Scarecrow Press Research Articles

The Music of William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Mennin: Voices of Stone and Steel (review)

The Music of William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Mennin: Voices of Stone and Steel. By Walter Simmons. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011. [xi, 425 p. ISBN 9780810857483. $69.95.] Illustrations, discographies, bibliographies, index, compact disc. The challenges of writing about composers who stand on the edge of the canon are many, including charting path that will lead toward further research, while having to acknowledge polemics before they sprout. This exhaustively researched tome is the second work by Simmons that unearths histories of underrecognized American composers who, according to the author, have suffered the Modernist interpretation of musical history, along with many of the assumptions on which it is predicated (p. 5). His previous volume (Walter Simmons, Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers, [Lan - ham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004]), defends composers such as Samuel Barber, Paul Creston, and Vittorio Giannini against the same interpretations. While passionate about his subjects, Simmons falls victim to the pitfalls of historical apologetics. His introduction to the present volume, for example, is only modestly revamped version of the introduction for the prior volume, which is undoubtedly relevant to both books, but allows Simmons' bias to pervade with certain sense of defensiveness. He identifies the featured triumvirate (William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Mennin) of the more recent book as Modern Traditionalists, category he establishes as distinct from neoromanticism, neoclassicism and National Populism (p. 9). The author responds to anticipated criticisms regarding the lack of in-depth musical analysis, classifying the book as reference tool (p. 20). This is certainly an apt description, but the author's transparent advocacy wants to push the book toward subjective dialogue to counter conventional narratives. Simmons' formulaic approach to each of the chapters is appropriate for reference book, and the narrative does not read well otherwise, as he is quick to acknowledge (p. 20). Instead, the author has thought fully provided useful subheadings and excellent indexing to facilitate easy navigation. He includes helpful discographies at the end of each chapter, as well as an accompanying compact disc with representative examples (p. 20) of each composer's works: Schuman's Judith, Persi chetti's Concerto for Piano, Four Hands, Persi - chetti's Sere nade no. 10 (with two movements omitted), and Mennin's Sym phony no. 6. The disc is not mentioned in the musical discussions, so its analytical usefulness is somewhat limited. It does, however, feature some very fine performances-most notably the one of Mennin's symphony, by the Albany Symphony Orchestra under the direction of David Alan Miller. In addition to allowing the compact disc to speak for itself, Simmons does not include any music examples, decision with which he clearly grappled, according to the introduction (p. 20). The end result is not too damaging, but sometimes elicits cumbersome descriptions which would no doubt be better served by score citation, for example: a gestural motif is introduced that proves to be the central unifying idea of the entire [Schuman's String Quartet no. 3]: note repeated several times, then, falling on an accented downbeat, resolves down majorsecond, in scotch-snap rhythm, as an augmented-fourth resolving to major third, within triadic harmonization (p. 62). The three subjects of the book are interconnected not just by stylistic category (Modern Traditionalism), but by professional association with Juilliard. Simmons does not highlight this connection, however, giving only brief mention to the political ill will between Schuman and Mennin, for example. The text focuses on the composers' music, as well as the reception at the time of the works' premieres and thereafter. Simmons draws upon an immense volume of secondary material, but is caught, at least in the cases of Schuman and Persichetti, by heavy reliance upon preexisting works about these composers. …

Weinzweig: Essays on His Life and Music (review)

NORTH AMERICAN COMPOSERS Weinzweig: Essays on His Life and Music. Edited by John Beckwith and Brian Cherney. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011. [xiii, 402 p. ISBN 9781554582563. $50.] examples, illustrations, works list, discography, bibliography, index, compact disc. This collection of essays about John one of Canada's most respected and influential twentieth-century composers, offers a vivid description of a man whose music and life might best be understood through their surprising contradictions: a young, activist outsider who came to occupy iconic status in Canada's art music establishment in his senior years; Canada's first serialist who advocated musical progress and innovation but continued to use twelve-tone techniques decades after they were out of fashion; and a musical style that balanced the harshness and warmth, seriousness and playfulness inherent in the man. This paradoxical portrait of Canada's dean of emerges in fifteen chapters written by Canadian composers, theorists, musicologists, and performers, many of whom, as the preface explains, had a personal connection of some kind with Weinzweig. book, which draws extensively on archival materials, reaffirms several familiar narratives about Weinzweig while offering revisions and alterations of the same. importance of serialism in Weinzweig's composing, teaching and reputation is a well-known thread weaved through several chapters, as is his pioneering spirit (both in composing and organizing), his tireless lobbying on behalf of Canadian composers, and his sarcastic humor (although his nickname for Tor - onto Symphony Orchestra conductor Sir Ernest MacMillan-Lord Largo-was a new one on me). Less commonly examined threads that also crisscross through this appraisal of Weinzweig's career are the nonserial influences on his style, the importance of his Jewish heritage in his activities and music, and his belief that artistic endeavors are and should be a kind of political or social action. These storylines play out in a varied collection of chapters organized under the headings Biographical Themes, The Composer, and The Legacy. Of the three chapter groupings, the most prominent is The Composer, which may be due to the fact that six of the twelve authors are composers or theorists, including the editors. five chapters under the heading The Composer investigate Weinz weig's use of serialism (The First Canadian Serialist, by theorist Catherine Nolan); his instrumentation 'Naked and Unashamed': Instrumental Practice, by composer Clark Ross); his use of texts (Works with Texts, by Beckwith); the influence of jazz on his style 'Jazz Swing' and 'Jazz Blues,' by Beckwith); and his twelve Divertimenti 'The Story of my Life': Divertimento Series, by composer/theorist James K. Wright). In addition, musicologist Elaine Keillor's chapter Music for Radio and Film is heavily analytical (indeed, why this exploration of the development of Weinzweig's craft is included under Biographical Themes is something of a mystery), and flutist Robert Aitken's How to Play Weinzweig, (under The Legacy) offers specific suggestions about phrasing and rhythm that bring us into the nitty-gritty of Weinzweig's scores; I include both in this group as well. Because these seven chapters provide detailed score analysis (often making reference to set theory), they may not be as accessible to the general reader as the preface suggests. But they do provide the most comprehensive treatment of Weinzweig's music since Elaine Keillor's monograph ( John Weinz - weig and His Music: Radical Romantic of Canada [Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994]), and probe specific works and genres in more detail than was feasible for her comprehensive overview. These close studies of Weinzweig's pieces will help counteract a common condition among Canadian musicians, scholars, and classical music aficionados: they know the composer by his reputation as the father of musical modernism in Canada, but, aside from a few often-performed works (such as his prize-winning Divertimento no. …

Johana Harris: A Biography (review)

