Music Musique: French and American Piano Composition in the Jazz Age.

* Music Musique: French and American Piano Composition in the Jazz Age, by Barbara Meister. Indiana University Press (www.iupress.indiana. edu/catalog/; [phone]), 2006. 163 pages.

Meister's insightful thesis emerges from the cultural ferment of African-American jazz musicians settling in post-World War I Paris, and their influences on French composers. Against the backdrop of Sylvia Beach's "Shakespeare & Company" bookstore and the coteries of Paris-based American writers, she traces the development of piano music in American (from Ives to Copland and Gershwin) and French (from Satie to Ravel and Milhaud) compositional styles.

The undeniable influence of "stride" jazz pianists--Meister calls this "New York style" (generally called "Harlem stride")--on American and especially French composers is often neglected outside jazz scholarship. Meister underscores the shifting trans-Atlantic cull influence, citing the "Jitterbug" coming from the French "Apache" dance; American literary influence is pervasive, with Debussy saying, for example, "I spent my existence in the House of Usher," and Ravel, "My teacher was Edgar Allan Poe."

Writers dealing with the aesthetic backgrounds of jazz and classical music are often from one tradition or the other. No exception, Meister betrays her own classical aesthetic model in expressing surprise at Henry Cowell's judgment that Copland was rooted in the European tradition. Despite his efforts to liberate American music from Europe, Copland, trying to create a "national" style using folk music in symphonic form, remained in the European tradition. In addition, Meister persists in the outdated tradition of calling classical music "serious" in contra-distinction to jazz, but can people any longer doubt that jazz is serious music?

The chapter, "A Brief History of Jazz," should be "A Brief History of Early Jazz," to fit the book's scope. Meister accurately mentions the prominence of blues in jazz, but says that its lyrics and music are in AAB format. The lyrics and melody usually are, but never the harmonies.

Meister's bibliography omits valuable sources, including: Kathy Jo Ogren's The Jazz Revolution: Twenties America and the Meaning of Jazz (1989); Carol J. Oja's Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (2000); Howard Pollack's Aaron Copland (1999); Gunther Schuller's "The Influence of Jazz on the History and Development of Concert Music" (1990) in New Perspectives on Jazz (Ed. David N. Baker); Roger Shattuck's The Banquet Years (1968); and Billy Taylor's Jazz Piano: A Jazz History (1983).

Still, Meister's expertise in the literature for voice and piano lends her writing a lyrical flavor that will appeal to amateurs and experts alike. She carefully balances theoretical analysis, ideas about repertoire and performance and how audiences responded to various pieces and styles.--Reviewed by Luke O. Gillespie, Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music

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