The MacDowell Colony: A Musical History of America's Premier Artists' Community byBridget Falconer-SalkeldReview by: Robin RauschNotes, Second Series, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Jun., 2006), pp. 989-991Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4487688 .

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Book Reviews 989

This is a valuable book in many ways. I have rarely seen such a broad study in eth- nomusicology or one that draws from such a wide variety of data. It will be valuable for learning about ethnic studies, immigration, Japanese cultural history, and certainly the wide varieties of Japanese music: vocal, in- strumental, classical, folk, and popular. It should have a place on the ethnomusicol- ogy shelf of every music library.

CARL RAHKONEN

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

The MacDowell Colony: A Musical History of America's Premier Artists' Community. By Bridget Falconer- Salkeld. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005. [xi, 467 p. ISBN 0-8108- 5419-8. $55.] Index, bibliography, illustrations.

The MacDowell Colony for creative artists in Peterborough, New Hampshire has been fostering the careers of composers, writers, and visual artists for almost one hundred years. Some of the most distinguished names in American arts and letters are on its rolls: Aaron Copland, Thornton Wilder, Willa Cather, James Baldwin, and Leonard Bernstein number among them. The colony's underlying philosophy is based on Edward MacDowell's belief that artists working in different disciplines can benefit from contact with one another-a fact that makes it somewhat anomalous to single out music for study. Those who come to the MacDowell Colony are provided a place to work undisturbed within a community of other creative artists. In addition to Cop- land and Bernstein, the composers who have been in residence include Amy Beach, Roy Harris, Mark Blitzstein, Douglas Moore, Otto Luening, David Diamond, Lukas Foss, Louise Talma, Ned Rorem, Barbara Kolb, and Richard Danielpour, to name but a few. The colony is arguably MacDowell's greatest legacy. The composer was in the throes of his final illness when it began in 1907. It was his widow, Marian MacDowell, who brought the place to life. For this rea- son, the colony has received scant attention from MacDowell scholars, who generally end their inquiries with the composer's death in 1908. British scholar Bridget

Falconer-Salkeld attempts to remedy this unjust neglect with The MacDowell Colony: A Musical History of America's Premier Artists' Community.

The MacDowell Colony offers a fascinat- ing case study in the arts in twentieth- century America. Its history illustrates the early struggle of American artists to forge a national cultural identity and the gradual emergence of the United States as a major artistic force. It is also a pre-feminist story of how one woman's devotion to her late husband sparked a movement that influ- enced the arts in small towns and big cites across the country. Marian MacDowell's network of loyal clubwomen formed the base of the colony's support during its for- mative years and provides insight into an overlooked but important aspect of philan- thropy in America at the grassroots level. Regrettably, Falconer-Salkeld's study cap- tures little of this. As the first published full-length treatment of the MacDowell Colony, it disappoints.

A Scarecrow Press publication, this book is aimed at an academic audience. The first of its six chapters provides a context for the formation of the colony with an over- view of earlier artists' communities that may have influenced its development. Cited as models are the Chautauqua Insti- tution in New York, and art colonies in Dublin and Cornish, New Hampshire and Old Lyme, Connecticut-the latter known as the "American Barbizon" and founded at the home of Florence Griswold, Marian MacDowell's cousin. The following two chapters deal respectively with the origins of the MacDowell Colony and its founder, Marian MacDowell. The remaining chap- ters offer a chronological survey of the colony up to 2000 with an emphasis on the composers who worked there.

The author makes several missteps in her study, and they are of two kinds. There are errors that can be verified as such by con- sulting other sources, such as the reference to Henry F. Gilbert as a "black composer" (p. 98), and the description of the Mendels- sohn Glee Club of New York as "the men's chorus that MacDowell had formed at Columbia and conducted for two years" (p. 33). Gilbert was an early colonist and known for his use of African American elements in his compositions, notably his Comedy Overture on Negro Themes of 1909.

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990 NOTES, June 2006

But no biographical source identifies him as African American, including Sherrill V. Martin's recent Henry F. Gilbert: A Bio- Bibliography (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004). The Mendelssohn Glee Club figures promi- nently in the colony's history for the funds it raised in 1906 to help cover MacDowell's medical expenses. Not needed for the com- poser's care, it became the seed money for the colony. But the chorus was neither formed by MacDowell nor affiliated with Columbia, as any good MacDowell biogra- phy will confirm. Still in existence, the Mendelssohn Glee Club was founded in 1866 and its members asked MacDowell to take over as conductor after the death of Joseph Mosenthal in 1896.

More serious are the author's errors in relating the colony's history, for there is no published source available to correct them. Unfortunately, these errors, now in print, will likely be perpetuated for some time to come. For example, during the first decade of the colony's existence, Marian MacDowell organized and produced a series of pageants and music festivals in Peter- borough to promote the colony and culti- vate the support of the local townspeople. In discussing the objectives achieved by these events, Falconer-Salkeld incorrectly states that "the productions raised funds for the colony" (p. 43). They were all criti- cal successes, but every one of them lost large sums of money. In fact, the deficit left after the first-the Peterborough Pageant of 1910-was the primary reason that Mrs. MacDowell took to the road on her first lecture-recital tour. This became her an- nual ritual for close to twenty-five years, un- dertaken to whittle away at the ever-present deficit and assure the colony's solvency.

