Sigma Alpha Iota

28 Winter 2024 • sai-national.org SONG & SELF: A SINGER'S REFLECTIONS ON MUSIC AND PERFORMANCE By Ian Bostridge University of Chicago Press, 2023 R enowned tenor Ian Bostridge, author of Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, reviewed in these pages several years ago, has given us another example of superlative scholarship. Song & Self: A Singer's Reflections on Music and Performance, a brief, yet deep book, consists of three essays that originated as lectures he gave at the University of Chicago in 2021 and covers topics relevant to our contemporary world. Before Bostridge became a professional performer, he was an academic historian, and this book reflects his conversance with not only music, but history, literature, and art. His first essay, "Blurring Identities: Gender in Performance," focuses on music by Claudio Monteverdi, Robert Schumann, and Benjamin Britten, and the unexpected ways in which they treat gender. Examples range from cases of disguised identity to performers of one gender portraying the opposite one. For instance, in Monteverdi's music drama Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, the Christian knight Tancredi battles a Muslim warrior outside the gates of Jerusalem, only to discover, upon mortally wounding his opponent, that it is actually Clorinda, the woman he loves. In both Schumann's song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben and Britten's "church parable" Curlew River, male performers frequently (in the case of Schumann) or always (in Britten's work) voice a female character. Using his own experiences as a performer to inform his analysis, Bostridge contemplates the implications of these gender reconfigurations. In "Hidden Histories: Ventriloquism and Identity in Maurice Ravel's Chansons madécasses," the second essay, Bostridge writes, "These songs of Ravel's were composed by a Parisian who never visited Madagascar about what can only have been an imagined Madagascar as far as he was concerned. Surely we need to ask, as performers, what is the history of the relationship between France and Madagascar rather than simply accepting Madagascar as an abstract and exotic location, a fairy tale?" Bostridge proceeds to answer this question by scrutinizing Ravel's textual source material, the prose poems of eighteenth- century writer Evariste Parny, who "ventriloquized" the voices of indigenous Madagascans to express their unhappiness with colonialism. In addition, he surveys the colonial history of the island of Madagascar to interrogate assumptions about who is allowed the agency of expression. Finally, the last essay, "'These fragments have I shored against my ruins': Meditations on Death," explores how individuals cope with the prospect of death using Benjamin Britten's War Requiem and Death in Venice as reference points. He also examines Britten's setting of poet John Donne's The Holy Sonnets. Bostridge convincingly demonstrates the ability of music to help listeners deal with the inevitability of death Bostridge's writing style is erudite, yet wholly readable, and, at only 110 pages, his book is a perfect quick read that entertains as it stimulates profound thought. Reviews CIRCLE OF WINNERS: HOW THE GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION COMPOSITION AWARDS SHAPED AMERICAN MUSIC CULTURE By Denise Von Glahn University of Illinois Press, 2023 D enise Von Glahn's book addresses a topic that has been seldom explored in past research — the role foundations play in molding musical attitudes and practices in the United States. Her book deals specifically with the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, created in 1925 by Simon and Olga Guggenheim to honor the memory of their son, who died at the age of 17 in 1922. With an empire having its origins in the mining industry, the Guggenheims desired to share their hard-earned wealth and promote the potential in aspiring young people that their own son was never able to realize. Having decided that a foundation promoting high-culture and scholarship would be the best way to do that, they set about the lengthy process of establishing it. Von Glahn's book takes the reader through this process, explaining how the goals and practices of the foundation were determined, and exploring the lives of the men who were involved in its inception. Although the foundation's stated policy was not to discriminate against any of its applicants based on race, gender, or religious beliefs, the way this was put into practice was imperfect. Ultimately, those who selected the awardees were primarily white men, and ingrained societal prejudices influenced which scholars were supported. The book focuses on the experiences of six early composer awardees, Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, George Antheil, Ruth Crawford, William Grant Still, and Carlos Chávez, to show the foundation's processes, and the impact they had on these individuals' subsequent musical careers. Von Glahn's scholarship is impeccable and she is scrupulous about documenting her sources of information, as well as the difficulties she had in doing research about a foundation that is extremely private and not forthcoming with details about its inner workings. It is an informative look at some of the cultural factors that went into influencing the musical life of our country and the evolution of the Guggenheim Foundation's goals and customs. Anyone interested in American musical history will find this book a rewarding read. Kathi Bower Peterson is a graduate of Indiana University, where she majored in music history and oboe, and was a member of Iota Epsilon chapter. She also has an MM (in musicology) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MLIS from San Jose State University. She has been the librarian at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla, California since 1997 and currently serves as the treasurer of the San Diego County Alumnae Chapter, as well as the Coordinator of Scholarships for SAI Philanthropies, Inc.

• Cover