‫ۣۤۡۙے‬ ‫یٮے‪ۛҖ‬ۦۣ‪ۘۛۙғ‬۝ۦۖۡٷۗ‪۠ۧғ‬ٷۢۦ۩ۣ۞‪ҖҖ‬ۃۤۨۨۜ‬ ‫‪ẰẸẻẺ‬ڷۦۣۚڷۧۙۗ۝۪ۦۙۧڷ۠ٷۣۢ۝ۨ۝ۘۘۆ‬ ‫ۙۦۙۜڷ۟ۗ۝۠‪Ө‬ڷۃۧۨۦۙ۠ٷڷ۠۝ٷۡٮ‬ ‫ۙۦۙۜڷ۟ۗ۝۠‪Ө‬ڷۃۣۧۢ۝ۨۤ۝ۦۗۧۖ۩ۑ‬ ‫ۙۦۙۜڷ۟ۗ۝۠‪Ө‬ڷۃۧۨۢ۝ۦۤۙۦڷ۠ٷ۝ۗۦۣۙۡۡ‪Ө‬‬ ‫ۙۦۙۜڷ۟ۗ۝۠‪Ө‬ڷۃڷۙۧ۩ڷۣۚڷۧۡۦۙے‬ ‫ۑەٮٲ۔ٮېڷۊۍۍ‪ψ‬‬ ‫ڿۀڷ‪Ғ‬ڷۂڿڷۤۤڷۃڼڽڼھڷۦۣۙۖۨۗۍڷ‪Җ‬ڷۀ‪Ң‬ھڷۙ۩ۧۧٲڷ‪Җ‬ڷۀڿڷۙۡ۩ۣ۠۔ڷ‪Җ‬ڷۣۤۡۙے‬ ‫ڼڽڼھڷۦۣۙۖۨۗۍڷڿڽڷۃۙۢ۝ۣ۠ۢڷۘۙۜۧ۝۠ۖ۩ێڷۃۀڿۀڼڼڼڼڽھہۂھڼۀڼڼۑ‪Җ‬ۀڽڼڽ‪ғ‬ڼڽڷۃٲۍ‪ө‬‬ ‫ۀڿۀڼڼڼڼڽھہۂھڼۀڼڼۑٵۨۗٷۦۨۧۖٷ‪ۛҖ‬ۦۣ‪ۘۛۙғ‬۝ۦۖۡٷۗ‪۠ۧғ‬ٷۢۦ۩ۣ۞‪ҖҖ‬ۃۤۨۨۜڷۃۙ۠ۗ۝ۨۦٷڷۧ۝ۜۨڷۣۨڷ۟ۢ۝ۋ‬ ‫ۃۙ۠ۗ۝ۨۦٷڷۧ۝ۜۨڷۙۨ۝ۗڷۣۨڷۣ۫ٱ‬ ‫ۀڿۀڼڼڼڼڽھہۂھڼۀڼڼۑ‪Җ‬ۀڽڼڽ‪ғ‬ڼڽۃ۝ۣۘڷڿۀ‪Ғ‬ۂڿڷۤۤڷۃۀڿڷۃۣۤۡۙےڷ‪ғ‬ۀڼڽڼھڿ‬ ‫ۙۦۙۜڷ۟ۗ۝۠‪Ө‬ڷۃڷۣۧۢ۝ۧۧ۝ۡۦۙێڷۨۧۙ۩ۥۙې‬ ‫ۀڽڼھڷۦٷیڷہھڷۣۢڷڼڼڽ‪Ңғ‬ڿ‪ғ‬ڽڿ‪ғ‬ڿۂڽڷۃۧۧۙۦۘۘٷڷێٲڷۃیٮے‪ۛҖ‬ۦۣ‪ۘۛۙғ‬۝ۦۖۡٷۗ‪۠ۧғ‬ٷۢۦ۩ۣ۞‪ҖҖ‬ۃۤۨۨۜڷۣۡۦۚڷۘۙۘٷۣۣ۠ۢ۫‪ө‬‬ 69 Tempo 64 (254) 69– 76 © 2010 Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0040298210000434 Printed in the United Kingdom   The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music ed. James Saunders. Ashgate, £75.00. James Saunders begins his introduction to this book with the declaration that it is not a sequel to Michael Nyman’s Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (1974). However, that declaration only holds up so far. Nyman’s book, as well as providing a historical overview of experimental music in theory and practice, was a vivid snapshot of the (particularly British) musical avant-garde at the end of the 1960s. Saunders’ book, despite its grand appellation ‘The Ashgate Research Companion to …’, is equally a portrait of its time. Like others in the series, this is a large, richlyillustrated book filled with a generous number of contributed essays. (It has the price-tag to match.) With an awareness that this publication will probably become a leading English-language sourcebook on experimental music, Saunders has taken the sensible decision to devote half of his space to a series of interviews with 14 leading experimental composers and performers. These are preceded by nine essays written by musicians and researchers working within experimental music, chosen to cover as wide a range of themes and practices as possible: notation, performance, politics, phonography, the visual arts and so on. The realm of inquiry thus opened up is considerably broader than Nyman, reflecting an increased diversity of activity, but it is also more segregated. One does not sense from reading the book (although this may be inferred from listening to the music) a continuity of aesthetic between Manfred Werder’s haiku-like text scores – ‘places / a time / (sounds)’ is the complete score for 20062 – and the act of ‘soundwalking’ that is described by John Levack Drever. But although the field of experimental music may have been divided into silos, each theme is explored deeply. As with any co-authored collection, the approaches taken both differ and overlap in equal measure. The book begins with a personal account (‘Why Experimental? Why me?’) by Christopher Fox, of what it is to be a composer of ‘experimental’ music. The personal touch recurs in several of the essays: pianist Philip Thomas (writing on performance and interpretation) and percussionist Eddie Prévost (on the politics of free improvisation) bring performers’ insights into http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 28 Mar 2014 their discussions. Fox reflects, through consideration of his MERZsonata (1993/1998), Themes and Variations (1992–6), Strangers in our midst (1999– 2001) and Everything You Need To Know (2000–01), on the creation of a context for a music that was neither minimal nor complex, composerly nor improvisatory, British nor European. Fox (a former teacher of Saunders) is a central figure in the current matrix of British experimental music, and this history of his own compositional identity colours the identity of the book itself – on which more in a moment. Michael Pisaro (on notation) and Thomas tackle in a relatively straightforward fashion the cataloguing of their subjects. From a musicological point of view, I found Thomas’s essay on performing experimental music the book’s most satisfying chapter. Pisaro’s contribution is valuable for the large number of score examples, from George Brecht to Jürg Frey, with which it is illustrated: like an annotated version of John Cage and Alison Knowles’s Notations in miniature. David Ryan, outlining the connexions and cross-currents between experimental music and the visual arts, similarly covers the full historical spectrum from the New York School and the Abstract Expressionists to Christian Marclay and Martin Creed. In fact, most of the essays take a wide historical view. On the whole this works well: Andy Keep (‘Instrumentalizing: Approaches to Improvisation with Sounding Objects in Experimental Music’) and Will Montgomery (‘Beyond the Soundscape: Art and Nature in Contemporary Phonography’), for example, are both writing about musical practices of relatively recent vintage, yet both find convincing historical contexts for their subjects. Levack Drever, writing on ‘Soundwalking: Aural Excursions in the Everyday’, is in a similar position, but his historical survey of musical walks (from Mahler’s hikes in the Tyrol mountains to Satie’s daily commutes from Arceuil to Paris, to the Fluxus walking