AMERICA'S MUSICAL LIFE – A HISTORY Richard Crawford WW Norton and Co., July 2000 ISBN: 0-393-04810-1 Hardback, £35.00, US$45.00

America is certainly a country in which diversity seems to be its main asset; 'The land of the free' (to quote from an song of British origin) might certainly be the 'home of the brave', but it is also one in which political extremism gave rise to McCarthyism, Korea, Viet Nam and Grenada, in which religious dogmatism continues to find a niche amongst the book-burning, gun-toting values of Middle America, and in which poverty and wealth coexist in an uneasy, yet volatile détente. Yet such extremes seem to be the very nature of its artistic heritage, one that exists on many independent, yet mutually-symbiotic levels, the roots of which are as diverse as the legacy that forms the very heart of the nation's identity. These are all aspects of which Crawford's book, America's Musical Life – A History, attempts to make some semblance of sense, even if the first few chapters somehow miss the mark. It begins with a somewhat uneasy chapter on the music of the Native American Indian; I say uneasy since, in the space of only a few pages, Crawford seems to be paying a guilt-ridden lip service to a community whose music would be better served elsewhere. Disguised with references to early ethnomusicological attempts to notate and publish native songs, he tries to deal with too large and too untidy a subject in a mere eleven pages. And other early chapters also seem somewhat incomplete; granted, if the effect of Puritanism on music in seventeenth-century Britain is anything to go by, then things in a relatively new, thinly-populated America are going to appear extreme. But, judging from Crawford's account, secular music seems to have failed to get a foothold, and no real mention of such fundamental forms as folksong or ballad singing seems to occur before the eighteenth century at the earliest, something that seems to arise from an unsettling preoccupation with the realm of the professional rather than the amateur musician.

Crawford's attempt is laudable: his style is clear and erudite, and, given the space, this book serves to be an important reference tool, even if several important composers or movements get only a mention in passing.

The chapters that deal with the years between the eighteenth and early twentieth century are more focused in their attempt to provide a historical narrative of mainstream arts' movements by placing them in their political and socio-economic contexts. Unsurprisingly, there is little that is different to musical developments on the other side of the Atlantic, although during the nineteenth century in particular, we begin to see the development of a more idiomatic musical language, not through the writings of Amy Beach or George Chadwick, or even oddities such as Louis Gottschalk, since their style is essentially European, but through nationalistic trends viz. marching bands and the advent of that bête noire of sensitivity, John Philip Sousa, to whom Crawford is perhaps more sympathetic than he deserves.

However, it is through Crawford's monumental attempt to plot the trials and tribulations of the music of the twentieth century where his monograph becomes a force on its own. This is a vastly larger subject area than anything which comes before, and is certainly more varied and difficult to track than mainstream European musical cultures, since it deals with the Afro-Hispanic-European mishmash which gave rise to the jazz culture (perhaps America's greatest cultural export), and later rock and pop idioms, as well as spawning minimalists, serialists, futurists (my term) and classicists along the way. And Crawford's attempt is laudable: his style is, on the whole, clear and erudite, and, given the space, this book serves to be an important reference tool, even if several important composers or movements get only a mention in passing.

Overall, this is an excellent history, and despite a slight lack of focus in the earlier chapters, Crawford's book cannot be recommended highly enough.

Alex Barton