Music of William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Mennin: Voices of Stone and Steel (Modern Traditionalist Classical Music) - Tapa blanda

The most immediately striking characteristics of this volume are its comprehensiveness, thoroughness, and scholarship. Simmons seems to have read everything ever written by and about these composers. He has researched everything concerning each work from its genesis to the score to the premiere and the reactions, pro and con, of the public and the critics, repeat performances and reactions to them, recordings, critical reactions to them, and their current availability, all carefully documented in the end notes, and generally maintaining a scholarly distance and objectivity. He gives a detailed and penetrating analysis of each with a cogent evaluation of its merits at the end. I was repeatedly impressed with his obvious professional integrity, with one phrase jumping off the page at me, when he wrote: '... for reasons unknown to me' rather than its common form without the final two words; after all, someone might know the reason. The breadth and depth of his information are impressive. The chapter may not constitute the definitive study of the composer but it is surely the definitive summary of him, his work, and his importance. Simmons' writing is succinct, precise, and incisive; every sentence is packed with information with next to no excessive verbiage, and often in felicitously excessive phrasing. Each work is described blow-by-blow from beginning to end. He quotes heavily from critics as well as summarizing their evaluations. He describes objectively but also evaluates astutely himself both the works and the critics' writings about them, aiming for a synthesis viewpoint. His style is straightforward, eminently readable, and pleasant; no pomposity comes with his scholarship and erudition.

William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Mennin were three of the most significant American composers of the 20th century, yet their music has largely disappeared from view since their respective deaths. Because they each spent the majority of their careers working at the Juilliard School and Lincoln Center, their music is often viewed as "interchangeable." In The Music of William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Mennin: Voices of Stone and Steel, Walter Simmons provides a thorough examination of the lives and work of these artists, clarifying their considerable individuality both as composers and as human beings. The book begins with a comprehensive introduction summarizing the conventional view of the history of American music, while noting the marginalization of traditionalist composers-those who preferred to work with the musical forms and developmental principles on which the body of Western classical music is based. In the chapters that follow, each composer is presented through a brief overview and a biographical essay, followed by a general description of his style. Extensively researched and including detailed discussions and insights, the sections include lists of the composer's "most representative, fully realized works" and then provide systematic overviews of most or all of their compositions, giving the reader a general understanding of the artist and his work. The overviews contain a description of each composition, information concerning first performance and first recording, excerpts from reviews as well as Simmons' own critical assessment of each, and a statement of its place within the composer's output as a whole. A selected bibliography and essential discography follows at the end of each chapter.