The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music (The Cambridge History of Music) Hardcover – Illustrated, 5 Aug. 2004

This is another excellent volume in the Cambridge University Press series of music histories; it should be in every library, and most serious students of music and intelligent listeners will want to have their own copy. It offers a wide-ranging series of studies by eminent scholars, exploring many of the chief concerns of present-day musical scholarship. If I am slightly less enthusiastic about this book than I was about the companion volume on the 19th century, it is perhaps a result of the fact that when it was first produced (2004) the 20th century had only just finished, and it was (and still is) too early to be confident when judging the relative importance and significance of aspects of the century's music, especially in view of the diverse nature of music in our own time, whereas recent studies in 19th-century music have profited not only from distance in time but also by insights afforded by the so-called new musicology. Thus the editors of that volume were able to adopt a more free-ranging approach, avoiding too many chapters of mere surveys of 'Great Composers and their Works', which are, after all, well covered in specialised monographs. This 20th-century volume, however, breaks out of the mould wherever it can, by broadening its scope beyond 'classical' music and its canonical works; among those chapters which offer reflections of a more general nature - music in society, listening habits, and the impact of recording, etc. - Leon Botstein's contribution is outstanding; it gives some penetrating insights on 'museum culture and the politics of subsidy', with often uncomfortable reflections on the state of music in the economic and social structures of contemporary society.Where the present book scores over most previous academic surveys of 20th-century music is in the attention it pays to jazz and popular music, which reflects the importance of these areas in current musicology (new musicology has certainly forced some rethinking here). The chapters by Robynn Stillwell and Dai Griffiths, eminent scholars in the fields of rock and pop and their relationship to society, are most stimulating, as are those by Derek Scott on the 'easy listening' repertoire and Andrew Blake on music as commodity. The chapters on jazz tend toward historical surveys, but are nonetheless valuable sources of information (at least to a non-specialist). At the same time, the traditional areas of 20th-century musical studies - the great pioneers of progressive musical thinking and renewal - are far from neglected: the Second Viennese school, with its dubious claim to preeminence, is given a stimulating re-examination by Joseph Auner, and there is a detailed and revelatory study of the avant-garde from 1945 by David Osmond-Smith. The music of more 'conservative' composers, sometimes sidelined in the past as being of lesser historical significance because less obviously innovatory, is also accorded the respect and weight that its prominence in the listening habits of the musical public would seem to demand. Here, Arnold Whittall's chapter is particularly valuable for its detailed discussion and comparison of exemplary works by Britten and Shostakovitch.Even in a book running to over 800 pages there are bound to be omissions; not everyone would agree with the editors' choices, nor with the priorities of each contributor, and for all its comprehensiveness there is relatively little on the music of cultures outside Europe and the USA. However, as bookends there are excellent chapters on the influences of Western music elsewhere in the world which go a little way to redress this overall imbalance. The book will certainly be in need of revision in a decade or two when priorities and perspective have become clearer. Nevertheless, the editors (sadly, Anthony Pople died before it was published, leaving Nicholas Cook to complete the work) have performed a Herculean task, the result of which can be warmly recommended. .