pieces) feels less convincing as a unified account. It is more an account of all walking practices within music; interesting and provocative in itself, but not quite an explanation of soundwalking’s ancestry. In contrast, Ron Kuivila’s essay on the use and realization of live electronics in experimental music focuses on the origins story – which centres around the work of David Tudor in the 1960s and 70s – of circuit bend- IP address: 193.61.65.100 70  ing, bespoke instrument building and so on, but struggles to bring its subject up to the present day. Only at the very end does it step beyond the 1970s, and even then the only specific piece referred to is Yatsanue Tone’s Solo for Wounded CD of 1985. Given the care with which the other essays of the first half comprehensively cover historical territory, this is a strange oversight. Yet the book’s overall thrust is very much towards the present: Peter Ablinger has three times the index references as Robert Ashley, for example. The Ashgate Research Companions are ‘designed to offer scholars and graduate students a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-theart review of current research in a particular area’, so the ‘nowness’ is intentional. It becomes most apparent in the second half of the book, when Saunders switches his editorial focus from thematic essays to subject interviews. One finds in this section the book’s greatest strengths and weaknesses, particularly for the more general, non-academic reader. Several of the interviews are rare and useful documents in their own right. Those with Antoine Beuger and Manfred Werder are, as far as I am aware, the first in English with these important composers, and a view of experimental music that takes note of European developments is very welcome. The slim literature on Laurence Crane, Tim Parkinson and Jennifer Walshe, all of whom should be a presence for years to come, has also been considerably enhanced. Only the interview with Phill Niblock – who is alternately evasive and flippant in his replies – is a real disappointment. Of the 14 interviewees, three – Alvin Lucier, Evan Parker and Christian Wolff – might be considered ‘father figures’, but the rest belong to the second, third or even fourth post-Cage generations of experimental musicians. Several of these have produced their best work in the last 10–15 years and some may yet have it ahead of them. Just three interviewees, Beuger, Werder and Bernhard Günter, represent practice outside the anglophone sphere; Walshe is the book’s only female voice. Saunders is a knowledgable and well-connected composer but this is, nevertheless, a somewhat selective view of global experimental music practice that he has chosen to represent. It was especially odd for this reader to find so little reference to the British, post-Cardew descendancy, either amongst the interviewees or in the thematic essays. Fox’s opener began life as a 1990 piece intended for Contemporary Music Review on the views of a composer ‘too young to have been in the Scratch Orchestra but for whom the work of composers like Cornelius Cardew, Gavin Bryars and Howard Skempton was an important influ- http://journals.cambridge.org ence’. Yet after Fox’s contribution, one searches in vain for more than passing references to figures like Bryars, Skempton, Michael Parsons or John White (although Cardew himself is frequently referred to). Perhaps this is because the book is, partly and inevitably, a portrait of its editor. But it is also intriguing to return once more to Nyman who, in his final chapter, put his money on the future of experimental music being carried by such composers. Reading The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music one senses that 1974-Nyman would have been surprised to see how experimental music had become so sober and scholarly in the 21st century. This isn’t the sequel to Nyman’s book, but one wonders whether, with experimental music now all grown up, the time for such a book is past? Tim Rutherford-Johnson Dane Rudhyar: His Music, Thought, and Art by Deniz Ertan. University of Rochester Press, £40.00. The Parisian-born Dane Rudhyar (1895–1985) is something of a marginal figure who, according to Deniz Ertan in her book-length study of his work, ‘has been almost written out of music history’ (p. 5). Arriving in America in 1916, Rudhyar soon became an active member in ultra-modernist circles; his writings on the spiritual workings of music were well-received in certain quarters during the 1920s. Shifts in cultural and economic politics changed the fortunes of many composers in the following decade, and for Rudhyar, the combination of financial necessity and artistic frustration saw him concentrate his efforts on ‘humanist astrology’ and painting. A revival of interest in his music and musical writings in the 1970s gave rise to an Indian summer in which he produced new, and revised older, works. Considering himself (in Ertan’s words) ‘first and foremost a composer’ and bemoaning what he felt to be a disproportionate emphasis placed on his astrological output, Rudhyar asserted that all of his work ‘is all one philosophy. It is one way of thinking of life’ (p. 1). Taking statements such as