The Beat Stops Here

WE READ on the jacket sleeve that this book is a "pioneering attempt to present the full spectrum of contemporary American composition." And to achieve this Promethean goal New York Times music critic John Rockwell leads us through the biographies of 20 American "composers"--classical, jazz, experimental, multimedia, environmental, Broadway, rock and musique concrete.

Rockwell, who has been writing about both classical and rock music for The Times for more than 10 years, obviously knows whereof he speaks. In All American Music, he insistently argues that a common bond connects all the different genres with which he deals. But if anything, this all-encompassing thesis reflects Rockwell's skewed emphasis towards artists who will prove his points and away from those who won't. There are fully eight essays on classical composers devoted to developing his theory that American music is split up into two camps: formal academic serialism and the more popular tonal romanticism. Yet his treatment of jazz is skimpy, to say the least, and rock gets only two chapters, inexplicably devoted to Neil Young and Talking Heads.

How does Rockwell condone excluding the great jazz musicians of our age? Jazz is, after all, the country's most important contribution to music and possibly the most significant art form to develop in this century. For that matter, where are America's great rock and soul poineers? Not in this "full spectrum of contemporary American composition."

Rockwell, it seems, is trying to overlook elements of traditionalism in our music the structures that are an essential part of the blues, folk, and rock. Bur tradition and form are as essential to our music as radical experimentation; no music can possibly escape the culture from which is emerges. Rockwell's discussion of serialism--a non-traditional musical system championed by Arnoid Schoenberg--is prefaced by the revealing remark. "But it was serialism more than populism that impeded the evolution of truly American music." Rockwell can't decide which side he is on, the side of serialist Milton Babbitt of Princeton--who once wrote an essay entitled. "Who; Cares if You Listen?"--or the avowedly populist Elliott Carter--whom he accuses of having a "more calculated attitude towards world success" than Babbitt. His classical composers are placed in a musical Catch--22; either they are anti-public or so commercial that they compromise their values.

ROCKWELL RUNS UP against other rocks in his espousal of the experimental spirit. He ignores the importance of traditionalism to experimentation, bluntly advocating complete breaks with the past. Yet experimentation must draw on traditional sources. Now and again Rockwell seems on the verge of recognizing this reality as when he ciscusses John Cage, who has become the godfather of modern experimental music. But the refuses to take the final step, apparently wanting it both ways.

It is perplexing to watch Rockwell extol an "outsider" or vanguard composer for'eign willing to depart from the ordinary and then give the distinct impression that his subject is not worth writing about. In the middle of a discussion of the problems posed by minimalist composer Philip Glass, he says of the subject of an earlier essay. "A composer like [Frederic] Rzewski can shift facilely from idiom to idiom because, to be blunt, nobody cares what he does, least of all the people."

He is similarly cynical about performance artist Laurie Anderson in an essay ostensibly about "Women Composers," he immediately casts doubt over his choice of women by stating," some artists suddenly become trendy and hot. They may sustain their recognition, of they may slip from view. At this writing, about the hottest, trendiest artist in SoHo is Laurie Anderson." Later in the essay he accomplishes the almost impossible task of negating one of his statements in the same sentence. "But her wit clearly entrances her audiences, and has helped secure her reputation. So has the very fact that she is a woman, although that alone explains little, since there are a lot of women composers these days, especially downtown" Rockwell's attitude bespeaks tokenism, and no wonder. Anderson-who is a quite accomplished composer but not by any means a major figure in the musical firmament--is hardly a fair representative of the women in modern American music.

THE WHOLE PURPOSE of Rockwell's book, it seems, is to link the different genres of music, classical and popular. That Rockwell would even attempt such a synthesis speaks much about the music being produced today. As Rockwell writes, the barriers between the different worlds of music are breaking down, as is the media through which music reaches the public. Artists like Max Neuhaus--whose most well-known "work" is a sonorous organ sound which emerges from a Times Square grating--has redefined music, taking it out of the concert halls and making it a truly "popular" art form.

