A Conductor's Guide to Nineteenth-Century Choral-Orchestral Works by Jonathan D. GreenReview by: Brian CockburnFontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 56, No. 2 (April-June 2009), pp. 225-226Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23512574 .

Accessed: 10/06/2014 20:20

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML) is collaboratingwith JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Fontes Artis Musicae.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.85 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 20:20:18 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 225

works that do not appear in Morales's Opera

Omnia. Two things would help the reader:

identifying musical models for the masses

(Oxford Music Online [formerly Grove Music Online] and the print version, New Grove

Dictionary of Music and Musicians, do this), and some kind of dating and/or provenance for

manuscript sources, which are listed separately in the prefatory material.

In his introduction, Rees expresses the hope

that the present book will encourage further re

search in Morales's biography, style, genres,

liturgical function and performance practice,

and finally reception history. These studies pro vide just such a catalyst for future scholars.

Jane Dahlenburg

University of Central Arkansas

A Conductor's Guide to Nineteenth

Century Choral-Orchestral Works. By

Jonathan D. Green. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow

Press, 2008. [xii, 336 p. ISBN 0-8108-6046-5; 978-08108-6046-9. $67.50]

According to the American Symphony Orches tra League's 2006-2007 Orchestra Repertoire

Report, three works alone comprised over one

third of the performances of nineteenth

century choral orchestral repertoire in the

2006-2007 season: Beethoven's Symphony

No. 9, with 24 performances; Brahms's Ein

deutsches Requiem, with 10; and Mahler's

Symphony No.2, with 8. Granted, this is only a small part of a picture that should also include

the repertoire of professional choirs, commu

nity choruses and others using pickup orches

tras. But, the fact remains that multiple influ

ences encourage conductors and music

directors to program the same works year after

year—audiences who wish to hear the same

standard works, cost to rent or purchase new

performing material, inadequate rehearsal time to prepare unfamiliar works, unusual forces re

quired, and lack of information to make in formed decisions on programming works with minimal exposure.

Jonathan Green's A Conductor's Guide to

Nineteenth-Century Choral-Orchestral Works ad

dresses the works of Beethoven (1770-1827)

through Scriabin (1872-1915). Along with well known works like Verdi's Requiem, Berlioz's

Faust, and masses by Schubert, one finds

lesser-known works by Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), Max Bruch (1838-1920), and Mrs. H. H. A. (Amy) Beach (1867-1944). Each

composer is allotted birth and death informa tion, brief biography, other principal works in various genres, and a select bibliography. Within the biography one may find lists of teachers and students. For each of the com

poser's works, Green provides the approximate

duration, text sources, the voices and instru

ments required for the performance, editions

currently available, and locations of manuscript

materials. Additionally, he offers notes and

comments on performance issues, and evalu

ates solo roles and level of difficulty of each

piece. The sections conclude with a selective

discography and bibliography. A list of text sources closes the volume.

This is the author's fifth volume in his series of conductor's guides to the choral-orchestral

literature. Previous volumes are A Conductor's

Guide to Choral-Orchestral Works (1994), A Con ductor's Guide to Choral-Orchestral Works,

Twentieth Century, Part II: The Music of Rach maninov through Penderecki (1998), A Con ductor's Guide to the Choral-Orchestral Works of

J. S. Bach (2000), and A Conductor's Guide to Choral-Orchestral Works, Classical Period

(2002). With a few exceptions, these books are

similarly organized, and, because they are by

the same author, there is consistency in the

subjective evaluations.

Green's book is accurate and well organized.

However, the selection process is not explained

beyond "I have elected to include here only

works that I believe deserve a permanent place

in the repertory" (Preface). Accepting that,

there remains no good reason for Gustav

Mahler (1860-1911), for example, to be found in Green's 20th Century Conductors Guide in stead of here, since his dates precede Scriabin's and Bruch's. Neither birth and death dates nor

composition dates give an adequate answer.

