This wide-ranging and eclectic book is the first to view the development of music in the twentieth century from the vantage-point of the twenty-first. It traces the fragmentation of the European ‘art’ tradition, and its relocation as one tradition among many at the century’s end. While the focus is on Western traditions, both ‘art’ and popular, these are situated within the developing context of ‘world music’. An international authorship brings a wide variety of approaches to music history, but the aim throughout is to set musical developments in the context of social, ideological, and technological change, and to understand reception and consumption as integral to the history of music.
• The first complete view of music across the twentieth century • Sets musical developments in their social, idelogical, and technological contexts • Takes a broad view of ‘music’, including performance and reception as well as composition
Contents
Introduction: trajectories of twentieth-century music Nicholas Cook with Anthony Pople; 1. Peripheries and interfaces: Western music and its others Jonathan Stock; 2. Music of a century: museum culture and the politics of subsidy Leon Botstein; 3. Innovation and the avant-garde, 1900–1920 Christopher Butler; 4. Music, text and stage: the tradition of bourgeois tonality, 1900–1930 Stephen Banfield; 5. Classic jazz to 1945 James Collier; 6. Flirting with the vernacular: America in Europe, 1900–1945 Susan Cook; 7. Between the wars: traditions, modernisms and the ''little people' from the suburbs' Peter Franklin; 8. Brave new worlds: experimentalism between the wars David Nicholls; 9. Proclaiming a mainstream: Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern Joseph Auner; 10. Rewriting the past: classicisms of the interwar period Hermann Danuser; 11. Music of seriousness and commitment: the 1930s and beyond Michael Walter; 12. Other mainstreams: light music and easy listening, 1920–70 Derek Scott; 13. New beginnings: the international avant-garde, 1945–62 David Osmond-Smith; 14. Moderate modernisms: individualism and accessibility, 1945–75 Arnold Whittall; 15. After swing: modern jazz and its impact Mervyn Cooke; 16. Music of the youth revolution: rock through the 1960s Robynn Stilwell; 17. Expanding horizons: the international avant-garde, 1962–75 Richard Toop; 18. To the millennium: music as commodity Andrew Blake; 19. Ageing of the new: the museum of musical modernism Alastair Williams; 20. (Post)-minimalisms, 1975–2000: the search for a new mainstream Robert Fink; 21. History and class consciousness: pop music towards 2000 Dai Griffiths; 22. 'Art' music in a cross-cultural context: Africa towards 2000 Martin Scherzinger; Appendices: 1. Personalia Peter Elsdon with Björn Heile; 2. Chronology Peter Elsdon and Peter Jones.
Reviews
'Its pluralist narrative finds room for pop, jazz and easy listening alongside classical mainstreams and avant-garde orthodoxies. The non-interventionist stance makes for lively debate between contributors, reflecting the revisionist brand of musicology where the importance of any musical culture must be constantly contested.' The Independent
‘… it can be warmly recommended as a worthwhile institutional purchase and as an encouragingly good read.‘ Music Teacher
Printer friendly version
Email a colleague