Twentieth Century Composers I [antikvár]

Introduction. Twentieth-Century Makers of Music BY NICOLAS NABOKOV This is not history nor is it a chronicle although perforce it deals with chronology. It is rather an imaginary map of twentieth-century music. Like all maps it is divided into regions and these regions represent loose cultural entities determined in turn by ethnic and geographical cohesion. All choices made by the authors of these volumes are personal ones. They express personal views, personal agonisms and antagonisms, personal tastes and judgments of value and of historical importance. But in so far as each author knows the musical life of his region each volume can be relied upon as being a fair albeit a personal description of what has happened to music in the region of his particular concern during the twentieth century. The language used in these books is intentionally unencumbered by a fatras of technical terms. It is I believe accessible to the average reader and music lover. It will give him a more coherent and detailed picture of the "state of music"—to use the title of a famous book—than if it were cluttered by technical terms and followed the chronological evolutionary paths of music history. Do these books, these regional essays, concerned primarily ix