Additionally, "choral-orchestral work" remains

undefined, and we are left wondering what

transcriptions, arrangements, or other works

might have been excluded based on an un

stated definition. As in other volumes in this series, this par

ticular book provides little that the experienced

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.85 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 20:20:18 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

226 FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE 56/2

conductor cannot glean from score study and a

slight bit of research. However, Green offers

the young conductor, amateur, and part-time

director the information needed to make in formed programming decisions on less

frequently performed works based on the abili ties of their ensembles. Additionally, he pro vides a few cautionary tidbits about difficulties in rehearsal or performance that might head off a few musical catastrophes. For the scholar,

Green provides a starting point for the reper

toire and its literature. For the librarian, this

monograph is a handy reference and an invalu

able collection development tool. Ultimately,

the greatest value in Green's monographs is the

collocation of an entire repertoire within a sin

gle unified set. One hopes that Green will finish this very valuable series with a Baroque vol

ume (excluding Bach) and an index volume ty ing together all volumes with indices covering difficulty level and forces required among

others.

Brian Cockburn

James Madison University

French Music, Culture, and National

Identity, 1870-1939. Edited by Barbara L.

Kelly. Rochester: University of Rochester

Press, 2008. [xix, 260 p. ISBN: 978-1-58046 272-3. $90.00]

If the rise of interdisciplinary scholarship is one of the most promising trends in contemporary historical writing, then the French third em pire, spanning the Franco- Prussian war to the

eve of World War II (c. 1870-1939), is an espe cially fertile period for such work. The twelve essays contained in French Music, Culture, and

National Identity arose out of an interdiscipli nary conference held at Keele University in

2001. The authors cover a wide spectrum of

topics including politics, reception history, art, and, above all, the elusive concept of

"Frenchness."

Organized into three large sections, the

book opens as Barbara L. Kelly presents key

concepts that unify the essays. These include

the role of the beaux arts (including painting and sculpture) in shaping national pride and why specific composers-chiefly Gounod, Saint

Saëns, and Fauré-were singled out for "glorifi cation by the state" (p. 4). Kelly notes that "there was not necessarily a consensus over

what was French" (p. 5), and this point in par ticular underlies the entire collection.

Edward Berenson's essay considers French

explorer Savorgnan de Brazza's role in bolster

ing French colonialism. Through sympathetic portrayals in writing, photography, and the

press, Brazza emerged as a "secular saint"

(p. 29) capable of uniting a broken nation fol

lowing the Franco-Prussian conflict. Annegret

Fauser then examines the complex relationship

between the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle and contemporary French identity.1 She ex

poses the Exposition as a locus for cutting-edge

technology, where the installation of "Théâtro

phones" allowed listeners to hear live opera and

ballet music from across town as it was hap

pening. Beyond mentioning works by Masse

net and Thomas, her statement that "the oper

atic music heard could not be more patriotic" (p. 43) is left undefined.

Barbara Kelly explores Debussy's self

appointed position as a musicien français. She examines the seminal role of Pelléas et

Mélisande in securing his reputation, including sharply divergent views from critics regarding its merit. One of the most fascinating sections

of the chapter concerns charges of "effemi

nacy" (p. 64) in Debussy's music, a point that

merits closer study beyond Kelly's brief com ments. The ubiquitous shadow of Wagner is

raised in Marion Schmid's essay on the French

press during World War I. Recalling that Saint Saëns had called for a ban on Wagner's music in

1914, Schmid demonstrates that Wagner be came a "convenient scapegoat" (p. 87) for anti

German sentiment.

Part II opens with a cogent essay on Vincent

d'Indy, a controversial figure who has received a great deal of attention in recent French schol

arship. Steven Huebner reveals Beethoven's

influence on D'Indy and the curriculum of the

Schola Cantorum, where the course of study in

1. For a detailed discussion of the Exposition, see

Annegret Fauser, Musical Encounters at the 1889

Paris World's Fair, Rochester: University of

Rochester Press, 2005.

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.85 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 20:20:18 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions