Deems Taylor: Selected Writings (review)

Deems Taylor (1885–1966) was one of the most visible figures in American art music during the first half of the twentieth century. Known to millions as a composer, critic, author, and radio personality, his appeal during this period of time has been well explained by James Pegolotti who, in the epilogue to his biography, observed that Taylor "had the character to succeed in all the areas of his multiple talents, and circumstances allowed them to fit the cultural needs of the early twentieth century." (Deems Taylor: A Biography [Boston: North eastern University Press, 2003], 340). Of all his talents, I believe that Taylor's greatest gift was his ability to communicate to a broad spectrum of people through the written and spoken word.

In Deems Taylor: Selected Writings, Pegolotti has assembled what he considers to be some of the composer-critic's best literary offerings, with the intent to provide "an opportunity for the reader to rediscover an American writer with an engaging view of life" (p. xv). Deems Taylor: Selected Writings indeed affords those readers unfamiliar with Taylor's work in print, an opportunity to obtain a sampling of what he was about musically and critically. Further, it reinforces Pegolotti's contention that Taylor's success was a consequence of his ability to incorporate into his reviews "a broad band of wit, musical knowledge, and experience as a composer" (p. 340).

The book is divided into seven sections—six chapters plus an "intermission"—and is organized chronologically. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction and each individual "piece" within the chapter contains a brief note as well, with the intent to provide the "reader with a better sense of Taylor himself, as well as his place and time" (p. xv).

Chapter 1, "Poems 1911–1919," offers a selection of five poems. In his introduction, Pegolotti looks at the arrival of Franklin Pierce Adams (F. P. A.) in New York City and his promotion of such writers as George F. Kaufmann, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Saint Vincent Millay. He observes that Taylor's "poems were his first published works" and were "helped into print" by Adams (p. 1). The fifth, and final poem of the chapter, "Haec Olim Meminisse Iuvat," is a humorous account of Taylor's college years at New York University, replete with Taylor's own explanatory footnotes. The title of the poem, a line from Virgil's Aeneid , means "Perhaps one day it will be useful to remember even these things" (p. 5). The following lines, recounting Taylor's final year at NYU, offer a soupçon of the composer-critic's true gift of wit:

As a Senior now, I was bald and gray with the studious life I'd led,But proud of the knowledge stowed away in my small but well-formed head.I killed International (so-called) Law,Took Spanish and Chaucer (the latter's raw), Wound up with a thesis on Bernard Shaw—How much of that stuff still sticksWell, here is the dope I recollect from nineteen–five and –six:Bill and I wrote the Senior show (his book was a mere detail),And Loup played "Elsie, the Cannibal Queen," and looked lie a half-dressed whale:The senior ball was a dream devine,The senior banquet was mostly wine,And F.P.A. ran a piece of mine in the New York Evening Mail.

(p. 7)

According to Pegolotti, the poem was judged by Franklin Pierce Adams as the "best submission for his column during 1919" (p. 5). It is also demonstrative of why Taylor was to become a "friend" of the Algonquin Round Table.

Chapter 2, "New York Sunday Tribune Articles and Some Others, 1914–1919," offers eight pieces written for the Sunday Tribune, the New Republic, and Century Magazine. Of the articles appearing in this chapter, Pegolotti notes that they were selected because they "illustrate" Taylor's many "interests and give insights to the world...