Music Since 1900 (review)

Music Since 1900. 6th ed. By Laura Kuhn; Nicolas Slonimsky, editor emeritus. New York: Schirmer Reference, 2001. [xvii, 1174 p. ISBN 0-02-864787-4. $175.] Index.

While Nicolas Slonimsky was preparing the first edition of Music Since 1900 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1937), Henry Cowell advised him that, although the idea for the book was "perfectly stupendous," the title was "dry" and would "appeal only to highbrow librarians" (Nicolas Slonimsky, Perfect Pitch: A Life Story [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988], 154). Despite Cowell's remarks, Slonimsky did not alter the book's name, and, though the title perhaps lacks the clever turn of phrase associated with Slonimsky's writings, it has served well to define the chronological parameters of each edition, from the first edition's thirty-seven-year scope to this sixth edition's coverage of the entire twentieth century. The latest edition of Music Since 1900, completed by Laura Kuhn following Slonimsky's death in 1995, maintains the four-part organization of the fourth (New York: Scribner's, 1971) and fifth (New York: Schirmer, 1994) editions, including a descriptive chronology, a collection of letters and documents, a dictionary of terms, and an index. Kuhn's brief preface, which precedes reprints of Slonimsky's prefaces to the fourth and fifth editions, does not specify how this rendering updates the fifth edition beyond its obvious coverage of the transpiring years. Comparison with the previous edition, however, reveals that each section indeed includes new information but that, outside of the chronology, few additions have been made.

Comprising the bulk of the volume, the descriptive chronology lists premieres, deaths of composers and performers, and various important or otherwise noteworthy musical events in an essentially day-by-day listing from 1 January 1900 through 14 December 2000. This catalog remains the book's most distinctive feature, and Kuhn, who presumably completed most if not all of the entries that update the chronology from that of the fifth edition, maintains Slonimsky's criterion of "when in doubt, do not delete" (p. xiii) by detailing events both renowned and obscure. Though such extensive treatment is impressive, a scan of the chronology reminds the reader how much the study of music has changed since the first edition, and since there has been little apparent revision of entries from earlier editions, the chronology is rendered somewhat uneven in its topical scope. In her review of the fifth edition, Joy Haslam Calico observes that "[t]he events Slonimsky deemed noteworthy and the manner in which they are described reveal trends that parallel developments in musicology as a discipline, such as increased awareness of the significance of popular music, the contributions of composers outside of Western Europe, and the existence of women composers" (Review of Music Since 1900, 5th ed., by Nicolas Slonimsky, Fontes Artis Musicae 42 [1995]: 387). With the sixth edition, Music Since 1900 seems to continue its response to changes in musicological thought by broadening the range of music considered in the chronology, but such efforts lack the rigorous reportage aimed at customary modes of American and European art music.

While Calico highlights problems with the fifth edition's treatment of women composers, the present edition additionally shows spotty coverage of jazz. Although the passing of both Carmen McRae and Sun Ra are recorded in the chronology, no mention is made of the deaths or lives of more prominent and celebrated innovators like Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk. This incongruity is noted here not to evaluate the book's merit as a jazz reference tool but, rather, to illustrate its arbitrary treatment of repertories that have gained scholarly attention during the latter decades of the past century.

The chronology's thorough documentation of music in the concert tradition, however, provides a level of detail that is unmatched by any other source. Slonimsky, ever a champion of the experimental and avant garde, offered precise citations and lively descriptions of new works throughout the previous editions of Music Since 1900, and these same qualities persist in...