For A Song

I just read Rob Kapilow's Listening For America, a book where he gives an in-depth look at a number of tunes from the Great American Songbook.  In particular he takes two songs each from eight of the greatest songwriters of the twentieth century: Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.

The songs are mostly classics--"Summertime," "All The Things You Are," "Cheek To Cheek," "Over The Rainbow" and so on.  Occasionally, he'll pick a tune that's well known but not the biggest hit--"I Wish I Were In Love Again" and "I Can Cook Too," for example.  He uses these sixteen songs, discussed in chronological order, to tell a larger story of the development of American music over the years.

Kapilow is a composer and musician who hosts NPR's What Makes It Great?, a show that dives into various pieces of music, so Listening For America is, in a way, a continuation of this work.  But it also leads to the biggest problem with the book. (I've got some minor problems but we'll leave them alone.)

Each chapter deals with a different song, and Kapilow prints many measure of music to illustrate his points.  This is already a bit difficult since I don't have a piano on hand to play along with the book.  But worse, to compare to the brilliance of the actual composition, he often creates versions of the songs as if they had been written without imagination.  I can sight read them and get some feeling for what he's getting at, but essentially this is a musical demonstration without sound.  For this alone, it's hard to recommend the book.

Unless it's the book on tape.  Now that would work.