Now in paperback! In Twentieth-Century Piano Music, David Burge offers a personal and inviting overview of the often challenging music written for solo piano during this century, an artistic response by a pianist and educator widely acclaimed for introducing much of this literature to the repertoire. Divided into four sections, each covering a key historical period, the text examines the development of different styles and compositional techniques, and integrates historical and artistic details with a sophisticated and ...
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Now in paperback! In Twentieth-Century Piano Music, David Burge offers a personal and inviting overview of the often challenging music written for solo piano during this century, an artistic response by a pianist and educator widely acclaimed for introducing much of this literature to the repertoire. Divided into four sections, each covering a key historical period, the text examines the development of different styles and compositional techniques, and integrates historical and artistic details with a sophisticated and accessible approach to the music. Burge offers cogent performance suggestions for selected works of Copland, Stockhausen, Boulez, Berio, Cage, Crumb, and others.
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A few years ago, EMI issued a large retrospective series of CDs titled "Great Pianists of the 20th Century" featuring outstanding recordings by masters of the keyboard in our recently-concluded century. In listening to several recordings in the compilation, I thought that a similar effort was needed systematically to introduce music lovers, myself particularly, to 20th Century piano music. I am unaware of a series of recordings devoted to this purpose, but David Burge's book, "Twentieth Century Piano Music" (1990) gives a good scholarly overview of the variety and complexity of the music the year 2000 left behind. David Burge is professor of piano at the Eastman School of Music and a noted performer.
Professor Burge's book is divided into four parts, in which he describes the literature for solo piano in, respectively, 1. the turn of the century to the end of WW I, 2. the period between the two World Wars, 3. the Postwar Period, and 4. the 1970s and 1980s. The book also includes a chronological list of major piano works, and a short discography or recent works.
Each part of the study includes includes a discussion of the piano compositions of major composers of the era, in the context of a brief biographical and historical setting and a musical analysis. The course of the book is set in the first part in which Professor Burge focuses upon the music of Debussy, Ravel, Ives, and Schoenberg. Throughout the book, Professor Burge's emphasis is on the growth of atonal music, and his discussion of Schoenberg, and to a lesser extent of Debussy, helped me understand how Schoenberg's atonal compositions were an outgrowth of late 19th Century romanticism by a composer determined to find his own voice. Schoenberg's compositions are considered in detail in two parts of this study, the first and the second. Besides Schoenberg, only Aaron Copland's music is treated in detail in two of the major portions (the second and the third) of the book.
Professor Burge gives excellent treatments of well-known composers for the piano including, Bartok, Stravinsky, Webern, Prokofiev, and Messiaen. Although he is critical, at times, of the over-intellectualized, overly-complex style of some of the latter music of the century, his sympathies lie with the new, and with the development of atonality as introduced by Schoenberg and developed by Webern. He slights Shostakovich, dismisses Barber's piano sonata in a brief paragraph, and doesn't mention an important work of the 20th century, "Goyescas" by Granados. Professor Burge includes lengthy discussions of Stockhausen and Boulez, Dallapicola, John Cage, and George Crumb, among others, as illustrative of the many directions composers for the piano pursued during the last century.
There is a great deal to be learned from this book. Professor Burge concludes: "[t]here is this wonderful body of literature from American composers that serious pianists need to make known to their audiences. If this book, a true labor of love, helps in even a small way to bring this about, it has been worth the effort." (p.257)
The book is geared in part to the pianist and includes brief comments on performance througout. It is also geared to the music lover seeking guidance through the welter of piano compositions in the past century. It is a difficult read, in places, as befitting the music under discussion, and short musical examples abound. Those coming to this music new will be surprised by the complex and, to the unitiated, almost unreadable musical notation employed by many composers from about-mid century. The effort required to read this book will be amply rewarded.
I took from Professor Burge's study a desire to hear more of the music he discussed, both by composers with whom I am familiar and by composers that I didn't know. I was intrigued, for example by his discussion of the music of three late-century composers I haven't heard before: the eclectic music of Frederic Rzewski and the ragtime-influenced piano works of William Albright and William Bolcolm. Professor Burge shows that there is a substantial body of music written in the Twentieth Century that remains to be discovered and enjoyed.
Professor Burge's book will appeal to informed lovers of the piano who want to expand their knowledge of 20th Century music.
