Music Since the First World War

Rating:
Summary: Very useful, an excellent introduction
Review: Whittall starts with the basic premise that the Wagnerian era, being over, was replaced by two basic schools, that of Schoenburg, Berg, and Webern, and Tonalists such as Stravinsky, Bartok, Sibelius, Nielson, and other mid century symphonists. His approach is to treat these composers as the pivotal characters spanning the very important years between the beginning of post romantic disillusionment and the more modern era.

He treats music after this point in a more brief fashion. Picking seven composer, (amongst them Berio, Stockhausen, Messaien and Xenakis) he discusses them not as the originators of specific schools of thought, but examples of highly individual exponents of very recently developed art. From this point of view, his treatment is highly effective, albeit somewhat brief.

What might be missing now, from the perspective of the passage of about twenty years since this book was originally published, is the inevitable acknowledgement that in fact several major identifiable contemporary movements now exist, and probably merit the sort of treatment in the first section of the book devoted to the giants. Mr Whitalls selection of modern composers shows tremendous foresight - these individuals have indeed become very important, almost as pivotal as the earlier generation of composers documented.

The book is absolutely exemplary in its detail and objective documentation of a very complex and often hard to research subject. I read this when I was 17 and gained an incalculable amount from it.