In this context America is taken to be the mainland area of the USA, but that narrow definition is compensated by the breadth of coverage which includes music written or performed there, and not only music by Americans. Even so, there is little about European composers of established reputation who made their homes in the USA during the 1930s and later, like Bartok, Hindemith, Schoenberg and Stravinsky and those refugees who contributed so much to Hollywood like Korngold, Rózsa and Tiomkin. In fact the contributors to this history devote more of their space to popular music than to “art music” ‐ that need not surprise us since jazz, blues, rock and other popular forms are so much better known and influential in the USA and worldwide, and it would be a much thinner book had it dealt only with American art music. Let us leave aside the sardonic question why such a large population has produced so little of it in comparison with, say, Finland. Still, I think we might have had as full a treatment of Chadwick and Wuorinen as we have of some of the jazz pianists.
The first part deals with the period from the earliest settlements up to about 1920 and covers the music of Native Americans, sacred and secular music of the colonial period, the music of the African Americans and other more willing immigrants from Europe and elsewhere, and popular and art music of the time. The contributors discuss repertory, domestic and public performance, choirs, brass bands, concert halls, opera houses, theatres, symphony orchestras, publishing and so on. The second part is more concerned with the twentieth century, predominantly the more popular forms and the great spread of them that sound and video recordings allow. There is much about music theatres, rock and roll, ragtime and jazz, and about the separate and simultaneous development of art music as some composers embrace serialism and other avant‐garde techniques while others continue in the tonal tradition; some seem to have followed both paths at different stages of their career.
Given the length of time covered and the variety of activities to be described, the contributors have done well to compress their essays into the space allowed. Larger libraries will need to have more detailed studies of individual aspects of American music making (and the extensive bibliography lists plenty of those), but this overview can be confidently recommended as a first resort.
