilled these obligations, although success on the last point is unequal.

The methods represented here for the study of the history of Western music are various. Some of the histories are chronological and all-inclusive, while others are chronological but focussed on styles and forms; some authors treat history as a history of Great Men; some include political, economic, social, and cultural events and their effect on music, while others see change as inherent only in the music itself and do not deal with events outside it; some attempt to produce self-sufficient volumes by including numerous musical examples in the text, while others, by providing a mere framework in outline form, imply that the student should do outside reading and listening; some strive for complete objectivity, cautiously avoiding obvious personal bias, while others openly state that they will make their personal assessment of the music known.

The college instructor in music history will choose a text which will best serve the kind of student for whom the course is set up. Is the class intended for music majors? for non-majors who are musicians? for non-majors who have very little background in music? (This survey does not, however, include introduction-to-music or appreciation texts.) Do the students work best when all information is contained in one volume, or do they welcome the challenge of an outline history? (The adequacy of the school music library to supplement the outline study with scores and books is a factor to consider.) Will most of the students go on to graduate work in music, or is this a terminal course for them? Is there a theory prerequisite for the course?

Texts for the music major, for the non-major, and outline histories will be described in that order, and presented in alphabetical order by the author.

There are some fine texts currently available for the music major. Edith Borroff's Music in Europe and the United States, A History (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1971) is comprehensive, accurate, and outstanding in many ways. As one gathers from the title, Dr. Borroff includes United States music history, beginning with the European Renaissance period. Other special features are the inclusion of 91 musical examples, 80 of which are complete, and discussions on the "Practicality of History" (chapter 30) and the rise of musicology (chapter 25). The magnificent illustrations are rich in color and pertinent to the text. Instead of a bibliography at the end, Dr. Borroff gives information about her sources in footnotes. Her prose style is full of vitality, precise and accurate. It may be a little disconcerting to some to find the composers relegated to brief small-print paragraphs at the end of each chapter. Those men who influenced the course of music most are bedded with their contemporaries in the same size berth. It seems to this reviewer that they deserve king-size accommodations.

Richard Crocker's History of Musical Style (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966) could certainly be used as the basic text for a history course. It treats the development of Western music chronologically, concentrating on form and style but also including the most important composers of each period. There are 142 musical examples; and, although illustrations of various non-musical events are not presented, these events are described in the text. The book is well-documented, with an excellent annotated bibliography. Dr. Crocker's prose style is terse, colorful and smooth. The analyses of the musical examples are most illuminating; and often give a fresh insight into the works. He speaks of "great rhythmic charm," and says "expressive ornamentation of trills, mordents and appoggiaturas is the French versionless brilliant and passionate, but more refined."

Adopted by 726 schools in 1970 alone, A History of Western Music (New York: W.W. Norton, 1960; rev. 1973) by Donald J. Grout probably is best-known to music history instructors. In 1973 it was expanded to 760 pages to include 135 musical examples. It is a most comprehensive general history, and in its revised version incorporates discoveries by musicologists which have been made in the 13 years since the book's original printing. Because of its attention to so many composers, works, and events, it makes an excellent reference and review book for both undergraduate and graduate music majors. The new illustrations in the revised edition concentrate on musical activity rather than on portraying composers. Some personal judgments have been eliminated in the new edition. Phrases from Dr. Grout's first edition such as "monotonous in harmony and almost totally unrelieved by any flash of spontaneous feeling" have been deleted. The bibliography has been augmented to include new publications and to fill in some earlier omissions. The text reads smoothly and clearly, and reflects a contagious enthusiasm for the music on the part of the author.

Man and his Music, The Story of Musical Experience in the West, by Alec Harman with Anthony Milner and Wilfrid Mellers (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1962), is intended for "use in schools and universities," and to show music in relation to human culture and activity. Although in a review of another music history book Mr. Harman accused the author of making judgments about composers, he himself states in the preface that he and his co-writers intend "to convey something of the feelings aroused in us by the music we write about." The book is large, originally subdivided but now available in a single volume of 1070 pages of text and with 236 musical examples. The organization is somewhat inconsistent. It begins with chapters given chronological titles and then proceeds to chapters on style. There is a bibliography at the end of each chapter. Baroque performers will be misled by Harman's discussion of ornamentation because he speaks of "upper" and "lower" mordents, and of the "perfectly satisfactory results" obtained by an "occasional trill on long notes." The American reader may be a little incensed by Wilfrid Mellers's arbitrary labeling of some composers in America as "minor." A commendable feature is the inclusion of complete compositions. The text is interesting and stimulating.

Curt Sachs's Our Musical Heritage, though appearing in a second edition as late as 1955 (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall), does not incorporate results of the latest research, and falls far short of giving a perspective on the contemporary scene in the 1950's. One of his last paragraphs begins: "Chordal harmony returned about 1930, and here and there, as in Stravinsky's C or Hindemith's E-flat Symphony, tonality in the older sense has been restored. Music, no less than other arts, develops in reversals. . . ." The importance of this book, however, lies in the reflection of Sachs's outstanding contributions to history of instruments and of dance, as well as the linking of Western European music to that of other cultures.

One of the newer histories is John D. White's Music in Western Culture, A Short History (Dubuque: Wm. C. Brown, 1972), "designed to meet the needs of undergraduate college and university students of music. . . ." It is concise and comprehensive (363 pages of text). Its brevity is achieved partly by summing up music history before the Middle Ages in a "prologue," by short musical examples, and by omitting documentation. Each of the conventional eras of Western music history are given 60-70 pages, except for "classicism" (33 pages). It includes information provided by recent musicological discovery in the text as well as in the bibliography. There is a nice balance between space for stylistic developments and space for men responsible for them. The book fulfills well the objectives of a concise history.

Histories which are intended for the "intelligent layman," the "general reader," and for popular consumption cannot be as accurate as more lengthy and technical histories. Generalizing always runs the risk of misrepresentation. One older favorite for the non-specialist in Great Britain is H.C. Colles's The Growth of Music, A Study in Musical History (London: Oxford University Press, 1956, 3rd ed.). "This book . . . makes a small selection of a few salient works by a few of the greatest men, and tries to trace the growth of musical technique by means of them." It begins with the troubadours and ends with 24 pages on the twentieth century, naturally dwelling at some length on the British composers.

Alfred Einstein's Short History of Music (New York: Vintage Books, 4th American ed., rev. 1954) takes contemporary developments as far as Bartok. J.A. Westrup writes about this history: "The work of one who was deeply versed in the minutiae of musical scholarship but was at the same time able to take a balanced view of the whole field . . . , it is immensely stimulating to the reader, and often it makes clear in a few sentences matters to which other authors have devoted many pages."²

A Concise History of Music by William Lovelock (New York: Ungar, 1962) is intended "for the beginner." It does not use the chronological divisions of Middle Ages, Renaissance, etc. Its chapter titles are "The Early Development of Counterpoint," "Early Secular Music," etc. There are very few musical examples, and contemporary developments end with Schoenberg. There is no information on American music.

An excellent book for the non-music major at college is Marc Pincherle's Illustrated History of Music, which has 240 fine illustrations and 200 pages of text. A review by Emmanuel Winternitz (Notes, XVIII [1960] pp. 48-50) praises the visual attraction but lists a few errors in identification of instruments.

"The pedagogic aim of this edition . . . is to help prepare the reader to participate more fully in the total musical experience. . . ." This is the stated aim of McKinney and Anderson in their Music in History, The Evolution of an Art (New York: American Book Co., 3rd ed., 1966). The revisions have largely been made by the authors, and the present edition carries contemporary information through the works of Charles Wuorinen. Some blanket statements might cause uneasiness, such as "Fortunately Bach did not write for the moment" (p. 354), and the subsequent description of the composition of his Mass in B Minor, implying that it was composed solely out of admiration for the Roman Mass.

Though the prose style tends to be a little pedantic and lifeless, the work of William L. Smolden, A History of Music (London: H. Jenkins, 1965), covers much detail in its 457 pages of text. It is intended for "students of music and the cultured layman."

A History of Music and Musical Style, by Homer Ulrich and Paul A. Pisk (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963), offers the "general reader" a well-written insight into the music primarily and men and events secondarily. There is a bibliography and a long chapter on American music.

Teaching music history by using an outline history has some advantages both to the student and to the teacher. A recent publication, An Outline History of Music by Milo Wold and Edmund Cykler (Dubuque: Wm. C. Brown, 1973), is quite complete, including in the twentieth century some important foreign composers forgotten in American music histories. Explanations are brief, but exact pages are cited in specific texts for additional reading on each topic treated in the outline. A source for score study and a recording are listed for every form described. There are fine illustrations and musical examples, features which are not often included in outlines. Such a book can also serve as an excellent review for graduate students.

The third edition of Hugh M. Miller's History of Music (New York: Barnes & Noble, 3rd ed., 1960) has a tabulated bibliography of standard texts. The list is limited, of course, to texts published before 1960 and, in fact, includes some which are no longer the best reference.

The Columbia University Press publication An Outline of The History of Music by Karl Nef (trans. by Carl Pfatteicher; 8th ed., 1955) includes musical examples, but also some statements that are no longer commonly accepted. It perpetuates some of the myths about Gregory and Gregorian chant, about Palestrina as the consultant for the Council of Trent, about Haydn introducing thematic development, etc.

¹J.A. Westrup, An Introduction to Musical History (London, 1963), p. 11.

²An Introduction to Musical History, p. 158.

Americans have been writing about the history of music, and about the history of American music, for almost a hundred years. As we approach the centenary we might well ask ourselves such questions as these: How have American music historians regarded American music? What have they considered its place in the history of Western music in general to be? How have they considered its own history? What have been their attitudes and approaches? In sum, where have we stood, we Americans, vis à vis our own music?

I

The first American history of music—as opposed to the first history of American music—was the History of Music of the Alsatian, Frédéric Louis Ritter, published between 1870 and 1874. It need not detain us: Ritter, who did not come to America until the age of twenty-seven and who was concerned with instructing the young ladies of Vassar College in the music of Europe's past, did not even mention American music. (He was, however, to publish later the first history of American music.)

Much more startling than Ritter's failure to include American music in his history is the fact that not for seventy years after his book would an American author's general history of music include any discussion of American music. Paul Henry Lang's Music in Western Civilization, published in 1941, is a monumental and masterly account of music in its social and cultural contexts; translated into several European languages, it was America's first significant contribution to international music historiography. In this book of some 1100 pages, covering the giant span of Western civilization from ancient Greece to the twentieth century, Lang does mention American music—just barely, with a total of seventeen pages.

The next full-length American history of music, and the one read almost universally now by American students, was Donald Grout's A History of Western Music (1960), a work of about 750 pages which, like Lang's, begins with the music of ancient Greece. In his last two chapters, Professor Grout includes a few paragraphs on American music: two pages in a discussion of late nineteenth-century nationalist trends; one-half page on jazz; and two and one-half pages on twentieth-century American music.

Statistically speaking Professor Lang devotes 1.5% of his book, Professor Grout 0.67% of his, to American music. Their view of American music—which might be termed "anti-nationalist"—is virtually the opposite of that of other nationals concerning the position of their own music in history. In Italy, a late nineteenth-century Compendio della storia della musica (1866) by Abramo Basevi concluded modestly that "il nostro paese nella scienza e nelle arti sopravenza ogni altri nazioni"; the music history adopted for the city schools of Paris in 1930 (Histoire de la musique, by Alice Gabeaud) remarks that "French music continues to hold her place as éducatrice du monde"; German music histories at least since Hans Joachim Moser's lecture of 1914, "Der Durgedanke als kulturgeschichtliches Problem," have tended to view German music as the "guiding star" of musical development in the Western world (the term appears explicitly in Max Chop's Führer durch die Musikgeschichte of 1922). In contrast to such views, American music historians have tended either to omit entirely any discussion of American music in their histories, to deny that it shared at all in the general development of Western music, or to damn American music with faint praise, commenting on it within the general framework of Western music history only as a kind of reluctant afterthought.

To understand this virtual exclusion of their own country's music from music histories by Americans, one must understand the degree to which Americans of the nineteenth century submitted to domination by romantic and transatlantic ideas about music, and have been subject to them almost until the present.

Early America was basically, of course, a product of British colonization. Early American culture, including early American music, was predominantly British in character. By the nineteenth century, however, a vast change in American musical attitudes had begun to take place. One influential American composer and educator, Thomas Hastings (1784-1872), hinted at this change when he wrote in 1822, in A Dissertation on Musical Taste:

We are the decided admirers of German music. We delight to study and to listen to it. The science, genius, the taste, that everywhere pervade it, are truly captivating to those who have learned to appreciate it: but such, we presume, are not yet the majority of American or English auditors or executants.

Hastings was writing as one of the first spokesmen for a new tradition in American music, one that I have elsewhere¹ called the "cultivated tradition," as opposed to an American "vernacular tradition." Terms like "science," "genius," and "taste" bespeak special standards, not for all music but for the art of music; not for music as a utilitarian part of everyday life or a pleasant diversion on the surface of life but as an art whose holy mission it was to edify and uplift. "Appreciation" of such music required cultivation.

With the early nineteenth-century restoration of diplomatic, commercial, social, and cultural relations with western Europe, Americans—particularly those in the old established Atlantic seaboard centers—turned to Europe for cultural models: they sought self-consciously and without self-confidence to cultivate an artistic taste. Western Europe at the time was of course just approaching the climax of the Romantic movement. Romanticism had had its earliest and strongest flourishing in Germany and, although springing initially from poets and novelists, it found its highest expression and made its greatest impact through German music and musicians. Hardly any European nation escaped this impact—nor did the United States. With the crop failures and the revolutions of 1848, moreover, a wave of Germans emigrated to America, further encouraging the Germanicization of America's cultivated tradition of art-music. The American pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk commented in his diary in 1863 that "all the musicians in the United States are Germans." A year earlier, with the same kind of exaggeration but also the same perceptive acknowledgment of an America wholly under Germanic musical influence, Gottschalk had written: "It is remarkable that almost all the Russians in America are counts, just as almost all the musicians who abound in the United States are nephews of Spohr and Mendelssohn."²

This situation affected in at least three ways American ideas about America's place in the "history of music" and about the history of American music itself. First, Americans rejected their musical past, dominated as it had been not only by popular, "unscientific" music but by British backgrounds. (We can observe this rejection as recently as 1963, in an American history of music: in their History of Music and Musical Style (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963), Homer Ulrich and Paul Pisk soberly declare, in a statement that is palpable nonsense, "For two centuries after the first settlements were established on the American continent a tradition of American music did not exist.") In the nineteenth century, America's past music was rejected as a basis for the new "scientific" music of the cultivated tradition. Early America indeed had a musical tradition; but in the nineteenth century that tradition, founded on Anglo-American psalmody and hymnody and on the great reservoir of Anglo-American song, was scorned completely by composers of the cultivated tradition.

Second, Americans rejected the American present as a source of either topical or musical subject-matter. The very aspects of nineteenth-century America and its music that were unique had by definition no models in Europe; they got no celebration in American music. Thus no echo of the fantastic American landscape, or of pioneering (despite its being "the Romantic movement in action," as Lewis Mumford has said³), or of American industry and science was heard in nineteenth-century American music of the cultivated tradition. Similarly, no echo was heard of the many kinds of vernacular-tradition music of the time—folk hymns, Negro music, minstrel-show songs and dances, popular marches, folksongs of many sorts. That composers of genteel, cultivated art-music were actually ashamed of American vernacular-tradition music is suggested by the career of Stephen Foster (1826-1864). Having begun as a composer of genteel "household" songs of sentiment, Foster decided to compose also for the more plebeian, earthy, vernacular medium of the blackface minstrel show. Embarrassed at first to be associated with that medium, Foster sold songs to the minstrel-troupe leader E.P. Christy: thus his most successful song, Old Folks at Home (1851), was originally presented and published as the work of Christy. Ultimately, attracted by the financial gain promised by the publication of minstrel-show songs, Foster wrote to Christy requesting his "name" back and saying with a fine (but defensive) show of resolution, "I have concluded . . . to pursue the Ethiopian business without fear or shame and . . . to establish my name as the best Ethiopian song-writer."⁴

The third result of the split between vernacular and cultivated American music traditions in the nineteenth century was to throw American cultivated-tradition music into direct competition, so to speak, with the European music it sought to emulate. Needless to say, American music was inferior. A Beethoven, a Schumann, a Wagner emerges as the crest of a wave of musical tradition that has been gathering for virtually centuries; America could hardly throw up such a wave-crest in a few decades.

Viewed in this light, it is perhaps no wonder that American writers on the history of Western music have unanimously neglected American music in their books; no wonder that theirs has been a basically anti-nationalist attitude. So long as they concerned themselves only with the tradition of European fine-art music—with the cultivated tradition—they saw American music, at least of the nineteenth century and earlier, as distinctly second-class: the competition was far, far too keen.

II

What about specialized studies of isolated aspects of American music? What has been done—and what has not been done? What has been the attitude of the American scholarly community toward American-music studies?

The first great scholar to make detailed studies of any aspect of American music was O.G.T. Sonneck (1873-1928). Chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress, Sonneck, who was born in America but educated in Germany, published many monographs on American music. His most extensive studies were Early Concert-Life in America (1907) and Early Opera in America (1915). These, along with his monumental Bibliography of Early Secular American Music: 18th Century (1905), provided models of meticulous scholarship and exhaustive detail. Today, a half-century later, they have been neither superseded nor matched, for in general American music has continued to be neglected by American musicologists.

