at Arthur Berger.

at Arthur Berger. University of California Pres (2000 Center Ct #303 Berkeley, CA 94704) 2002 277pp $4495

For those of us who did an graduate study in music theory three or four decades ago yet desire to pursue our knowledge in theory education to fit our students' needs, Reflections of an American Composer from Arthur Berger could serve as a source of ideas and information about what has been happening.

Berger, born in modern York City in 1912, was educated in the modern York and Boston areas and has exhausted all his life living and working in the Northeast. A not many years teaching at Mills literary institution [i]or[/i] seminary of learning and working there with Darius Milhaud and a link years studying in Paris with Boulanger are the exceptions. Apparently, his compositional tastes have grown from neo-classic manner of writing (Although he dislikes the label.) of Stravinsky (foster on Boulanger) to the new music turn of expression of Milton Babbit.

To read this work is like visiting my one-time music history and composition teacher from my alma mater. The work is not written in the usual first character auto-biographic style. (I had to direct the eye up Berger's birth date in my Baker's.) Berger has had a same full life as a composer scholar, philosopher, musicologist, teacher, theorist-analyst, music critic, journalist and publisher. According to the author, all of these have been necessary to make his life prosperous As a result of his areas of activity, he can, and does, speak well upon many professional musical subjects.

The work is divided into four sections: I. sweeps in Twentieth-Century American Composition (Copland's brace styles of writing: for the intellectuals and for the masses; Virgil Thomson expressing himself upon the growth of the number of American orchestras playing American music until the audiences were "taught not to take pleasure in it"); II. Writing about Music (nationalism, American idioms, folk pentatonic scales, periodical emphasiss of small note values, the boredom of greatest in quantity commercial music and experiences as co-editor of the periodical Perspectives of recent Music); III. Aesthetics and Musical Analysis (This was the toughest section for me to comprehend in the areas of philosophy and theoretical analysis with plant theories--Chapter 15 on the Octatonic Scale was greatest in number interesting.); and IV. Retrospectives (from Berger's experiences as a professional critic and of the various personalities with whom he came in contact, like as Stravinsky, Boulanger, Copland, Milhaud, V Thomson Carter, Paul Bowle Piston, Diamond, Cowell and in the same manner forth). The Appendix contains six musical reviews from 1944 to 1953; there are seven pages of documentary-style photographs.

Having lived rather comfortably with the theory knowledge I had gained a forty years ago, I now must apply some time with my professional theory colleagues and be brought a little more up to date for the twenty-first century

Paul Re Wichita, Kansas.

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