With the Beatles Music” Entry Is Comprehensive and Concise, Since It’S a City I Know Well

22 REFERENCE BOOKS here does one start when reviewing Eric Ewazen subtly condescends to him for a reference work of 5,592 pages? being stubbornly accessible. The “Popular WI began by looking up “St Louis”, With the Beatles Music” entry is comprehensive and concise, since it’s a city I know well. My first thought but a good deal of evidence could be mar- was that the coverage was a little cursory. shalled against its contention that “the cata- What about the bohemian Landesmans, their STEPHEN BROWN first LP”. The Beatles were themselves clysmic events of the 1920s and 30s were nightclub the Crystal Palace, and their Beat responsible for the fact that a work like this largely ignored by North American song- musical The Nervous Set? But then I realized Charles Hiroshi Garrett, includes them. writers”. Unless you believe that “Dancing that cursory was just about right for St Louis. e d i t o r There are a number of subject entries one in the Dark” (1931) was only about dancing in It’s a provincial town in a provincial part of the THE GROVE DICTIONARY OF would not necessarily expect to see. The one the dark. country, and the Landesmans’ great projects AMERICAN MUSIC on “Sports” begins “Although music and As authoritative and informative as the never really came to much. True, the St Louis Second edition sports are too often considered as discrete entries are, it would be nice to see more Symphony is a “world-class” orchestra that Eight volumes, 5,592pp. Oxford University Press. entities, connections between the two cultures humanizing, or at least particularizing, detail. can be talked of in the same breath as the Berlin £1,160 (US $1,595). occur in many significant ways”. For example, To mention Edgar Stillman Kelley one last Philharmonic. But no one ever says that the 978 0 19 531428 1 “Both music and sports are inherently con- time: why drop the mention of the 5,000 Berlin Philharmonic can be talked of in the nected to the body”. The average reader could performances of his Ben-Hur? An entry on same breath as the St Louis Symphony. Louis Armstrong was performing at the be forgiven for not continuing past this banal- Adorno’s relationship to American music Being provincial means living in a place Dreamland Cafe, at that moment the absolute ity, but, persevering, one comes to: “Particu- should at least mention his Tom Sawyer where, when you drop a stone into a pool, centre of the musical universe. larly in the wake of the Beatles and Bob Dylan, singspiel: Der Schatz des Indianer-Joe (genre: the stone makes a “plop” but sinks without a The Dictionary, to its credit, makes no such most popular music in contrast stressed hedon- excruciating). We learn about the eight ripple. While the great and good of St Louis distinctions between provincial and central, or istic values of fun and pleasure and increas- National Endowment for the Arts grants that plopped stones left and right, the musician who between high and popular art. It is resolutely ingly focused on the creation of lyrics and the composer William Thomas McKinley made ripples was Chuck Berry, playing his ecumenical. Donal Henahan, talking about the music promoting more passive, cerebral con- received, but not that he was an accomplished guitar like ringing a bell. St Louis sent him to 1986 edition’s inclusion of popular culture, templation” – which proves that two halves of knuckleball pitcher (a knuckleball being akin, prison. found it too full of items which would prove one sentence can contradict each other and in effect, to cricket’s googly), once invited to I go into this because St Louis is a micro- ephemeral. But high art can prove just as both be entirely wrong. A better subject entry throw to the Boston Red Sox during batting cosm of the United States. Most American ephemeral (see the composer Kelley above), is the one on the Cold War, pertinent and practice. Charles Ives was an excellent high- music for most of America’s history had local and where else but in a reference work like this insightful about that bizarre moment when school pitcher, but never got to throw to big- success which the rest of the world ignored. A could one go to learn what all the fuss was the FBI might investigate you (covertly) for league batters (Ives’s attachment to baseball case in point is Edgar Stillman Kelley. In the about? That’s the useful aspect. The pleasura- un-American activities while the CIA was does figure in his entry). We get a generic com- 1928 American Supplement to Grove’s Dic- ble aspect is paging through a volume and supporting you (covertly) as an