As Mrs. MacDowell traveled across the country she left numerous MacDowell Clubs in her wake. The MacDowell Club movement in pre-World War II America became something of a phenomenon. By 1915, Mrs. MacDowell estimated that there were close to 150 such clubs and she ac- tively attempted to organize them in sup- port of the colony, proposing the creation of a MacDowell Colony League to bring them together under a single administra- tion. Falconer-Salkeld almost completely ignores the MacDowell Clubs. The only mention of them in her text appears as something of an afterthought. While citing the women's groups who supported the

colony she writes, "And the list would be incomplete without mention of the MacDowell Clubs, which although inde-

pendent of the association, played a fund- raising role and provided venues for Mrs. MacDowell's lecture-recitals" (p. 49). Marian MacDowell identified different types of MacDowell Clubs throughout the country. Some were MacDowell Clubs in name only, but many were actively inter- ested in the colony and worked on its be- half. The clubs in the larger cities, such as the ones in New York, Cincinnati, Okla- homa City, and Evanston, Illinois, had memberships representing all the arts, and their programs reflected Edward MacDowell's ideas about the correlation between the arts. Falconer-Salkeld's failure to include any substantive discussion of the MacDowell Clubs is troublesome.

The author offers a clue to her misinter- pretations in her introduction. Citing a re- search trip she made in 2000, she recounts visits to the MacDowell Colony in New

Hampshire and the colony's New York

headquarters, as well as Columbia Uni- versity and the New York Public Library. Conspicuously absent from her list is the Library of Congress where, as she notes on p. 165, the colony's archives were trans- ferred in 1969. The Library of Congress is the major repository of MacDowell material in the country. Its holdings include Marian MacDowell's unpublished writings about the colony, volumes of her correspondence with her clubwomen and past colonists, as well as minutes of board and committee meetings. Falconer-Salkeld appears to have

spent no time with these collections, a seri- ous gap in her research.

The last half of the book is devoted to a historical survey of the colony. It is full of facts and figures taken from annual reports and colony newsletters, but at times it lacks a cohesive narrative. Even the author seems to get lost on occasion. On p. 79 she quotes from a letter of Douglas Moore to Mrs. MacDowell congratulating her on re-

ceiving the Order of Merit of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1949. The

quote is repeated verbatim on p. 141, some-

thing a good editor should have caught. The author can be given credit, however, for correcting the often-repeated claim that

Copland wrote Appalachian Spring at the MacDowell Colony. Copland figures promi- nently in the colony's history-he was a

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Book Reviews 991

colonist eight times between 1925 and 1956 and served as its president from 1962 to 1968-but he was nowhere near the colony in the early 1940s when he wrote Appala- chian Spring.

The study concludes with seven appen- dices that equal the text in length. These are filled with information on colony com- posers, including lists of works created there and awards that the composers have won. Hidden away in appendix D is Falconer-Salkeld's most valuable contribu- tion, the transcripts of interviews she con- ducted with composers who have worked at MacDowell-Barbara Kolb, Russell Oberlin, Daniel Pinkham, David Rakowski, Ned Rorem, and Howard Shanet. These personal recollections contain some gems. Rorem recounts being asked for a contribu- tion by the Guggenheim Foundation and explains his violent opposition to the re- quest: "it's not up to artists to support each other. They're not in the business of sup- porting each other. They need to be kept by rich people, as they were in Europe, or by rich foundations like the Fords and the Rockefellers used to do, but aren't doing so much anymore" (p. 273). Rorem's remarks offer the perfect opportunity to discuss the support of the arts in a democracy and the role played by an institution like the MacDowell Colony. But Falconer-Salkeld presents no meaningful analysis. These in- terviews, while valuable, are not enough to recommend this book. Its exorbitant price of $55 aside, the book's flaws render it an unreliable resource.

ROBIN RAUSCH

Library of Congress

Lost Delta Found: Rediscovering the Fisk University-Library of Congress Coahoma County Study, 1941-1942. By John W. Work, Lewis Wade Jones, and Samuel C. Adams, Jr.; edited by Robert Gordon and Bruce Nemerov. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005. [xvi, 343 p. ISBN 0-8265- 1485-5. $34.95.] Indices, appendices, illustrations, music examples.

The immediate attraction of Lost Delta Found is the inclusion of John W. Work III (1901-1967) among the authors. His Ameri- can Negro Songs and Spirituals (New York:

Bonanza, 1940) sold well on its initial publi- cation and may still be found in many mu- sic libraries. It remains in print as American

Negro Songs through Dover Books. That collection was the product of a talented mind with a wide interest in many kinds of southern African American music and a facile skill in music transcription. Having been raised within a distinguished African American musical family and being on the faculty of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee-home of the internationally famous Fisk Jubilee Singers-placed Work in an advantageous position to view, listen, and report on the music of his people, re-

gion, and time. Any additional research of his should be of high interest. That pre- sented in Lost Delta Found is cause for cele- bration and careful, responsive study.

Three studies by Work and two other Fisk African American scholars, Lewis Jones and Samuel C. Adams, are presented here. All were products of a series of field trips to Coahoma County (including its seat Clarks- dale) in the Mississippi Delta in 1941-1942, undertaken in collaboration with white researcher Alan Lomax (1915-2002) of the

Library of Congress (LC). The main pur- pose of the research was to study the rural African American residents of the Delta, recording their "traditional" ways and ex-

pressions, and then to assess the retention of such traditions when people moved to towns and cities. Sound recording was a means to the fieldwork, yet the blues per- formances captured by the field technol-

ogy, especially those by Son House, Muddy Waters, and David "Honeyboy" Edwards, have nearly overshadowed the reasons why the Fisk/LC team came to the Delta. The

Library of Congress initially issued selec- tions of their blues during the 1940s and 1950s, and reissues of the same music on the Flyright, Biograph, MCA/Chess, and Document labels have continued through the present day. In his account of the 1942 trip in his memoir The Land Where The Blues

Began (New York: Pantheon, 1993; winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), Lomax focused on the blues, to which he made cultural and musical associations with the other types of African American music he had heard. Yet the scope of the Fisk/LC recordings encompassed more than just blues, and the social classes of the recorded African American performers included not

only the poor on cotton plantations but

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