The Language of Twentieth Century Music: A Dictionary of Terms
Robert Russell Fink, Robert Ricci · 1975
The authors of The Language of Twentieth Century Music: A Dictionary of Terms envisage their work as serving students, music teachers on all levels, performers, writers on contemporary music, disc jockeys faced with deciphering arcane notes on record jackets, and perhaps a few curious souls who just like the music(s) of our time. Indeed, all these groups may find some? thing of value here, although undergraduate music students will undoubtedly have the most frequent recourse to these pages. They will find, with few exceptions, clear and accurate definitions couched in language accessible to the layman but perfectly acceptable to the professional as well. Anyone who remembers his first encounter with the parascientific language of an article by Milton Babbitt will be grateful to Fink and Ricci for explaining all-combinatorial set, order-number pitch-number couple, etc. A large number of the black boxes associated with electronic music and the basic terminology for discussing voltages and waveforms are explained, as are the most frequently encountered computer terms (although only a few individual sound-generating programs are identified). Somewhat unexpectedly, some fifty-odd are defined, often at some length. (This is not an unqualified advantage, however, since for of these movements the authors have neglected to establish any relationship with music: art deco, for example, might have been eschewed in favor of Kandinsky's expressionist group Der blaue Reiter, which, after all, had a very direct connection with expressionism in music.) Performance practices and musical styles associated with jazz and popular musics are especially welcome additions to a volume of this type. The authors profess to have made many difficultdecisions about what terms should be included, as doubdess they have done. In some cases, though, they seem not to have made the required decision or to have decided wrongly. Apparendy unsure about whether microphone and loudspeaker types should be covered, they admitted only a few (cardioid and contact microphones, infinite baffle speaker designs) and omitted all others. Although they aimed to make ccessible the terminology of modern anal? ys and music theory, and largely succeeded, the result shows a decided bias in favor of Schenker (and Salzer), Forte, and Yasser and omits such important terms as microand macrorhythm and directionality. Particu? larly regrettable is the complete absence of terms associated with music in the Socialist countries: Socialist realism (as distinct from American social realism, which is quite satisfactorily explained), proletarian music, masssong all have a legitimate place in the in? ternational musical language of our centu? ry. Formalism and fauvism are both ex? plained in their original senses, but no mention is made of their later official use as critical pejoratives. Another minor complaint is that some terms have been defined, if anything, too specifically. This happens particularly with words borrowed from mathematics, such as mapping, which is explained only with reference to musical sets and not more broadly as a feature of general set theory. The definition of phase is less satisfactory still: here only Stockhausen's idiosyncratic usage is mentioned, and the original use of the term in describing waveforms is ignored. Phase shifter is thus missing entirely. These carpings aside, however, The Lan? guage of Twentieth Century Music must be accounted an extremely valuable contribu? tion to the available reference sources. Its format is clear and easy to read. Its sturdy cloth binding will withstand repeated use. Topical indexes and bibliographies enhance its usefulness, especially for students. Typographical errors are few and mostly in-