One major reason for this neglect has been the very concept of music history held by American musicologists. This concept, which still predominates among American musical scholars, is based on the principles enunciated by the Viennese musicologist Guido Adler in a famous article of 1885: "Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft" (Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft, I, 1). Adler emphasized analytic and style-critical studies of musical "monuments" as the primary responsibility of musicologists; he minimized the importance of studies of the social or cultural uses of music; he was concerned with masterworks by master composers. American musicologists almost unanimously accepted these principles, as the fledgling discipline began to develop in the United States (we might date it from the first issue of The Musical Quarterly in 1915). Furthermore, confirmed in their European orientation by the arrival in America during the Nazi era of many fine European scholars, American musicologists focused their attention not on American music but on European. It is a remarkable fact that although American scholars have contributed to many Denkmäler, Monumenta, and Gesamtausgaben of music by European composers, there is not yet in print a complete edition of the works of a single American composer, and the closest we have come to a volume of Denkmäler is a single modest historical anthology of American music.⁵

The attitude toward American-music studies of a majority of American musicologists was expressed trenchantly in a now-notorious colloquialism by Joseph Kerman, in his keynote paper of the 1964 meetings of the American Musicological Society. Suggesting "A Profile for American Musicology," Professor Kerman dismissed studies of American composers' music as a futile exercise: he said we can be interested in the music of, for example, Marenzio or Couperin because their music can be brought to life and made a vital part of our contemporary experience, but as for Francis Hopkinson, Lowell Mason, or Theodore Chanler (and here Professor Kerman pointedly chose one composer from each of the three centuries of American music), "Man, they are dead."

Despite, however, the general lack of interest in American music among the American musicological community, a few scholars have made notable contributions. Sonneck's early models of meticulous scholarship, many of them bibliographical studies, have been followed in such a work as Richard Wolfe's three-volume Secular Music in America 1801-1825 (New York Public Library, 1964). Irving Lowens and Allen Britton, working singly and as a team, have explored especially the late eighteenth-century choral music of New England; Lowens's more numerous contributions have been gathered into a book, Music and Musicians in Early America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1964). Donald McCorkle has written extensively about, and edited music by, the German-speaking communities of Moravian brethren in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America. Robert Stevenson has concentrated on Spanish music in Latin America but has also completed a careful survey of Protestant Church Music in America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1966). Few professional musicologists have concerned themselves with jazz or related music. A composer, Gunther Schuller, has published the first volume of a two-volume work on jazz that is the first serious style-critical study: Early Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968). The most objective and well-documented jazz history remains The Story of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956) by the late Marshall Stearns (a Chaucer specialist!); Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis have surveyed a related music in They All Played Ragtime (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950); Charles Keil has written a splendid account of Urban Blues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).

Few critical biographies of American composers have appeared. Among those that observe high standards of scholarship and are also critically perceptive are Henry and Sidney Cowell's Charles Ives and His Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), John Tasker Howard's Stephen Foster (rev. ed.; New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1962), and Kathleen Hoover and John Cage's Virgil Thomson: His Life and Music (New York: T. Yoseloff, 1959). In a class by itself, a remarkable demonstration of the potential riches for American music history in what I have called our vernacular tradition, is Hans Nathan's study of Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962). Among successful broader studies one might single out John Mueller's sociologically oriented account of The American Symphony Orchestra (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1951) and the portions on America in Arthur Loesser's lively social history, Men, Women and Pianos (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954). By now a number of Ph.D. dissertations on American music have been written; for the most part these have been style-studies, along Adlerian lines, of the works of single composers, and like most American dissertations they remain unpublished and virtually unread. (One of the finest, however, Richard Crawford's "Andrew Law (1749-1821): The Career of an American Musician," is to be published by Northwestern University Press.)

In sum, the list of specialized studies in American music of which we may be proud in a scholarly sense is not only rather short; it is owed only in part to American musicologists. However, the past decade or so has revealed some signs of change. These have arisen, I think, partly from the populist trends of the late 1930's and 1949's, which saw Americans newly interested in their own past; partly from the nationalist sentiments evoked by World War II; and finally from a more liberal view of what historical musicology—especially in a fluid, diverse, and democratic society like that of the United States—could or should concern itself with.

The most eloquent spokesman for this new view of the proper approach for American musicologists to take vis à vis their own culture's music has been Charles Seeger (b. 1886). Seeger has asserted bluntly that "the majority of musicologists are not primarily interested in music, but in the literature of European fine art music, its grammar and syntax (harmony and counterpoint)."⁶ Pointing out that fine-art music is but one of four main traditional idioms in world culture—primitive, fine-art, folk, and popular—and that in a dynamic, nascent culture like that of the United States the fine-art idiom may well be the weakest or at any rate the least universal or representative of the culture, Seeger has claimed:

It will be readily understood, therefore, that the character of music activity in the Americas up to 1900 compels an approach in many ways different from that conventionally in use by historicomusicology. It must perforce be almost exclusively ethnomusicological, quantitative rather than qualitative, more concerned with tradition than with only the outstanding carriers of tradition, and with all four idioms.⁷

Seeger's point of view has been that of a pan-cultural historian. Rejecting the older, exclusive concern with only a cultivated tradition, an educated culture, an elite art—the best that has been thought and said by the few in a civilization, as Matthew Arnold once put it—Seeger has argued for a concern also with the vernacular tradition, popular culture, mass art—"the run of what is thought, felt, and liked by the many," as Max Lerner has put it.⁸ Seeger's ideas have opened the way for a new interest in American music by American music historians, for they offer new standards of scholarly value and invite investigation in areas different from those of the traditional European historical musicology—the Adlerian tradition—in which American music historians have been schooled for so long. Essentially, what Seeger has challenged us to do is to write about the history of music rather than the history of a music, i.e., the history of musical culture in the large rather than the history of a single musical idiom.

Before suggesting how this challenge has been taken up by some scholars, let me briefly outline the history of American-music histories.

III

The first attempt at a history of American music was by that same Frédéric Ritter I mentioned earlier as the first American author of a general history of music. Ritter's Music in America (1883) was concerned exclusively with the cultivated tradition in American music and measured that music critically and anti-nationalistically by the standards of European fine-art music. Ritter went so far as to claim that "the people's song . . . is not to be found among the American people"—thus relieving himself of any responsibility to discuss the American vernacular tradition. Louis Elson's History of American Music (1904) shared Ritter's orientation.

Oscar Sonneck, whom I have mentioned as a peerless pioneer in American-music scholarship, hinted in a lecture of 1916 titled "The History of Music in America" that perhaps American music historians had been too narrowly restrictive in their viewpoint. "Our books," said Sonneck, "deal more with the history of music and musicians in America than with the history of American musical life." Sonneck himself, however, did not develop this idea into a full-scale history, nor was his hint acted upon by the next historian of American music, John Tasker Howard.

Howard's Our American Music, far more extensive than any earlier survey, was first published in 1931. Within the next fifteen years, reflecting the newly awakened interest of Americans in their own past that was characteristic of the 1930's and '40's, so much new research had been done that Howard had to revise his book twice (1939, 1946). Nevertheless, he did not change his basic viewpoint, which was dominated by European fine-art music ideals and which saw American music as having engaged in a long, arduous struggle to rise to European levels of musical excellence. Howard divided American music history into three periods, and the titles of the three sections of his book reveal his attitude: Part I—1620-1800—Euterpe in the Wilderness; Part II—1800-1860—Euterpe Clears the Forest; Part III—1860 to the present—Euterpe Builds Her American Home.

The next history of American music, and the first to adopt the multilateral, multi-level approach urged by Charles Seeger, was America's Music by Gilbert Chase (New York: McGraw Hill, 1955). Reacting violently against what I have called the anti-nationalism of earlier American-music historians (which we have seen to be really an exclusive orientation to the fine-art idiom of Euro-America), Chase belligerently introduced his book by saying, "My own approach to America's music is not at all respectable—my bête noire is the genteel tradition." He proudly pointed out that "in this book, some fifteen chapters [of thirty-one] deal, in whole or in part, with various phases of American folk, primitive, and popular music."⁹ And he went so far as to say that in his opinion "important" American music was important only to the degree that it was "different from European music." This sounds suspiciously like an arch-nationalist viewpoint, but rather than viewing him as an ardent nationalist, I view Chase as attempting to redress the balance, in American-music historiography, between concern for the tradition of fine-art music—virtually the only tradition dealt with by earlier writers—and the traditions of primitive, folk, and popular music.¹⁰ Chase implicitly urged the idea that in American democratic society, which has lacked the clear-cut cultural stratification of western Europe's older, more autocratic societies, the popular-music idiom especially (or what I prefer to call the vernacular tradition, since it has drawn on various elements of the folk, the popular, and the once-elite idioms) has been extraordinarily important in relation to the other idioms of folk and fine-art music.

Insisting on this point, which, against the background of earlier American-music histories, was somewhat revolutionary, Chase acted like any good revolutionary: he denied any virtues in the old régime; he devalued American fine-art music (at least of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) to the point of bankruptcy, suggesting that a single popular song by Stephen Foster was worth any number of concertos by Edward MacDowell. In short, he shifted the criteria of significance for American music history by about 180 degrees.

Perhaps a middle ground is the ideal. Perhaps we need not be as extremist in a new direction as to denigrate American cultivated-tradition music simply because it aped European music; that is what one segment of our nineteenth-century culture was all about, and as historians we must accept it. On the other hand, thanks to Seeger and Chase perhaps we have found ways to a better-balanced history of American music, including a recognition of the vitality, the honesty, the "American-ness," and indeed the beauty of the vernacular tradition. Hopefully, other American historians will adopt a truly pan-cultural attitude, accepting as the proper concern of music-historical study not solely one idiom, one tradition, one mode of musical expression but all the kinds of music that America has made, used, sung, and played.

¹Music in the United States: A Historical Introduction (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc.; to be published in April 1969).

²Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Notes of a Pianist, ed. Jeanne Behrend (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), 127, 102.

³The Golden Day (2nd ed.; Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 20.

⁴The entire text of this interesting letter is given in Gilbert Chase (ed.), The American Composer Speaks (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), 56-57.

⁵W. Thomas Marrocco and Harold Gleason (eds.), Music in America . . . 1620-1865 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1964).

⁶"Oral Tradition in Music," Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend (New York, 1950), 825-29.

⁷"The Cultivation of Various European Traditions in the Americas," Report of the Eighth Congress of the International Musicological Society, New York 1961, Volume I—Papers (Basel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1961), 364-75.

⁸America as a Civilization (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 780.

⁹America's Music, 1st ed., xvii, xix.

¹⁰Chase later admitted (with overt reluctance) that primitive music—e.g., of the American Indian—has had almost no role in the general culture of the United States by eliminating from the second edition of his book (1966) a chapter on Indian music, to make room for a new one on music in the 1960's.

The two-semester course for music majors which concentrates almost exclusively on European music from the Middle Ages to the mid-twentieth century has been a standard on American campuses for several decades as the core music history requirement for music majors. It represents in most programs a "bottom line" of historical knowledge. During these same decades there has, happily, been an explosion in knowledge about ethnic music, American music, and music by women, as well as the acceptance of these subjects as essential components of our students' musical education. There has also been an increased acceptance of truly contemporary music as worthy of study.

What is the impact of this explosion on our undergraduate music history core? Are we incorporating the new areas into our core courses? Are we eliminating old material to make room for the new? Are we distinguishing among different programs (for example, performance on the one hand and music education on the other), and deciding that minimal knowledge of music history can be at a lower level for one group than the other?

In order to answer these questions I conducted a survey of music programs across the country¹ The results, summarized in the tables at the end of this article, are quite striking. They show that significant change is taking place in the American undergraduate music history core. Much of the change is due to expansion of the field of musicology into these previously ignored areas, and to the resulting overload when these new areas are added to the already full music history core. The type of change that the survey shows is largely evolutionary: a gradual modification of the traditional curriculum to absorb new concepts and information.

The average undergraduate program requires 3.3 semesters of music history for all music majors. Almost all programs require a course like Music in Western Civilization (MWC). Half of the MWC courses are two semesters in length;² most of the others are three or four semesters. The semester course usually carries three credits.

In the three tables below, the percentages represent positive responses based on the total number of responses to each question.

In addition to the standard subject matter of the MWC course—cultivated music (that is, "art music") from the middle ages through the middle of the twentieth century—over three-quarters of the programs also cover music written after 1970,³ more than half cover pre-Medieval music, and a significant minority cover jazz, ethnic or non-western music, and women composers. The development of listening skills⁴ is one of the goals of most of these courses.

Most of the courses use the Grout-Palisca text, but many respondents commented that they supplement it with others: often the Machlis Introduction to Contemporary Music or the Cope New Directions in Music, with one or more of the period studies in the Prentice Hall History of Music Series, or with a volume of source readings.

The addition of an introductory music history course in almost half of all programs is the most significant change in the overall profile of music history requirements in recent years. While MWC tends to cover the traditional European content, this pre-MWC course more often introduces both cultivated and vernacular musics to lower-division music students and puts an even stronger emphasis on developing listening skills than does MWC. It is much less likely than MWC to be chronological in approach.

In only about a quarter of the schools is at least one further music history course required in all the degree programs, but most schools do offer electives in music history to their undergraduates. In order of popularity, the most commonly offered electives are Jazz, Twentieth Century, Opera, Romantic, Baroque, Classical, American, Renaissance, Symphonic, Medieval, Post-World War II, and World Music. More than half of the programs require repertory courses of all their performance majors, but these are usually under a performance rather than history rubric.

Adding an introductory course, and possibly expanding the MWC course to three or more semesters in almost half of the programs—when a two-semester course has been the norm in the past—seems to be balanced by programs decreasing required upper division electives, moving away from the cafeteria-style approach of the late '60s and '70s to a more structured curriculum. On the other hand, the required course content now tends towards coverage of a wider spectrum of musics than before. About one-half of all programs require some coverage of jazz (ranging from two works to an entire course), and about a third, world or ethnic music. These figures are not high, particularly in light of NASM standards for all baccalaureate programs in music, which call for "opportunities to deal with music of various historical periods and cultural sources (emphasis mine)."⁵

Asked to note any additional features of core music history curricula, respondents to the survey often cited a strong listening, analysis, or writing emphasis in their required courses. A handful of schools designate at least one semester of the MWC course as one of the school's writing-intensive courses. Another handful of respondents indicated that their music education, music therapy, and/or commercial music majors took fewer semesters of the MWC course than did other music majors.

The music history core at the University of Idaho, which started evolving to its present form around 1980, can stand as a specific example since it appears to embody many of the characteristics revealed in the questionnaire. It begins, in the spring semester of the freshman year, with an appreciation course. The course goals are to develop listening skills, to put the music with which students are most familiar in some kind of context in relationship to the cultivated repertory, and to develop some larger world view of music and the way it functions in culture. The introductory course focuses on the development of listening skills and exposure to a variety of musics, both vernacular and cultivated, stressing social context, basic forms, procedures, and genres. It is less European in content and less historical in approach than MWC and uses a horizontal, cross-cultural approach rather than a strictly chronological one.⁶

The MWC course, begun in the sophomore year, has been expanded to three semesters: the first covers European music to about 1750, the second covers European and American music from 1750 to 1900, and the third, the twentieth century. Significant popular and folk music (mostly American) is touched upon in the last two semesters and jazz history is integrated throughout the last semester. The emphasis in the MWC course is on the development of literacy, in some depth, in Western music. My definition of "literacy" is broad, encompassing not only information such as terms, genres, composers, and works, but also skills in analysis, establishing of context, and understanding performance practices. MWC also introduces basic research methodology and graduated library assignments which begin in the freshman introductory course continue throughout the three semesters of the course.

Our music education majors are not required to take any further music history courses, while most other majors must elect one additional upper-division course. The upper-division history courses are not surveys, but focused studies within a particular period or genre.

We advise students planning to continue with graduate study to use computer programs and organized study groups to prepare for GRE's and graduate placement exams, since we do not try to cover the details of, say, the full edition of the Grout-Palisca History of Western Music in the MWC course.

Two important trends emerge from this survey. First, music programs in the U.S. are putting a greater emphasis, especially in MWC, on the development of skills that will allow students to continue to investigate and learn on their own. Second, there is an increasing recognition that MWC is not the appropriate first course in music history for most students; they need to be armed first with certain skills and with at least a beginning acquaintance with the cultivated repertory before they embark on an intense survey. In fact, music majors need something we have been offering to non-majors for decades: music appreciation as an initiation into the field of the history of music.

Finally, a question emerges from this survey: what is the music of Music in Western Civilization? The question is implicit in these figures: 85% of programs use Grout, yet 30% of the courses cover jazz, 43% cover women composers, and 78% cover post-1970 music—subjects which Grout treats minimally or not at all.⁷ If one is using the full 880-page Grout/Palisca, and teaching skills as well as information, getting through its content alone is a feat; adding these other subjects to the curriculum is obviously a product of teachers' strong commitment to their importance. That jazz and twentieth-century music are the most frequently offered music history electives across the country, as indicated in Table 3, below, also shows this commitment.⁸

While this survey indicates a trend toward a broadened content and approach in MWC, this greater breadth has been slow in coming and is still not firmly established throughout U.S. undergraduate music curricula. Perhaps one reason is simply that "Music in Western Civilization" or "History of Western Music" as a traditional course name defines for most of us a particular course content and approach, reinforced by the text books we tend to choose.⁹

This traditional course content seems to raise concerns which might be illustrated by specific (and admittedly polemic) questions such as these: Are the music of Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin, and Stephen Foster an important part of America's musical civilization? Should the music of these composers, and the cultures they represent, be relegated to elective courses which are unlikely to be taken by most American music students? On the other hand, is a music student "literate" if s/he graduates from a music program having studied less, in the case of Beethoven, than his third, fifth and ninth symphonies, plus a few other works from representative genres?

