Apart from Tim Rutherford-Johnson, who is an independent researcher, the authors of Twentieth-Century Music in the West: An Introduction, Tom Perchard, Stephen Graham and Holly Rogers all teach at Goldsmiths, University of London. The four have written what they describe as ‘the first introductory survey to address popular music, art music and jazz on equal terms’. Since 2008, the authors have been teaching a course that is the basis of the book. As a result, Twentieth-Century Music in the West covers a large amount of material succinctly yet thoroughly. I teach a ‘Music Since 1900’ course for undergraduates every year and have adopted Twentieth-Century Music in the West for Spring 2024.
The book also accomplishes the incorporation of recent educational and societal goals, heretofore missing from most textbooks: de-canonisation, decolonisation and better representation of music figures of all genders and sexual orientations. Unlike most, if not all, twentieth-century music history surveys, Twentieth-Century Music in the West does not approach its subject chronologically. Every chapter is devoted to a different topic pertaining to twentieth-century music: ‘Harmony’, ‘Rhythm and Time’, ‘Canons’, ‘States and Markets’, etc. They each contain two case studies, highlighting a significant genre or piece corresponding to the chapter topic. For example, a case study for Chapter Six, Rhythm and Time, examines salsa, expanding upon the chapter's discussion of diasporic importation of music and culture as a result of the slave trade to the Americas. Indeed, the chapters titled ‘Harmony’ and ‘Rhythm and Time’ are excellent, explaining how these are used in pop and art music, an enormous topic, with clarity and judiciously selected illustrations and listening examples.
Several marginalised figures are included. One learns about Julius Eastman, Pauline Oliveros and Germaine Tailleferre, as well as the Fluxus group and a number of pop musicians. The trade-off is that there is only space for so many composers to be namechecked or given slim attention. For example, the inclusion of Tailleferre means that Poulenc only gets mentioned as being part of Les Six with her. Still, the omission of most opera and music theatre is puzzling.
Of course, one hopes that a textbook is not used by instructors as the entirety of their syllabus. A piece they cannot live without covering is easily enough added to their lectures and accommodated by the book's framework. To my taste, more post-war American modernists’ pieces should be discussed. In the unit on Chapter Two, Modernism, I will slot in George Walker's piano sonatas, Milton Babbitt's Philomel and Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 2.
One welcomes the inclusion of Ruth Crawford's music, particularly her String Quartet 1931, and wishes that there was space for a fuller picture of her work. Unmentioned is dissonant counterpoint, which Crawford studied with her husband Charles Seeger. It was an important component of her music and that of the rest of American hypermodernists. Crawford's collection and arrangements of folk music made her both an important early ethnomusicologist and an influential music educator. Closer to home, she raised children who would go on to be famous folk musicians, Peggy and Pete Seeger among them. American folk music in general gets less coverage in the book than one might wish.
Several chapters address the rapidly changing technologies that impacted performance, recording and listening habits. An excellent case study is found in Chapter Eight, Instruments, a discussion of the history of the vocoder, stating it ‘offers a glimpse into the interconnections between the creative arts and science’. The vocoder dates back to 1928, when Bell Labs started to develop it for military communications, and it eventually was used to encrypt communications for D-Day between Churchill and Roosevelt. In the late 1940s, Werner Meyer-Eppler experimented with the musical applications of the vocoder at the WDR Studio in Cologne. Starting in 1970, pop and jazz artists such as Wendy Carlos, Laurie Anderson, Tangerine Dream and Herbie Hancock incorporated the vocoder into their music. Autotune was not far off, much to the relief of Cher, whose megahit Believe (Warner Brothers, 1998) made extensive use of it.
Chapter Ten, Copyright and the Music Industry, may be eye-opening for many students. The case studies discuss ‘The Origins of Rock “n” Roll’ and ‘Hip-hop from the Golden Age to G-Funk and Beyond’. The appropriation of rhythm and blues songs by white rock ‘n’ roll artists, such as Elvis Presley, who made significantly more from performances and royalties, lines up with the chapter's discussion of cultural appropriation. In the hip-hop study, the issue of sampling, including lawsuits for infringement of copyright for borrowed music, explains the terms of surrender that left big record labels in a hegemonic position and artists either paying for samples or turning to other forms of music creation, such as the use of instrumentalists and a greater emphasis on electronic beats. Chapter 12, Music and the Moving Image, has a case study on music videos and discusses video games. Particularly helpful is the analogy between dissonance in film and experimental music, a way in for students who say they cannot tolerate post-tonality in a concert work.
A unit that speaks to our current moment is Chapter 11, States and Markets. It contains two engaging case studies: one on the infamous history of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, an ideal discussion about the impact of Stalinism on composers in the Soviet Union, and paternalism at the BBC, from its early days to the William Glock era and its residue, culminating in a discussion of the programming of Birtwistle's Panic at the Last Night of the Proms in 1995.
The last section, Chapter 16, Centres and Peripheries, has case studies on free jazz and Japanese noise music and parses the complex history of Uptown and Downtown. It concludes by pointing out that centres and peripheries may change over time, using the examples of John Zorn and Philip Glass moving from Downtown to ‘“official” acceptance;’ the idea of a ‘them’ who are arbiters of such recognition is briefly mentioned as a provocative closer. It is also an excellent prompt for a class's closing discussion: Will decolonisation, de-canonisation and better inclusion help disassemble the concept and practice of such judgements, or are they inevitable?
The book contains errors. Some are typos, enervating to instructors and possibly confusing to students, such as the misspelling of John Adams’ Harmonielehre as Harmonielehrer and the misuse of a pound sign for a sharp. More serious are the errors on the chart of 12-tone rows on page 61, in which three row forms are mislabelled (upper right – P0 should be R0; lower left – I0 should be I6; lower right – RI-0 should be RI-6). Since this introduces Schoenberg's 12-tone music and the concept of permutations of row forms, it is problematic.
There are a number of examples of post-war philosophical endeavours, particularly in the chapters on modernism and postmodernism. These inclusions are valuable when expanded upon. Many students will benefit from connecting extramusical thinkers to the topics about which they are learning. Occasionally, the references to philosophy and other fields seem like asides that are not developed further; the inclusion of endnotes would have helped to maintain the flow of the text. In some places, listenings in the textbook include title, artist, record label and date of recording; in others, just the first two. Having all of them completely labelled would help instructors and students hunt them down. It would be better still to also have a complete discography of the listening examples at the end of the book.
Published in 2022, there are places where the book has not quite caught up to changes during the pandemic and post-pandemic years; in particular, the increased programming of female and minority composers. Where the book mentions the music of William Grant Still and Florence Price disappearing from the repertoire, the return of their work, particularly Price's, which now is frequently programmed and recorded, would be a useful coda.
I look forward to learning more from students’ reactions to the book this coming spring. One caveat: they are getting a new 12-tone row chart.