Johana Harris: A Biography. By Ethel Paquin. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011. [xv, 256 p. ISBN 9780810877603. $65.] Illustrations. Ethel Paquin's Johana Harris: A Biography is the first full-length biography of the renowned pianist, teacher, and composer whose birth name was Duffey. The book is in some ways a psychobiography. Its first sentence is Mary Beula Aleta Duffey was born to a mother who didn't want her, and Beula/Johana's difficult relationship with her mother is a strong thread throughout the book. The writing style is highly engaging, at times somewhat breezy, and sometimes humorous, filled with casual expressions like a rock and a hard place (p. 1), You did not cross Laura if knew what was good for you (p. 1), and Men being men, marriage being marriage, and Catholic doctrine being what it was, before she knew it Laura was pregnant (p. 2). While Paquin does not hold back her interpretations of the events in Johana's life, she also provides strong supporting evidence for them. Paquin explains the book's origins in her preface. Research for the book was begun by Louise Spizizen (1928-2010), who in 1993 had put forth the disputed theory that Johana Harris was co-composer of some of Roy Harris's works. When she was unable to continue her research due to personal problems, Spizizen turned over her mate - rials, including the personal papers of Johana and Roy Harris, to Paquin. While Paquin does address the question of musical authorship (see especially pp. xi, xii, 34, and 58), her primary goal in the book is to answer a broader question: Why would Johana Harris, a musical prodigy of welldocumented genius, who had been the youngest student ever admitted to the Juilliard Graduate School of Music, who had been offered solo concert careers by management firms in this country and in Europe, who regularly received ovations when she performed, choose to marry Roy Harris and subordinate her own career in favor of advancing his? (p. xii) The theme of subordination is woven through this meticulous portrayal of Johana as both a woman and artist. While Johana's musical talent is made clear, the book is also quite intimate, filled with personal details including those surrounding her two abortions and miscarriage, and the role of mental and physical illnesses on various events. Paquin's narrative is storylike as she shows the interplay between Johana's relationships, music making, and academic life. Her relationships with several men are analyzed, with much attention given to that with her first husband, composer Roy Harris. Roy is not presented in attractive light. Paquin's description of Roy as an undependable, emotionally abusive, volatile man (p. xii) is reinforced throughout the book. Johana Harris's second husband, composer Jake Heggie, contributes a forward to the book and also addresses Johana's influence on Roy Harris (pp. viii-ix). Paquin draws upon papers and letters; newspaper reviews and articles; interviews recorded by Spizizen of Johana's colleagues, students, relatives, and friends; and fresh interviews of her own. She also draws upon the literature concerning Roy Harris, particularly Dan Stehman's Roy Harris: A Bio-Bibliography (New York: Green - wood Press, 1991). Included are twentythree photos in black and white of Johana and others. Notes are provided for each of the book's twelve chapters. A minor complaint is that the book is difficult to navigate as no index is provided, and each of the chapter titles consists of no more than a date range. In chapter 1, December 1913 to May 1932, Beula/Johana's background and childhood in Canada, her musical development, and her move to New York at the age of twelve are thoroughly portrayed, along with her training at Juilliard and in Berlin, her teaching position of secondary piano at Juilliard, and her tremendous early successes as a performer, concertizing in the United States and in Canada. Chapter 2, June 1932 to October 1936, includes Beula's fiance David Dawson, the beginning of her long-term romantic relationship with Halfden Gregersen, Roy Harris's background, and her marriage to Roy Harris as his fourth wife. …

Orpheus in Manhattan: William Schuman and the Shaping of America's Musical Life (review)

Orpheus in Manhattan: William Schuman and the Shaping of America's Musical Life. By Steve Swayne. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. [xvii, 692 p. ISBN 9780195388527. $39.95.] Illustrations, notes, bibliography, composition index, index. Marking a composer's centenary year routinely invites an influx of conferences, symposia, articles, concert series, and books that illustrate the broad if not complete spectrum of an artist's work. Joseph Polisi's American Muse: Life and Times of William Schuman (New York: Amadeus Press, 2008) provides a substantial portrait of Schuman the businessman, with representative compositions accompanied by detailed analyses. In Music of William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Mennin: Voices of Stone and Steel (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011), Walter Simmons profiles Schuman together with two other composers fundamentally linked to the New York music scene during the 1940s through the 1960s, and to the Juilliard School in particular: Mennin was on the composition faculty and later became Schuman's successor as president of Juilliard, while Persichetti served four decades on the composition faculty. Simmons offers substantial analyses as well as his perceptions of flaws in compositional technique, but offers only a sketch of biographical information. Steve Swayne's Orpheus in Man - hattan: William Schuman and the Shaping of America's Musical Life an objective, detailed account illustrating Schuman's roles as composer, administrator, husband, father, and friend. He has left no stone unturned when comes to the meticulousness of his research. His acknowledgments alone span seven pages, with many names readers will instantly recognize as members of our own Music Library Association, and he approached over 200 individuals, librarians, archivists, and corporate officers to obtain permissions for the book (e-mail message to me, 18 July 2011). Swayne's goal is to understand Schuman against the backdrop of the world in which he lived and moved (p. 6). The Early Years chronicles not only those events that were formative influences on Schuman's musical development, including his foray into popular song composition, also traces the immigration of Schuman's ancestors from Germany to America. As with many immigrants, pride in their adopted country held a place of high importance. account of Schuman's time at Cobbossee underscores the importance his father put on full assimilation into American life, gradually dissociating (or maybe integrating) their Jewish-German roots. Camp Cobbossee was, in short, a place for Jews that was free of Judaism. It was also a place where German-American Jewish boys could go that kept them separate from their poorer eastern European co-religionists (p. 32). Schuman's position as a major figure in arts administration may have eclipsed his work as a composer in the minds of many, but it was as a composer that Schuman wanted first and foremost to be remembered (p. 551). Music had always played a central role in his life, but the catalyst that brought Schuman from New York Uni - versity's School of Commerce (he withdrew due to poor academic performance), to music studies at Juilliard, at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and at Columbia University, and subsequently to a teaching position at Sarah Lawrence College, all within the span of approximately seven years, appears to have been his first New York Philharmonic concert (pp. 43-44). About his teaching responsibilities, Swayne points out that [i]n his first four years at Sarah Lawrence, Schuman helped to revolutionize the college's music offerings, especially in extracurricular areas. With his colleagues he started a Music Forum at which faculty and students discussed various aspects of music making, and was at a series of these forums that Schuman demonstrated his ability to play every instrument in the orchestra (p. 84). dedication Schuman exhibited when he reshaped the music department at Sarah Lawrence foreshadows the work he would do at the Juilliard School, namely, a curriculum overhaul taking the form of the Literature and Materials of Music. …

I Am Hip-Hop: Conversations on the Music and Culture (review)