these as a launching point, Ertan attempts ‘to comprehend the unity and the multiplicity of Dane Rudhyar’s creative work, thought, aesthetics and life’ (xi). Such strands are irreducibly intertwined, and ‘as Rudhyar remained loyal to philosophical, aesthetic, cultural, and psychological matters throughout his life, this book aims to make a number of general observations that apply to the totality of his oeuvre’ (p. 11, original emphasis). The result is that Ertan’s narrative avoids for the most part a Downloaded: 28 Mar 2014 IP address: 193.61.65.100   71 chronological survey (although a 14-page ‘Events in the life of Dane Rudhyar’ is provided) in favour of three groups of three chapters focussing on Rudhyar’s engagement with philosophical, aesthetic and cultural movements in Europe, the Orient, and America (here, and elsewhere, I retain Ertan’s uncritical use of the term ‘Orient’). These divisions are not absolute, but they provide to a certain extent useful frameworks for understanding Rudhyar’s work. Rudhyar’s philosophy and aesthetics (the two cannot be neatly prised apart) are born from a complex synthesis of diverse ideas. Notions of birth, decline and re-birth abound in his writings, symbolized above all by autumnal imagery and the ‘potentiality’ of seeds. To this is added a heady blend of thought that is connected to theosophy, mysticism and Jung, in which art becomes a collective therapeutic vehicle through the welcoming and enactment of crises. For the West, Rudhyar diagnosed the crisis as being a result of ‘decay, sterility, a tendency towards quantity (rather than quality), and a separation of the soul from the intellect’ (p. 199); his remedies, philosophically and musically, drew on American and Eastern models. His decision in 1918 to change his name from Daniel Chennevière to the Sanskritinspired Rudhyar reflected the opportunities for renewal and re-birth in the New World alongside the integration of Oriental ideas. Yet for all of his openness to Eastern thought, the traffic appears one-way, if not colonialist in nature: Rudhyar pleaded with Hindu and Indian musicians to preserve ‘the pure essence’ of their traditional musics in the face of the perverting influence of ‘intellectual ideas from the West’ (pp. 132–3). In his paintings and writings, Rudhyar makes frequent use of imagery and concepts related to the above. The book includes 16 handsomelyreproduced paintings, supported by Ertan’s sensitive readings, reflecting his association with the Transcendental Painting Group. Ertan devotes less space to the artistic contents of Rudhyar’s semiautobiographical novel Rania: An Epic Narrative (1973), and gives his poetry less still. (Rudhyar’s complaint about the attention his astrology receives, cited above, places poetry at the front of his list of other achievements.) This is not to say that Ertan does not make considerable claims for Rudhyar’s writings. At the culmination of a passage drawing extended parallels with Whitman’s poetry (153–4), she suggests that like many American artists and thinkers of their generations, Whitman and Rudhyar impose upon themselves a clean role to play: the American individual was to be incorrupt, natural, and guileless with the instinct to explore. In Whitman’s words, “I and mine http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 28 Mar 2014 do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes, / We convince by our presence” (p. 154). There is a similar shackling of Rudhyar with Nietzsche, with the conclusion that ‘at times, the challenging interrogation of truths encapsulate grand themes or eminent ideas as the two authors create styles that reflect the content of their arguments. Their writings remain timely critiques and disquisitions’ (p. 16). In the absence of critical evaluation, one is left with the strong impression that Ertan wants us to regard Rudhyar as the equal of his artistic and philosophical predecessors. The same complaints can be made about the treatment of the music. Given that Ertan places music as central to Rudhyar’s activities both in the book’s title and in her claims for his importance (she ranks him ‘first and foremost a composer’), it receives surprisingly little attention. Very few works are discussed, fewer still quoted, and it is difficult to ascertain from their non-chronological presentation their importance or significance in Rudhyar’s output as a whole. Certainly, the limited examples at the reader’s disposal make it well-nigh impossible to evaluate the many positive opinions from his peers that Ertan quotes at length. One begins to suspect – as with the writings – that Ertan is trying just a little too hard to establish Rudhyar’s significance. For this reason, when Roy Harris’s somewhat negative reference for Rudhyar’s 1931 Guggenheim application is cited, it provides a welcome counterbalance, despite Ertan’s rapid dismissal of it as ‘callous’ and ‘inconsistent’ (p. 184). (As if to cast further doubt on Harris’s appraisal, she notes that a few years earlier, Harris sent an encouraging letter to Rudhyar, though the possibility that Harris was merely being polite is not considered.) It is only in the closing pages that Ertan begins to assess