Listening to Classic American Popular Songs. (Book Reviews).

Listening to Classic American Popular Songs. By Allen Forte. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. [xiii, 219 p. + 1 CD. ISBN 0-300-08338-6. $35.]

In Listening to Classic American Popular Songs, as in his longer 1995 book The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era, 1924 1950 (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press), Allen Forte explores "that wonderful repertoire of music" (p. xi) written during the second quarter of the twentieth century. The book is accompanied by a compact-disc recording of most of the songs discussed. (Forte provides the arrangement and piano accompaniment for two of them.)

Anticipating many observations that follow, Forte's preface touches on the musical styles that contributed to the creation of these "magical songs," the most significant of which are jazz and European sources (p. xi). He observes that "many of [the features that] can be traced back to European sources ... were bent considerably out of shape" (ibid.) by the song composers. Nonetheless, the set of expectations and possibilities defined by both styles provided ample ingredients for a host of charming blends of music and text. The repertory itself provides Forte with the opportunity to address two complementary purposes simultaneously. On the one hand, he can argue for the value of the compositions- value that integrates immediate emotional appeal with sophisticated manipulations of musical syntax. On the other, because the syntactical processes are often clearly integrated with the most accessible features of the songs, Forte's examination makes a strong case for the value of music analysis, even-and perhaps esp ecially-for the reader who is not a professional music theorist.

In the main portion of the book, Forte examines twenty-three songs, devoting a brief essay (four to ten pages) to each. The essays are arranged by year of composition and grouped in three chapters, one for each decade. Preceding each essay is a lead sheet for all or a major component of the song, with separately printed lyrics. Most of the essays also include an account of general historical events at the time of composition, along with some background information on the composer(s), the circumstances of composition, the show for which the song was written, and so on.

The book's raison d'etre, of course, resides in the remaining component of each essay: the analytical observations about the song in question. Forte deploys his commentary very effectively in several ways. Rather than presenting an exhaustive analysis of each song, he focuses on those features that he finds to be of ...