Customer Reviews

All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century

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This book receives kudos for the broad range of genres covered, and the open mind that indicates. It also deserves kudos for its actually critical attitude. However, that critical attitude is the main drawback of the book. Nearly every artist presented is set up only to be knocked down. Ernst Krenek goes first and gets the worst treatment, and everyone till at least Ornette Coleman is dismissed by the end of their respective chapters. The goal is to criticize the American music scene through examining individual partcipants, but this seems both inaccurate and unfair and is depressing through its unending negativity.

The original Knitting Factory, ABC No Rio, White Columns; the early 80's were a time when many experimental "classical" musicians seemed to say the heck with Julliard and the academy and cast their lot with jazz - yet to be Wynton-ized and smoothed to suffocation and still wandering in that DMZ between post-funk and ECM Lexicon modal bliss - and rock - battling its own rear guard action from English synth-pop that for awhile threatened to render the electric guitar (and acoustic piano) obsolete. Eno, Bowie and Byrne got much recognition as popularizers, but there were many others doing more daring, if less-accessible, work. Taken as a whole, this book paints a broad portrait of those in and out of various establishments - commercial and academic, and tries to find common ground in their expression of American music.

And yeah, it's fun to recall how Laurie Anderson was more famous for her hair back then for her performances.

Full disclosure: I participated in the concert of Terry Riley's "In C" at White Columns for a group of around 20 electric guitars, mentioned in one of the book's chapters.

This is a brilliantly written book.None of the simplistic oppositions for Rockwell:this is a guy who can find virtues in both Phil Glass (minimalism) and Milton Babbitt(hyper intellectual) but can take gentle side swipes at them as well.

just a brief warning that this book wasoriginally written and published in the UK in1985, and as such is a little dated in its coverage. still, with chapters on artists as diverse as keith jarrett, talking heads, neil young, sondheim and elliott carter, its a satisfying romp through distinctly american music.