Rudhyar’s output – surely a necessary move in a work that is ‘motivated by a strong desire to reassess his position’ (p. xi) – and despite admitting certain limitations, she ultimately baulks at providing an evaluation in favour of a vague psychological reading: Thus – assuming, for a moment, that it is appropriate even to raise such a question – is there anything unique in Rudhyar’s creative oeuvre? Why should we listen to his music today? […] The same way the relationship between ascent and descent is analogously tantamount to the inner workings of wholeness, such opposites are brought together in Rudhyar’s work, so that they may be reconciled and released through processes of differentiation and integration. (p. 202) In the few recordings that I’ve heard of Rudhyar’s music, I have to date been unable to detect these things; nor are they necessarily the best reasons to listen to anyone’s music. Ertan most convincingly IP address: 193.61.65.100 72  suggests reasons to ‘listen to his music today’ when she attends to the intuitive, dissonant, and rhythmically flexible qualities of his output. If we want to take seriously her claim that Rudhyar is indeed ‘unfairly neglected’ (p. xi), more of this close analytical reading, and a wider selection of examples, would have been necessary. Unfortunately, by attempting to demonstrate Rudhyar’s work in its ‘totality’, Ertan shifts attention away from just those musical properties that might convince us of his merits. The jury must remain out. about Scotland’s treatment of her musicians, and he makes it in writing about Chisholm without seeming to question the construct of the ‘quintessential Scot’. Chisholm the modernist, by comparison, is somewhat overwhelmed by Erik the Scot. Purser was clearly aware of the danger of this happening, hence the title of his book where national identity and universality connect perforce. In Chapter 3 he writes: Chisholm’s genius is to have found a place for the Scottish idiom within the broad context, retaining the native vitality in an international setting. It is extraordinary that this stylistic achievement, which has produced beautiful music, clearly structured, coherent and individualistic, has not made more of an impact (p. 48). Edward Venn Erik Chisholm, Scottish Modernist 1904–1965: Chasing a Restless Muse by John Purser. Boydell & Brewer, Boydell Press, £50.00. John Purser chooses to highlight three perspectives in the title of his Erik Chisholm biography. The first, Chisholm’s Scottishness, is central to Purser’s understanding of meaning in his subject’s music and personality (‘In his sense of social responsibility, Chisholm was a quintessential Scot’, p. 210, as well as the whole of Chapter 3). The second, his status as a modernist, serves to position the biographical subject as an important international figure (‘Chisholm was not outside a movement and learning from it; he was in it and creating it along with some of the greatest of his contemporaries …’, p. 213). Lastly, the notion of the composer in pursuit of a ‘restless muse’ becomes the operative principle to explain aesthetic choices and moral ambiguities, which muses have a chequered history of mediating. Of the three titular accents, Purser’s exposition of Chisholm’s musical and personal situation as a Scot is most consistently developed in the book. Chisholm was born in Glasgow, spent the first 40 years of his life in Scotland, and was undoubtedly much influenced by Scottish traditional music. Purser quotes Chisholm himself in support of this influence in the chapter devoted to ‘Chisholm’s Scottish Inheritance’ (p. 37), but the theme is also pursued throughout the rest of the book. We read about it in the ‘Centre-Piece’ in a discussion of the orchestral work Pictures from Dante and Night Song of the Bards – Six Nocturnes for Piano, in Chapter 7 (‘Under Table Mountain’, pp. 148–9), in Chapter 8 (‘On Tour in the USA and Europe’, pp. 162–3) and in Chapter 10 (‘Chasing a Restless Muse’, p. 203). It is clear enough that this is an integral theme in the life and work of this enigmatic man, but it is also important to note that it seems to be particularly important to the biographer. Purser, himself a Scottish composer, has a point to make http://journals.cambridge.org This is the conundrum exactly, but Purser’s book doesn’t offer us much help in understanding what is surely a central concern in any retrospective consideration of Chisholm’s work and life. What is missing throughout the biography is the kind of theoretical acuity that could refine Scottishness as a non-essentialist sensibility, intuitively resonating, as it does in Chisholm’s case, to the music of Sorabji, Bartók and Janáček, intriguingly merging with a musical and military career in the crumbling years of British empire and eventually flowering organizationally, academically, politically and musically in the fascist state that South Africa (still a member of the Commonwealth until 1961) was becoming. As it stands, the dense rhizome of influences, social and political contexts and Chisholm’s musical tastes are reduced to a naïve romantic formula in the composer ‘chasing a restless muse’ (the third angle featured in Purser’s title): The