However, there are some essential and irreconcilable differences between "popular" and "serious" art forms. Rock music--which is today's "pop"--relies on its audience and the collective consciousness of a generation of youths for its power. Rock cannot--and should not--exist in a vacuum. It is by "the people" and should be for the people, although that might be wishful thinking in this age of corporate control. "Serious" art--for our purposes, classical music--emphasizes the artist, his ego, and a purely subjective and personal outlook. Success usually comes only after the classical composer dies and sometimes not at all. And, as Rockwell argues, the best classical music often comes from the outsider, the artist who is not affected by the corrosive influences of monetary success, trendiness, or peer pressure.

Though artists like Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass have helped break down the barriers between the classical and popular through such devices as amplification, those barriers still exist. And Rockwell, by choosing to emphasize the experimental over the popular excludes the music that has most influenced the lives of 20th century Americans Indeed, the only truly popular composer included here is Neil Young, who hardly warrants the messianic status Rockwell has bestowed on him. Dylan would probably have been a more appropriate example of the marriage of art and popular tastes.

IN THE BOOK'S final essay Rockwell hurriedly fills in the gaps left by the rest of the work. Rock, he correctly argues, has forever lost its innocence to "artistic self-awareness." Even primitivism, from the Velvet Underground to the New York Dolls to Flipper, is essentially self-conscious. Today's hart-core punks are often far from the lowlife scum image they create and the violence of their music comes more as a rebellious expression of frustration with a static, repressive, bourgeois society than as a statement of being.

But Rockwell only mentions punk as context for an essay on the Talking Heads and effectively dismisses the genre after smugly declaring. "This flamboyant, often speeded-up rock and exuberant, nihilistic life-style never really caught on in New York; the Dolls and, later, the Ramones helped inspire the movement, but didn't realize it fully themselves." Rockwell's fixation with the "New York scene" is part and parcel of his overall preference for the cerebral over the emotional the arty over the visceral.

Probably the most aggravating aspect of Rockwell's writing is his unwillingness to go out on a limb, to; make an unqualified statement, to be controversial. Times readers are used to his overly reasonable approach to subject where intellectualizing is completely inappropriate. Only rarely does Rockwell take the bull by the horns and confront the reader with a controversial statement. One case in which Rockwell does reach for eloquence is in his essay or. Latin musician Eddie Palmieri, one of his finest chapters. He writes.

Artistically and sociologically, [Latin music] is a ghetto. Latin music plays its own concert circuit, with its own record labels, radio stations and [usually Spanish language] fan magazines...Success is purchased at the price of a steady pattern of exploitation and corruption that is less obvious now in the upper reaches of the mainstream pop-music business. And whatever success a Latin performer does achieve is source by an awareness of the greater success available on just the other side of the street, and by the strictures that tradition and subcultural rigidity place on a creative composer.

Rockwell seems truly to empathize with the underdog and the outsider, especially in his discussions of Palmeri and the seminal Black jazz-funk alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Throughout the book, he stresses the importance of alienation in the creation and development of art and the plight of those who go unappreciated by their public. But he is severe on composers and artists who bend to the will of their audience and waters down his praise for popular musicians such as Keith Jarrett or Philip Glass.

Despite the problems with this work, there is a lot of promise here Rockwell's argument for musical pluralism and experimentation is a convincing one, but the structure of the book creates many problems it would have been wise to model All American Music after Rolling Stone's inferior but useful "Illustrated History of Rock & Roll," which combines essays about the most important artists with more general pieces providing an overall view of a particular movement Rockwell would have been able to discuss his themes more thoroughly and could have better dealt with artists he should not have ignored.

Rockwell raises some interesting issues which should be discussed, especially in an age that is tending towards cultural stagnation and artistic repression. Any work that sheds light on the largely ignored vanguard of American art should be considered, if only because today's experimental is tomorrow's mainstream. Michael W. Hirschorn