Music Since 1900
by Nicolas Slonimsky

How Often Does a Reference Book Make You Laugh Out Loud?

Nicolas Slonimsky (b. St. Peterburg, Russia in 1894 - d. Christmas Day 1995
in Los Angeles at the exceptional age of 101 years, 9 months, 28 days) was
an institution. He labeled himself a 'musical lexicographer,' having
written several indispensable musical reference works such as 'Baker's
Biographical Dictionary of Musicians,' and 'The Lexicon of Musical
Invective' (containing hilarious entries from reviews and other sources),
as well as the esoteric and encyclopedic, 'Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic
Patterns.' He also wrote one of the most amusing musical autobiographies
around, 'Perfect Pitch.' But before he became a scholar/writer he was a
pianist, conductor, composer, and champion of modern music. For instance,
he was the first person to conduct an orchestral work of Charles Ives in
Europe, and in an appendix of this gargantuan book (1260 pages) he prints
twenty pages of letters he received from Ives. Because he lived so long he
knew just about everybody in the field of twentieth-century music.

The primary content of the book is a day by day account of musical events
throughout the Western world from January 1, 1900 up to the death of Ernst
Krenek in 1991. This volume, its Fifth Edition, contains all the material
of the previous editions (with corrections and additions) plus 1500
additional entries for the period after the Fourth Edition.

For a reasonably well-informed music-lover there is rarely a page in
this book without information about events in music history that are
familiar, as well as others that are interesting but otherwise unknown.
To illustrate this I opened the book literally at random to pages 150-151
and found entries, among others, on the premiere of Zandonai's 'Francesca
da Rimini'; a squib about the fifteen-year-old Henry Cowell demonstrating
'tone clusters' to the San Francisco Music Club; the premiere of 'Hashish,'
a tone-poem by Sergei Liapunov; the premiere of George Butterworth's
'The Banks of Green Willow'; the premiere of Vaughan Williams's now-beloved
'London Symphony'; the premiere of Franz Schmidt's opera 'Notre Dame';
the premiere of Alberic Magnard's magnum opus, his Fourth Symphony; the
first performance as orchestral piece (as opposed to accompaniment of a
ballet) of Stravinsky's 'Sacre de printemps,' Pierre Monteux conducting.
All these took place in February-April 1914. You get the idea.

Also included is a section of musical 'documents' such as the Ives letters
mentioned, as well as things like the Futurist manifesto, a talk by Alban
Berg entitled 'What is Atonality?,' letters to Slonimsky from luminaries
such as Arnold Schoenberg, George Bernard Shaw, Anton von Webern and
Edgard Varese. There are documents from Soviet Russia illuminating the
control the government placed on composers and some of their responses.

Also included is a valuable section of definitions of musical and allied
terms applicable to the modern era with entries from abecedarianism (a
gentle term to describe simplistic music - oh, what he has to say about
what we would now call minimalism!) to Zen (and its influence on the
avant-garde). He also defines some of his own neologisms; for instance,
he tends to refer to twentieth-century music as 'vigesimosecular.' One
can imagine him smiling at his mock-pompous use of such words.

Slonimsky's writing style is idiosyncratic. He is frequently puckish,
sometimes acerbic, always superdensely, polysyllabically multifactual;
I counted 300 words in one exuberant Russian-doll-like sentence. He
created an enormous number of musical neologisms to describe musical
processes and styles, some of which have entered the technical vocabulary;
for instance, 'pandiatonicism' to describe the process by which 'all
seven degrees of the diatonic scale are used freely in democratic
equality.' He takes sly pokes at music he does not admire but is never
mean-spirited. He gives technical analyses of major works (e.g., his
extensive exegeses of the Mahler symphonies which were premiered in the
20th century.) He has some inexplicable hobby-horses. For instance, he
gives the precise age at death of important musicians as I've done in
my opening sentence. He raves about composers that few others seem to
care for, e.g., the Swiss Hans Huber. He completely omits some composers
that are now well-thought-of, e.g. Sweden's Wilhelm Stenhammar. He
tends to go on at length about uses of scales and melodic patterns,
not surprising considering his expertise in that area.  But overall he
is fair-minded and although not anywhere near complete - that would
be impossible - the encyclopedic nature of the work requires fervent
admiration. There are a few typos along the way - unavoidable - and an
occasional error of fact, although it is clear that he makes every effort
to correct them (there are frequent retractions of errors made in earlier
editions); this even extends to poring over governmental and church birth
and death records and newspaper reviews of premiere performances.

For someone like me who often writes reviews of recordings of obscure
twentieth-century works, this volume is indispensable. For others who
are generally interested in the musical history of the previous century
it would be valuable if not absolutely necessary. Every library worthy
of the name ought to have a copy. Slonimsky was one of our cultural
treasures and thank goodness his words will live on.

Scott Morrison