Watkins G. Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century

New York: Schirmer Books, 1988. — 746 p.This is a unique and important book. It provides a comprehensive overview of art music in the twentieth century; a topic that is not given the attention it deserves. Mr. Watkins demonstrates a unique breadth of knowledge of the music of the last hundred plus years and he also posseses a rare depth of insight into the wonderfully rich flowering of musical styles and the connection of those styles to the larger artistic culture in painting, sculpture, literature, poetry, theatre, and dance.
This book is so rich in explanation and insight that it is impossible to take in all it has to offer in a single front to back reading. It is one of those texts that rewards deep and repeated study. You will want to return not only for its texts, musical examples, and images, but also for its rich notes and references.
The book opens by giving us wonderful background in the cultural movements in Vienna and Paris from 1885 through the first year of the First World War. The next two parts lay out the way new movements and views arose in Europe from 1909-1930. The next two sections brilliantly demonstrate the rise and aims of national movements and the way the first and second world wars caused artists to create works aiming beyond nationalism. Serialism and the search for new sounds are the subjects of the next two sections. The book closes with a survey of the art music of the late twentieth century including its movements in synthesizing earlier composers into new musical movements and the way classic forms were re-used and re-interpreted.
Mr. Watkins tells us these great stories by providing wonderful readings of aptly chosen works that connect and illuminate all these movements. It isn't a continuous narrative of one thing after another. Instead, we get the benefit of seeing great works up close and in their proper cultural context. For me, one of the great benefits of this book was the way it opened up the connections between painting, sculpture, and literature to the music of this period. I had studied that for the Baroque, Classic, and Romantic periods, but had not been given that insight into the twentieth century. And this book does it better than anything I have seen for those previous centuries. Reading this book was an electric experience for me. It is just so intensely packed with insight and revelation.