Given the concern evident from this survey and the importance of the literacy issue in music history, it is not surprising that some serious and lively debate on these subjects is now taking place within The College Music Society and the Sonneck Society.¹⁰ More, however, needs to occur within the musicological community at large.

Those of us who are responsible for the definition and the teaching of the core undergraduate music history curriculum are clearly facing, or need to face, some rather difficult choices. One is very practical: it is a lot of extra work to create one's own text/score anthology/recording anthology package when there is one readily available that is in so many ways exemplary, even if it does not address certain musics that many of us think are critical. Another choice may appear more difficult than it is: the broader content which is mandated by advances in our field can only be achieved at the expense of some traditional course content (as in the Beethoven example). This broader content can be achieved without a more superficial approach, though. For example, teaching only two jazz works, which according to the questionnaire would qualify as "covering" jazz in a syllabus, is not necessarily tokenism. In two works we can offer considerable insight into how to approach jazz, its procedures, and its social and historical context compared with, say, a Beethoven symphony.

Offering our students a model of how to "do" music history, and covering less detail and fewer works (but those in greater depth) can address both our need for a broader definition of Music in Western Civilization and the ideal of equipping our students with better skills to continue the process of learning.

TABLE 1
Music in Western Civilization

TABLE 2
Music Appreciation or Introduction to Music for Majors

TABLE 3
Elective Music History Courses

Others listed by more than 5%: Choral, Special Topics, Vocal Literature (Song), Chamber, Popular, Piano Literature

¹The questionnaire was sent to 500 NASM-accredited colleges and universities in the U.S. There were 266 responses and there was no follow-up. Fifty-six percent of the responding schools have graduate programs.

²Seventy-seven percent of schools on the quarter system have three quarters of MWC.

³The questionnaire specified that a topic being "covered" meant "lecture and/or reading in some depth, and at least two works on the syllabus." Regarding the high percentage of respondents who include post-1970 music in their courses, it seems quite possible that those most interested in keeping up-to-date in their courses would also be the most likely to answer this survey.

⁴That is, the ability to analyze style elements and formal events through listening alone.

⁵National Association of Schools of Music 1991-1992 Handbook, 55.

⁶Unfortunately, there are very few texts which offer this approach and content. Donald Ivey's Sound Pleasure (Schirmer) does, and Tom Manoff's Music: a Living Language (Norton) also offers a cross-cultural approach, but within a chronological format.

⁷Grout/Palisca devotes 8% of its pages to twentieth-century music, less than 2% to the past fifty years, and 2% to all American music. It does not cover jazz, popular music, or any music by women composers.

⁸Of course, these trends put music history squarely in line with the other humanities' involvement in the cultural literacy debate of the past ten or so years. The debate, often fueled by the current interest in reforming or establishing college- or university-wide general education requirements, has focused on "what to know" versus "how to know" and "what is western civilization?" in literature, history, and philosophy as well as music.

⁹Three general music history texts—the Schirmer History of Music, K. Marie Stolba's The Development of Western Music (Wm. C. Brown), and Edith Borroff's Music in Europe and the United States (2d edition, Ardsley House)—do treat American music, including jazz, in some depth, and also include women composers. They are used in few programs, however.

¹⁰The College Music Society and the Sonneck Society are currently discussing issues closely related to the ones addressed here. Results of a survey by Susan L. Porter on the coverage of American music in music history survey courses appeared in the Summer 1989 issue of the Sonneck Society Bulletin. The Sonneck Society has just published a booklet—Bringing Music History Home: A Guide for American Teachers of Music History—which presents practical information on integrating American music into the music history curriculum.

College Music Symposium, the premier journal of The College Music Society, was published in print form for 50 years, 1961-2010. The journal included scholarly and historical articles, reviews of publications and recordings, reports of musical events, and discussion of curricula and teaching methods of interest to the music and higher education community.

Symposium emerges today as a refereed, web-based service through which The College Music Society presents the work of its members to the public and professional musicians. The name “College Music Symposium” honors the achievements of the past while using new technologies to meet the continuing needs of the public and all working in the music field.

Symposium includes ten major service areas:

• Scholarship and Research—refereed scholarly articles
• CMS Forums—Opinions, editorials, commentary and essays
• Reviews—reviews of books, textbooks, periodicals, and instructional materials
• Instructional Technologies, Methodologies, and Resources—review and discussion of technologies and methods useful for teaching in the classroom and studio
• CMS Report—in depth reports concerning important topics, events, or issues
• Music Business-Industry—presentation of reports and discussion of topics relevant to music business-industry education
• CMS Audio Archive—an audio archive of performances of CMS members
• Lectures, Performances, and Lecture-Recitals—a video archive of refereed music lectures, performances, and lecture-recitals
• CMS Conference Archive—abstracts of international, national, and regional music conferences
• Events in Music—information concerning events in and outside academe, including international music conferences

T. S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize in 1948 for his work as a trailblazing pioneer of modern poetry. His memorable poem "The Four Quartets" captures, in my opinion, where we are today as we reflect on fifty years of the publication of College Music Symposium;

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened into the rose garden.
My words echo thus in your mind.

We stand today as members of The College Music Society in the "present" of all the complexities of music in higher education and music in society. As we enter a new era in the life of Symposium, we look at the future and its many possibilities and opportunities with excitement and yet with anxiety. We take with us "time past" as we enter into this new era of publication. We take with us "time present" as we contemplate the future purposes and activities of The College Music Society, as well as the web based publication of Symposium.

The founders of College Music Symposium began their discussions of the purpose and direction of the journal during the winter of 1960. In 1961, Symposium, with its startling breadth of topics and its all-encompassing perspective of issues, concerns, and scholarly work in music in higher education, became a reality. Donald M. McCorkle, first editor of Symposium, stated the purpose and the goal of the journal in his editorial in volume 1, published in fall 1961. McCorkle presents the purpose of Symposium as the amalgamation of scholarly thought, research, and ideas that transcend areas of specialization and provide a unique cross-section of provocative ideas in music. The journal was to stimulate the intellectual curiosity of composers, theorists, conductors, pianists, singers, educators, and administrators – all faculty in music in higher education. It was to be "a different sort of scholarly journal,” "address[ing] itself with optimism and vigor" to each of the professional areas in music.

A year later, in volume 2 (fall, 1962), McCorkle stated "that the future of CMS and Symposium is completely in the hands of you the members, readers, and authors." He strongly emphasized that Symposium should not duplicate or run parallel to the journals and activities of other associations, but that The College Music Society and its journal should rise above provincialism and should "take our place with our own best assets which are considerable among the foremost American musical associations." He strongly suggested that we could do so by understanding ourselves and those with whom we work.

As we launch Symposium as a web-based service, we look in the rear view mirror at Donald M. McCorkle's earlier predictions and statements of purpose. Have we created a provocative and stimulating forum in Symposium that transcends the barriers of specialization? Have we shared our collective wisdom as a professional and a professional Society? Have we provided our culture with a greater understanding of our art form and our pedagogy? Has Symposium succeeded in the purposes stated by the founders in 1960?

Harold Spivacke's article, "The CMS Amidst National Societies," which was published in volume 2 (fall, 1962) of Symposium, provides a framework by which we might address the questions posed above. In his review of the relationship of The College Music Society to other societies in our field, he delineates the components and aspects of our profession and its work. He charges us to provide a critical evaluation of teaching at the college level and he welcomes an evaluation of our work by high school teachers. He emphasizes the importance of the relationship of the higher education community to the private music teacher. He stresses the importance of our research and scholarly activity to the work and purposes of the private music teacher. He emphasizes questions of curricula and course content. He challenges us to review law and politics as they relate to the field of music in higher education. He focuses on the publication of books, scores, and records. He draws us to an awareness of copyright law and he addresses government subsidies of the arts.

These topics, first brought to the attention of readers of Symposium at its founding, guided future issues of the journal. Throughout its early volumes, Symposium contained a "Symposium" or "Topics and Perspective" section in which several contributors wrote on a single topic from various perspectives. For example, Volume 3 (1963) published a report of the Committee on Music in the Elementary and Secondary schools which recommended summer training institutes for K-12 teachers, quality standards of musical performance, standards for high school text books in music history and theory, the discontinuation of humanities or related arts courses, and the better education of college guidance counselors. Volume 4 (1964) contained a Symposium section entitled "Performance as Humanistic Study" and Volume 5 (1965) contained a Symposium section addressing "The Crisis in Theory Teaching."

Throughout its history, Symposium responded to Harold Spivacke's original topical suggestions. Symposium provided its readers with new perspectives in music teaching, in the theoretical aspects of our field, in performance, in governmental relations, in ethnomusicology, in the development of a broad based curricular structure and in the integration of ideas and thoughts regarding music.

Yes, we have accomplished the goals set forward in 1960 by our founders. We have created an international forum through Symposium that cuts across lines of specialization and provides opportunities for the discussion of ideas and problems related to music in higher education. Symposium has advocated a broad-based, comprehensive, and scholarly approach to the issues presented and it has encouraged controversy and debate.

Through the ideas expressed in Symposium in the early volumes, an agenda was set for the presentation of focused research and scholarly work in the years to come. Subsequent Editorial Boards focused on research and writing of high quality that would meet the standards set early in the journal's history. In meeting the challenges set by the founders, Symposium has demonstrated one of the great strengths of our profession: the collaboration we bring to our curricular and pedagogical work.

Now, it is appropriate that we set a new technologically based agenda for Symposium. That agenda should include a thorough review of music curricula in higher education, one that will address the broad educational needs of our students in the twenty-first century. The agenda should embrace technology and how technology will be utilized in every area of specialization. The agenda of Symposium should examine the nature of the partnership between higher education and the public primary and secondary schools, as was the charge given to us in 1962 by Harold Spivacke. Our agenda for Symposium for the twenty-first century should continue to consider the role of music in the various cultures of the world as an imperative in the growth and development of music in higher education. The agenda should continue to include a comprehensive approach to analysis, theory, and creativity, and the agenda should celebrate the joy of teaching in all of the specialized areas. The agenda for the 21st century for Symposium should include provocative examinations of the role of the government in artistic development, as well as the role of local, state and federal support of the musical arts.

It is appropriate as we enter a new technological and web-based period for College Music Symposium that we celebrate the field of music and the achievement of our journal. We must also challenge ourselves to consider what is old and familiar to us in startling new ways. As William Faulkner phrased it in his Nobel Prize winning address of 1950, "Make out of the material of the human spirit something that was not there before." Let us celebrate our work, our dreams, our research, our scholarly activities and our visions. Let us look for new ways and new directions of artistic and scholarly development in the pages of the web-based Symposium. Let us make out of the material of the human spirit something that was not there before.
We are reminded of our future in the poem "The Rewaking" by William Carlos Williams, first printed in Volume 1 (1961) of Symposium:

Sooner or later
we must come to the end
of striving

to reestablish
the image the image of
the rose

but not yet
you say extending the
time indefinitely

by
your love until a whole
spring

rekindle
the violet to the very
Ladies Slipper

and so by
your love the very sun
itself is revived

Comprehensive musicianship as a factor in the structure of music curricula in secondary schools, colleges, universities, and conservatories has been in existence long enough for trends and attitudes to have emerged which permit observation and comment. A recent article by Leland D. Bland in SYMPOSIUM (Fall 1977, pp. 167-174), "The College Music Theory Curriculum: The Synthesis of Traditional and Comprehensive Musicianship Approaches" has touched off a desire to respond to these trends and attitudes and to suggest some words of caution about comprehensive musicianship as it appears to be evolving in collegiate institutions.

To describe comprehensive musicianship I would like to repeat the definition given by Willoughby, with which most readers of SYMPOSIUM are probably familiar:

Comprehensive musicianship is a concept about teaching and learning music. It is an approach that suggests that the source of all music study is the "literature" of music and is one that promotes the integration of all aspects of music study—whether in the classroom, in private or group lessons, or in ensemble rehearsals—at all educational levels. This approach provides a focus for an entire music curriculum, enabling students to synthesize material and to see relationships in all that they do. It makes possible more complete musical experiences.¹

This is a sweeping definition, one that embraces the entire program of study. In actuality most programs with which I am familiar are not this inclusive. As the title of Bland's article indicates, most comprehensive musicianship approaches have been concentrated in those aspects of music instruction dealing with theory, literature, and history, with the emphasis on the theory aspects of the program. In my own institution the comprehensive idea is presented as an alternative to the traditional theory program, with the two programs running concurrently.

Comprehensive musicianship programs developed in a time of increasing awareness of recent developments in educational and psychological theories. Authors cited frequently are Bruner and Whitehead and the Gestaltists. Comprehensive musicianship also evolved from the movement to base music instruction on actual music literature, especially contemporary music. The many articles on comprehensive musicianship give the impression that only in comprehensive musicianship programs do these relationships exist, overlooking the development of integrated theory courses immediately following World War II, and the stylistic studies of authors as diverse as Jeppesen, Soderlund, Morris, McHose, Hindemith and Piston. Articles on comprehensive musicianship also dismiss the possibility that new developments in educational theories are compatible with traditional modes of instruction.

The idea which most requires a cautionary word is the very notion of "comprehensive." Even the most all-embracing comprehensive music program is still but a part of a total educational experience. However, the term has such strong connotations that it leads too many individuals—administrators, instructors, students—to expect too much from it. The use of the term leads to the framing of extravagant claims for the approach, claims which can be met only in a lifetime of practice and study.

One such extravagant claim is the constant dwelling on the effectiveness of "synthesis" in the program. It has always seemed paradoxical that a program seemingly based on the need to recognize and meet the different needs of individual students would attempt to organize under one umbrella so many diverse aspects of musical education. Comprehensive musicianship, according to the literature, attempts to show syntheses among the aspects of learning at all stages of the program, with the syntheses directed by the nature of the organization and mode of instruction. Obviously if the student sees no syntheses, no relationships among the diverse elements of the curriculum, the educational method has been singularly ineffective. However, no program can force a synthesis upon a student; even in highly integrated programs the students will tend to disassociate the various elements. The student must achieve the synthesis individually and not have it prescribed by the mode of instruction.

A trend resulting from these efforts at synthesis frequently encountered in comprehensive musicianship programs is described by Howard:

There now exists a growing trend toward enlarging the scope of theory as a core subject in the music curriculum, bringing into the framework of theory study a more in-depth treatment of such areas as history and literature, detailed analysis of formal structures, musicology, style-analysis, musical practices of other cultures and civilizations, and other aspects of the art which were formerly given only marginal consideration in most theory programs.²

That music theory of some sort is a basic need in a music curriculum is self-evident. However, making theory the "core" and incorporating under its aegis an everwidening concern and content can only result in the weakening of the basic premises of a theory program.

This trend of encroachment on other aspects of the music curriculum is stated another way by Mitchell: ". . . its [comprehensive musicianship's] recommendations have had less to do with curricular changes than with an umbrella-like philosophy of the teaching of music and the attitudes toward instruction engendered by it."³ This approach places undue prominence on this aspect of musical education. The college or university curriculum as a whole provides the "umbrella" and it is important to maintain the integrity of the various constituents of the curriculum. Too many attempts at synthesis at the level of undergraduate course content are limiting, impeding the students' opportunities for selection and synthesis for their own individual needs, and lessening the degree of mastery of some of the elements of music. The college can provide opportunities to experience learning in many fields and to gain mastery in some. This is the college's function. The student has a lifetime in which to discover syntheses and to pursue diverse interests. Let not the strong content of individual disciplines be attenuated by premature attempts at generalization and synthesis.

One could make claims with equal validity for areas other than theory to be the "core" of the music curriculum. Applied music immediately comes to mind. Since most music curricula demand continued undergraduate specialization in an applied music area, were this area considered the "core" then theory, history, and literature would be ancillary courses, supporting the basic performing skills. With equal ease cases could be made for history or literature as the "core" areas.

The comprehensive musicianship programs described in the literature demand extremely well-trained, non-specialist instructors, men and women equally at home in the intricacies of counterpoint, aesthetics, historical and stylistic developments, composition, and methodology of teaching such basic skills as ear-training and sight-singing. Such individuals are rare. Most university and conservatory faculties are comprised of many specialists, each of whom contributes an area of expertise to the educational complex as a whole. The comprehensive nature of the curriculum is engendered by the variety of specialties represented and the strength of the program depends on the strength of these individuals. That these individuals may sometimes appear to exist in isolation from one another is unfortunate but the solution is to encourage communication and cooperation among specialists rather than to create generalists who attempt to do all things within the curriculum. According to Bruner, "It takes no elaborate research to know that communication of knowledge depends in enormous measure upon one's mastery of the knowledge to be communicated."⁴ It would appear that the more generalized the comprehensive musicianship program becomes, the shallower the program is bound to be.

