Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this wide-ranging book, Arnold Whittall considers a group of important composers of the twentieth century, including Debussy, Webern, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartók, Janácek, Britten, Carter, Birtwistle, Andriessen and Adams. He moves skilfully between the cultural and the technical, the general and the particular, to explore the various contexts and critical perspectives which illuminate certain works by these composers. Considering the extent to which place and nationality contribute to the definition of musical character, he investigates the relevance of such images as mirroring and symmetry, the function of genre and the way types of identity may be suggested by such labels as classical, modernist, secular, sacred radical, traditional. These categories are considered as flexible and interactive and they generate a wide-ranging series of narratives delineating some of the most fundamental forces which affected composers and their works within the complex and challenging world of the twentieth century.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Tradition and Innovation
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The work in the world
• 2 Reflections, reactions
• 3 Rites of renewal and remembrance
• 4 Transcending the secular
• 5 Overlapping opposites: Schoenberg observed
• 6 The subject of Britten
• 7 Engagement or alienation?
• 8 Rites of transformation
• 9 Modernism, lyricism
• 10 Experiment and orthodoxy
• 11 Modernism in retreat?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

One might ask if this book, closely following Whittall's Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century (1999), is sufficiently different to merit consideration. The answer is an emphatic yes. Whereas the earlier study is a historical survey, the present book is a critical study; Whittall limits the number of composers and compositions under intensive scrutiny and concentrates on how these individuals and works both mirror important trends in 20th-century culture and, at the same time, stand as art pieces for aesthetic contemplation. Whittall admits his writing here to be "personal"; however, the reputation of this eminent English musicologist demands the attention of the scholarly community. Whittall mediates between hermeneutics and formalism, integrating cultural factors that shape the composer and his work into what the composition can mean as music per se. He uses time-honored aesthetic polarities--modernism/classicism, Dionysian/Apollonian, innovation/conservation--in developing very lucid arguments. He analyzes in detail parts of approximately 40 compositions by 20 composers of international reputation, drawing the writing of other critics into dialogue with his own views. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Academic libraries supporting study at the upper-division undergraduate level and above. W. K. Kearns emeritus, University of Colorado at Boulder