Music Book Review: South Within Sound: Radical Composers of the Twentieth Century by Kate Molleson

Sound Within Sound: Radical Composers of the Twentieth Century
by Kate Molleson (Music 780.922 Mol)

In the world of contemporary classical music, there are some household names familiar to the general public, but as various forms of pop music became dominant, a lot of very interesting composers have gone unnoticed. Even within the classical music community, there are those whose music has been influential or remarkable in some circles, yet they just haven’t gotten much attention. It’s unfortunate, but we all lead busy lives, and there is so much to hear and experience that some folks just end up slipping through the cracks. Some of us, though, have the luxury or passion (or both) to spend a little more time looking into the deeper roots of favorite forms of music, and occasionally we have opportunities to share our discoveries with other through things like books, blogs, magazines, or radio programs. Long-time Scottish music journalist and broadcaster Kate Molleson, whose professional life has afforded her the unique opportunity to look at contemporary classical music in tremendous depth, has been able to share her discoveries with all of us in a variety of formats, including a 7-year stint as the classical music critic for the Guardian, her New Music Show and Music Matters programs for BBC Radio 3, and now through her new book, Sound Within Sound: Radical Composers of the Twentieth Century, which you can borrow from the Polley Music Library.

 

In her introduction, Molleson reflects on her motivations for writing this book. As a passionate lifelong fan and student of classical music, she dived into 20th Century music over time, and was disappointed to see many of her favorite artists underrepresented in music history books. There may be many reasons for this, but as Molleson has observed, the composers we study, even from the 20th Century, still tend to be white male Europeans and Americans, yet there have been lots of fantastic composers active in this period that don’t fit that description. This book, which Molleson says that she wrote “out of love and anger,” is a step toward balancing the historical record, and reintroducing elements she says are sometimes lacking in contemporary music discussions: “If classical music is serious about wanting change, it needs to reclaim its innate and vital sense of adventure.” And she rejects common tropes used to describe composers like “the genius” or “the lone wolf” while telling the stories of these vital, important composers.

 

Indeed, the 10 composers profiled in Sound Within Sound all led (and a few are still leading) exemplary creative lives in terms of adventure, and collectively they represent a multiplicity of musical approaches. What they have in common instead is being outside of the dominant narrative in classical music history, which tends to focus on European or American white men and their music. Here we find women, people of color, or people who live outside of America or Europe. They appear in the book in the order of their birth, which helps to take us through the 20th Century in more or less chronological order.

 

Molleson starts with Mexican composer Julian Carrillo, whose early work with microtonal music was among those of the first generation exploring microtonal subdivisions in modern Western music. While others were investigating pitches smaller than a semitone around the same time, Carrillo thought of microtonal music as part of a broader philosophical investigation, publishing his continually-evolving thoughts on microtones and other musical observations over the years. And as Molleson points out, he remained a prolific composer of quality music while resisting the popular trends toward traditional and indigenous music that were popular in Mexico during his career. Like Harry Partch generations later, he invented and modified instruments to make performances of his microtonal music possible.

 

The profile of Ruth Crawford that follows is especially poignant, as her reputation has become largely dependent upon her work with folk music as part of the greater Seeger family. While the family’s activities as folklorists and song collectors helped us to preserve some of our own history, this has unfortunately obscured Crawford’s earlier work as a cutting edge early 20th C. composer, among the earliest to bring European musical modernism to America in unique forms along with contemporaries like Cowell and Ives. This chapter highlights Molleson’s talent for bringing out more universal themes in these individual composers’ lives: in conversation with Ruth’s daughter, the well-known folk artist Peggy Seeger, they discuss the nature of womens’ roles in the earlier parts of the 20th Century, notions of folk (or non-academic) music in relation to the working class, and the male-dominated narratives found in much of the folk music of America. There is a lot to unpack here!

 

The same is true for all of the fascinating composers covered in Sound Within Sound. We talked about Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya a while back, and there is a great introspective chapter on her work and life here that furthers the discussion around her unique music. The origins of the Tropicalia musical movement in Brazil are traced through the work of Walter Smetak, particularly focusing on his “plasticas sonoras,” sonic sculptures made of simple, locally-sourced materials. The unique and sometimes large-scale music of Filipino composer Jose Maceda is discussed, along with his unique relationship to Filipino culture and politics of his time. And Chicago’s AACM comes up here through the work of composer Muhal Richard Abrams. I was especially taken by the chapter on Ethiopian composer Emahoy Tsegue-Mariam Guebru, too, who unfortunately passed away just this week, as I was reading this book. Her music is particularly filled with a unique brand of joy and discovery that I suspect almost any listener will love!

 

My biggest takeaway from this book is that there are simply so many composers who may not have become household names for a variety of reasons, but whose work is so compelling, and whose life stories are so fascinating, that there truly seems to be no end to music discovery. The 10 composers featured here could just as well represent the 20th century as more familiar names like Bartok, Stravinsky or Cage, and our musical lives would remain just as fulfilling. Take a moment to learn about these composers, enjoy their work, and deepen your love of the many forms of music all around us!

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The Life of Music: New Adventures in the Western Classical Tradition by Nicholas Kenyon, or The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music by Balint Andras Varga.)

 

( official Kate Molleson web site )

 

Recommended by Scott S.
Polley Music Library

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