muse was indeed restless, and he had worshipped her wearing tartan and in her costumes for opera, her tutu for ballet and her uniform for war. Now she was about to put on a gown and mortar-board. Nor was the colour of her skin of the slightest consequence, though he perhaps was particularly seduced by her in her Hindustani manifestations (p. 134) And this ultimately leads to the most important question raised by this timely but flawed recognition of a composer arguably even more important to South African music history than to that of Scotland: how does one set about writing musical biographies of those musicians and composers who occupy the periphery of the larger currents of history? If it is only to document, heroically, the lives and work of these Kleinmeister, Purser has written a commendable book. Apart from the ten chapters (following a chronological plan), there are two Appendices (‘The Active Society for Downloaded: 28 Mar 2014 IP address: 193.61.65.100   73 the Propagation of Contemporary Music’, pp. 214–221; and ‘Patric MacDonald Sources for Chisholm’s Piano Works’, pp. 222–225), endnotes numbered by chapter and containing mostly bibliographic references (pp. 226–254), a select bibliography (pp. 255–259), a discography (pp. 260–263), a list of selected compositions (pp. 264–266) and a thorough and meticulous index (pp. 267–283). Yes, there are silences in the text: the South African perspective is under-researched, the whole of Chapter 9 (‘Soviet Ambassador: Chisholm behind the Iron Curtain’) is sprung on the reader with very little context of the significance (critically, politically or musically) of these events and Chisholm’s clearly problematic personality is never thoroughly interrogated (perhaps not entirely surprising when taking into account that the book is the result of a commission from the Erik Chisholm Trust). Commendable nevertheless, but also dispiritingly conventional. If biographies of so-called minor musical figures are to do more than document (however thoroughly) an accepted humble position in a canonic hierarchy, more complexity is required. This complexity could be located at any of various different levels of engagement with the material: the musical readings, the theoretical framing, the narrative technique, the structural design – any or all should become more self-reflexively responsive to the complexity of the impossible task of documenting a life and a life’s work. Only when this is understood and attempted, does the biographer stand a chance of contesting the prejudice towards what is considered ‘minor’ through the complexity of the approach to the material. And only then will composers like Erik Chisholm emerge as pivotal figures in their own right; not between parochial national identities and acknowledged ‘-isms’, but as the remarkable artistic agents of the interstice. Not chasing spectres of (anachronistic, if restless) muses, but thinking, articulating and composing the complicated counter-narratives to our everchanging understanding of 20th-century music history. Stephanus Muller Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac by Sylvia Kahan. University of Rochester Press, £17.99 (2009 paperback; originally published 2003). In Search of New Scales: Prince Edmond de Polignac, Octatonic Explorer by Sylvia Kahan. University of Rochester Press, £40.00. Behind Bars z An indispensable reference book for composers, arrangers, teachers, students of composition, editors and music processors z Provides a comprehensive grounding in notational principles and covers everything from basic rules, conventions and themes to complex instrumental techniques z Comprehensive sections on electro-acoustic music and microtones z Computer technologies are embraced, providing valuable support for those using computer note-setting software ISBN: Pages: Price: 0-571-51456-4 704 pages £65.00 Pre-order huge now for a ING V A S 45% 5.00 6 £ e th on published price* *offer ends 31st December 2010 http://journals.cambridge.org z Supported by 1,500 music examples, including extracts from works from Bach to Xenakis z Encourages standards of excellence, accuracy and precision For a SAMPLE BOOKLET and offer details, contact the marketing department at the address below Faber Music, Burnt Mill, Elizabeth Way, Harlow CM20 2HX Tel: 01279 828909 Email: marketing@fabermusic.com Downloaded: 28 Mar 2014 IP address: 193.61.65.100 74  ‘All music is modern’, said Nadia Boulanger (quoted MMM, 330). This was true in France during the early to mid-20th century to the extent that musical life was influenced, moulded, and supported by Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, the great patron – La Grande Mécène – of modern music and host of musical gatherings at her residence in central Paris. These gatherings held sway over fashionable Paris in matters musical from the 1880s through to the mid-1930s, by which time the salon had become something of a historical anachronism, especially with Léon Blum’s election, a government dominated by the Popular Front and the rise of the working class (MMM, 326), and darkening clouds across the border. Winnaretta Singer was from a rich American family, and was the twentieth of 24 