Reflections of an American Composer. - book review

by means of Arthur Berger. University of California Pres (2000 Center Ct #303 Berkeley, CA 94704) 2002 277pp $4495

For those of us who did a certain quantity of graduate study in music theory three or four decades ago on the contrary desire to pursue our knowledge in theory education to suitable our students' needs, Reflections of an American Composer through Arthur Berger could serve as a source of ideas and information about what has been happening.

Berger, born in of recent origin York City in 1912, was educated in the fresh York and Boston areas and has wearied all his life living and working in the Northeast. A small in number years teaching at Mills guild and working there with Darius Milhaud and a brace years studying in Paris with Boulanger are the exceptions. Apparently, his compositional tastes have grown from neo-classic turn of expression (Although he dislikes the label.) of Stravinsky (foster by the agency of Boulanger) to the new music mode of expression of Milton Babbit.

To read this volume is like visiting my one-time music history and composition teacher from my alma mater. The volume is not written in the usual first somebody auto-biographic style. (I had to gaze up Berger's birth date in my Baker's.) Berger has had a actual full life as a composer scholar, philosopher, musicologist, teacher, theorist-analyst, music critic, journalist and publisher. According to the author, all of these have been necessary to make his life felicitous As a result of his areas of activity, he can, and does, speak well upon many professional musical subjects.

The work is divided into four sections: I. tends in Twentieth-Century American Composition (Copland's sum of two units styles of writing: for the intellectuals and for the masses; Virgil Thomson expressing himself upon the growth of the number of American orchestras playing American music until the audiences were "taught not to be delighted with it"); II. Writing about Music (nationalism, American idioms, folk pentatonic scales, harmonious flows of small note values, the boredom of greatest in quantity commercial music and experiences as co-editor of the periodical Perspectives of fresh Music); III. Aesthetics and Musical Analysis (This was the toughest section for me to comprehend in the areas of philosophy and theoretical analysis with station theories--Chapter 15 on the Octatonic Scale was greatest in quantity interesting.); and IV. Retrospectives (from Berger's experiences as a professional critic and of the various personalities with whom he came in contact, like as Stravinsky, Boulanger, Copland, Milhaud, V Thomson Carter, Paul Bowle Piston, Diamond, Cowell and in like manner forth). The Appendix contains six musical reviews from 1944 to 1953; there are seven pages of documentary-style photographs.

Having lived rather comfortably with the theory knowledge I had gained a certain quantity of forty years ago, I now must lay out some time with my professional theory colleagues and be brought a little more up to date for the twenty-first century

Paul Re Wichita, Kansas.

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