I Am Hip-Hop: Conversations on the Music and Culture. By Andrew J. Rausch. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011. [xvi, 213 p. ISBN 9780810877917. $29.95.] Discographies, bibliographies, index. I Am Hip-Hop collects twenty-four interviews conducted by Andrew J. Rausch with a variety of figures from hip-hop culture, including emcees, producers, DJs, and writers. The majority of those Rausch interviewed came to prominence during the so-called golden age of hip-hop (roughly 1986-93), and many of the conversations concern this era: setting the record straight on disputed or only partially known historical events, detailing the complicated early beginnings of the hip-hop business world, and assessing the legacy of music from this time period. Snagging interviews with figures such as Big Daddy Kane, Chuck D (of Public Enemy), Daddy-O (of Stetasonic), Eric B. (of Eric B. and Rakim), Kool Keith (of the Ultramagnetic MCs), Sadat X (of Brand Nubian), and Shock G (of Digital Underground)-all among the most prominent hip-hop artists of the late 1980s and early 1990s-has to be regarded as something of a coup for Rausch, but the book is lacking in several key aspects that limit its usefulness to scholars and its appeal to hip-hop fans. The interviews are arranged alphabetically, beginning with producer 9th Wonder and Boston emcee Akrobatik and ending with Young MC. While this alphabetical arrangement can lead to an interesting thought experiment (what would a history of hip-hop look like in which Chuck D is put on the same level as the relatively obscure poet and author Michael Cerelli? Why don't we pay as much attention to the people deeply influenced by hip-hop as we do to the great men of hip-hop history?), it also makes it difficult for the reader to make comparisons or think more broadly about the content of each interview. A more considered grouping of the interviews-putting artists who have collaborated together; making separate sections for DJs, producers, emcees, and writers; or placing interviews with common themes next to each other-would have been beneficial to the reader. Unfortunately, this alphabetical arrangement is symptomatic of a larger problem with I Am Hip-Hop: not much thought or effort seems to have been put into considering how this book will be read and used. The introductions to each interview are perfunctory and only offer straight biographical facts without advancing any interpretations of the interviews that follow. Readers gain little insight into why these interviews are important, why Rausch chose to interview these particular figures for inclusion in this book, and what the most interesting aspects of these interviews are. Scholars looking for information about a particular topic will have to page through the entire book, as the index includes only names of artists, songs, and albums-not themes like sampling or influence. The book seems less like a unified whole than a collection of isolated thoughts about hiphop, some mundane and some profound. The book is also weakened by a lack of input from any of the most popular current figures in the contemporary hip-hop scene. Artists like Jay-Z, Kanye West, Nas, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, Eminem, Soulja Boy, and Nicki Minaj are referred to throughout the text (often in disparaging terms), but these artists themselves are not interviewed by Rausch in this book. Doubtless this is a problem of access, as these artists are typically not willing to be interviewed for works that are unlikely to materially benefit them through increased exposure and publicity. But their absence is felt all the more because of what Rausch wants to accomplish. He closes the book's introduction by suggesting: Maybe instead of criticizing today's hip-hop music we should take more time to analyze it and appreciate it for what it is rather than admonishing it for what it isn't (p. xv). But little analysis or appreciation of contemporary hip-hop takes place in the book, least of all by artists or figures prominent in that scene. …

Women of Influence in Contemporary Music: Nine American Composers (review)

Women of Influence Contemporary Music: Nine American Composers. Edited by Michael K. Slayton. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011. [xvi, 494 p. ISBN 9780810877429, $75.] Music examples, discography, index. After reading Michael K. Slayton's Women of Influence Contemporary Music: Nine American Composers, I wanted to create a spreadsheet that would allow me, one glance, to view and weigh and compare the composers' collective musical influences, stylistic traits, daily composing rituals, educational backgrounds, preferred genres, approaches to teaching composition, notational eccentricities, relationships with performers, pre-compositional planning, life challenges and life changes, inspirations, aspirations, and thoughts about being composers who happen to be female. I didn't actually build the spreadsheet, of course, but what I found most engaging about Slayton's book was that it lent itself to precisely such multiple comparisons, highlighting, as it does, an admirable and impressive diversity of experience and approach, of perseverance and serendipity, of innovation and inspired musical juxtapositions. The nine American living composers (listed both here and the book alphabetically by surname) are Elizabeth R. Austin, Susan Botti, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larsen, Tania Leon, Cindy McTee, Marga Richter, and Judith Shatin. The volume's portraits (two of which are authored by Slayton) are structured identically. Each includes a biography, music examples, an interview with the composer, and a coda, which provides the briefest summary of the composer's current activities and projects. End notes, a list of works, a discography, and a source list follow. The authors, addition to Slayton (Vanderbilt University), include Carson Cooman (Boston), Deborah Hayes (Uni versity of Colorado, Boulder, emerita), Donald McKinney (Interlochen Arts Aca demy), Tina Milhorn Stallard (Uni versity of South Carolina), James Spinaz zola (University of Indianapolis), Sharon Mirchandani (Westminster Choir College of Rider University), and Judith Lochhead (State University of New York, Stony Brook). Slayton indicates that the authors were chosen in collaboration with the composers themselves (p. xiii); at least two of the authors were or are engaged additional research focusing on the composers with whom they are paired this volume. Reflecting upon the multiplicity of compositional approaches, musical influences and heterogeneous backgrounds, Karin Pendle, author of Women & Music: A History (2d ed. [Bloomington: Indiana Uni - versity Press, 2001]) provides the book's foreword, entitled Who Are These Women? She notes that the composers featured not only 'women composers' but 'American composers' (p. ix) and reminds us that the many women who failed to forge successful careers (p. ix) composition failed not necessarily because they were lacking talent, but because they lacked access (italics Pendle's). Depen - dent variously upon geography, era, and class, they lacked access to the public, access to performers, access to technology, and access, perhaps most importantly, to education. The composers unanimously express a clear commitment to the triumvirate of audience, performer, and the younger generation they currently mentor and teach. Each has searched for and found inspiration for composition arenas other than music, including, but certainly not limited to, theater (Botti), personal heritage (Leon and Frank), literature (Austin and Richter), science, social theory and religion (Shatin) (p. 406), themes of social awareness (Larsen), and visual art (McTee and Higdon). The composers' stylistic characteristics and sonic tools are as wide-ranging as their individual sources of inspiration and represent the entirety of approaches to composition the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Several, including Shatin and McTee, make use of electronic and digital media as well as employing their acoustic palette, while others, like Richter, remain resolutely acoustic. …

