Acad. Quest. (2016) 29:478–482 DOI 10.1007/s12129-016-9586-4 REVIEWS

Surprised by Beauty: A academy, its place, like all of the Listener’s Guide to the humanities and arts, is at the very Recovery of Modern Music, margins. Students come to university revised and expanded, by never having heard of Bach or Robert R. Reilly, with Jens F. Beethoven (I kid you not), and they Laurson. San Francisco: Ignatius will leave just as musically ignorant. Press, 2016, 510pp., $34.95 Performers get technically better and paperback. better, but in the main, have less and less to say. The market for classical music can seem to handle just one star The Comeback of Beautiful Music at a time, similar to the arena of sports. After Yo-Yo Ma is there another cellist? Daniel Asia There might have been when Published online: 10 November 2016 # Springer Science+Business Media New York Rostropovich was alive, but that is 2016 because he had that great Russian street cred. Joshua Bell represents The state of the contemporary the “younger” generation of violinists, music world is problematic. For that but is hardly as well-known as Isaac matter, the general health of music is Perlman, now a shadow of what he not good. Or perhaps what I should once was. If the performance scene is really say is that the place that atrophying, what of the New, of those classical, or high art, music finds works being created in our own time or itself in is—almost nowhere. composed in the recent past, meaning Audiences are dwindling for the last hundred years, give or take. concert music presented by our You might blanch were you to go to nation’s orchestras. CDs or downloads hear a new or recently written piece. of classical music represent a Would it be of that unlistenable sort, minuscule component of market reminiscent of the fifties, sixties, or share. While there are still music seventies, the music of blips and schools and music represented in the bleeps colloquially known as “squeak- fart music”? Would it go on and Daniel Asia is professor of composition and director — — of the American Culture and Ideas Initiative at the on with little change as in much University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; www. minimal music? Or might it provide danielasia.net and http://caci.arizona.edu/.The distinguished composer of numerous works, respite or nourishment for the soul? including five symphonies, he received a 2010 At one time music was considered Music Academy Award given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. the highest of the arts. Regarded as 479 Asia the revealer of the working of the Or finally, have we emerged from the spheres, as a guide to the soul, music musical experimentation of the was thought to be man’sbestwayof twentieth century and maybe, just understanding himself because it maybe, come back to our wits and addresses the mind, the heart, and senses? the senses. For at its deepest level, These questions and this perspective every great work of music, unlike lie at the heart of the new edition of almost any other art, is a metaphor Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s for our own life experience, as both Guide to the Recovery of Modern have a beginning, a middle, and an Music, written by Robert R. Reilly, end, and reside incorporeally and with Jens F. Laurson. I review this only in time. Music’s ephemerality book as it is now twice the size of the reminds us at the deepest level of our first edition, published in 2002, and so nature that there is more to us than we is an almost entirely new opus. Like can know. It is part of the divine. many good musical compositions, But if the past sixty years have been Surprised by Beauty has an tough, where are we now? Or maybe introduction, a main body, and a coda, what we must ask is, were they really or conclusion. Both introduction and so tough, or were we simply not conclusion address the central listening? Remember, Bach was question of music of the twentieth dismissed in favor of Telemann in his and twenty-first centuries: Is music own time; he didn’t receive his due meant to be beautiful and/or sacred, until Mendelssohn resurrected his or is it meant to present us with a view music in the nineteenth century. So is of the truth of our times—including it possible that the music history of the the state of our embattled inner twentieth century really has yet to be spirit—and thus possibly revel in written, that what was purveyed as the ugliness? only legitimate music, that is, the Reilly comes down on the side of unlistenable sort, will disappear, or is the former. Being an active Roman already in the process of becoming Catholic, and having written most irrelevant? Or are we at least of his entries in Surprised by beyond such definitive teleological Beauty for the Catholic magazine pronouncements as that of Pierre Crisis, this outlook should not Boulez, who claimed that any come as a surprise. Reilly also composer who has not experienced treats the Death of God movement the “necessity for the dodecaphonic 1Pierre Boulez, “Possibly…” (1952), in Stocktakings [twelve-tone] language is USELESS from an Apprenticeship, comp. Paule Thévenin, [sic]” and “his whole work is trans. Stephen Walsh, intro. Robert Piencikowski (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford 1 irrelevant to the needs of his epoch.” University Press, 1991), 113. Reviews 480 of this period as problematic, as, of John Corigliano, Henryk Górecki, course, do many of the composers Einojuhani Rautavaara, George he cites. Rochberg, Benjamin Lees, and John The main section of Surprised by Tavener, among others. Beauty (part 1) is an alphabetic Then there are those composers review of composers who represent who are not well-known, but whose the “other history” of twentieth- mark is being made as I write, century music, whose works continued including Kenneth Fuchs, Daniel to provide perceptible rhythms and Strong Godfrey, Stephen Hartke, structure, recognizable and memorable Jennifer Higdon, Stephen Jaffe, Libby melodies or motivic materials (a clear Larsen, Lowell Liebermann, George if surprising journey), and that unique Tsontakis, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. contribution of Western music, the We must add those whose music interweaving of individual lines that was forbidden, composers who were together create something we call exterminated by the Nazis or Stalin or harmony. The book also includes excommunicated or left in limbo by an addendum, which contains the European and American avant- conversations the author has had with garde or Academy. These would various composers or interpreters of include Hans Gál, Erich Wolfgang