children. Her father was a globally successful manufacturer of sewing machines, and her mother was rumoured to have inspired the sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi when he created the Statue of Liberty (MMM, 3). Prince Edmond de Polignac (1834–1901) came from a family that could trace its princely ancestry back to the court of Louis XIV (MMM, 64). A large period of his childhood was spent in Bavaria, and his education was multi-lingual and wide-ranging, taking in Latin, Greek, mathematics, and, naturally for one of his social class, music and art. Back in Paris, the family lived next door to Balzac and received Rossini and other luminaries as guests, and his brother translated Faust into French. As a young man, Edmond met Wagner during the latter’s Parisian visits (IS, 22) as well as Henry James, Whistler, Rossetti and William Morris during a trip around London (IS, 56). Edmond met Winnaretta at an art auction, where, to his annoyance, she easily outbid him for Monet’s Champs de Tulipes en Hollande (now in the Louvre) (IS, 57). Two years after Winnaretta had divorced her first husband, Edmond proposed to her, and they were married on 15 December 1893, much to the anger of Edmond’s longstanding friend, Comte Robert de Montesquiou (later to be mercilessly parodied in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu). While the marriage began as one of social convenience to both parties – not long before meeting Winnaretta, Edmond had lost his inheritance on the stock market (MMM, 64) – and was commonly acknowledged to be a mariage blanc, given their respective sexual inclinations, ‘To their amazement and delight, a bond of friendship and affection quickly grew between them’ (IS, 75). They are both buried in the family vault in Torquay, Devon. Of course, Winnaretta is justly remembered for her patronage of music, supporting musical causes like the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris (MMM, 269), the faltering finances of the impor- http://journals.cambridge.org tant journal La Revue Musicale (MMM, 335), as well as the coterie of brilliant composers whom she commissioned and nurtured. But her generosity did not stop there. Her contribution to broader, more worthy causes was enormous, and included the research of Marie Curie (MMM, xxii), social housing projects (though the money only came with the stipulation that Le Corbusier be appointed architect – MMM, 256–7), the Salvation Army, a donation of 100,000 francs to support an archaeological dig in Vari, Greece (MMM, 327), and various war-related charities, one project of which raised almost a million francs in 1917 (MMM, 205). All donations, though, were those of a hard business woman who gave money in return for a say in how it was spent. And not all pleas were successful; Virgil Thomson failed to receive a commission for her salon (MMM, 257–8), and Stravinsky received advice and the benefit of her considerable influence, rather than hard cash, for the purchase and renovation of a house in Nice (MMM, 257). Kahan raises the question of whether the artists involved in the salons were always paid quite as much as they should have been (MMM, 330). Culturally, Winnaretta was very widely read; she had a rapacious appetite for new knowledge and a deep and fertile imagination. While mourning Edmond’s death, she read and translated Thoreau’s Walden (excerpts were published in two instalments in La Renaissance Latine in 1903 and 1904) – to the dismay of Proust, who had been planning to translate it himself (MMM, 128–9). She also translated Calvin Coolidge’s speech, ‘The Classics for America’ for La Revue de Paris, with the president’s approval (MMM, 242, 245). She could read Plato in the original language, and maintained a passionate interest in all things Greek; indeed, she was the driving force behind Satie’s Socrate. Both Edmond and Winnaretta loved spending time in Venice at the palazzo that she had bought him for his sixty-sixth birthday; as Edmond would say, ‘Venice is the only city where you can hold a discussion in front of an open window without having to raise your voice’ (quoted IS, 102). There is a famous photo taken there 20odd years later, with Stravinsky and Winnaretta posing during the composer’s stay for a performance of his Piano Sonata (dedicated to her) (MMM, 222). Both independently and as a couple, Edmond and Winnaretta were well-connected. Guests at their salons included composers, aristocrats, poets, political figures (including Oswald Mosley – MMM, 254), family members, and many more. Proust was a regular presence, and wrote about them for fashionable magazines (IS, 92), though not always in a manner that impressed Winnaretta Downloaded: 28 Mar 2014 IP address: 193.61.65.100   75 (MMM, 130). Prokofiev attended much more frequently than Stravinsky, though Winnaretta had a longer and more influential relationship with the latter, which included the commission of Renard. Their salons ranged from ‘organ evenings’ (IS, 80) with performances from Guilmant, Widor, Vierne, and Gigout (and, much later, Dupré – MMM, 389) to full-blown orchestral concerts, in later years organized by Gabriel Astruc and often directed by Nadia Boulanger. Fauré, who