Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1963-09-01
BY IRVING LOWENS
Star Music Critic

OF the 1,780 book titles
selected by James T. Babb
(the. Yale University libra
rian) and his associates as
a library about Americans by
Americans for the White
House, % are included in the
music" category, and an
other four can be added from
the folklore, folk music, folk
art" section.
Compared to other fields,
this is a surprisingly generous
representation.
For example, the Ian
guage" category has five
titles, geography" has II,
communications" has eight,
entertainment" has %, and
sports and recreation" has
eight.
1t was not Mr.. Babb's in
tention to set up a standard
bookshelf on American
music for the average citizen,
but since all of the items he
chose are easily available
(some of them in paperback),
this may we'll happen.
For general reference, the
two works picked were
Bakers Biographical Die
tiOnary of Musicians &C.
Schirmer, 1859 and the
Harvard Dictionary of Music
Harvard, 1947.) would have
preferred Oscar Thompson's
one-volume International
CyclOpedia Of Music and
Musicians (Dodd, Mead.
1859 to the Harvard volume,
but not enough to make me
unhappy about its omission.
There can be little quarrel
with the three general his
tories Of American music,
John Tasker Towards Our
American Music (Crowell,
1854, Gilbert Chase's Amer
ica's Music (McGraw-Hill,
1850, and Paul Henry Lang's
100 Years of Music in Amer
lea (Grosset, 1850. Jacques
Barzun's Music in American
Life Doubleday, 1850, is a
thought-provoking survey of
the art in the structure of
American society, but my
choice would have been Cecil
Smiths Worlds Of Music
Lippincott, 1882.
The church is represented
by Leonard w. Ellinwood's
History of American Church
Music (Morehouse- Goreham,
1859 and H. w. Foote's
Three Centuries Of American
HymnOdy (Shoestring Press.
1850, the latter nearly 80
years old but still not SUI
perseded.
Popular music and iaZZ are
covered by five titles: Isaac
Goldberg's Tin Pan Alley
(Ungar, 1850, another re-
printed old one; Sigmund
Spaeth's History Of Popular
Music in America BRANDON
House, 194S); Carl Wilkes
TambO and Bones Duke,
1890, now superseded by
Hans Nathan's recently pub
lished book on Dan Emmett
and the beginnings of min
strelsy; Rudi Blesh's They
All Played Ragtime Grove,
1850, originally published
by Knopf in 1850; and Mar
shall Stearns's The Story Of
Jazz (Oxford, 1866, avail
able in enlarged form in
a New American Library
paperback.
John H. Mueller's The
American symphony Or
chestra Qndiana, 1851 takes
care of orchestral water
front; opera is treated in
Edward E. HipSher's Ameri-
can Opera and Its Composers
Dresser, 1934)-an inferior
book-and Irving Kolodin's
Story of the Metropolitan
Opera (Knopf, 1889.
The photograph, generally
considered an American con-
tribution to civilization, is
dealt with in Roland Gelatt's
The Fabulous Photograph
Lippincott, 1850, an enter
tanning as well as informa-
tive volume.
A slight miscalculation ap-
pears to be Joseph Machlis'
Introduction to COntem-
pOrary Music Morton, 1861
a textbook Of no great dis
tinction with no special en-
phasis on the American
scene.
Biographies of five COM
posers are included surely
an impossible choice: Ar
thur Berger's Aaron COPELAND
(Oxford, 1889, John Tasker
Towards stephen Foster
(Crowell, 1889, Vernon Log
gins study of Louis Moreau
Gottschalk, Where the Word
Ends Louisiana State, 1859 ,
Edward N. Waters Victor
Herbert Macmillan, 1855
and Henry Cowell's Charles
Ives and His Music (Oxford,
1850.
Folk music? George M.
Laws Native American Bal
ladry american Folklore So
ciety, l95O), John A. Lomax's
Best Loved A m erican Folk
Songs (Grosset a. Dunlap,
1854, Carl Sandburg's Amer
lean SOngbag (Harcourt
Brace, 1920. and Newman /