Introduction

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Margaret E. Dull and Bonnie Parks, “Cataloging Education and Cataloging Futures: An Interview with Allyson Carlyle,” Serials Review 37, no. 2 (June 2011): 116–119; Daniel N. Joudrey, “Another Look at Graduate Education for Cataloging and the Organization of Information,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 46, no. 2 (2008): 137–181; Robert L. Bothmann, “Meeting the Needs of Special Format Catalogers: Ideas for Professional Organizations, Library Schools, and Professional Catalogers,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 44, no. 3/4 (2007): 221–232; Jerry D. Saye and Alenka Šauperl, “Cataloging Education on the Sunny Side of the Alps,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 41, no. 3/4 (2006): 269–289; Janet Swan Hill, ed., “Education for Cataloging and the Organization of Information: Pitfalls and the Pendulum, Parts I and II,” in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 34, no. 1/2–3 (2002); Sheila S. Intner and Janet Swan Hill, eds., Cataloging: The Professional Development Cycle, New Directions in Information Management, no. 26 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991); Sheila S. Intner and Janet Swan Hill, eds., Recruiting, Educating, and Training Cataloging Librarians: Solving the Problems, New Directions in Information Management, no. 19, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989); Ruth C. Carter, ed., “Education and Training for Catalogers and Classifiers,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 7, no. 4 (1987), and others. 2. Boyd Keith Swigger, The MLS Project: An Assessment After Sixty Years (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010), 40; Danny P. Wallace and Jefrey Naidoo, eds., Library and Information Science Education Statistical Report 2010 (Chicago: Association for Library and Information Science Education, 2010), 10. 3. Internet-based course offerings increased from 134 courses or sections in 1999/2000 to 1,544 courses in 2009/2010, whereas on-campus offerings amounted to 274 sections in 2009/2010, a ratio of 5.6 to 1. Wallace and Naidoo, eds., Library and Information Science Education Statistical Report 2010, 17, 262–263. 4. Jerry D. Saye, “The Cataloguing Experience in Library and Information Science Education: An Educators Perspective,” Cataloging and Classification Quarterly 7, no. 4 (1987) addresses the instruction of cataloging and classification. While not examining the effectiveness of teaching, J. H. Bowman, “Education and Training for Cataloguing and Classification in the British Isles,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 41, no. 3/4 (2006), does look at training from commercial providers. Both Rose Tiny Kgosiemang, “Education and Training for Cataloguing at the University of Botswana Library: An Overview,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 41, no. 2 (2005) and Kamma Tolstrup, “Fra Oplaering Til Uddannelse; Undervisning i Katalogisering Pa Denmarks Biblioteksskole for Og Efter 1985. From Instruction to Education; Teaching of Cataloguing at the Danish Library School before and after 1985,” Biblioteksarbedje 10, no. 27 (1990) look at curriculum outside North America. 5. Linda Cleote, “The Education and Training of Cataloguing Students in South Africa through Distance Education,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 41, no. 2 (2005), probably the first and only article prior to this theme issue to address online technology in distance education. 6. Among others, Franklin R. Koontz, Hongqin Li, and Daniel P. Compora. Designing Effective Online Instruction: A Handbook for Web-Based Courses (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2006), Bonnie, Elbaum, Cynthia McIntyre, and Alese Smith, Essential Elements: Prepare, Design, And Teach Your Online Course (Madison, WI: Atwood, 2002), George Collision, Bonnie Elbaum, Sarah Haavind, and Robert Tinker, Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators, (Madison, WI: Atwood Pub., 2000), Rita-Marie Contad and J. Ana Donaldson, Engaging the Online Learner: Activities And Resources for Creative Instruction (San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 2004), and Shirley Bennett and Debra Marsh, Handbook of Online Education, (London: Continuum, 2007) all have useful tips and practical strategies for general design and implementation of online courses. 7. Unpublished survey results of OLAC members conducted in 2010 by Robert Bothmann, Debbie Benrubi, and Marcia Barrett for the OLAC Executive Board showed a high preference for online instruction (2.21 on a rating scale of 1–4 with 1 being high preference); however, the strongest preference was for face-to-face instruction (average rating of 1.36).

Good Chronological History Detected but Critical Analysis on the Missing List

Invited book review of Carolyn Carpan, 2009, Sisters, Schoolgirls and Sleuths : Girls' Series Books in America, MD: Scarecrow Press

“Partakers of the Same Sacrifice”

“Partakers of the Same Sacrifice” Neil Xavier O’Donoghue Most papal encyclicals address issues of the day and therefore tend to lose relevance as time passes. Certiores effecti, issued in 1742 by Pope Benedict XIV (reigned 1740-58), is not one of them, given that the liturgical abuse it censures remains (270 years later!) all too prevalent. In this short encyclical, Benedict XIV encourages priests to administer Holy Communion to the faithful from hosts consecrated at the same Mass rather than from hosts retrieved from the tabernacle. Because the encyclical is difficult to obtain in the original Latin, and as I am unaware of an extant English translation of it in full, I append the full text in Latin and English (my translation). I. Historical Background Liturgical historians generally agree that up to the fourth century the faithful communicated at every Mass, partaking of eucharistic elements solely consecrated at that celebration.1 Numerous sources attest, moreover, that it was customary for the faithful to take home from the Sunday Eucharist enough of the “eucharistized” bread for Holy Communion on weekdays, when there was normally no celebration of the Eucharist; they also brought the Sacrament to members of the local community who could not attend the liturgy because of illness, imprisonment, or the difficulties of travel.2 Decline in the frequency of Communion Following the adoption of Christianity as the state religion after the Peace of Constantine (312), the reception of Holy Communion be1 On the frequency of holy Communion, see: Joseph Nicholas Stadler, Frequent Holy Communion: A Historical Synopsis and a Commentary, Canon Law Studies 263 (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1947); Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development (Missarum Sollemnia) [revised and abridged edition in one volume, ed. Charles K. Riepe], trans. Francis A. Brunner (London: Burns & Oates, 1959) 498-502; and, most recently, Joseph Dougherty, From AltarThrone to Table: The Campaign for Frequent Holy Communion in the Catholic Church (Lanham MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010). 2 See Robert F. Taft, “Home-Communion in the Late Antique East” in Ars Liturgiae: Worship, Aesthetics and Praxis. Essays in Honor of Nathan D. Mitchell , ed. Clare V . Johnson (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2003) 1-25. Antiphon 16.2 (2012): 130-143 131 “Partakers of the Same Sacrifice” came generally restricted to the celebration of Mass. Yet the frequency of reception sharply declined in some places. As the renowned Jesuit liturgist Joseph Jungmann reports in his classic study The Mass of the Roman Rite: Already Chrysostom, among the Greeks, complained: “In vain do we stand before the altar; there is no one to partake.” In Gaul, too, the Synod of Agde (506) found it necessary to insist on Communion three times a year, on Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, as a minimum. And this demand was repeated time and time again till the very height of the Middle Ages, sometimes with the addition of Maundy Thursday. In the Carolingian reform the attempt was made to re-introduce Communion every Sunday, especially on the Sundays of Lent, but the result was at best temporary. From the eighth century onward, the actuality seems generally not to have gone beyond what the Lateran Council of 1215 established as a new minimum: Communion at Easter.3 Explanations have been advanced for this unexpected development: the extended period of penitence (and thus exclusion from the Eucharist ) imposed on apostates who had returned to the Church once she had finally gained freedom; the common postponement of baptism until a later age; the development of a spirituality of reverential fear with regard to the Eucharist—the mysterium tremendum—and a corresponding sense of personal unworthiness;4 the multiplication of cases of exclusion from the Sacrament, especially for married 3 Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, 499. Fourth Lateran Council , chap. 21, in Henry Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 30th ed., trans. Roy J. Deferrari, The Sources of Catholic Dogma (St Louis: B. Herder, 1957; reprint, Powers Lake ND: Marian House, n.d.) §437, p. 173: “Let everyone of the faithful of both sexes, after he has arrived at the years of discretion, alone faithfully confess all his sins at least once a year to his...

