A Most Wondrous Babble: American Art Composers, Their Music and the American Scene, 1950–1985 by Nicholas E. Tawa (review)

SHORTERBOOKREVIEWS Nicholas E. Tawa. A Most Wondrous Babble: American Art Composers, Their Music and the American Scene, 1950-1985. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1987. xiii + 284 pp. '' A real concern for the health of art music in the United States'' and its effect on the public is the motivation for Nicholas E. Tawa's at times absorbing, at times fascinating, and at times provocative book. Professor of Music at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, and the author of five other books about ''American'' music and musical life, Tawa's aim here is no less than "to facilitate ... reconciliation'' between composers and listeners. In his opening chapter, Tawa discusses the political and social changes that have permeated the United States since 1945 and how these-along with the influx of European composers just prior to that time, and the ''New York Scene'' affected composers: "To live outside of New York, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s, might mean exclusion from serious consideration as a composer.'' One wonders whether this latter state of affairs remains, as among Tawa's hundreds of chapter notes not one is derived from the Los Angeles Times, while citations from the New York Times are legion. Tawa examines changes in composers' beliefs and values, the lack of a tradition for listening to art music or being educated to it, the rejection of the past (including the immediate past) by many composers, parallel innovations in other arts, the limited repertoire of lionized performers, the rapid succession of fashions in modern music (in part encouraged by journalism) and the notion of progress in the arts. In the following chapter, Tawa describes support systems (commissions, universities, New Music groups), the frustrations (conflicts of interest, competition ), the relationship of theory to art, and technological advances (in the uses of electronic sound in particular). Three-fifths of the book is devoted to a discussion, as Tawa himselfremarks, of ' 'all of the musical styles during the postwar decades, from highly experimental to the traditional .... Significant compositions that exemplify a particular style are discussed, as well as the reactions to them of music critics, professional musicians , and audiences." It is these reactions that many readers (especially those acquainted with the composers and works discussed) may find fascinating. A sampling of Tawa's approxi~ately dozen-and-a-half stylistic categories includes the following: Serial and Quasi-Serial; The New Left; The Assertion of the Fanciful; The Musical Conservators; A New-Fashioned Traditionalism. Readers not directly involved in the music business may be sufficiently intrigued by references to the "workings of the American cultural market-place" to investigate these working in their own locales-illusions may be shattered. 380 Shorter Book Reviews In the final chapter, Tawa characterizes the 1970s and 1980s as a ''period of transition. '' In order that the general audience may feel a '' greater affection for his music" the composer must, Tawa urges, "cease his isolation," "reconsider the function of his music'' and '' achieve a sense of community'' with a society '' in which the composer has faith"-thus the "people's and the composer's inner imperfections and aspirations together can be fit matter for artistic works.'' Echoing Keats, Tawa asserts that ''by repeatedly denying listeners the experience of beauty, a beauty that does not exist in normal reality, many a composition has lied.'' Even though Tawa's intent was not to compile a dictionary of composers, a book so inclusive may tempt curious readers to investigate composers whose music is ignored; among these are John Adams, Easley Blackwood, Henry Brant, Edwin London, William Kraft, Mel Powell, William Schuman and Christian Wolff. Readers wishing to use this book as a point of departure are provided with a Discography of Works (222), Notes for the eight chapters (466), and A Selective Bibliography of Works Consulted (256); the Index which includes a listing of composers and works discussed by Tawa contains almost every name and topic covered (e.g., Shockless public, the; California; Earning, of composers). Tawa's serviceable literary style occasionally soars (''notes chipped out of the texture fly out like hard splinters") and occasionally stumbles ("The term 'minimal art,' however, waited for Richard Wollheim to invent it in 1965 ... "). Having surveyed AM...