Orpheus in Manhattan: William Schuman and the Shaping of America's Musical Life (review)

Marking a composer's centenary year routinely invites an influx of conferences, symposia, articles, concert series, and books that illustrate the broad if not complete spectrum of an artist's work. Joseph Polisi's American Muse: The Life and Times of William Schuman (New York: Amadeus Press, 2008) provides a substantial portrait of Schuman the businessman, with representative compositions accompanied by detailed analyses. In The Music of William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Mennin: Voices of Stone and Steel (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011), Walter Simmons profiles Schuman together with two other composers fundamentally linked to the New York music scene during the 1940s through the 1960s, and to the Juilliard School in particular: Mennin was on the composition faculty and later became Schuman's successor as president of Juilliard, while Persichetti served four decades on the composition faculty. Simmons offers substantial analyses as well as his perceptions of flaws in compositional technique, but offers only a sketch of biographical information.

Steve Swayne's book Orpheus in Manhattan: William Schuman and the Shaping of America's Musical Life is an objective, detailed account illustrating Schuman's roles as composer, administrator, husband, father, and friend. He has left no stone unturned when it comes to the meticulousness of his research. His acknowledgments alone span seven pages, with many names readers will instantly recognize as members of our own Music Library Association, and he "approached over 200 individuals, librarians, archivists, and corporate officers to obtain permissions for the book" (e-mail message to me, 18 July 2011).

Swayne's goal "is to understand Schuman against the backdrop of the world in which he lived and moved" (p. 6). "The Early Years" chronicles not only those events that were formative influences on Schuman's musical development, including his foray into popular song composition, it also traces the immigration of Schuman's ancestors from Germany to America. As with many immigrants, pride in their adopted country held a place of high importance. The account of Schuman's time at Camp Cobbossee underscores the importance his father put on full assimilation into American life, gradually dissociating (or maybe integrating) their Jewish-German roots. "Camp Cobbossee was, in short, a place for Jews that was free of Judaism. It was also a place where German-American Jewish boys could go that kept them separate from their poorer eastern European co-religionists" (p. 32).

Schuman's position as a major figure in arts administration may have eclipsed his work as a composer in the minds of many, but "it was as a composer that Schuman wanted first and foremost to be remembered" (p. 551). Music had always played a central role in his life, but the catalyst that brought Schuman from New York University's School of Commerce (he withdrew due to poor academic performance), to music studies at Juilliard, at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and at Columbia University, and subsequently to a teaching position at Sarah Lawrence College, all within the span of approximately seven years, appears to have been his first New York Philharmonic concert (pp. 43-44).

About his teaching responsibilities, Swayne points out that "[i]n his first four years at Sarah Lawrence, Schuman helped to revolutionize the college's music offerings, especially in extracurricular areas. With his colleagues he started a Music Forum at which faculty and students discussed various aspects of music making, and it was at a series of these forums that Schuman demonstrated his ability to play every instrument in the orchestra" (p. 84). The dedication Schuman exhibited when he reshaped the music department at Sarah Lawrence foreshadows the work he would do at the Juilliard School, namely, a curriculum overhaul taking the form of the Literature and Materials of Music. At Juilliard, "L & M" was to be taught exclusively by composers, and would offer a more integrative approach to the subtle ways musical...