A cinema of presence and proximity: Gunvor Nelson's collage films and the aesthetics of the signaletic material before the electronic signal

This essay argues for the importance of an intersubjective and impure film theory in which the signal and the signaletic is considered as figures for approaching film. This in order to make the argument that the signaletic mode indeed enables a novel perspective on moving image history. The aesthetics of the signaletic has thus a history preceding that of electronic media, in particular when it comes to animation and experimental film. When constructing such an archaeology, however, dichotomies into sign and signal should be avoided; otherwise, the complexity of many of the films is reduced. In order to illuminate the latter point, four films by Gunvor Nelson is analyzed (both analog and digital), showing not only how both sign and signal interact but also how the aesthetics of the signal and the signaletic material is not dependant on the electronic as such.John Sundholm is Professor in Film Studies at Karlstad University. He has published extensively on experimental film and minor cinema and is the co-editor of several books on memory studies. He is also the editor of Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Cinema (Scarecrow Press, 2012) and Gunvor Nelson and the Avant-Garde (Peter Lang, 2003). He has published work in English in journals such as Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Framework, New Cinemas and Studies in European Cinema. Together with Lars Gustaf Andersson and Astrid Söderbergh Widding he has written the first history on Swedish experimental film: A History of Swedish Experimental Film Culture: From Early Animation to Video Art (National Library of Sweden/John Libbey, 2010). He is also a member of the examination board of the PhD program in Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Finland.

The Chicago of Fiction (review)

Reviewed by: The Chicago of Fiction Andrew Strombeck (bio) The Chicago of Fiction, by James A. Kaser. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2011. xii + 659 pp. Cloth, $100.00. At least since the New Historicist revolution of the early 1980s, and the accompanying challenges to the literary canon, scholars and teachers have sought to teach and research a wider range of literature, trying to see around the filters of history to identify works which have passed out of favor but which nevertheless offer fascinating insights into their historical context. While scholars have long used resources like The Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, newspaper archives, and library catalogs, these resources posed several problems, including lacunae around reviews of popular fiction, lack of annotations in catalogues, and the sheer difficulty of culling works together along regional lines. Toward this end, resources like The Chicago of Fiction, by James A. Kaser, are invaluable. As its title suggests, Kaser’s work assembles a comprehensive account of novels and short story collections either “wholly or mostly set in Chicago” or in which Chicago has a “strong symbolic role throughout the book.” Kaser has masterfully indexed and annotated a wide range of works, from pulp authors, to juvenile authors, to lesser lights of the Chicago Renaissance such as [End Page 220] Nelson Algren, to well-known authors with only one or two works set in the city, such as Philip Roth (Letting Go, 1962) or Langston Hughes (Not Without Laughter, 1930). Chicago, of course, occupies a tremendous place in American literature, serving as a “second city” that helped displace the Northeast, and New England in particular, as the exclusive site of American literary production, and serving as an incubator for everyone from Sherwood Anderson to Frank Norris to T. S. Eliot to Nella Larsen, to say nothing of those writers whose works are nearly synonymous with Chicago, such as Theodore Dreiser, Richard Wright, and Saul Bellow. In reading The Chicago of Fiction, one is struck by the multiple Chicagos that emerge here: the world of upper class socialites, working class steelworkers, recently arrived immigrants, African Americans during the Great Migration, Yippies around the 1968 Democratic Convention, and so on. There are countless novels that follow the pattern of Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, detailing the difficulties and triumphs of adapting to city life. There are a series of novels set in Chicago department stores (such as Albert Halper’s The Little People, 1942) and at least one set in O’Hare International Airport (Arthur Hailey’s Airport, 1968). The juxtapositions here are often striking: Isaac Rosenfeld’s 1947 novel about Orthodox Jews on the North Side, Passage from Home, appears immediately after Richard Rose’s 1979 political thriller The Satyr Candidate. Plenty of obscure works by minority writers appear here, as with the African American writers Scott Nearing (Free Born, 1932), Rose Robinson (Exile in the Air, 1969), Waters Edward Turpin (O Canaan! 1939), and Melvin Van Peebles (The True American: A Folk Fable, 1976). The volume’s most useful facet is the annotated bibliography of works published between 1852 and 1980. Here, Kaser summarizes each work, often with an eye toward its relevant cultural context, calling attention to its depiction of labor issues, or women in the workplace, or immigrants, or gender roles, or even the rise of interstate trucking, as in this annotation to Milton Ozaki’s Dressed to Kill (1954): “The criminal activity in the novel is interesting for revealing the dominance of interstate trucking in the transportation of goods by the 1950s since all of the fenced items come from stolen trucks,” or Margaret Shane’s The Unpaid Piper (1927) on the Chicago real estate boom of the 1920s: “the march of high rise buildings up the lakefront have a significant impact on Lakeshore as houses close to the lake get torn down or relocated.” Annotations should be useful to scholars and teachers interested in researching particular topics, or developing clusters of works around, say, gender roles in Chicago in the 1910s. Those entries which mention specific locations are most useful, [End Page 221] as with the one for Newton Fuessle’s Gold Shod—a bohemian district on the South Side, the red-light...

Featured Artist Peter Josyph

Featured Artist Peter Josyph Samantha Cole (bio) Peter Josyph was chosen as the keynote speaker when the University of Texas at San Marcos unveiled the inaugural exhibition of the Cormac McCarthy Papers last October. His credentials for serving in this capacity are impressive. He is the author of Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy. Released in 2010, this book, published by Scarecrow Press, includes personal essays on McCarthy's Suttree, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, and The Stonemason, as well as conversations with critics Harold Bloom and Rick Wallach, novelist and poet Robert Morgan, and Oscar-winning screenwriter Ted Tally. In 2001 Josyph codirected Acting McCarthy: The Making of Billy Bob Thornton's All the Pretty Horses, which examined the art of acting as it relates to McCarthy's work. His photography is featured on the Portuguese translations of McCarthy's Suttree and Blood Meridian. In addition to his work on McCarthy, Josyph is best known as the author of Liberty Street: Encounters at Ground Zero, an illustrated chronicle of his life in Lower Manhattan after the September 11th attacks, which the New York Times called "a personal, expressionistic, almost poetic account." He directed the award-winning documentary Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero, which premiered in 2005. Josyph has worked on numerous projects with surgeon-author Richard Selzer, including Letters to A Best Friend, which he edited and illustrated; and What One Man Said to Another: Talks With Richard Selzer. His book The Wounded River: The Civil War Letters of John Vance Lauderdale, M.D., was featured in American Heritage and was a New York Times Notable Book of 1993. Josyph's solo exhibition Cormac McCarthy's House has been featured in Texas Monthly and has shown in Sweden, in England, and in Texas. His dealer is Galerie Signum Winfried Heid in Heidelberg, and his work is at peterjosyph.com. He is completing a second volume of Adventures in Reading Cormac McCarthy, and illustrating Cormac McCarthy's House, a memoir of working with McCarthy as a visual motif. Ongoing projects include a series of novels about Matisse; a feature film about Picasso; a followup to Liberty Street called Lost Worlds of September 11; and three haiku novels, one of which, the way of the trumpet, he performs with jazz trumpeter and composer Tim Hagans. [End Page 115] Samantha Cole Samantha Cole is a Berea College senior from Lee County, Kentucky, majoring in Appalachian Studies. Since her freshman year, her primary labor position has been with Appalachian Heritage. She has also served as the editor of Carillon, the Berea College literary magazine. Copyright © 2010 Berea College

American Classic Screen: Interviews; American Classic Screen: Profiles; American Classic Screen: FeaturesJohn C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh, Editors. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2010.

