Page 69 - CJSeptember25

Book Reviews
Book Reviews

Gregory Pysh, editor
gregory.m.pysh@gmail.com

Leo Sowerby Chicago as an adolescent to live with relatives. Among
John Sargent formative influences was the composer Percy Grainger,
University of Illinois Press, 2024 with whom he scheduled a series of lessons in summer
164 pages 1916 that were more like conversations sharing music
Hardcover, $50.00 of favorite composers. One of these was Frederick De-
eBook, $19.95 lius’s Florida Suite, in addition to Grainger’s piano music
(p. 19).
Anyone who studied music in Chicago in the 1920s
to the 1950s might have had an encounter with Leo Musically, Grainger’s influence can be seen in
Sowerby, whether in the fields of composition, theo- Sowerby’s piano setting of the country dance
ry, or organ. Many important musicians did, including tune “The Irish Washerwoman.” Composed
Ned Rorem and Florence Price. Sowerby was an im- in 1916 and issued as his first published com-
portant influence, particularly in the Midwest, first in position, this piece highlights Sowerby’s bur-
concert and chamber music and later in sacred music. geoning interests in colorful sonorities, textural
This reviewer remembers organ and choral music sung variety, and harmonic complexity. (p. 21)
at church in the early 1970s, and there are several an-
thems in many church music libraries. Sowerby’s first public concert of his original works
John Sargent has succeeded in chronicling Sowerby’s occurred in Chicago less than six months later in Jan-
life and work in this small volume. The book is divided uary 1917, assisted by sixty members of the Chicago
into the following sections: Introduction: Sowerby in Symphony at Orchestra Hall, followed by performanc-
American History; The Emerging Americanist (1895- es of piano and chamber music later that year. He
1918); Home and Away: European Travels, American furthered his studies at the American Conservatory of
Concert Successes (1919-27); The Church Ascendant: Music, where he became an instructor of piano.
Chicago and a More “Balanced” Composer (1927-40); Following a December 1917 enlistment in the Army,
Secular Decline, Sacred Rise (1940-62); Washington Sowerby returned to Chicago, took two church music
and the Royal College of Church Musicians (1962-68); positions, composed organ and sacred choral works,
and Epilogue: Forgetting and Remembering. traveled, and began writing more in-depth works. He
Sowerby spent his childhood in Grand Rapids, revised his Piano Concerto and studied abroad while he
Michigan, but due to family situations and a more ed- developed his craft, including a tone poem, Comes Au-
ucationally advantageous environment, he moved to tumn Time, performed by the Philadelphia, Baltimore,

CHORAL JOURNAL September 2025 Volume 66 Number 2 67