A problem in a too-comprehensive or too-integrated approach is that individuals learn different types of knowledge at varied rates of speed; some skills and knowledge can be acquired quickly while others take much longer. One sees this problem exemplified in the impatience that is often expressed when dealing with mastery of details of style, as in Bland:

Since appropriate part-writing rules take months to master, experience in dealing with common harmonic functions and alternatives in creative work and practice in harmonizing melodies cannot be delayed until this mastery has been completely achieved.⁵

In a curriculum which maintains a degree of independence among the types of study and courses, it is possible for a student to spend a semester or more as needed concentrating on specific problems such as common-practice-period harmony, Bach-chorale part-writing, orchestration, or sixteenth-century counterpoint. Meanwhile the student can be applying different methods of learning to other aspects of his education. In any case it is important to remember that there are no short cuts to musical mastery of any kind, whether it be violin-playing, part-writing, jazz-improvisation or any other skill. Much drudgery and hard work are necessary to achieve such mastery. No attempts to simplify, glamorize, or synthesize the studies will change this.

Yet I endorse the attempts of comprehensive musicianship to incorporate new educational ideas into the curriculum, particularly as stated by McGaughey:

It has been the essence of the Comprehensive Musicianship idea that it is not a "method" but an attitude, giving rise to an effort to break loose from teaching patterns which were not preparing students to deal with the demands of musical careers today.⁶

We must always keep alert for new ideas and findings. What is disturbing in many of the claims for comprehensive musicianship is that too frequently it has not been proven that existing types of training are "not preparing students to deal with the demands of musical careers today" nor that comprehensive musicianship can do it better. In attempting to cover too much material, to aim at synthesis before details are mastered, comprehensive musicianship is in danger of encouraging dilettantism.

In conclusion I would suggest four areas in which comprehensive musicianship must apply caution: (1) the notion of "comprehensive" in itself, (2) too early attempts at synthesis, (3) encroachment on areas such as history which may be served better as distinct entities, and (4) impatience with mastery of details before embarking on more general "creative" projects. If these areas are considered carefully then comprehensive musicianship can make a valuable contribution to the college curriculum.

¹David Willoughby, Comprehensive Musicianship and the Undergraduate Music Curricula (Contemporary Music Project of the Music Educators National Conference, 1971), p. vii.

²Bertrand Howard, "Teaching Music Theory: the University," Journal of Music Theory XVIII (Spring 1974), 52.

³William J. Mitchell, "Under the Comprehensive Musicianship Umbrella," Music Educators Journal LV (March 1969), 71.

⁴Jerome S. Bruner, The Process of Education (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), p. 88.

⁵Bland, p. 172.

⁶Janet McGaughey, "Teaching Music Theory: The University," Journal of Music Theory XVIII (Spring 1974), 88.

Throughout the twentieth-century musical composition was characterized by the evolution of two distinct traditions that developed simultaneously and in opposition to one another. As a number of critics and historians have noted, these traditions together defined what has come to be known as Modernism.¹ One was an extension of the organicism of the late nineteenth century, in which form arises from the direct interaction of artist with materials, and form is seen as inherent in its materials. In an organic conception of form content and form are one; form is a direct product of the innate qualities of the materials used in its creation. With respect to organic form, nothing exists apriori. In contrast, another, very different, less organic approach emerged in which materials and form were treated as independent of one another. In the latter, form arose not from the nature of its materials but rather as an abstraction that exists independent of any specific characteristics of the materials from which it was made. Neither tradition alone is sufficient to account for the richness and diversity of creative activity in the Modern era. Each is an equal, though opposite, component of the music of that epoch, and each gives meaning to its counterpart.

I believe that, among early twentieth-century composers, Erik Satie most consistently embodies the inorganic approach. Indeed, I believe that he is the key figure in the emergence of this significant branch of the Modernist tradition. At one point in my recent study of John Cage’s Amores, I made what some may perceive as a provocative statement that, with regard to a history of early Modernism in music, only a  “naïve or biased examination of [this era in] music would ignore Satie when considering Schoenberg (or vice-versa); just as one would never ignore either Gertrude Stein or T. S. Eliot when considering early Modern poetry.”² It is this belief that has led me to the present study, an attempt to identify the ways in which Satie’s music exemplifies this second tradition and lays the foundation for the music of many of the most significant composers after the Second World War, including Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, and Alvin Lucier, to name but a few. Indeed, Cage himself makes this connection through his own path-breaking essay on Satie in his book Silence (1973), as well as through his gloss on Satie’s masterpiece Socrate in a series of compositions entitled Cheap Imitation (in versions for piano solo, 1969; orchestra,1972; violin solo,1977).³     

In this essay,  I will examine, in detail, the song Daphénéo, the second of a set of three songs entitled Trois Mélodies that Satie composed in 1916 (Example 1).⁴For the purpose of comparison, I will conclude by contrasting Satie’s methods with an example of the more organic approach to composition drawn from the same period, the opening of Alban Berg’s well known Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1907-08).⁵A comparison of the very different treatment of harmony, voice leading and rhythm by these two composers will highlight the differences between their styles.  

Example 1, Erik Satie, Dapheneo, Annotated Score

 Daphénéo

The poem Daphénéo was written by Mimie Godebska (cited on the score as M. God) the seventeen year old daughter of Cipa and Ida Godebski, friends of Satie and many other composers and artists of the day. (Indeed, Mimie and her brother Jean were the dedicatees of Maurice Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye.)  According to René Chalupt, a contemporary of Satie, the Godebski’s “famous Sunday salon on the rue d’Athènes was, for many years, the meeting place for the best artists in Paris, both foreign and Parisian.”⁶

     The poem is “a charming conceit utterly dependent for its effect on the confusion of like-sounding words [. . . ]”⁷

Dis-moi, Daphénéo, quel est donc cet arbre

Dont les fruits sont des oiseaux qui pleurent?

Cet arbre, Chrysaline, est un oisetier.

Ah! Je croyais que les noisetiers

Donnaient des noisettes, Daphénéo.

Oui, Chrysaline, les noisetiers donnent des noisettes,

Mais les oisetiers donnent des oiseaux qui pleurent.

Ah!...

Tell me, Daphénéo, what is that tree

The fruits of which are birds that cry?

That tree, Chrysaline, is a bird-tree.

Ah!  I thought hazelnut-trees

Gave hazelnuts, Daphénéo.

Yes, Chrysaline, hazelnut-trees give hazelnuts,

But bird-trees give birds that cry.

Ah!...

The key words of this sound-play are oiseaux, oisetiers, noisettes, noisetiers, (which, unfortunately, do not preserve the same sonic connections when translated into English (birds, bird-trees, hazelnuts, hazelnut trees).

Form

The form of the song is fairly simple (Example 2). Sections and sub-sections are generally constructed in units of two, four, and eight measures. However, the two main sections, A and A’, are so contrived as to comprise ten measures: A is subdivided 4+4+2, while A’ exhibits a more irregular subdivision of 3+7 (certainly more irregular in the context of this composition). The song concludes, in a rather surprising manner, with an odd three-measure unit (which, as we will see reflects the unsettling nature of both text and harmony at this point). This three-measure unit is prepared both in section C as well as the first subdivision of A’. One might see the introduction of the three-measure subdivision in C as the catalyst for the transformation of the more typical two- and four-measure units of A into the irregular three- and seven-measure units of A’, resulting in a destabilization of A upon its return. As we will see, this resonates with the text in section C and prepares the listener for the ending, which seems to destabilize the entire song in numerous ways.

Example 2, Dapheneo, Form

Rhythm

According to Robert Orledge: “First and foremost [Satie] was a man of ideas who questioned every aspect of inherited nineteenth-century tradition and rejected its conceptions of Romantic expressiveness and thematic development.”⁸ More specifically, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Satie explored “the significance of a flat, repetitive, and uninflected surface, freed of the personal expression engendered by any organic interaction with materials.”⁹ He achieved such a surface primarily through his pervasive use of the ostinato.  This device enabled him to create what Robert Morgan has described as a “mosaic-like structure, in which various more or less ‘fixed’ musical units are combined into apparently random successions with no strictly logical connections among them. . . ”¹⁰  Indeed, throughout his career, the ostinato provided just such a “fixed” musical unit for Satie.  

Satie’s use of ostinati in Daphénéo is indeed pervasive (Example 3). All but eight of the thirty-nine measures in the song contain an ostinato in at least one instrumental part and on three occasions we find ostinati in both piano and voice parts simultaneously (a², c^2a and a’²). As revealed in its composite rhythm (Example 4), the degree of rhythmic regularity and repetition that saturates the song is quite striking, and reminiscent of the work of such later composers as Steve Reich and Philip Glass. This composite rhythm reveals quite vividly the block-like organization noted by Morgan. It also underscores the noticeably non-progressive temporal design of the song, for the rhythmic formations within each section are quite static. Thus, in terms of rhythm, one experiences little sense of change or development and, therefore, little sense of movement or growth. Rhythmic patterms are chosen more to fill time rather than evolve through time.  

Example 3, Dapheneo, Repetitive and Non-Repetitive Rhythmic Patterns

Example 4, Dapheneo, Composite Rhythm

The composite rhythm chart also clearly shows that there are three main sections in the song, A, C and A’, which are equal in duration: ten measures of continuous eighth notes. Of the other sections, two, B and D, are filled with continuous streams of sixteenth notes, while in the final section Satie returns to continuous eighth notes through its first two measures before finally coming to rest on a dotted quarter in the last measure of the piece. Moreover, B and D become progressively shorter. Thus, not only are these intervening sections characterized by shorter note values, but also by a progressive reduction in total duration. Perhaps this is intended to underscore the unstable harmonic nature of these sections. The transitory nature of each of these two sections is reflected in both their speed of pulsation and brevity.  

Harmony

The song is in D major, but it projects an overall harmonic evolution from D to F major (not F#), and then back to D (Example 1, Example 5). The music touches upon f# minor (section B, mm. 13-14), but the real point of tonal contrast is the strong cadence on F natural in measure 21. This engenders a play of major and minor tonalities: the mediant triad of D major is, of course, f# minor, for which Satie substitutes F major. Of course, the succession of a D based tonality followed by an F natural key center suggests a possibly deeper unfolding of a d minor triad. As we will see, all of this confusion of mode (D major vs. D minor; f# minor vs. F Major) reflects the confusion engendered by the unique word-play in the text.  

Example 5, Dapheneo, Tonal Plan

Section A and the initial chord of section B project a succession of very straightforward harmonic progressions in D major (Example 6). However, in several ways, Satie thwarts their ability to clearly establish and reinforce this tonality. For example, the initial V is a V⁹ placed in second inversion (Example 1 and Example 5.). Its dissonance is completely unprepared—unlike music of the common practice, where the 9th in an inverted dominant 9th chord is typically the result of voice leading (anticipation or suspension). Moreover, this 9th chord is presented without its 7th (which appears only once as a neighbor note in the vocal part in measure 3).¹¹  

Example 6, Dapheneo, Tonal Plan, Section A and First Chord of Section B

Between the V, I, V/ii and ii chords, we encounter very weak voice leading, especially in the piano part and, thus, are denied any strong sense of harmonic motion (Example 7). Indeed, throughout this passage there is no true functional voice leading. For example, there are numerous parallel octaves (between successive Es, Ds and Ebs (D#s). This draws attention to the chromaticism between the I and V/ii chords. In addition, the 7th of the secondary dominant chord in the second half of each of measures 5-8 remains unresolved. Finally, the full cadence that occurs at the end of section A (m. 9) occurs on the last eighth note of the measure. Though some may argue that Satie simply was not well versed in traditional voice leading—which may indeed have been true in his early years—he did in fact enroll in the Scola Cantorum in Paris late in life. He graduated with honors in 1908 with a Diploma in Counterpoint, his teachers having included a number of distinguished composers and scholars of the day such as Vincent d’Indy, Auguste Sérieyx and Albert Roussel!¹² It seems clear that in works such as Daphénéo, composed eight years after his graduation from the Scola Cantorum, he knew exactly what he was doing and was deliberately trying to negate the power of traditional voice leading to link harmonies and push them forward toward a cadence.  

Example 7, Dapheneo, Voice Leading, Section A

Perhaps most striking, however, is the way that chords are grouped together throughout the section. In the second phrase of (mm. 5-8), I and V/ii are bound together within a repeating ostinato pattern. These chords have no clear harmonic connection to one another (obviously the V/ii would normally be linked to ii). Consequently, the passage tends to highlight the chromaticism that arises when these two chords are linked to one another (especially through he aforementioned projection of parallel octaves between successive Ds and Ebs, which are reiterated over and over on strong beats), rather than any harmonic connection between chords. In this phrase we seem to lose any sense of D major, indeed any sense of tonality itself.

The obvious cadence of the V chord of the first phrase to the I at the start of the second is immediately negated by the many factors outlined above: the dissonant inversion of the V⁹, the excessive parallelism in the voice leading and, most importantly, the juxtaposition of I with V/ii rather than, as one might expect V with I and V/ii with ii. As such, the harmonic progressions of the passage do not so much evolve toward one another as merely follow one another, with little sense of inevitability as would typically associate with such straightforward progressions. Indeed, everything about the passage seems to negate any sense of the forward thrust characteristic of tonal motion. Harmony, in part, provides the means to fill up blocks of time, albeit with uniquely identifying sonorous qualities. Of course, the aforementioned ostinati support this treatment of harmony. The ostinati make each phrase static and non-generative, further stripping the underlying harmonic progressions of any sense of movement. The first ostinato of the composition (piano, phrase 1) articulates the V⁹ chord while the second ostinato binds the I and V/ii chords into one, harmonically incompatible unit (Example 8). These first two blocks sever normal tonal connections and replace them with juxtapositions of seemingly unrelated chords!   

Example 8, Dapheneo, Harmony and Ostinati, Section A

The final cadence of section A is itself further compromised by the presence of the note A in measure 9, superimposing V onto ii (Example 1 and Example 5). One could see the chord on the downbeat of measure 9 simply as a V⁹ in third inversion, but this would deny the sense of resolution of the previous V/ii and the strong connection between the repeated D#s of the previous measures and the Es of measure 9. I believe the situation is more complex and we hear ii and V superimposed upon one another at this moment.

 In the final measures of A (mm. 9-10) potentially strong cadential points arrive at very weak rhythmic points (I on the last eighth note of measure 9, and V9 on the last eighth note of measure 10). Furthermore, these points are subsumed within the sequential patterns that characterize these measures, ultimately thwarting any sense of finality.

Section B begins with a resolution of the V⁹ that concluded section A to a deceptive vi (m. 11, Example 1).  The passage seems to move to a dominant (V/vi) in its final measures but, once again, its rhythmic placement on the last eighth note of each measure robs the passage of a clear sense of finality or goal (mm. 13 and 14). 

Section C projects the most straightforward harmonic progression of the song, though, ironically, in a harmonic region far from the home key of D major, that of F major (Example 9). It is also the section in which harmonic motion is most clearly supported by rhythm; for the first time in the song, a cadence falls on a downbeat (m. 21, Example 1). Until this moment in the song, Satie’s block like design tended to neutralize tonal attractions and sever their connections.  In section C, however, this same block-like design seems to reinforce harmonic motion. In the first phrase of C, the dominant of F is sustained by its own ostinato. In the second phrase, the first three measures continue this support of the dominant; then in the final measure of the phrase we hear in rapid succession a deceptive motion to VI of F then vii of F and finally in the last phrase of the section a clear resolution to F which is also sustained for two measures with an ostinato (Example 10).

Example 9, Dapheneo, Harmony, Section C

Example 10, Dapheneo, Harmony and Phrasing, Section C

Section D, in contrast, constitutes the most harmonically ambiguous passage of the piece. In measures 23-24 we find a continuation of the octave eighth notes heard throughout section C, though now on A, the third of the previous F major chord. This A prepares us for the subsequent return of D major four measures later (section A’, m. 27). Superimposed on top of this A is the major third B-D#.These two tones anticipate the chord sounded on the downbeat of measure 25, which closely resembles an augmented 6th chord (either a German 6th with B rather than Bb, or an Italian 6th with one added tone). The typical German 6th in D major would contain the augmented 6th,Bb-D#, which would then resolve to octave As, the dominant of D. Satie’s chord, however, contains the augmented 6th Eb-C# and so pulls directly to octave Ds. As such, it still seems to point back to D, though, once again, as one might expect, in a rather irregular manner. However, Satie does not give us these Ds at this point; in the forthcoming reprise of the A section we are greeted first with the return of the dominant of D before the tonic is heard. Thus, the song lurches toward a return of D major in a very disjointed manner, in which local connections are never quite what are expected.

This quasi-augmented 6th chord is superimposed upon a fragment of a chromatic scale that fills in the space of the chord with half steps, seeming to wipe away all its harmonic implications—regular or otherwise.¹³ This chromatic scale turns into a b minor scale in the following measure (measure 26), somewhat reminiscent of section B where Satie took us to vi of D major (b minor chord), the result of a deceptive motion at the end of section A (and which, we shall see, also anticipates the unresolved V/vi chord at the end of the entire song). Of course, this turn of events could explain the presence of the B natural in the quasi-German 6th chord rather than the expected Bb.

Section A’ constitutes a varied reprise of A. A’ begins, as before, with the inverted V⁹, though it is curious that, at this point, the second inversion dominant 9th feels more stable. It is a testament to Satie’s ability to disrupt our normal tonal expectations that the dominant seems to be the goal of this reprise rather than a lead in to the subsequent tonic. As noted earlier, the phrasing of A’ is less square than A. Unlike A, section A’ consists of only two phrases, a1 and a2, which correspond to the first two four-measure phrases of section A. However, here a1 is truncated from four measures to three while a2 is expanded from four measures to seven. Such irregular phrase lengths add to the sense of instability conveyed by this passage.

