After his tragic death in 1920, at the age of thirty-five, Charles T. Griffes became the object of an almost fanatical devotion among many American music-lovers, and his reputation and stature have grown steadily ever since. His songs, piano compositions, string music, and symphonic works are now in the repertoire of leading musicians and symphonic organizations. Against a rich background of contemporary figures and of musical life in the early years of this century, Mr. Maisel here traces the story of Griffes' rise from obscure origins. Much light is thrown on the conditons and problems of American music in general; and there is a careful analysis of many of the central ideas of Griffes' music, especially his best-known pieces, The White Peacock and The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan. The result is an interesting chapter in the history of American culture, and a fascinating study of the creative temperament in our time.

After his tragic death in 1920, at the age of thirty-five, Charles T. Griffes became the object of an almost fanatical devotion among many American music-lovers, and his reputation and stature have grown steadily ever since. His songs, piano compositions, string music, and symphonic works are now in the repertoire of leading musicians and symphonic organizations. Against a rich background of contemporary figures and of musical life in the early years of this century, Mr. Maisel here traces the story of Griffes' rise from obscure origins. Much light is thrown on the conditons and problems of American music in general; and there is a careful analysis of many of the central ideas of Griffes' music, especially his best-known pieces, The White Peacock and The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan. The result is an interesting chapter in the history of American culture, and a fascinating study of the creative temperament in our time.

At the turn of the century, visionary composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes synthesized highly diverse elements from other musical traditions into his distinct artistic voice. As American as he was far ranging in his interests, Griffes was an aesthetic polyglot, combining elements of literature, visual arts, global folk melodies, and contemporary European art music into a new musical language. The breadth of his sources of inspiration are breathtaking, including the sensual harmonies of fin-de-siècle French music, the British Aesthetic Movement, folk music drawn from the Middle East and Java, and a wide range of poets, including William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Sharp. The Pastoral in Charles Griffes's Music explores both his music and the rich historical context from which it grew to enrich our understanding of the composer's artistic contribution and reveal new intersections and contradictions in European and American culture during the early twentieth century. Taylor A. Greer also critiques the philosophical foundation of topic theory and its relationship to the pastoral in Griffes's music to reflect on the end of the nineteenth century and clarify our understanding of his artistic influences. With Griffes's conception of the pastoral, he transformed the siciliana-based tradition he inherited from the eighteenth century into a new and vibrant genre that preserved the usual associations of simplicity and tranquility and introduced new elements of tension into the pastoral ideal, including global voices, paradox, and occasional conflict.