their music. Korngold, Franz Mittler, Othmar The composers Reilly discusses can Schoeck, Karl Weigl, Mieczysław be grouped into several categories. Weinberg, and Erich Zeisl. First are the well-known composers, And finally—and this is a small including Samuel Barber, Benjamin percentage—there are those who Britten, Edward Elgar, Leoš Janáček, wrote nice but less than original Hector Villa-Lobos, Frank Martin, music, and whose music should be Francis Poulenc, Jean Sibelius, listened to only if you have exhausted Michael Tippett, and Ralph Vaughan the other possibilities. Williams, among others. These names The reviews follow a useful pattern. will be recognized by most people who The composer is identified and located have engaged, at least at some level, in in history. His music is then explored in mainstream musical life, in other a simple, accessible manner. Reilly words, those who regularly attend often identifies his favorite pieces, and orchestra or chamber music concerts. then refers to various recordings, with Next we have the composers, living their relative merits and demerits or recently dead, who are leaving or identified. Thus the entries are have left a major mark on the music of formulated to give the interested the twentieth century: John Adams, listener easy access to the music of Stephen Albert, Dominick Argento, each composer, with a clear track of 481 Asia greater to lesser, more accessible to less music for the next one hundred years accessible, works. One need not read (by the way, he never held German them in order, but dip in citizenship), later in life and certainly serendipitously anywhere in Surprised towards its conclusion Schoenberg by Beauty. wrote tonal music, or “in the old While Reilly is a devout Catholic, style,” as he called it, without any the ghosts of two Jews hover over the pejorative notion to it. He also did book. The first is the twentieth- not abjure composers who did not century nemesis Arnold Schoenberg, appropriate his method, and found who developed the twelve-tone meth- greatness in other composers’ music od of composition. The other is that was tonal. George Rochberg, who came to com- It was Schoenberg’s descendants, positional maturity as a twelve-tone namely Boulez and his acolytes, who composer, later famously abandoned became downright totalitarian in their it to reenter the world of his musical understanding of what he had created forebears, particularly Brahms, Bee- and, by the way, figuratively killed off thoven, and Mahler, and then, at the their artistic progenitor, as Boulez did end of his life, produced a unique when he said “Schoenberg is dead.” synthesis of both. Why did Boulez say this? Because Schoenberg moved away from Schoenberg didn’tgofar enough in tonality because he felt it could no ridding his music of any relationship longer contain what he wished to to the musical past. Boulez and his express, that the extension of followers desired a complete break chromatic harmony had gone as far from the past—and a new beginning as it could, and that twelve-tone starting from ground zero. music is a logical and historical need. The composers whose work is Rochberg moved away from twelve- discussed in Surprised by Beauty tone music because he felt it did not sought and seek to be continuers of provide the means for what he wished the tradition. Defying the notion of to say, that it is emotionally too rupture and a new beginning, they restrictive, and that it is a denial, a see themselves as individuals cutting off, of the artist from the past, upholding and contributing to a great and all that tonality holds in regards musical tradition. These composers to musical memory. Schoenberg was write symphonies, concertos, and a musical and artistic revolutionary in sacred music. Most of it is tonal or his early years; he matured as he has strongly tonal elements and is developed. While as a young man written in known forms and for he said that his new method would familiar forces, as in orchestras, string insure the supremacy of German quartets, chamber ensembles, and the Reviews 482 like. Surprisingly, however, that imp For anyone interested and willing of the twentieth century, John Cage, to explore the wonders of music of does make an appearance, as Reilly the recent past and present, finds some of his earlier music of Surprised by Beauty is a fine guide interest. and companion. As Reilly writes in The structure of the book leaves the preface to the second edition, it open for readers, if they wish, to “[I]t’s okay: The war is over. You find fault with Reilly’s choice of can come out now. The army of composers to feature in Surprised noise emptied its lungs screaming by Beauty. For example, of the its loudest and then whimpered American symphonists, Roy Harris away. Today’s composers have and David Diamond are included, returned to tonality, melody, and but not Walter Piston, William gorgeous harmonies.” Schuman, Peter Mennin, or The academic world tends to stick to Vincent Persichetti. Leonard tried-and-true formulas. After all, Bernstein and Lukas Foss are not established professors are reluctant to to be found. Reilly shows a certain rework their notes. But it just might be bias toward second- and third-tier that the history of the music of the Europeans at the expense of better twentieth century will indeed be American composers. The holy rewritten by a younger cadre of minimalists—Arvo Pärt, Górecki, musicologists and theoreticians, as it and Tavener—are overly lauded, already is by conductors and musicians almost in a supersessionist manner, who are programming and performing over their Jewish counterparts, who, the music of these “other” composers. while considered pivotal and In that regard, this book will be a primary, don’t quite seem to have source and a starting place for those the sacred stuff. And there are a willing to entertain such a change in number of younger American their understanding of the course of composers I would have included classical music of the recent past. instead of those featured, but all this The famous Jewish sage Hillel will shake out in the coming years. told the prospective convert, who A few other minor faults. Reilly asked him to explain the entirety of loves the word “beguiling,” which Torah while he stood on one foot, he employs abundantly. An index “Do not do unto others as you would be useful. And, as would would not have them do unto you. and could be expected in a book of Now go study.” My suggestion is this size and encyclopedic nature, a to read Surprised by Beauty and certain sameness sets in if read in then do what Reilly is really large chunks. asking you to do: Now go listen.