The end consists of an open fifth D-A, signaling, however briefly, a resolution of the V⁹ chord that opened section A’, followed by a minor third B-D, perhaps suggesting an incomplete vi.  This is followed by a completely unresolved third inversion dominant 9th chord of vi; its 7th, which sounds so prominently in the bass, is tripled, while its unresolved 9th is equally exposed as it is held by the singer. It is curious, however, that the A# of this chord is spelled as Bb. Perhaps Satie is trying to show that the chord contains an augmented 6th G#-Bb, which, as mentioned above, would be present in a true German 6th chord of D major. Clearly, however, Satie is trying to leave the composition sounding open and unresolved at its conclusion.

Register

Daphénéo exhibits a very sophisticated spatial design (Example 11; in this example all regions blocked off in gray represent sections and phrases of the song that are filled with ostinati).  Clearly sections A and A’ occupy distinctly higher spatial regions than sections B, C, and D. Through this inverted arch-shaped motion Satie differentiates the sections that are in D major from those that veer off course tonally. It seems clear, too, that the block-like design engendered by the extensive use of ostinati is enhanced by this spatial design.  

Example 11, Dapheneo, Register Graph

Text

The text is distributed throughout the song in the following way:

A a¹  Dis-moi, Daphénéo,                 

    a²  quel est donc cet arbre

           Dont les fruits sont des oiseaux qui pleu-

 a³   -rent?

        Cet arbre,

B b¹ Chrysaline, est un

     b² oisetier.

C c¹  Ah!

     c²  Je croyais que les noisetiers

           Donnaient des noisettes,                     

     c³   Daphénéo.

A’ a’¹Oui, Chrysaline,                             

     a’²les noisetiers donnent des noisettes,

            Mais les oisetiers donnent des oiseaux qui pleurent.

End    Ah!...                                   

Satie presents the text through a simple vocal line devoid of excessive motion, a fine example of  his ‘uninflected surface.’ This is most obvious in passages like the second phrase of section A, in which both the piano and voice repeat the same material over and over with no attempt to underscore the meaning of the words or dramatize them in any way. Here, Satie distances the text from its musical support, draining each moment of emotional resonance and motivation.  

The text is essentially a dialog between two girls, Daphénéo and Chrysaline. This dialog contains four key moments consisting in turn of a question, an answer, some resulting confusion and a final clarification (Example 12). Each of these four moments is articulated musically with an ostinato, either in the piano and vocal parts together (question, confusion and clarification) or in the piano part alone (answer). Each of these moments carries the argument of the text forward—a simple confusion of meaning based upon its word play. The ostinati rob each moment in this dialog of any intensity. They become flat, uninflected, non-goal oriented passages, not unlike some late twentieth-century poetry or prose in which language is stripped of its dramatic resonance altogether.¹⁴

Example 12, Dapheneo, Text

Harmony also underscores this confusion (Example 13). Satie outlines a minor third D-F within a piece in D major and the surprising appearance of F major coincides precisely where the confusion is created by the word play of oisetiers and noisetiers. Moreover, we sense that the answer to the initial question (Chrysaline, est un oisetier) does not quite ring true as it is set to the deceptive vi. The final word of the song (Ah!) is set to music that pulls us away from the central tonality (mm. 38-39), leaving the piece open and unresolved at its conclusion, perhaps a reference back to the initial answer offered by Daphénéo. In the end, we are left with a playful sense that the general confusion may not be clarified after all.  

Example 13, Dapheneo, Text and Harmony

Alban Berg, Piano Sonata (1907-08)

 A comparison of Daphénéo with an oft-discussed contemporaneous piece, the Piano Sonata of Alban Berg, will highlight the many distinctive qualities of Satie’s style as well as the branch of Modernism that his style exemplifies. It is undoubtedly coincidental that both Satie’s song and Berg’s sonata begin with a V⁹ in second inversion. However, the fact that they each chose to initiate their compositions with the same material affords an opportunity to highlight the differences in their compositional approaches, as well as that of the Modernist traditions that their styles embody.  

A cursory examination of the first phrase of Berg’s sonata clearly shows the underlying evolution of the harmony and voice leading of the passage (Examples 14 and 15).¹⁵ The substance of the first phrase is the very formation of a V⁹ chord, which, when it finally crystallizes, closes immediately to I. The first chord is clearly a conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ in second inversion. It has been argued that the sonata opens solely with a ii7, but this strikes me as an oversimplification that misses the sense of an emerging tonality that shapes this phrase.¹⁶In this initial conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ each chord is compromised in some significant way. For example, the F# in the upper voice is stronger both in terms of rhythmic placement and duration than the G to which it would supposedly resolve if viewed merely as an appoggiatura to that note.  Indeed, by the time this G finally receives some rhythmic weight (when it appears on the second beat of measure 2) the C# and B of the ii⁷ chord already have been replaced by C and Bb. The presence of V9 in the first measure is clarified in another significant way. The C# in measure 2 passes down chromatically to A# in measure 3. This A# does not then fall to F# in the bass at the end of the third measure. It simply holds through the measure. As Berg clearly shows through his slurring in that measure, the F# in the bass emerges from the E on the down-beat of the third measure. Thus, the initial C# of the composition seems to be part of an inner voice moving from the fifth of the V chord (C#) to the third of that chord (A#), though this is only revealed as the phrase approaches its cadence.  

Example 14, Alban Berg, Piano Sonata, First Phrase

Example 15, Berg, Piano Sonata, First Phrase, Harmonic Reduction

I dwell on this point because this conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ at the outset of this sonata is, in my view, very important.  Within the highly chromatic context of the opening measures of this sonata ii7 alone would not strongly point us toward I, especially given the prominence of F# in the melodic line. However, the conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ (due to the prominence of that very same F#), while still unfocused for the reasons outlined above, starts to point the listener toward b minor a bit more. ¹⁷ Gradually, the tonal basis for the passage becomes clear as these two chords slowly start to untangle themselves from one another and finally achieve a cadence. In a sense, at the moment of cadence the listener discovers the inherent tonality of the passage. It is only by the first cadence in measure 4 that we realize that the means for making that cadence were present in the preceding materials and were gradually coalescing in a way in which their potential tonal functions could be realized. One can think of few more vivid examples of the immanence of a musical language within an unfolding composition than the opening of this sonata.

The first phrase of this sonata presents a wonderful example of organic evolution, at least with respect to its emerging sense of tonality.  The b cadence in measure 4 is literally engendered by the preceding movement of pitches as they shift from a rather unfocused sense of tonal center toward a more defined alignment of tones which can be truly understood as meaningful in a tonal sense, defining b minor clearly as a functioning musical language. Here, tonality does not exist until the possibility of cadence, immanent within the pitches themselves, is revealed and then achieved. Thus, in this piece, V does not exist a priori. It must be formed, as if from nothing and its formation constitutes the form (shape) of the phrase—makes the phrase, literally; and the process of forming the phrase is the process of forming its language.¹⁸ This is its organic nature. 

In Satie’s song, the initial V chord exists unchanged from the start and is used to fill a specified block of time. Its formation does not engender that block of time.  Rather, it constitutes pre-existing material used to articulate a predetermined period of time. (Much like a color fills a tile in a mosaic; the color does not create the shape of the tile, the shape pre-exists it.)  In the second phrase of Daphénéo I and V/ii are blocked together, thwarting, as we have discussed earlier, their natural connections to other chords around them. These two chords, which do not themselves have any strong tonal connections to one another, are tied together in a seemingly arbitrary way (giving measures 5-8 an almost non-tonal quality when taken out of context of the surrounding measures). Harmonies in Satie are presented, but do not evolve, nor do they lead to one another. Units of time (phrases, sections) are not formed by the evolution of the harmonic material contained within them, they exist separate from those materials and are merely containers for them. In this sense, then, Satie’s compositional style is not organic.  

Conclusion

Satie’s style clearly represents a significant break with nineteenth-century European practice, both in terms of its refutation of the power of directed motion inherent in common practice tonality, and the sense of directed rhythmic motion that supported that practice. Through his systematic negation of the connective tissue of common practice voice leading, his use of unexpected, tonally ambiguous and unresolved dissonances, as well as the non-propulsive rhythmic stasis produced by his pervasive use of ostinati, Satie’s music projects a sense of non-directionality (or perhaps, multi-directionality) which leads inevitably to a displacement of the listener’s expectations as conditioned by traditional compositional practice, and ultimately, as sense of non-inevitability, arbitrariness, indeterminacy. As such, Satie’s music stands in opposition to the organic conception of form which Berg and his like-minded contemporaries inherited from nineteenth-century practice. Satie’s music epitomized an important branch of modernism that continues well into the twenty-first-century, and set the stage for the creative breakthroughs in the middle of the twentieth-century through the so-called “Postmodernism“ of the late twentieth and early twenty-first-centuries. Satie and his successors followed a special path through the Modern era, which paralleled that of composers such as Schoenberg and Berg whose work epitomized an extension of the organicism of the Romantic era into the twentieth-century. It is only through an understanding of the complementary nature of these two branches of Modernism that we can finally begin to formulate a comprehensive view of the music of our time. 

Bibliography

Aldwell, Edward and Carl Schachter. Harmony and Voice Leading. Belmont, CA: Schirmer, 2003.

Berg, Alban. Piano Sonata, Op. 1. Munich: Henle Verlag, 2006.

Cage, John. “Erik Satie.” In Silence. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1974.

DeLio, Thomas. The Amores of John Cage. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2010.

___. “Language and Form in an Early Atonal Composition: Schoenberg's Op. 19 No. 2.” The Indiana Theory Review 15, no. 2 (1994): 17‒20.

Gillmor, Alan M. Erik Satie. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.

Headlam, David. The Music of Alban Berg. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Jarman, Douglas. The Music of Alban Berg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

Morgan, Robert P. Twentieth Century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.

Orledge, Robert. Satie Remembered. London: Faber and Faber, 1995.

Perloff, Marjorie. The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1983.

Rameau, Jean-Philippe. Treatise on Harmony. New York: Dover Publications, 1971.

Satie, Erik. “Daphénéo.” From Trois Mélodies. Paris: Editions Salabert, 1917.

Schmalfeldt, Janet. “Berg’s Path to Atonality: The Piano Sonata, Op. 1.” In Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives. Edited by Robert P. Morgan and David Gable/ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Shattuck, Roger. The Banquet Years. NY: Vintage Books, 1968.

Sheldon, David A. “The Ninth Chord in German Theory.” Journal of Music Theory 26, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 61-100. 

Webern, Anton. The Path to the New Music. Edited by Willi Reich, translated by Leo Black. Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Co., in Association with Universal Edition. Reprinted London: Universal Edition, 1975.

Endnotes

¹In my book, The Amores of John Cage, I outlined these two branches of the Modern era, discussed their evolution, and noted the long history of criticism supporting this view.

²Ibid., 123.

³Cage, “Erik Satie,” in Silence, 76‒82.

⁴Satie, Daphénéo.

⁵Berg, Piano Sonata, Op. 1. This view of the organic nature of the compositional process was established by Anton Webern, who, in his lectures The Path to the New Music argued that the music of his mentor and teacher Schoenberg and his students led to an intensification of organic unity in composition. Webern, The Path to the New Music, ed. Willi Reich, trans. Leo Black.

⁶Orledge, Satie Remembered, 145.

⁷Gillmor, Erik Satie, 186.

⁸Orledge, 141.

⁹DeLio, The Amores of John Cage, 7.

¹⁰Morgan, Twentieth Century Music, 52.

¹¹See Adwell and Schachter, Harmony and Voice Leading, 477‒78. Also see Sheldon, “The Ninth Chord in German Theory” for an excellent summary of the treatment of the ninth chord by German theorists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast see Jean-Philippe Rameau’s consideration of the ninth chord in his famous Treatise on Harmony.

¹²See Gillmor, Erik Satie, 134‒139 for an excellent discussion of Satie’s initial shortcomings and later education at the Scola Cantorum. (I disagree thoroughly with his opinion of Satie’s ability as an orchestrator; there are numerous instances in his late ballets of a very masterful, though unorthodox treatment of orchestration).

¹³In his book The Banquet Years, Roger Shattuck notes that, in Satie’s Socrate, after a modulation Satie often “wipes the slate clean with a scalewise passage…and starts again.” Shattuck, The Banquet Years, 164.

¹⁴For a brilliant examination of this branch of twentieth-century literature see Perloff, The Poetics of Indeterminacy.

¹⁵For several analytical views of the Berg Sonata see Schmalfeldt, “Berg’s Path to Atonality”; Headlam, The Music of Alban Berg; Jarman, The Music of Alban Berg.

¹⁶See, for example, Schmalfeldt, 91‒92.

¹⁷The more simplistic view of the opening as a ii-V-I progression leads Janet Schmalfeldt to the rather contradictory notion that “…the primary melodic tone of the work, 5, enters as an appoggiatura…”, graphed as an unsupported open-head F#. See Example 2c in Schmalfeldt, “Berg’s Path to Atonality,” 92. The F# is melodically just as strong as the subsequent G to which it supposedly “resolves.” I see this as a chord that telescopes ii7 and V9.

¹⁸Thomas DeLio, “Language and Form in an Early Atonal Composition: Schoenberg's Op. 19 No. 2,"  17‒20.

Throughout the twentieth-century musical composition was characterized by the evolution of two distinct traditions that developed simultaneously and in opposition to one another. As a number of critics and historians have noted, these traditions together defined what has come to be known as Modernism.¹ One was an extension of the organicism of the late nineteenth century, in which form arises from the direct interaction of artist with materials, and form is seen as inherent in its materials. In an organic conception of form content and form are one; form is a direct product of the innate qualities of the materials used in its creation. With respect to organic form, nothing exists apriori. In contrast, another, very different, less organic approach emerged in which materials and form were treated as independent of one another. In the latter, form arose not from the nature of its materials but rather as an abstraction that exists independent of any specific characteristics of the materials from which it was made. Neither tradition alone is sufficient to account for the richness and diversity of creative activity in the Modern era. Each is an equal, though opposite, component of the music of that epoch, and each gives meaning to its counterpart.

I believe that, among early twentieth-century composers, Erik Satie most consistently embodies the inorganic approach. Indeed, I believe that he is the key figure in the emergence of this significant branch of the Modernist tradition. At one point in my recent study of John Cage’s Amores, I made what some may perceive as a provocative statement that, with regard to a history of early Modernism in music, only a  “naïve or biased examination of [this era in] music would ignore Satie when considering Schoenberg (or vice-versa); just as one would never ignore either Gertrude Stein or T. S. Eliot when considering early Modern poetry.”² It is this belief that has led me to the present study, an attempt to identify the ways in which Satie’s music exemplifies this second tradition and lays the foundation for the music of many of the most significant composers after the Second World War, including Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, and Alvin Lucier, to name but a few. Indeed, Cage himself makes this connection through his own path-breaking essay on Satie in his book Silence (1973), as well as through his gloss on Satie’s masterpiece Socrate in a series of compositions entitled Cheap Imitation (in versions for piano solo, 1969; orchestra,1972; violin solo,1977).³     

In this essay,  I will examine, in detail, the song Daphénéo, the second of a set of three songs entitled Trois Mélodies that Satie composed in 1916 (Example 1).⁴For the purpose of comparison, I will conclude by contrasting Satie’s methods with an example of the more organic approach to composition drawn from the same period, the opening of Alban Berg’s well known Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1907-08).⁵A comparison of the very different treatment of harmony, voice leading and rhythm by these two composers will highlight the differences between their styles.  

Example 1, Erik Satie, Dapheneo, Annotated Score

 Daphénéo

The poem Daphénéo was written by Mimie Godebska (cited on the score as M. God) the seventeen year old daughter of Cipa and Ida Godebski, friends of Satie and many other composers and artists of the day. (Indeed, Mimie and her brother Jean were the dedicatees of Maurice Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye.)  According to René Chalupt, a contemporary of Satie, the Godebski’s “famous Sunday salon on the rue d’Athènes was, for many years, the meeting place for the best artists in Paris, both foreign and Parisian.”⁶

     The poem is “a charming conceit utterly dependent for its effect on the confusion of like-sounding words [. . . ]”⁷

Dis-moi, Daphénéo, quel est donc cet arbre

Dont les fruits sont des oiseaux qui pleurent?

Cet arbre, Chrysaline, est un oisetier.

Ah! Je croyais que les noisetiers

Donnaient des noisettes, Daphénéo.

Oui, Chrysaline, les noisetiers donnent des noisettes,

Mais les oisetiers donnent des oiseaux qui pleurent.

Ah!...

Tell me, Daphénéo, what is that tree

The fruits of which are birds that cry?

That tree, Chrysaline, is a bird-tree.

Ah!  I thought hazelnut-trees

Gave hazelnuts, Daphénéo.

Yes, Chrysaline, hazelnut-trees give hazelnuts,

But bird-trees give birds that cry.

Ah!...

The key words of this sound-play are oiseaux, oisetiers, noisettes, noisetiers, (which, unfortunately, do not preserve the same sonic connections when translated into English (birds, bird-trees, hazelnuts, hazelnut trees).