American Classic Screen: Interviews; American Classic Screen: Profiles; American Classic Screen: FeaturesJohn C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh, Editors. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2010.

Immigration Narratives in Young Adult Literature: Crossing Borders (review)

Reviewed by: Immigration Narratives in Young Adult Literature: Crossing Borders Kent Baxter (bio) Immigration Narratives in Young Adult Literature: Crossing Borders. By Joanne Brown. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011. The rich parallels that exist between the transitional nature of adolescence and the often unstable and bifurcated status of the first- or second-generation immigrant (or the colonized other) have not been lost on many writers of children's and adolescent literature. Indeed, characters caught between childhood/ adulthood and between old country/ new (or colonial/subaltern) can be seen throughout literature in general, perhaps because adolescence can serve as a powerful metaphor for the transition between cultures and geographic locations, or because the liminal site of adolescence provides a unique insight into the constructedness of what we call "the nation." Joanne Brown's Immigration Narratives in Young Adult Literature examines contemporary young adult novels that feature children or teens who have immigrated to the United States. Part of the Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature series, Brown's work provides an overview and historical contextualization of fifteen young adult novels that focus on different aspects of the immigration story. Although, for this reader, it leaves a number of questions unanswered, this brief study is a useful tool for teachers who are organizing a course on the subject of immigration or a good starting point for scholars who are pursuing further research in this pervasive but largely undertheorized area of children's literature. Though Brown offers some preliminary discussion of late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century texts, including an interesting glimpse of turn-of-the-century textbook discussions of immigration, she largely concerns herself with contemporary young adult novels, arguing that, in fact, the first young adult novel about immigrants was Laurence Yep's 1975 title Dragonwings. The bulk of Brown's analysis is oriented around five questions she contends are central to young adult narratives about immigration: "What prompted peoples of various nations to leave their native lands and travel to the United States?" "How did they come?" [End Page 482] "What challenges met them as they settled into their new country?" "What effect did their immigrant status have upon families, children in particular?" "What conclusions about young immigrants and immigration to the United States can we draw from the literature discussed?" (17-18). Brown provides plot summaries of fifteen novels that she identifies with each of these broader topics. The summaries are supplemented with references to a number of historical works on immigrants and immigration that help contextualize each novel. Chapter two, "The Beckoning Shores," which addresses the first question about what prompted immigrants to travel to the United States, provides a summary of Patricia Reilly Giff 's Nory Ryan's Song (2000), Linda Glazer's Bridge to America (2005), and Laurence Yep's The Serpent's Children (1984). This chapter is framed with a reference to Roger Daniel's "push-pull" theory of immigration from Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (2002), which Brown uses as a heuristic to discuss the motivating factors of the protagonists of each of the novels. Each summary is supplemented with additional historical information, such as background on the Irish potato famine for Nory Ryan's Song and information about the immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe to the United States for Bridge to America. Chapter three, "The Journey," is framed by Oscar Handlin's well-known—and quite controversial—work, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People (1973), which Brown uses as a way of identifying the various phases of the journey that exist beyond the border crossing itself. Brown summarizes four different novels that focus on different aspects of the journey to America: Maggie's Door (2003), Double Crossing: A Jewish Immigration Story for Young Adults (2005), The Dragon's Child (2008), and Red Midnight (2002). Chapter four, "Strangers in a Strange Land," summarizes four novels that focus on adjusting to the new country, while chapter six, "Immigrant Children: Rebels with a Cause" focuses on three novels that feature second-generation immigrant experiences. Brown also provides a brief look at illustrated young adult texts about immigration in chapter 5...

Ramblin' Jack Elliott: The Never-Ending Highway (review)

Reviewed by: Ramblin' Jack Elliott: The Never-Ending Highway Chris Durman Ramblin' Jack Elliott: The Never-Ending Highway. By Hank Reineke. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010. [xx, 397 p. ISBN9780810872561. $55.] Illustrations, bibliography, discography, index. Sometimes stories of "also ran" figures are more compelling than stories of "winners," and sometimes being an "also ran" is a sufficient accomplishment in itself. As [End Page 383] Hank Reineke tells, the life of American folk singer Ramblin' Jack Elliott is just that, the story of a man known to the larger public, if at all, more for his associations and friends than for his many accomplishments. Good friend to generations of American and British folk and roots musicians such as Pete Seeger, Ewan MacColl, Johnny Cash, The Grateful Dead, John Prine, and Emmylou Harris, Jack is most famous for his close friendship with his primary mentor, Woody Guthrie, and for the role he in turn played influencing a generation of musicians including Guthrie's son Arlo and Bob Dylan. Reineke, who assisted as a research consultant for Elliott's daughter, Aiyana Elliott, during the making of her documentary film The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack (2000), has written articles on American popular music for Aquarian Arts Weekly, East Coast Rocker, Blues Revue, and ISIS (the Bob Dylan Magazine). Ramblin' Jack Elliott: The Never-Ending Highway, Reineke's first book, traces Elliott—who was notoriously difficult to locate, let alone chronicle—throughout his life and long career. Reineke reveals that the book is built around the recordings Elliott made between 1954 and 2009 and that "there is purposefully little gossip or retelling of famously tall tales, real and apocryphal, to be found in this book" (p. xviii). While the book would have undoubtedly been made more colorful with the addition of more gossip and anecdotal Ramblin' Jack tales, Reineke, using hundreds of pre-existing articles and interviews, has written an engaging and comprehensive record of his life nonetheless. Ramblin' Jack's tale is the quintessential American story of a man who created himself in the image he wanted—an image that didn't necessarily correspond to the life into which he was born. Born Elliot Charles Adnopoz, Ramblin' Jack may have been the son of a Brooklyn surgeon, but he seems to have ridden straight out of the cowboy west. Reineke's biography begins appropriately at the 1940 World Championship Rodeo in Madison Square Garden, where interest in the cowboy was cemented into the nine-year-old Elliot Adnopoz. Fascination with the cowboy life would lead him to run away from home at age sixteen to join a traveling rodeo and to a life-long love of the rodeo, the cowboy life, and the songs of the cowboy. He taught himself to accompany his singing on guitar and at the age of seventeen landed right in the middle of the folk revival then burgeoning in Greenwich Village. Perhaps the American folk music scene was just very small at that time, perhaps it was particularly concentrated in New York, or perhaps Elliott was amazingly fortunate and persistent, but the list of American folk music and popular culture luminaries Elliott met there is simply amazing. The reader cannot help but be impressed by the wide range of celebrities Elliott meets and befriends throughout his life, and comparison is inevitable between Elliott and fictional characters who stumble through life bumping into great numbers of famous historical characters. By the time the nineteen-year-old Elliott met Woody Guthrie, he already knew many of the biggest names of the folk music revival. Through his friendship and apprenticeship with Guthrie, he came to know many more. Surprisingly, Elliott actually launched his career and may have left his most enduring legacy in Great Britain. Having arrived there with a new bride and the names of a few music contacts right at the height of the skiffle craze (roughly comparable to the American folk music revival), Elliott was soon making albums, singing in London clubs, and performing in the play The Big Rock Candy Mountain at the Theatre Royal in London's East End. His music appealed to many in Great Britain who were interested in American folk music, but "put off...

