title: Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s
author:  Carol J. Oja 
description: With this superb exploration of the classical music scene in New York City during the 1920s and early 1930s, Oja (music and American studies, Coll. of William and Mary) adds to her list of well-received music titles, including the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award-winning Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds. She profiles a variety of composers, both well known (Aaron Copland) and little remembered (Dane Rudhyar), analyzing a composition and placing the musician within the context of the overall artistic and social milieu. Her ability to show how styles such as neoclassicism and the use of technology or dissonance combined to form a new genre of "American" music is a distinguishing feature. Women patrons, the influence of jazz, and music criticism are discussed, and there is a useful appendix of programs of modern music societies. One hopes that Oja will now focus on another decade or locale to complement this work. Exhaustively researched and written in an intelligent, engaging style, this book is highly recommended for academic collections and for public collections with a sophisticated clientele.DBarry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH <BR>Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  # The Age of Innocence
  
  
  ## Edith Wharton
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Book I
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### I.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine
  
  
  Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of
  
  
  Music in New York.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  Though there was already talk of the erection, in
  
  
  remote metropolitan distances "above the Forties," of
  
  
  a new Opera House which should compete in costliness
  
  
  and splendour with those of the great European capitals,
  
  
  the world of fashion was still content to reassemble
  
  
  every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of
  
  
  the sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished it
  
  
  for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out
  
  
  the "new people" whom New York was beginning to
  
  
  dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung
  
  
  to it for its historic associations, and the musical for its
  
  
  excellent acoustics, always so problematic a quality in
  
  
  halls built for the hearing of music.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  I