had been a close family friend since 1887 (IS, 59) and who was effectively one of the ‘house musicians’ (IS, 80) – Kahan asks whether at one time he was even in love with Winnaretta (MMM, 53) – often took part as composer or performer. Early music had an important part in the gatherings, Edmond having inherited a harpsichord from his parents, and Landowska performed several times on harpsichord and piano. Winnaretta made assiduous efforts with the Parisian press to promote her salon, with variable results (IS, 81). Outside the salon, the Polignacs met Debussy in 1894, who wrote to Pierre Louÿs a year later expressing his interest in Edmond’s own music (IS, 142), and Ravel, whose octatonic Jeux d’Eau of 1901 may have been partly inspired by the evenings Ravel spent in the salons with Edmond (IS, 91). While what had drawn them together initially was their mutual love of Bach and Wagner (IS, 89), Edmond and Winnaretta’s musical tastes were catholic and embraced all genres from solo instrument to chamber, vocal, and orchestral, and the whole gamut of contemporary music – Frenchbased, naturally, though with quite a few commissions and performances of English music, as well as Falla and Weill. Winnaretta was a gifted organist and performed several times herself (she had a penchant for Bach), and in February 1906 she joined Ricardo Viñes in a two-piano performance of Prélude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune (MMM, 145). She defended Pélleas et Mélisande before it became fashionable to do so, and was troubled to find that Fauré did not share her opinion of it (MMM, 126). The programmes of music presented in her salons stayed aloof from the party-political bickering between camps of critics and composers, Scholists, Debussyists and the rest, and were splendidly eclectic (MMM, 371–404). Kahan presents a mass of detail from personal letters, others’ reminiscences, public reviews in journals and society columns, and elsewhere, about Winnaretta’s personality, which was emphatically the dominant of the two: Edmond for his part had a ‘directness and emotional sincerity’ (IS, 36), but was also plagued by chronic illnesses throughout his life, particularly gastroenteritis (IS, 17), which he dubbed ‘the sinister teas- http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 28 Mar 2014 ings of irritable gods’ (quoted IS, 37). Winnaretta’s friend, the novelist Rosamond Lehmann, described her as ‘a grand old girl with a rocky masculine aquiline profile’ (quoted MMM, 340), while her own niece, Armande de Polignac (herself an accomplished composer), wrote that she was an ‘eight-thousand-volt being’ (quoted MMM, 367). She was clearly ‘a determined, indomitable woman […] an enigmatic and difficult woman, a woman who made little effort to be understood, and made even less effort to be likeable’ (MMM, xviii), but entirely ‘positive, determined, indefatigable’ (MMM, 2) when it came to musical projects, especially those of her own devising. ‘Her imposing stature, gravelly voice, steely expression, and domineering manner made her downright scary to some’ (MMM, 142–3), and her relationships with close friends and acquaintances had their ups and downs, some publically seen and the object of gossip, others privately maintained and unspoken. Thus: she held a private grudge against Fauré from 1894 for his failing to find her proposal that he set a libretto by Verlaine as enticing as she did (MMM, 87–8). She was shocked that Ravel should presume to dedicate his Pavane pour une Infante défunte to her (a breach of etiquette), though naturally pleased that it should quickly become so popular (MMM, 106). A permanent chill entered her relationship with Markevitch, from whom she had commissioned Partita and Hymnes, in the mid-1930s after he crudely dumped Anna de Noailles for Krya Nijinsky (MMM, 341). Her relationship with Boulanger, otherwise a longstanding, mutual and fruitful one, became somewhat strained in the build up to the première of Poulenc’s Organ Concerto in 1938, though mostly, it seems, on Boulanger’s part (MMM, 353). Some in French society Winnaretta never liked; she disapproved of Misia Sert, and felt outright disdain for Chanel, whom she described as a tradesperson (MMM, 262). While Winnaretta’s attention was focussing on shepherding others’ music, Edmond was a busy ‘gentleman composer’, and an inventive one at that, with numerous performances (some in their salons) and quite a few publications of his works. As a composer, Kahan acknowledges that his music is not of the same inspiration as some of his contemporaries, though she finds several things of interest in his scores, which she discusses carefully. The La Danse du Serpent for solo piano, for example, was published in June 1888 with a note from the publisher: ‘Be certain that banality will never fall from his pen. He has audacity, even strangeness, and he is someone’ (quoted IS, 63). Edmond’s musical style seems to have embraced ‘true octatonicism’, as defined by IP address: 193.61.65.100 76  Richard Taruskin (IS, 2), almost always relying on the (0134) form of the collection (IS, 149). The score of La Danse du Serpent includes an explanatory note at the end, which sets