Where the Dark and Light Folks Meet: Race and the Mythology, Politics, and Business of Jazz (review)

Where the Dark and Light Folks Meet: Race and the Mythology, Politics, and Business of Jazz. By Randall Sandke. (Studies in Jazz, no. 60.) Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010. [x, 277 p. ISBN 9780810866522. $40.] Bibliography, index. Writing a book about race in jazz is like painting a picture with colors: it's expected. So in some ways, Randall Sandke's Where the Dark and Light Folks Meet is just another book on race in jazz. In other ways, it's an unusual offering. Sandke is a jazz trumpeter and composer who has written one previous book, a theoretical text espousing his own compositional style (Harmony for a New Millenium: An Introduction Metatonal Music [New York: Second Floor Music, 2002]). Where the Dark and Light Folks Meet is a completely different type of book. In it, Sandke outlines the difference between what he considers the rightful version of jazz history (inclusionary, or history that acknowledges a large degree of cooperation among blacks and whites) and the flawed version that he claims professors teach at colleges throughout the United States (exclusionary, or history that prioritizes blacks' contributions and emphasizes their exploitation). He lays bare his aims in the first chapter, enticingly titled Jazz About Music Anymore? This initial chapter is where one can find many of Sandke's splashier statements, obviously intended stir controversy where there is no lack of controversy begin with. This is where we learn that he intends challenge some of the most long-treasured jazz ideas, including its connection with traditional African music, its status as an emblem of African American ideals, and the detrimental effects of Jim Crow laws on jazz musicians. Chapters 2 (The Activist Jazz Writers), 3 (Good Intentions and Bad History) and 4 (What Gets Left Out) are an examination of the exclusionary, or racially segregated version of jazz history. These three chapters present the most coherent of Sandke's narratives, and along with his next three chapters, which are about racial radicalism (The Road Radicalism), revival music (Radical Ideas and Retro Music), and interracial cooperation (The Biggest Myth of All), they provide the bulk of his work. His next three chapters are about jazz and business (It's Strictly Business, Copyrights: Accounting With - out Accountability, and Show Me the Money), and his final two (Is Everything About Race? and Tomorrow Is the Question) are summaries of themes throughout the book. The final five chapters are each much shorter than the first seven; as a result, they feel like an afterthought, and the narrative is less cohesive than in the earlier ones. Sandke's agenda emerges in many places in this work. In his previous book, he extolled the virtues of metatonality, his own theory on jazz composition. His disappointment about the lack of impact of his concept of metatonality is clear in the new book when he writes that to date, not one article has been written about metatonal music, even though I have recorded several examples since 1985 and written a book on the subject (p. 10). In the passage and others, he plainly wants jazz musicians and scholars prioritize innovation over nostalgia, insinuating detrimental effects of revivalist Wynton Marsalis and his followers in the first chapter and implicating them outright in chapter 5, in which he wonders how jazz went from a dynamically evolving art form a music in which the importance of blazing new trails was widely and openly discounted (p. 107). In chapter 3, Good Intentions and Bad History, he invokes jazz's links with modernism as the reason why it should be progressive, but he strangely questions why audiences do not flock see modern jazz performers, missing one of the key effects of modernism: alienation of the audience. …

Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831): A Bio-Bibliography (review)

Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831): A Bio-Bibliography. By Anna Kijas. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press 2010. [xvii, 201 p. ISBN 9780810876842. $55.] Illustrations, music examples, tables, index, annotated bibliography, discography. Polish pianist-composer Maria Szyman - owska (1789-1831) is one of the most fascinating figures of the early-nineteenthcentury musical scene. She was one of the earliest international performing artists of the time, influential as performer and composer, and, perhaps most incredibly, she advanced her career despite being divorced woman with three young children. Respected by the foremost musicians of her day (including Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Gioacchino Rossini, and Luigi Cherubini), admired by aristocracy, she was also muse of the great romantic poets Johan Wolfgang Goethe and Adam Mickiewicz. Szymanowska scholarship in Polish and Russian is rather extensive, with major biographies on the composer already half century old (in Russian by Igor Belza, Mariia Shimanovskaia [Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1956]; in Polish by Teofil Syga and Stanislaw Szenic, Maria Szymanowska i jej czasy [Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1960]). The same cannot be said about Anglo-American musicology, where interest in the Polish virtuosa began only in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Only recently, in 2006, has an English biography of the composer appeared: Maria Szymanowska: Pianist and Composer by Slawomir Dobrzanski (Los Angeles, CA: Polish Music Center at USC: Figuero Press, 2006). Anna Kijas's biobibliography is thus an important new research tool for scholars of Szymanowska, providing an indispensable up-to-date guide for anyone interested in investigating the sources related to her, including her compositions and correspondence. Unlike Dobrzanski's work, Kijas's book is not an attempt at comprehensive biography of the artist. Her approach also differs from what we see in Polish studies, which often consider Szymanowska in relation to other great Polish composers including Chopin, Elsner, and Oginski. Instead, in the 128-page biography section the author focuses on two specific areas of Szymanow - ska's professional life: the daily aspects of her grand tours in the 1820s and the last three years of her life (1828-31) spent in Russia. The treatment of touring is particularly illuminating. Engaged in such trivia as transportation, lodging, and finances, it offers valuable insight into the day-to-day aspects of the careers of nineteenth century performers. Kijas discusses not only the repertoire, ticket prices, and critical reception of Szymanowska's concerts, but also more broadly considers the crucial role patrons and musicians' networks played in performer's life. Kijas brings sources to her work that were unavailable at the time of the classic Polish and Russian biographies, or earlier American studies. The rediscovered diary of Szymanowska's daughter Helena, considered lost until the 1980s (published as Malewska, Dziennik: 1827-1857, ed. Zbigniew Sudolski [Warsaw: Ancher, 1999]), as well as Kijas's own recent discovery of Helena's correspondence with Eliza Middleton (a daughter of Henry Middle - ton, American Ambassador to Russia), shed light on the period between Szymanowska's leaving Warsaw and her premature death from cholera in St. Petersburg in the summer of 1831. The letters, comprising the time period 1830-46 and located at the Historical Society in Charleston, South Carolina, include passages written by Maria Szymanowska, Celina Szymanowska, and other members of their circle (p. 126). These newly discovered sources are able to offer us, as Kijas writes, a vivid portrayal of Szymanowska's life as performer, composer, teacher, and mother as viewed and experienced by her daughter Helena (p. 112). The engrossing chapter on Szymanowska as concert pianist (which includes table with her concert repertoire) is preceded by short presentation of her musical background, education, and life prior to her international concert tours. …

From Altar-Throne to Table: The Campaign for Frequent Holy Communion in the Catholic Church (review)