Form

The form of the song is fairly simple (Example 2). Sections and sub-sections are generally constructed in units of two, four, and eight measures. However, the two main sections, A and A’, are so contrived as to comprise ten measures: A is subdivided 4+4+2, while A’ exhibits a more irregular subdivision of 3+7 (certainly more irregular in the context of this composition). The song concludes, in a rather surprising manner, with an odd three-measure unit (which, as we will see reflects the unsettling nature of both text and harmony at this point). This three-measure unit is prepared both in section C as well as the first subdivision of A’. One might see the introduction of the three-measure subdivision in C as the catalyst for the transformation of the more typical two- and four-measure units of A into the irregular three- and seven-measure units of A’, resulting in a destabilization of A upon its return. As we will see, this resonates with the text in section C and prepares the listener for the ending, which seems to destabilize the entire song in numerous ways.

Example 2, Dapheneo, Form

Rhythm

According to Robert Orledge: “First and foremost [Satie] was a man of ideas who questioned every aspect of inherited nineteenth-century tradition and rejected its conceptions of Romantic expressiveness and thematic development.”⁸ More specifically, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Satie explored “the significance of a flat, repetitive, and uninflected surface, freed of the personal expression engendered by any organic interaction with materials.”⁹ He achieved such a surface primarily through his pervasive use of the ostinato.  This device enabled him to create what Robert Morgan has described as a “mosaic-like structure, in which various more or less ‘fixed’ musical units are combined into apparently random successions with no strictly logical connections among them. . . ”¹⁰  Indeed, throughout his career, the ostinato provided just such a “fixed” musical unit for Satie.  

Satie’s use of ostinati in Daphénéo is indeed pervasive (Example 3). All but eight of the thirty-nine measures in the song contain an ostinato in at least one instrumental part and on three occasions we find ostinati in both piano and voice parts simultaneously (a², c^2a and a’²). As revealed in its composite rhythm (Example 4), the degree of rhythmic regularity and repetition that saturates the song is quite striking, and reminiscent of the work of such later composers as Steve Reich and Philip Glass. This composite rhythm reveals quite vividly the block-like organization noted by Morgan. It also underscores the noticeably non-progressive temporal design of the song, for the rhythmic formations within each section are quite static. Thus, in terms of rhythm, one experiences little sense of change or development and, therefore, little sense of movement or growth. Rhythmic patterms are chosen more to fill time rather than evolve through time.  

Example 3, Dapheneo, Repetitive and Non-Repetitive Rhythmic Patterns

Example 4, Dapheneo, Composite Rhythm

The composite rhythm chart also clearly shows that there are three main sections in the song, A, C and A’, which are equal in duration: ten measures of continuous eighth notes. Of the other sections, two, B and D, are filled with continuous streams of sixteenth notes, while in the final section Satie returns to continuous eighth notes through its first two measures before finally coming to rest on a dotted quarter in the last measure of the piece. Moreover, B and D become progressively shorter. Thus, not only are these intervening sections characterized by shorter note values, but also by a progressive reduction in total duration. Perhaps this is intended to underscore the unstable harmonic nature of these sections. The transitory nature of each of these two sections is reflected in both their speed of pulsation and brevity.  

Harmony

The song is in D major, but it projects an overall harmonic evolution from D to F major (not F#), and then back to D (Example 1, Example 5). The music touches upon f# minor (section B, mm. 13-14), but the real point of tonal contrast is the strong cadence on F natural in measure 21. This engenders a play of major and minor tonalities: the mediant triad of D major is, of course, f# minor, for which Satie substitutes F major. Of course, the succession of a D based tonality followed by an F natural key center suggests a possibly deeper unfolding of a d minor triad. As we will see, all of this confusion of mode (D major vs. D minor; f# minor vs. F Major) reflects the confusion engendered by the unique word-play in the text.  

Example 5, Dapheneo, Tonal Plan

Section A and the initial chord of section B project a succession of very straightforward harmonic progressions in D major (Example 6). However, in several ways, Satie thwarts their ability to clearly establish and reinforce this tonality. For example, the initial V is a V⁹ placed in second inversion (Example 1 and Example 5.). Its dissonance is completely unprepared—unlike music of the common practice, where the 9th in an inverted dominant 9th chord is typically the result of voice leading (anticipation or suspension). Moreover, this 9th chord is presented without its 7th (which appears only once as a neighbor note in the vocal part in measure 3).¹¹  

Example 6, Dapheneo, Tonal Plan, Section A and First Chord of Section B

Between the V, I, V/ii and ii chords, we encounter very weak voice leading, especially in the piano part and, thus, are denied any strong sense of harmonic motion (Example 7). Indeed, throughout this passage there is no true functional voice leading. For example, there are numerous parallel octaves (between successive Es, Ds and Ebs (D#s). This draws attention to the chromaticism between the I and V/ii chords. In addition, the 7th of the secondary dominant chord in the second half of each of measures 5-8 remains unresolved. Finally, the full cadence that occurs at the end of section A (m. 9) occurs on the last eighth note of the measure. Though some may argue that Satie simply was not well versed in traditional voice leading—which may indeed have been true in his early years—he did in fact enroll in the Scola Cantorum in Paris late in life. He graduated with honors in 1908 with a Diploma in Counterpoint, his teachers having included a number of distinguished composers and scholars of the day such as Vincent d’Indy, Auguste Sérieyx and Albert Roussel!¹² It seems clear that in works such as Daphénéo, composed eight years after his graduation from the Scola Cantorum, he knew exactly what he was doing and was deliberately trying to negate the power of traditional voice leading to link harmonies and push them forward toward a cadence.  

Example 7, Dapheneo, Voice Leading, Section A

Perhaps most striking, however, is the way that chords are grouped together throughout the section. In the second phrase of (mm. 5-8), I and V/ii are bound together within a repeating ostinato pattern. These chords have no clear harmonic connection to one another (obviously the V/ii would normally be linked to ii). Consequently, the passage tends to highlight the chromaticism that arises when these two chords are linked to one another (especially through he aforementioned projection of parallel octaves between successive Ds and Ebs, which are reiterated over and over on strong beats), rather than any harmonic connection between chords. In this phrase we seem to lose any sense of D major, indeed any sense of tonality itself.

The obvious cadence of the V chord of the first phrase to the I at the start of the second is immediately negated by the many factors outlined above: the dissonant inversion of the V⁹, the excessive parallelism in the voice leading and, most importantly, the juxtaposition of I with V/ii rather than, as one might expect V with I and V/ii with ii. As such, the harmonic progressions of the passage do not so much evolve toward one another as merely follow one another, with little sense of inevitability as would typically associate with such straightforward progressions. Indeed, everything about the passage seems to negate any sense of the forward thrust characteristic of tonal motion. Harmony, in part, provides the means to fill up blocks of time, albeit with uniquely identifying sonorous qualities. Of course, the aforementioned ostinati support this treatment of harmony. The ostinati make each phrase static and non-generative, further stripping the underlying harmonic progressions of any sense of movement. The first ostinato of the composition (piano, phrase 1) articulates the V⁹ chord while the second ostinato binds the I and V/ii chords into one, harmonically incompatible unit (Example 8). These first two blocks sever normal tonal connections and replace them with juxtapositions of seemingly unrelated chords!   

Example 8, Dapheneo, Harmony and Ostinati, Section A

The final cadence of section A is itself further compromised by the presence of the note A in measure 9, superimposing V onto ii (Example 1 and Example 5). One could see the chord on the downbeat of measure 9 simply as a V⁹ in third inversion, but this would deny the sense of resolution of the previous V/ii and the strong connection between the repeated D#s of the previous measures and the Es of measure 9. I believe the situation is more complex and we hear ii and V superimposed upon one another at this moment.

 In the final measures of A (mm. 9-10) potentially strong cadential points arrive at very weak rhythmic points (I on the last eighth note of measure 9, and V9 on the last eighth note of measure 10). Furthermore, these points are subsumed within the sequential patterns that characterize these measures, ultimately thwarting any sense of finality.

Section B begins with a resolution of the V⁹ that concluded section A to a deceptive vi (m. 11, Example 1).  The passage seems to move to a dominant (V/vi) in its final measures but, once again, its rhythmic placement on the last eighth note of each measure robs the passage of a clear sense of finality or goal (mm. 13 and 14). 

Section C projects the most straightforward harmonic progression of the song, though, ironically, in a harmonic region far from the home key of D major, that of F major (Example 9). It is also the section in which harmonic motion is most clearly supported by rhythm; for the first time in the song, a cadence falls on a downbeat (m. 21, Example 1). Until this moment in the song, Satie’s block like design tended to neutralize tonal attractions and sever their connections.  In section C, however, this same block-like design seems to reinforce harmonic motion. In the first phrase of C, the dominant of F is sustained by its own ostinato. In the second phrase, the first three measures continue this support of the dominant; then in the final measure of the phrase we hear in rapid succession a deceptive motion to VI of F then vii of F and finally in the last phrase of the section a clear resolution to F which is also sustained for two measures with an ostinato (Example 10).

Example 9, Dapheneo, Harmony, Section C

Example 10, Dapheneo, Harmony and Phrasing, Section C

Section D, in contrast, constitutes the most harmonically ambiguous passage of the piece. In measures 23-24 we find a continuation of the octave eighth notes heard throughout section C, though now on A, the third of the previous F major chord. This A prepares us for the subsequent return of D major four measures later (section A’, m. 27). Superimposed on top of this A is the major third B-D#.These two tones anticipate the chord sounded on the downbeat of measure 25, which closely resembles an augmented 6th chord (either a German 6th with B rather than Bb, or an Italian 6th with one added tone). The typical German 6th in D major would contain the augmented 6th,Bb-D#, which would then resolve to octave As, the dominant of D. Satie’s chord, however, contains the augmented 6th Eb-C# and so pulls directly to octave Ds. As such, it still seems to point back to D, though, once again, as one might expect, in a rather irregular manner. However, Satie does not give us these Ds at this point; in the forthcoming reprise of the A section we are greeted first with the return of the dominant of D before the tonic is heard. Thus, the song lurches toward a return of D major in a very disjointed manner, in which local connections are never quite what are expected.

This quasi-augmented 6th chord is superimposed upon a fragment of a chromatic scale that fills in the space of the chord with half steps, seeming to wipe away all its harmonic implications—regular or otherwise.¹³ This chromatic scale turns into a b minor scale in the following measure (measure 26), somewhat reminiscent of section B where Satie took us to vi of D major (b minor chord), the result of a deceptive motion at the end of section A (and which, we shall see, also anticipates the unresolved V/vi chord at the end of the entire song). Of course, this turn of events could explain the presence of the B natural in the quasi-German 6th chord rather than the expected Bb.

Section A’ constitutes a varied reprise of A. A’ begins, as before, with the inverted V⁹, though it is curious that, at this point, the second inversion dominant 9th feels more stable. It is a testament to Satie’s ability to disrupt our normal tonal expectations that the dominant seems to be the goal of this reprise rather than a lead in to the subsequent tonic. As noted earlier, the phrasing of A’ is less square than A. Unlike A, section A’ consists of only two phrases, a1 and a2, which correspond to the first two four-measure phrases of section A. However, here a1 is truncated from four measures to three while a2 is expanded from four measures to seven. Such irregular phrase lengths add to the sense of instability conveyed by this passage.

The end consists of an open fifth D-A, signaling, however briefly, a resolution of the V⁹ chord that opened section A’, followed by a minor third B-D, perhaps suggesting an incomplete vi.  This is followed by a completely unresolved third inversion dominant 9th chord of vi; its 7th, which sounds so prominently in the bass, is tripled, while its unresolved 9th is equally exposed as it is held by the singer. It is curious, however, that the A# of this chord is spelled as Bb. Perhaps Satie is trying to show that the chord contains an augmented 6th G#-Bb, which, as mentioned above, would be present in a true German 6th chord of D major. Clearly, however, Satie is trying to leave the composition sounding open and unresolved at its conclusion.

Register

Daphénéo exhibits a very sophisticated spatial design (Example 11; in this example all regions blocked off in gray represent sections and phrases of the song that are filled with ostinati).  Clearly sections A and A’ occupy distinctly higher spatial regions than sections B, C, and D. Through this inverted arch-shaped motion Satie differentiates the sections that are in D major from those that veer off course tonally. It seems clear, too, that the block-like design engendered by the extensive use of ostinati is enhanced by this spatial design.  

Example 11, Dapheneo, Register Graph

Text

The text is distributed throughout the song in the following way:

A a¹  Dis-moi, Daphénéo,                 

    a²  quel est donc cet arbre

           Dont les fruits sont des oiseaux qui pleu-

 a³   -rent?

        Cet arbre,

B b¹ Chrysaline, est un

     b² oisetier.

C c¹  Ah!

     c²  Je croyais que les noisetiers

           Donnaient des noisettes,                     

     c³   Daphénéo.

A’ a’¹Oui, Chrysaline,                             

     a’²les noisetiers donnent des noisettes,

            Mais les oisetiers donnent des oiseaux qui pleurent.

End    Ah!...                                   

Satie presents the text through a simple vocal line devoid of excessive motion, a fine example of  his ‘uninflected surface.’ This is most obvious in passages like the second phrase of section A, in which both the piano and voice repeat the same material over and over with no attempt to underscore the meaning of the words or dramatize them in any way. Here, Satie distances the text from its musical support, draining each moment of emotional resonance and motivation.  

The text is essentially a dialog between two girls, Daphénéo and Chrysaline. This dialog contains four key moments consisting in turn of a question, an answer, some resulting confusion and a final clarification (Example 12). Each of these four moments is articulated musically with an ostinato, either in the piano and vocal parts together (question, confusion and clarification) or in the piano part alone (answer). Each of these moments carries the argument of the text forward—a simple confusion of meaning based upon its word play. The ostinati rob each moment in this dialog of any intensity. They become flat, uninflected, non-goal oriented passages, not unlike some late twentieth-century poetry or prose in which language is stripped of its dramatic resonance altogether.¹⁴

Example 12, Dapheneo, Text

Harmony also underscores this confusion (Example 13). Satie outlines a minor third D-F within a piece in D major and the surprising appearance of F major coincides precisely where the confusion is created by the word play of oisetiers and noisetiers. Moreover, we sense that the answer to the initial question (Chrysaline, est un oisetier) does not quite ring true as it is set to the deceptive vi. The final word of the song (Ah!) is set to music that pulls us away from the central tonality (mm. 38-39), leaving the piece open and unresolved at its conclusion, perhaps a reference back to the initial answer offered by Daphénéo. In the end, we are left with a playful sense that the general confusion may not be clarified after all.  

Example 13, Dapheneo, Text and Harmony

Alban Berg, Piano Sonata (1907-08)

 A comparison of Daphénéo with an oft-discussed contemporaneous piece, the Piano Sonata of Alban Berg, will highlight the many distinctive qualities of Satie’s style as well as the branch of Modernism that his style exemplifies. It is undoubtedly coincidental that both Satie’s song and Berg’s sonata begin with a V⁹ in second inversion. However, the fact that they each chose to initiate their compositions with the same material affords an opportunity to highlight the differences in their compositional approaches, as well as that of the Modernist traditions that their styles embody.  

A cursory examination of the first phrase of Berg’s sonata clearly shows the underlying evolution of the harmony and voice leading of the passage (Examples 14 and 15).¹⁵ The substance of the first phrase is the very formation of a V⁹ chord, which, when it finally crystallizes, closes immediately to I. The first chord is clearly a conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ in second inversion. It has been argued that the sonata opens solely with a ii7, but this strikes me as an oversimplification that misses the sense of an emerging tonality that shapes this phrase.¹⁶In this initial conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ each chord is compromised in some significant way. For example, the F# in the upper voice is stronger both in terms of rhythmic placement and duration than the G to which it would supposedly resolve if viewed merely as an appoggiatura to that note.  Indeed, by the time this G finally receives some rhythmic weight (when it appears on the second beat of measure 2) the C# and B of the ii⁷ chord already have been replaced by C and Bb. The presence of V9 in the first measure is clarified in another significant way. The C# in measure 2 passes down chromatically to A# in measure 3. This A# does not then fall to F# in the bass at the end of the third measure. It simply holds through the measure. As Berg clearly shows through his slurring in that measure, the F# in the bass emerges from the E on the down-beat of the third measure. Thus, the initial C# of the composition seems to be part of an inner voice moving from the fifth of the V chord (C#) to the third of that chord (A#), though this is only revealed as the phrase approaches its cadence.  

Example 14, Alban Berg, Piano Sonata, First Phrase

Example 15, Berg, Piano Sonata, First Phrase, Harmonic Reduction

I dwell on this point because this conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ at the outset of this sonata is, in my view, very important.  Within the highly chromatic context of the opening measures of this sonata ii7 alone would not strongly point us toward I, especially given the prominence of F# in the melodic line. However, the conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ (due to the prominence of that very same F#), while still unfocused for the reasons outlined above, starts to point the listener toward b minor a bit more. ¹⁷ Gradually, the tonal basis for the passage becomes clear as these two chords slowly start to untangle themselves from one another and finally achieve a cadence. In a sense, at the moment of cadence the listener discovers the inherent tonality of the passage. It is only by the first cadence in measure 4 that we realize that the means for making that cadence were present in the preceding materials and were gradually coalescing in a way in which their potential tonal functions could be realized. One can think of few more vivid examples of the immanence of a musical language within an unfolding composition than the opening of this sonata.

The first phrase of this sonata presents a wonderful example of organic evolution, at least with respect to its emerging sense of tonality.  The b cadence in measure 4 is literally engendered by the preceding movement of pitches as they shift from a rather unfocused sense of tonal center toward a more defined alignment of tones which can be truly understood as meaningful in a tonal sense, defining b minor clearly as a functioning musical language. Here, tonality does not exist until the possibility of cadence, immanent within the pitches themselves, is revealed and then achieved. Thus, in this piece, V does not exist a priori. It must be formed, as if from nothing and its formation constitutes the form (shape) of the phrase—makes the phrase, literally; and the process of forming the phrase is the process of forming its language.¹⁸ This is its organic nature. 