out to elucidate some of the music’s octatonicism. Supplementary material apart, though, Edmond’s main contribution to music and his historical significance, Kahan argues, was as a theorist. Part 2 of In Search of New Scales consists of both a transcription and a translation of his 98-page treatise, ‘A Study on the Alternating Sequences of Whole Steps and Half Steps’. This was written mostly in 1879, with material added over the next few years, but never published. It is unclear what function the treatise was intended to serve. In part it is theory, in part compositional exploration with worked examples that show Edmond unpacking the possibilities of octatonic collections (IS, 165, 176). Kahan’s annotated translation of the text is excellent, although – a really minor point – bigger pages (so that each new page of the treatise might start on a new page) and colour might have helped to make the layout easier to navigate visually. The affects Edmond ascribes to certain types of music (certain types of octatonic texture) are typical of what later octatonic music was used for: the exotic and/or erotic (IS, 1, 5, 178). Edmond’s ‘discovery’ of octatonicism was disputed publically in 1894 as a result of an article in La Nouvelle Revue by the Hungarian musicologist, Alexandre de Bertha, ‘Un Système de Gammes Nouvelles’ (IS, 82–8), later expanded into a threepart article in 1895 for Le Ménestrel. The dispute even went as far as a public debate at the prestigious Académie des Sciences. Part of Edmond’s defence was a simultaneous performance of the oratorio Pilate Livre le Christ, also from 1879, a major work which impressed Fauré enough that he wrote to Winnaretta about it (IS, 87). From the point of view of the history of music theory, it will be progress if In Search of New Scales helps to take its subject beyond Stravinsky, dominant for so long in music-analytical thought. Certainly, Prince Edmond de Polignac and Alexandra Bertha should now be added to the history of octatonicism prior to Arthur Berger’s 1963 article, along with a more nuanced sense of the emergence of explicit/conscious octatonic composition in the 19th century in the work of Rimsky-Korsakov, whose first octatonic venture was 1867, and Liszt, whose Ossa Arida of 1879 (the same year as Edmond’s treatise) contains a written postscript in which Liszt explicitly acknowledges its construction based on thirds. Along with the research of Allen Forte on octatonicism in Debussy and Webern, Steven Baur on http://journals.cambridge.org Ravel, and others, a broader picture of octatonicism is slowly emerging. Both of these books are excellent and clearly love their extraordinary subjects. Fulsome indexes make them easy to dip in and out of, and the rich cultural history expanding the musicological narrative makes them real digestible coffee table books. There a few tiny typos (IS, 3, 18, 93, 148, 153, 164; MMM, 418) and one error about Stravinsky’s Introitus (MMM, 418). There is not much duplication between the books, since the overlap of subject matter caused by the Polignacs’ marriage lasted for only seven years. Both books have been thoughtfully produced with a plethora of musical examples, photos, and pictures of other memorabilia such as programme bills. Music’s Modern Muse, in particular, is brilliantly ambitious and fulfils every wish one could have for a biography of this key figure in 20th-century French music. Three particular scenes sketched by Kahan stick in the mind: the inappropriate vocal intervention of Anna de Noailles at the private première of Stravinsky’s Piano Concerto, no doubt making Stravinsky even more nervous at his solo debut (MMM, 243); perceptions around Prokofiev’s first visit to Winnaretta’s salon (MMM, 251); and – my favourite – the discussion of the ‘house violinist’, Olga Rudge, who painstakingly transcribed and edited numerous newly re-discovered concerti by Vivaldi, and performed them with a curious Stravinsky volunteering to turn her pages (MMM, 343). The one claim of Kahan’s which could bear greater emphasis comes on the opening page, where she claims, quite reasonably I think, that ‘two of [Winnaretta’s] artistic preferences – a love of the music of J. S. Bach, and her fascination with Hellenic language and culture – led directly to the rise of what is broadly called “neoclassicism” in music’ (MMM, xvii); there is a similar remark later on about the historical importance of Satie’s Socrate (MMM, 252). The Polignacs, Winnaretta in particular, if only because she lived longer and was much richer than Edmond, were friends to many artists in the 20th century. Four years before her death, she was justly promoted to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honour in July 1939 for ‘fifty-four years of service rendered to the sciences, letters, and the arts’ (MMM, 357). But music as a form of friendship was always a personal thing for her, as is clear from a beautiful compliment from her close friend, Colette: ‘To find friendship, to give it, means first crying out: ‘shelter, shelter!’ / My dear Winnie, I only cried out to you before in a whisper, but your ear is so fine.’ (quoted MMM, 305). 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