Reviewed by: From Altar-Throne to Table: The Campaign for Frequent Holy Communion in the Catholic Church James M. O'Toole From Altar-Throne to Table: The Campaign for Frequent Holy Communion in the Catholic Church. By Joseph Dougherty. [ATLA Monograph Series, No. 50.] (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press and the American Theological Library Association. 2010. Pp. xxxv, 225. $80.00. ISBN 978-0-810-87164-9.) One Sunday morning in spring 1899, a Boston priest noted in his diary that, of the more than 700 Irish and German immigrant parishioners attending his 7:45 a.m. Mass, exactly forty of them came forward for Communion. He did not do the calculation, but that is a little more than 5 percent, and he was encouraged that it was as high as that. Today, most parishes report reception rates of 90 percent or above at every Mass. How Catholics, especially those in the United States, got from Point A to Point B is the subject of Joseph Dougherty's study. The completeness and relative speed with which lay Catholics changed longstanding habits regarding Communion richly merits study. This book is far from exhaustive, and other scholars will want to refine and expand it; but as an introduction to the subject, it is a welcome addition to recent historiography. In the first several chapters, Dougherty surveys reception of the Eucharist from ancient times to the end of the nineteenth century. This is obviously a huge subject and the evidence is highly fragmentary, but a disposition against frequent Communion settled on the Church early and lasted a long time. Bishops and priests consistently denounced laypeople who were too presumptuous in approaching the sacrament often—why, even married men were doing it, one seventeenth-century hierarch exclaimed in horror—and elaboration of the doctrine of Real Presence encouraged a lay piety that [End Page 750] emphasized looking at the Eucharist, usually from a distance, rather than consuming it. This began to change in the nineteenth century, and Dougherty is helpful in identifying some early sources of change. He reconstructs the theological arguments and overstates the impact of the newly created Eucharistic Congresses: Were they not effect rather than cause? Nevertheless, there is more to this story than we might have expected. The fight over frequency was really a fight over the proper dispositions a Catholic should have when receiving, and the theological ground was well prepared for new attitudes by the time the decrees of Pius X—"the Pope of Holy Communion," (p. 81)—validated changing practice at the beginning of the twentieth century. The second half of the book shifts away from theology and attempts a social history of the question, particularly in America. Theologians argued and popes decreed, but what did laypeople do? Dougherty tries to get at this question by looking at two periodicals that "orchestrated" (p. 111) a campaign for greater frequency—one the organ of the Priests' Eucharistic League, the other of the People's Eucharistic League. Unfortunately, there are inherent shortcomings in this method. Both magazines were official in nature, produced under clerical auspices, and the lay role, even in the "people's" league, is hard to discern. Eliza O'Brien Lummis founded the People's Eucharistic League, but she merits only two sentences here. As a first approach to the subject, all this may be forgivable, but the book only underscores the need for more focused studies, including local cases, if real laypeople are to be discussed. Among other things, we will want to know more about why resistance to frequent Communion lasted as long as it did (until after the Second Vatican Council), a topic about which Dougherty's conclusions seem tentative and not fully persuasive. In all, the book is clearly written, although the absence of a summary conclusion brings it to a very abrupt end. The bibliography is helpfully extensive, as can be expected of a revised dissertation. The absence of an index is surely a failing, the more so in a volume published under the auspices of a library association. But any future studies of this important topic will have to begin here. James M. O'Toole Boston College Copyright © 2011 The Catholic University...

The Encyclopedia of Christian Literature , Vol. 1: Genres and Types/Biographies A-G ; Vol. 2: Biographies H-Z (review)

General and Miscellaneous The Encyclopedia of Literature, Vol. 1: Genres and Types/ Biographies A-G, Vol. 2: Biographies H-Z. Edited by George Thomas Kurian; James D. Smith G?, coeditor. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. 2010. Pp. xvi, 347; iv, 349-71 1. $180.00. ISBN 978-0-810-86987-5.) Literature in this encyclopedia is understood very broadly indeed. It is not a gathering of articles on in the romantic sense- poetry, fiction, and the drama- but rather in the preromantic and postmodern sense of writing. That it aims to be encyclopedic is admirable, although potential readers should be warned that it has a heavy bias toward the United States. The encyclopedia has two volumes. The first begins with the genres and types of writing, and here one finds useful entries ranging from apocalyptic to women's literature. Thereafter, both volumes are devoted to a wide range of authors, entries on whom are arranged alphabetically. The editor rightly distinguishes Christian from writers who are Christians (l:xxi), as well as notes the inclusion the most part of writers who are professing Christians (l:xxi) and the exclusion of works by authors whose philosophy is in open conflict with Christianity (l:xxi). The last criterion must be laxly held, since there is an entry on John Hick who, we are told, rejects the claim that Jesus is God incarnate and advises that an afterlife is improbable (2:364). Potential readers drawn to religion and literature will find pieces on G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, George Herbert, G M. Hopkins, Flannery O'Connor, R. S.Thomas, and many other rightly expected literary figures.They will not find anything on William Wordsworth, however, and will look in vain for Frederich Holderlin, Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, Angelus Silesius, and Marco Girolamo Vida. Some choices make the American flavor of the venture intense.There is a long entry on the younger American poet Scott Cairns and a shorter one on Luci Shaw; yet in an anthology that seeks to be global, one would expect articles on two important Australian Catholic poets: James McAuley and Francis Webb. The British poet Geoffrey Hill certainly deserves an entry. One might reasonably have expected an article on Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye. Looking outside the fields of creative writing and literary criticism, readers will be enriched by familiarizing themselves with great writers: Ss. John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus, for instance. There is an outstanding entry on Hugh of St. Victor. Why some important figures- St. Gregory of Nyssa, for example- are mentioned in several entries but have no article devoted to them must be due to oversight or to lack of space. Yet space could have been saved by eliminating entries on some of the many American evangelicals who are better known for their energy than their literary excellence. …

Review of Randall Sandke. 2010. Where the Dark and Light Folks Meet: Race and the Mythology, Politics, and Business of Jazz . Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press

Randall Sandke’s Where the Dark and Light Folks Meet is a very personal, but seriously flawed, consideration of racial issues in jazz. In Where the Dark and Light Folks Meet Sandke attempts to tackle a large number of race related topics and claims about the jazz discourse with uneven results. His targets include activist jazz writers, “radical” racial politics, claims of discriminatory practices in business, pay, and intellectual property, and neo-conservative music trends. Although sometimes the act of troubling can be a good thing, Sandke’s book is troubling in ways that undermine his best arguments about the music’s lack of innovative vitality, and for expanding its history beyond iconic musical figures. He sets out to, in the words of George E. Lewis, “trouble the settled” of the dominant narrative-an altogether worthy ambition-but sometimes Sandke merely comes off as feeling personally left out of jazz’s past and present, a not uncommon frustration for many jazz musicians. He initially describes his project as one of inclusion. When the smoke clears, Sandke is dissatisfied with racial discourse that binds concepts of jazz authenticity and blackness. (In early jazz writing blackness was often used as an indicator of primitivity and therefore “realness;” from the ’60s onward jazz’s perceived authenticity has factored into a larger project of re-claiming black identity and pride.) This is not an altogether unreasonable point of view for a non-black jazz practitioner. But rather than wage a direct assault on fragile and cliched notions of authenticity that permeate jazz history and continue to dominate its discourse, Sandke makes sweeping claims about the motives of historical and recent jazz writers that seem designed to create ill will.