In Satie’s song, the initial V chord exists unchanged from the start and is used to fill a specified block of time. Its formation does not engender that block of time.  Rather, it constitutes pre-existing material used to articulate a predetermined period of time. (Much like a color fills a tile in a mosaic; the color does not create the shape of the tile, the shape pre-exists it.)  In the second phrase of Daphénéo I and V/ii are blocked together, thwarting, as we have discussed earlier, their natural connections to other chords around them. These two chords, which do not themselves have any strong tonal connections to one another, are tied together in a seemingly arbitrary way (giving measures 5-8 an almost non-tonal quality when taken out of context of the surrounding measures). Harmonies in Satie are presented, but do not evolve, nor do they lead to one another. Units of time (phrases, sections) are not formed by the evolution of the harmonic material contained within them, they exist separate from those materials and are merely containers for them. In this sense, then, Satie’s compositional style is not organic.  

Conclusion

Satie’s style clearly represents a significant break with nineteenth-century European practice, both in terms of its refutation of the power of directed motion inherent in common practice tonality, and the sense of directed rhythmic motion that supported that practice. Through his systematic negation of the connective tissue of common practice voice leading, his use of unexpected, tonally ambiguous and unresolved dissonances, as well as the non-propulsive rhythmic stasis produced by his pervasive use of ostinati, Satie’s music projects a sense of non-directionality (or perhaps, multi-directionality) which leads inevitably to a displacement of the listener’s expectations as conditioned by traditional compositional practice, and ultimately, as sense of non-inevitability, arbitrariness, indeterminacy. As such, Satie’s music stands in opposition to the organic conception of form which Berg and his like-minded contemporaries inherited from nineteenth-century practice. Satie’s music epitomized an important branch of modernism that continues well into the twenty-first-century, and set the stage for the creative breakthroughs in the middle of the twentieth-century through the so-called “Postmodernism“ of the late twentieth and early twenty-first-centuries. Satie and his successors followed a special path through the Modern era, which paralleled that of composers such as Schoenberg and Berg whose work epitomized an extension of the organicism of the Romantic era into the twentieth-century. It is only through an understanding of the complementary nature of these two branches of Modernism that we can finally begin to formulate a comprehensive view of the music of our time. 

Bibliography

Aldwell, Edward and Carl Schachter. Harmony and Voice Leading. Belmont, CA: Schirmer, 2003.

Berg, Alban. Piano Sonata, Op. 1. Munich: Henle Verlag, 2006.

Cage, John. “Erik Satie.” In Silence. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1974.

DeLio, Thomas. The Amores of John Cage. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2010.

___. “Language and Form in an Early Atonal Composition: Schoenberg's Op. 19 No. 2.” The Indiana Theory Review 15, no. 2 (1994): 17‒20.

Gillmor, Alan M. Erik Satie. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.

Headlam, David. The Music of Alban Berg. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Jarman, Douglas. The Music of Alban Berg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

Morgan, Robert P. Twentieth Century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.

Orledge, Robert. Satie Remembered. London: Faber and Faber, 1995.

Perloff, Marjorie. The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1983.

Rameau, Jean-Philippe. Treatise on Harmony. New York: Dover Publications, 1971.

Satie, Erik. “Daphénéo.” From Trois Mélodies. Paris: Editions Salabert, 1917.

Schmalfeldt, Janet. “Berg’s Path to Atonality: The Piano Sonata, Op. 1.” In Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives. Edited by Robert P. Morgan and David Gable/ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Shattuck, Roger. The Banquet Years. NY: Vintage Books, 1968.

Sheldon, David A. “The Ninth Chord in German Theory.” Journal of Music Theory 26, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 61-100. 

Webern, Anton. The Path to the New Music. Edited by Willi Reich, translated by Leo Black. Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Co., in Association with Universal Edition. Reprinted London: Universal Edition, 1975.

Endnotes

¹In my book, The Amores of John Cage, I outlined these two branches of the Modern era, discussed their evolution, and noted the long history of criticism supporting this view.

²Ibid., 123.

³Cage, “Erik Satie,” in Silence, 76‒82.

⁴Satie, Daphénéo.

⁵Berg, Piano Sonata, Op. 1. This view of the organic nature of the compositional process was established by Anton Webern, who, in his lectures The Path to the New Music argued that the music of his mentor and teacher Schoenberg and his students led to an intensification of organic unity in composition. Webern, The Path to the New Music, ed. Willi Reich, trans. Leo Black.

⁶Orledge, Satie Remembered, 145.

⁷Gillmor, Erik Satie, 186.

⁸Orledge, 141.

⁹DeLio, The Amores of John Cage, 7.

¹⁰Morgan, Twentieth Century Music, 52.

¹¹See Adwell and Schachter, Harmony and Voice Leading, 477‒78. Also see Sheldon, “The Ninth Chord in German Theory” for an excellent summary of the treatment of the ninth chord by German theorists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast see Jean-Philippe Rameau’s consideration of the ninth chord in his famous Treatise on Harmony.

¹²See Gillmor, Erik Satie, 134‒139 for an excellent discussion of Satie’s initial shortcomings and later education at the Scola Cantorum. (I disagree thoroughly with his opinion of Satie’s ability as an orchestrator; there are numerous instances in his late ballets of a very masterful, though unorthodox treatment of orchestration).

¹³In his book The Banquet Years, Roger Shattuck notes that, in Satie’s Socrate, after a modulation Satie often “wipes the slate clean with a scalewise passage…and starts again.” Shattuck, The Banquet Years, 164.

¹⁴For a brilliant examination of this branch of twentieth-century literature see Perloff, The Poetics of Indeterminacy.

¹⁵For several analytical views of the Berg Sonata see Schmalfeldt, “Berg’s Path to Atonality”; Headlam, The Music of Alban Berg; Jarman, The Music of Alban Berg.

¹⁶See, for example, Schmalfeldt, 91‒92.

¹⁷The more simplistic view of the opening as a ii-V-I progression leads Janet Schmalfeldt to the rather contradictory notion that “…the primary melodic tone of the work, 5, enters as an appoggiatura…”, graphed as an unsupported open-head F#. See Example 2c in Schmalfeldt, “Berg’s Path to Atonality,” 92. The F# is melodically just as strong as the subsequent G to which it supposedly “resolves.” I see this as a chord that telescopes ii7 and V9.

¹⁸Thomas DeLio, “Language and Form in an Early Atonal Composition: Schoenberg's Op. 19 No. 2,"  17‒20.

Throughout the twentieth-century musical composition was characterized by the evolution of two distinct traditions that developed simultaneously and in opposition to one another. As a number of critics and historians have noted, these traditions together defined what has come to be known as Modernism.¹ One was an extension of the organicism of the late nineteenth century, in which form arises from the direct interaction of artist with materials, and form is seen as inherent in its materials. In an organic conception of form content and form are one; form is a direct product of the innate qualities of the materials used in its creation. With respect to organic form, nothing exists apriori. In contrast, another, very different, less organic approach emerged in which materials and form were treated as independent of one another. In the latter, form arose not from the nature of its materials but rather as an abstraction that exists independent of any specific characteristics of the materials from which it was made. Neither tradition alone is sufficient to account for the richness and diversity of creative activity in the Modern era. Each is an equal, though opposite, component of the music of that epoch, and each gives meaning to its counterpart.

I believe that, among early twentieth-century composers, Erik Satie most consistently embodies the inorganic approach. Indeed, I believe that he is the key figure in the emergence of this significant branch of the Modernist tradition. At one point in my recent study of John Cage’s Amores, I made what some may perceive as a provocative statement that, with regard to a history of early Modernism in music, only a  “naïve or biased examination of [this era in] music would ignore Satie when considering Schoenberg (or vice-versa); just as one would never ignore either Gertrude Stein or T. S. Eliot when considering early Modern poetry.”² It is this belief that has led me to the present study, an attempt to identify the ways in which Satie’s music exemplifies this second tradition and lays the foundation for the music of many of the most significant composers after the Second World War, including Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, and Alvin Lucier, to name but a few. Indeed, Cage himself makes this connection through his own path-breaking essay on Satie in his book Silence (1973), as well as through his gloss on Satie’s masterpiece Socrate in a series of compositions entitled Cheap Imitation (in versions for piano solo, 1969; orchestra,1972; violin solo,1977).³     

In this essay,  I will examine, in detail, the song Daphénéo, the second of a set of three songs entitled Trois Mélodies that Satie composed in 1916 (Example 1).⁴For the purpose of comparison, I will conclude by contrasting Satie’s methods with an example of the more organic approach to composition drawn from the same period, the opening of Alban Berg’s well known Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1907-08).⁵A comparison of the very different treatment of harmony, voice leading and rhythm by these two composers will highlight the differences between their styles.  

Example 1, Erik Satie, Dapheneo, Annotated Score

 Daphénéo

The poem Daphénéo was written by Mimie Godebska (cited on the score as M. God) the seventeen year old daughter of Cipa and Ida Godebski, friends of Satie and many other composers and artists of the day. (Indeed, Mimie and her brother Jean were the dedicatees of Maurice Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye.)  According to René Chalupt, a contemporary of Satie, the Godebski’s “famous Sunday salon on the rue d’Athènes was, for many years, the meeting place for the best artists in Paris, both foreign and Parisian.”⁶

     The poem is “a charming conceit utterly dependent for its effect on the confusion of like-sounding words [. . . ]”⁷

Dis-moi, Daphénéo, quel est donc cet arbre

Dont les fruits sont des oiseaux qui pleurent?

Cet arbre, Chrysaline, est un oisetier.

Ah! Je croyais que les noisetiers

Donnaient des noisettes, Daphénéo.

Oui, Chrysaline, les noisetiers donnent des noisettes,

Mais les oisetiers donnent des oiseaux qui pleurent.

Ah!...

Tell me, Daphénéo, what is that tree

The fruits of which are birds that cry?

That tree, Chrysaline, is a bird-tree.

Ah!  I thought hazelnut-trees

Gave hazelnuts, Daphénéo.

Yes, Chrysaline, hazelnut-trees give hazelnuts,

But bird-trees give birds that cry.

Ah!...

The key words of this sound-play are oiseaux, oisetiers, noisettes, noisetiers, (which, unfortunately, do not preserve the same sonic connections when translated into English (birds, bird-trees, hazelnuts, hazelnut trees).

Form

The form of the song is fairly simple (Example 2). Sections and sub-sections are generally constructed in units of two, four, and eight measures. However, the two main sections, A and A’, are so contrived as to comprise ten measures: A is subdivided 4+4+2, while A’ exhibits a more irregular subdivision of 3+7 (certainly more irregular in the context of this composition). The song concludes, in a rather surprising manner, with an odd three-measure unit (which, as we will see reflects the unsettling nature of both text and harmony at this point). This three-measure unit is prepared both in section C as well as the first subdivision of A’. One might see the introduction of the three-measure subdivision in C as the catalyst for the transformation of the more typical two- and four-measure units of A into the irregular three- and seven-measure units of A’, resulting in a destabilization of A upon its return. As we will see, this resonates with the text in section C and prepares the listener for the ending, which seems to destabilize the entire song in numerous ways.

Example 2, Dapheneo, Form

Rhythm

According to Robert Orledge: “First and foremost [Satie] was a man of ideas who questioned every aspect of inherited nineteenth-century tradition and rejected its conceptions of Romantic expressiveness and thematic development.”⁸ More specifically, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Satie explored “the significance of a flat, repetitive, and uninflected surface, freed of the personal expression engendered by any organic interaction with materials.”⁹ He achieved such a surface primarily through his pervasive use of the ostinato.  This device enabled him to create what Robert Morgan has described as a “mosaic-like structure, in which various more or less ‘fixed’ musical units are combined into apparently random successions with no strictly logical connections among them. . . ”¹⁰  Indeed, throughout his career, the ostinato provided just such a “fixed” musical unit for Satie.  

Satie’s use of ostinati in Daphénéo is indeed pervasive (Example 3). All but eight of the thirty-nine measures in the song contain an ostinato in at least one instrumental part and on three occasions we find ostinati in both piano and voice parts simultaneously (a², c^2a and a’²). As revealed in its composite rhythm (Example 4), the degree of rhythmic regularity and repetition that saturates the song is quite striking, and reminiscent of the work of such later composers as Steve Reich and Philip Glass. This composite rhythm reveals quite vividly the block-like organization noted by Morgan. It also underscores the noticeably non-progressive temporal design of the song, for the rhythmic formations within each section are quite static. Thus, in terms of rhythm, one experiences little sense of change or development and, therefore, little sense of movement or growth. Rhythmic patterms are chosen more to fill time rather than evolve through time.  

Example 3, Dapheneo, Repetitive and Non-Repetitive Rhythmic Patterns

Example 4, Dapheneo, Composite Rhythm

The composite rhythm chart also clearly shows that there are three main sections in the song, A, C and A’, which are equal in duration: ten measures of continuous eighth notes. Of the other sections, two, B and D, are filled with continuous streams of sixteenth notes, while in the final section Satie returns to continuous eighth notes through its first two measures before finally coming to rest on a dotted quarter in the last measure of the piece. Moreover, B and D become progressively shorter. Thus, not only are these intervening sections characterized by shorter note values, but also by a progressive reduction in total duration. Perhaps this is intended to underscore the unstable harmonic nature of these sections. The transitory nature of each of these two sections is reflected in both their speed of pulsation and brevity.  

Harmony

The song is in D major, but it projects an overall harmonic evolution from D to F major (not F#), and then back to D (Example 1, Example 5). The music touches upon f# minor (section B, mm. 13-14), but the real point of tonal contrast is the strong cadence on F natural in measure 21. This engenders a play of major and minor tonalities: the mediant triad of D major is, of course, f# minor, for which Satie substitutes F major. Of course, the succession of a D based tonality followed by an F natural key center suggests a possibly deeper unfolding of a d minor triad. As we will see, all of this confusion of mode (D major vs. D minor; f# minor vs. F Major) reflects the confusion engendered by the unique word-play in the text.  

Example 5, Dapheneo, Tonal Plan

Section A and the initial chord of section B project a succession of very straightforward harmonic progressions in D major (Example 6). However, in several ways, Satie thwarts their ability to clearly establish and reinforce this tonality. For example, the initial V is a V⁹ placed in second inversion (Example 1 and Example 5.). Its dissonance is completely unprepared—unlike music of the common practice, where the 9th in an inverted dominant 9th chord is typically the result of voice leading (anticipation or suspension). Moreover, this 9th chord is presented without its 7th (which appears only once as a neighbor note in the vocal part in measure 3).¹¹  

Example 6, Dapheneo, Tonal Plan, Section A and First Chord of Section B

Between the V, I, V/ii and ii chords, we encounter very weak voice leading, especially in the piano part and, thus, are denied any strong sense of harmonic motion (Example 7). Indeed, throughout this passage there is no true functional voice leading. For example, there are numerous parallel octaves (between successive Es, Ds and Ebs (D#s). This draws attention to the chromaticism between the I and V/ii chords. In addition, the 7th of the secondary dominant chord in the second half of each of measures 5-8 remains unresolved. Finally, the full cadence that occurs at the end of section A (m. 9) occurs on the last eighth note of the measure. Though some may argue that Satie simply was not well versed in traditional voice leading—which may indeed have been true in his early years—he did in fact enroll in the Scola Cantorum in Paris late in life. He graduated with honors in 1908 with a Diploma in Counterpoint, his teachers having included a number of distinguished composers and scholars of the day such as Vincent d’Indy, Auguste Sérieyx and Albert Roussel!¹² It seems clear that in works such as Daphénéo, composed eight years after his graduation from the Scola Cantorum, he knew exactly what he was doing and was deliberately trying to negate the power of traditional voice leading to link harmonies and push them forward toward a cadence.  

Example 7, Dapheneo, Voice Leading, Section A

Perhaps most striking, however, is the way that chords are grouped together throughout the section. In the second phrase of (mm. 5-8), I and V/ii are bound together within a repeating ostinato pattern. These chords have no clear harmonic connection to one another (obviously the V/ii would normally be linked to ii). Consequently, the passage tends to highlight the chromaticism that arises when these two chords are linked to one another (especially through he aforementioned projection of parallel octaves between successive Ds and Ebs, which are reiterated over and over on strong beats), rather than any harmonic connection between chords. In this phrase we seem to lose any sense of D major, indeed any sense of tonality itself.

The obvious cadence of the V chord of the first phrase to the I at the start of the second is immediately negated by the many factors outlined above: the dissonant inversion of the V⁹, the excessive parallelism in the voice leading and, most importantly, the juxtaposition of I with V/ii rather than, as one might expect V with I and V/ii with ii. As such, the harmonic progressions of the passage do not so much evolve toward one another as merely follow one another, with little sense of inevitability as would typically associate with such straightforward progressions. Indeed, everything about the passage seems to negate any sense of the forward thrust characteristic of tonal motion. Harmony, in part, provides the means to fill up blocks of time, albeit with uniquely identifying sonorous qualities. Of course, the aforementioned ostinati support this treatment of harmony. The ostinati make each phrase static and non-generative, further stripping the underlying harmonic progressions of any sense of movement. The first ostinato of the composition (piano, phrase 1) articulates the V⁹ chord while the second ostinato binds the I and V/ii chords into one, harmonically incompatible unit (Example 8). These first two blocks sever normal tonal connections and replace them with juxtapositions of seemingly unrelated chords!   

