American pioneers: Ives to Cage and Beyond (20th Century Composers) - Tapa blanda

"Smoothly executed. The chapter on Cage may well be the best introduction to his thought and work in English."-Gramophone '...Has a subtle but insistently inquiring approach to biography and details of artistic development. Alan Rich sets out the facts on early-20th-century music with clarity as well as providing a succinct summary of the background of the rise of concert music in the cultured urban classes if the west coast in the 19th century."-Musical Times On the 20th Century Composers Series "As a series, Phaidon's 20th Century Composers has brought remarkable variety and a welter of information, both necessary and delightfully trivial. Intended both for the general reader and for the more enthusiatically musical."-The Scotsman

The first book to concentrate on the rebellious trend within American music at the turn of the 20th century. Their pioneering flair was an act of defiance: Americans throwing off the shackles of European tradition and inventing a new language, seeking to redefine what could or could not be embraced by the term `music'. American Pioneers examines Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, John Cage, Carl Ruggles, Edgard Varese, Harry Patch, Colin McPhee and Lou Harrison, focusing on the peculiarly American quality of their artistic motivation.