exemplar of ment about the film composer Bernard Herr- tionary of Music and Musicians, he seems an stopping at things you suddenly realize you American culture (as happened to Leonard mann’s irascibility, but not specifics, like his important composer, with a full-page picture need to know more about. To look something Bernstein, for one). Missing is a subject entry dismissing André Previn as “that jazz boy”. On and an extended discussion of his career, the other hand, the Billie Holiday entry, by including the information that his music for Donald Clarke, is a model of brief biography. William Young’s theatre adaptation of Ben- “Lady Sings the Blues (1956) was as gloomy Hur (1899) had received about 5,000 perform- and doom-laden as possible because it was ances “in English-speaking countries”. By written to sell to the movies, while her ghost- 1986, though, in The New Grove Dictionary of writer, William Dufty, described her as the American Music, we are told that “little of his funniest woman he had ever known.” The music has survived the test of time”. (Not a biographical entry on Fred Astaire (who needs very long test – he was still alive in 1944.) In little help being memorable) notes that “when the second edition, this has become “little of seen playing [the piano] on screen he is always his music has continued to be performed”. Of also heard on the soundtrack”. which American mid-century composers can One slim volume on American music was we say that “much of their music has continued published in 1920 and revised in 1928; there to be performed” a generation after their were four huge volumes in 1986; and the deaths? Roger Sessions? Vincent Persichetti? second edition gives us eight equally large Walter Piston? Roy Harris? In mid-twentieth- volumes. This rate of progress would project century America these were all big names, sixteen volumes in the very near future, which and they are still treated as such in the second surely is not going to happen, not in the world edition. I would not argue for neglecting them, of physical books, anyway. The expansion but I would ask for a little more realism about may, however, already be taking shape within their reputations. Andrew Porter was a great the online source Wikipedia. A Grove Music and influential critic – he deserves his own Online subscription costs £215 (US $295) a entry – but his influence was not great enough year. The cost of these eight volumes is £1,160 to make Sessions, who “embodied”, according (US $1,595). Wikipedia is free, although it to Porter, “what is finest in American thought, comes without Grove’s solid reliability as a character, and genius”, a mainstay of the scholarly source. Of course, one could depend concert repertoire. on one’s local library to buy the books and pay It is curious that mid-century modern is now Bonnie Whiting Smith taking part in a performance of John Luther Adams’s Inuksuit the subscription fee. But even then, it’s not all such a sought-after furniture style, while mid- at Park Avenue Armory, New York, 2011 smooth navigating. To get to the multimedia century modern music is rarely heard in appro- features of Grove Music Online (namely film priately furnished living rooms. But such is the up, I had to make a note of it first; otherwise, for “Drugs”, which could cover the heroin and recordings), you have to access another fate of the provincial musician. There is pre- after being distracted by four or five other epidemic that ravaged the jazz world in the site. I spent ten minutes trying to chase a video cious little of American high-art music that can entries, I tended to forget what I’d started out 1940s and 50s, with consequences including through this online maze, fifteen if you count pass the British Empire test: that is, music on looking for. debilitation, prison and death. In fact, a whole a consultation with a helpful librarian. Most which the sun never sets. Chuck Berry’s songs Not that the dictionary is without flaws. For sub-entry could be devoted to “Overdose, students are going to let their phones take them pass that test, of course, and what Chuck Berry me the most glaring lacuna is in the “Beatles” Death By”. And another to “Hallucinogenics, to Wikipedia and YouTube, which found the is to St Louis, all of jazz, blues and popular entry, which discusses how American music Music Ruined By”. But that’s being judge- video I was searching for in 0.26 seconds. music are to America. They colonized the influenced them, but not how they influenced mental, which this book resolutely is not. It True, I then had to watch four seconds of an ad world.

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