Example 8, Dapheneo, Harmony and Ostinati, Section A

The final cadence of section A is itself further compromised by the presence of the note A in measure 9, superimposing V onto ii (Example 1 and Example 5). One could see the chord on the downbeat of measure 9 simply as a V⁹ in third inversion, but this would deny the sense of resolution of the previous V/ii and the strong connection between the repeated D#s of the previous measures and the Es of measure 9. I believe the situation is more complex and we hear ii and V superimposed upon one another at this moment.

 In the final measures of A (mm. 9-10) potentially strong cadential points arrive at very weak rhythmic points (I on the last eighth note of measure 9, and V9 on the last eighth note of measure 10). Furthermore, these points are subsumed within the sequential patterns that characterize these measures, ultimately thwarting any sense of finality.

Section B begins with a resolution of the V⁹ that concluded section A to a deceptive vi (m. 11, Example 1).  The passage seems to move to a dominant (V/vi) in its final measures but, once again, its rhythmic placement on the last eighth note of each measure robs the passage of a clear sense of finality or goal (mm. 13 and 14). 

Section C projects the most straightforward harmonic progression of the song, though, ironically, in a harmonic region far from the home key of D major, that of F major (Example 9). It is also the section in which harmonic motion is most clearly supported by rhythm; for the first time in the song, a cadence falls on a downbeat (m. 21, Example 1). Until this moment in the song, Satie’s block like design tended to neutralize tonal attractions and sever their connections.  In section C, however, this same block-like design seems to reinforce harmonic motion. In the first phrase of C, the dominant of F is sustained by its own ostinato. In the second phrase, the first three measures continue this support of the dominant; then in the final measure of the phrase we hear in rapid succession a deceptive motion to VI of F then vii of F and finally in the last phrase of the section a clear resolution to F which is also sustained for two measures with an ostinato (Example 10).

Example 9, Dapheneo, Harmony, Section C

Example 10, Dapheneo, Harmony and Phrasing, Section C

Section D, in contrast, constitutes the most harmonically ambiguous passage of the piece. In measures 23-24 we find a continuation of the octave eighth notes heard throughout section C, though now on A, the third of the previous F major chord. This A prepares us for the subsequent return of D major four measures later (section A’, m. 27). Superimposed on top of this A is the major third B-D#.These two tones anticipate the chord sounded on the downbeat of measure 25, which closely resembles an augmented 6th chord (either a German 6th with B rather than Bb, or an Italian 6th with one added tone). The typical German 6th in D major would contain the augmented 6th,Bb-D#, which would then resolve to octave As, the dominant of D. Satie’s chord, however, contains the augmented 6th Eb-C# and so pulls directly to octave Ds. As such, it still seems to point back to D, though, once again, as one might expect, in a rather irregular manner. However, Satie does not give us these Ds at this point; in the forthcoming reprise of the A section we are greeted first with the return of the dominant of D before the tonic is heard. Thus, the song lurches toward a return of D major in a very disjointed manner, in which local connections are never quite what are expected.

This quasi-augmented 6th chord is superimposed upon a fragment of a chromatic scale that fills in the space of the chord with half steps, seeming to wipe away all its harmonic implications—regular or otherwise.¹³ This chromatic scale turns into a b minor scale in the following measure (measure 26), somewhat reminiscent of section B where Satie took us to vi of D major (b minor chord), the result of a deceptive motion at the end of section A (and which, we shall see, also anticipates the unresolved V/vi chord at the end of the entire song). Of course, this turn of events could explain the presence of the B natural in the quasi-German 6th chord rather than the expected Bb.

Section A’ constitutes a varied reprise of A. A’ begins, as before, with the inverted V⁹, though it is curious that, at this point, the second inversion dominant 9th feels more stable. It is a testament to Satie’s ability to disrupt our normal tonal expectations that the dominant seems to be the goal of this reprise rather than a lead in to the subsequent tonic. As noted earlier, the phrasing of A’ is less square than A. Unlike A, section A’ consists of only two phrases, a1 and a2, which correspond to the first two four-measure phrases of section A. However, here a1 is truncated from four measures to three while a2 is expanded from four measures to seven. Such irregular phrase lengths add to the sense of instability conveyed by this passage.

The end consists of an open fifth D-A, signaling, however briefly, a resolution of the V⁹ chord that opened section A’, followed by a minor third B-D, perhaps suggesting an incomplete vi.  This is followed by a completely unresolved third inversion dominant 9th chord of vi; its 7th, which sounds so prominently in the bass, is tripled, while its unresolved 9th is equally exposed as it is held by the singer. It is curious, however, that the A# of this chord is spelled as Bb. Perhaps Satie is trying to show that the chord contains an augmented 6th G#-Bb, which, as mentioned above, would be present in a true German 6th chord of D major. Clearly, however, Satie is trying to leave the composition sounding open and unresolved at its conclusion.

Register

Daphénéo exhibits a very sophisticated spatial design (Example 11; in this example all regions blocked off in gray represent sections and phrases of the song that are filled with ostinati).  Clearly sections A and A’ occupy distinctly higher spatial regions than sections B, C, and D. Through this inverted arch-shaped motion Satie differentiates the sections that are in D major from those that veer off course tonally. It seems clear, too, that the block-like design engendered by the extensive use of ostinati is enhanced by this spatial design.  

Example 11, Dapheneo, Register Graph

Text

The text is distributed throughout the song in the following way:

A a¹  Dis-moi, Daphénéo,                 

    a²  quel est donc cet arbre

           Dont les fruits sont des oiseaux qui pleu-

 a³   -rent?

        Cet arbre,

B b¹ Chrysaline, est un

     b² oisetier.

C c¹  Ah!

     c²  Je croyais que les noisetiers

           Donnaient des noisettes,                     

     c³   Daphénéo.

A’ a’¹Oui, Chrysaline,                             

     a’²les noisetiers donnent des noisettes,

            Mais les oisetiers donnent des oiseaux qui pleurent.

End    Ah!...                                   

Satie presents the text through a simple vocal line devoid of excessive motion, a fine example of  his ‘uninflected surface.’ This is most obvious in passages like the second phrase of section A, in which both the piano and voice repeat the same material over and over with no attempt to underscore the meaning of the words or dramatize them in any way. Here, Satie distances the text from its musical support, draining each moment of emotional resonance and motivation.  

The text is essentially a dialog between two girls, Daphénéo and Chrysaline. This dialog contains four key moments consisting in turn of a question, an answer, some resulting confusion and a final clarification (Example 12). Each of these four moments is articulated musically with an ostinato, either in the piano and vocal parts together (question, confusion and clarification) or in the piano part alone (answer). Each of these moments carries the argument of the text forward—a simple confusion of meaning based upon its word play. The ostinati rob each moment in this dialog of any intensity. They become flat, uninflected, non-goal oriented passages, not unlike some late twentieth-century poetry or prose in which language is stripped of its dramatic resonance altogether.¹⁴

Example 12, Dapheneo, Text

Harmony also underscores this confusion (Example 13). Satie outlines a minor third D-F within a piece in D major and the surprising appearance of F major coincides precisely where the confusion is created by the word play of oisetiers and noisetiers. Moreover, we sense that the answer to the initial question (Chrysaline, est un oisetier) does not quite ring true as it is set to the deceptive vi. The final word of the song (Ah!) is set to music that pulls us away from the central tonality (mm. 38-39), leaving the piece open and unresolved at its conclusion, perhaps a reference back to the initial answer offered by Daphénéo. In the end, we are left with a playful sense that the general confusion may not be clarified after all.  

Example 13, Dapheneo, Text and Harmony

Alban Berg, Piano Sonata (1907-08)

 A comparison of Daphénéo with an oft-discussed contemporaneous piece, the Piano Sonata of Alban Berg, will highlight the many distinctive qualities of Satie’s style as well as the branch of Modernism that his style exemplifies. It is undoubtedly coincidental that both Satie’s song and Berg’s sonata begin with a V⁹ in second inversion. However, the fact that they each chose to initiate their compositions with the same material affords an opportunity to highlight the differences in their compositional approaches, as well as that of the Modernist traditions that their styles embody.  

A cursory examination of the first phrase of Berg’s sonata clearly shows the underlying evolution of the harmony and voice leading of the passage (Examples 14 and 15).¹⁵ The substance of the first phrase is the very formation of a V⁹ chord, which, when it finally crystallizes, closes immediately to I. The first chord is clearly a conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ in second inversion. It has been argued that the sonata opens solely with a ii7, but this strikes me as an oversimplification that misses the sense of an emerging tonality that shapes this phrase.¹⁶In this initial conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ each chord is compromised in some significant way. For example, the F# in the upper voice is stronger both in terms of rhythmic placement and duration than the G to which it would supposedly resolve if viewed merely as an appoggiatura to that note.  Indeed, by the time this G finally receives some rhythmic weight (when it appears on the second beat of measure 2) the C# and B of the ii⁷ chord already have been replaced by C and Bb. The presence of V9 in the first measure is clarified in another significant way. The C# in measure 2 passes down chromatically to A# in measure 3. This A# does not then fall to F# in the bass at the end of the third measure. It simply holds through the measure. As Berg clearly shows through his slurring in that measure, the F# in the bass emerges from the E on the down-beat of the third measure. Thus, the initial C# of the composition seems to be part of an inner voice moving from the fifth of the V chord (C#) to the third of that chord (A#), though this is only revealed as the phrase approaches its cadence.  

Example 14, Alban Berg, Piano Sonata, First Phrase

Example 15, Berg, Piano Sonata, First Phrase, Harmonic Reduction

I dwell on this point because this conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ at the outset of this sonata is, in my view, very important.  Within the highly chromatic context of the opening measures of this sonata ii7 alone would not strongly point us toward I, especially given the prominence of F# in the melodic line. However, the conflation of ii⁷ and V⁹ (due to the prominence of that very same F#), while still unfocused for the reasons outlined above, starts to point the listener toward b minor a bit more. ¹⁷ Gradually, the tonal basis for the passage becomes clear as these two chords slowly start to untangle themselves from one another and finally achieve a cadence. In a sense, at the moment of cadence the listener discovers the inherent tonality of the passage. It is only by the first cadence in measure 4 that we realize that the means for making that cadence were present in the preceding materials and were gradually coalescing in a way in which their potential tonal functions could be realized. One can think of few more vivid examples of the immanence of a musical language within an unfolding composition than the opening of this sonata.

The first phrase of this sonata presents a wonderful example of organic evolution, at least with respect to its emerging sense of tonality.  The b cadence in measure 4 is literally engendered by the preceding movement of pitches as they shift from a rather unfocused sense of tonal center toward a more defined alignment of tones which can be truly understood as meaningful in a tonal sense, defining b minor clearly as a functioning musical language. Here, tonality does not exist until the possibility of cadence, immanent within the pitches themselves, is revealed and then achieved. Thus, in this piece, V does not exist a priori. It must be formed, as if from nothing and its formation constitutes the form (shape) of the phrase—makes the phrase, literally; and the process of forming the phrase is the process of forming its language.¹⁸ This is its organic nature. 

In Satie’s song, the initial V chord exists unchanged from the start and is used to fill a specified block of time. Its formation does not engender that block of time.  Rather, it constitutes pre-existing material used to articulate a predetermined period of time. (Much like a color fills a tile in a mosaic; the color does not create the shape of the tile, the shape pre-exists it.)  In the second phrase of Daphénéo I and V/ii are blocked together, thwarting, as we have discussed earlier, their natural connections to other chords around them. These two chords, which do not themselves have any strong tonal connections to one another, are tied together in a seemingly arbitrary way (giving measures 5-8 an almost non-tonal quality when taken out of context of the surrounding measures). Harmonies in Satie are presented, but do not evolve, nor do they lead to one another. Units of time (phrases, sections) are not formed by the evolution of the harmonic material contained within them, they exist separate from those materials and are merely containers for them. In this sense, then, Satie’s compositional style is not organic.  

Conclusion

Satie’s style clearly represents a significant break with nineteenth-century European practice, both in terms of its refutation of the power of directed motion inherent in common practice tonality, and the sense of directed rhythmic motion that supported that practice. Through his systematic negation of the connective tissue of common practice voice leading, his use of unexpected, tonally ambiguous and unresolved dissonances, as well as the non-propulsive rhythmic stasis produced by his pervasive use of ostinati, Satie’s music projects a sense of non-directionality (or perhaps, multi-directionality) which leads inevitably to a displacement of the listener’s expectations as conditioned by traditional compositional practice, and ultimately, as sense of non-inevitability, arbitrariness, indeterminacy. As such, Satie’s music stands in opposition to the organic conception of form which Berg and his like-minded contemporaries inherited from nineteenth-century practice. Satie’s music epitomized an important branch of modernism that continues well into the twenty-first-century, and set the stage for the creative breakthroughs in the middle of the twentieth-century through the so-called “Postmodernism“ of the late twentieth and early twenty-first-centuries. Satie and his successors followed a special path through the Modern era, which paralleled that of composers such as Schoenberg and Berg whose work epitomized an extension of the organicism of the Romantic era into the twentieth-century. It is only through an understanding of the complementary nature of these two branches of Modernism that we can finally begin to formulate a comprehensive view of the music of our time. 

Bibliography

Aldwell, Edward and Carl Schachter. Harmony and Voice Leading. Belmont, CA: Schirmer, 2003.

Berg, Alban. Piano Sonata, Op. 1. Munich: Henle Verlag, 2006.

Cage, John. “Erik Satie.” In Silence. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1974.

DeLio, Thomas. The Amores of John Cage. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2010.

___. “Language and Form in an Early Atonal Composition: Schoenberg's Op. 19 No. 2.” The Indiana Theory Review 15, no. 2 (1994): 17‒20.

Gillmor, Alan M. Erik Satie. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.

Headlam, David. The Music of Alban Berg. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Jarman, Douglas. The Music of Alban Berg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

Morgan, Robert P. Twentieth Century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.

Orledge, Robert. Satie Remembered. London: Faber and Faber, 1995.

Perloff, Marjorie. The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1983.

Rameau, Jean-Philippe. Treatise on Harmony. New York: Dover Publications, 1971.

Satie, Erik. “Daphénéo.” From Trois Mélodies. Paris: Editions Salabert, 1917.

Schmalfeldt, Janet. “Berg’s Path to Atonality: The Piano Sonata, Op. 1.” In Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives. Edited by Robert P. Morgan and David Gable/ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Shattuck, Roger. The Banquet Years. NY: Vintage Books, 1968.

Sheldon, David A. “The Ninth Chord in German Theory.” Journal of Music Theory 26, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 61-100. 

Webern, Anton. The Path to the New Music. Edited by Willi Reich, translated by Leo Black. Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Co., in Association with Universal Edition. Reprinted London: Universal Edition, 1975.

Endnotes

¹In my book, The Amores of John Cage, I outlined these two branches of the Modern era, discussed their evolution, and noted the long history of criticism supporting this view.

²Ibid., 123.

³Cage, “Erik Satie,” in Silence, 76‒82.

⁴Satie, Daphénéo.

⁵Berg, Piano Sonata, Op. 1. This view of the organic nature of the compositional process was established by Anton Webern, who, in his lectures The Path to the New Music argued that the music of his mentor and teacher Schoenberg and his students led to an intensification of organic unity in composition. Webern, The Path to the New Music, ed. Willi Reich, trans. Leo Black.

⁶Orledge, Satie Remembered, 145.

⁷Gillmor, Erik Satie, 186.

⁸Orledge, 141.

⁹DeLio, The Amores of John Cage, 7.

¹⁰Morgan, Twentieth Century Music, 52.

¹¹See Adwell and Schachter, Harmony and Voice Leading, 477‒78. Also see Sheldon, “The Ninth Chord in German Theory” for an excellent summary of the treatment of the ninth chord by German theorists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast see Jean-Philippe Rameau’s consideration of the ninth chord in his famous Treatise on Harmony.

¹²See Gillmor, Erik Satie, 134‒139 for an excellent discussion of Satie’s initial shortcomings and later education at the Scola Cantorum. (I disagree thoroughly with his opinion of Satie’s ability as an orchestrator; there are numerous instances in his late ballets of a very masterful, though unorthodox treatment of orchestration).

¹³In his book The Banquet Years, Roger Shattuck notes that, in Satie’s Socrate, after a modulation Satie often “wipes the slate clean with a scalewise passage…and starts again.” Shattuck, The Banquet Years, 164.

¹⁴For a brilliant examination of this branch of twentieth-century literature see Perloff, The Poetics of Indeterminacy.

¹⁵For several analytical views of the Berg Sonata see Schmalfeldt, “Berg’s Path to Atonality”; Headlam, The Music of Alban Berg; Jarman, The Music of Alban Berg.

¹⁶See, for example, Schmalfeldt, 91‒92.

¹⁷The more simplistic view of the opening as a ii-V-I progression leads Janet Schmalfeldt to the rather contradictory notion that “…the primary melodic tone of the work, 5, enters as an appoggiatura…”, graphed as an unsupported open-head F#. See Example 2c in Schmalfeldt, “Berg’s Path to Atonality,” 92. The F# is melodically just as strong as the subsequent G to which it supposedly “resolves.” I see this as a chord that telescopes ii7 and V9.

¹⁸Thomas DeLio, “Language and Form in an Early Atonal Composition: Schoenberg's Op. 19 No. 2,"  17‒20.