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Book Reviews
Book Reviews

Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, and Los Angeles Or- the Whitman-inspired tome poem Sea Drift, for which
chestras. But it was the winning of The Rome Prize and Sowerby was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
its accompanying three-year residency that propelled his It was at this time that Sowerby’s career turned to
compositional career and international reputation. church music. He was the latest in a series of prom-
Upon his return to the United States in 1924, he con- inent American organists and composers who still
nected to the world of jazz and music based on folk idi- maintained a relationship with the concert hall. He be-
oms. He developed a relationship with Paul Whiteman, came a member of The Hymnal 1940 committee and
who premiered Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Whiteman contributed several hymns to this effort in addition to
commissioned Sowerby to write Synconata, a combina- meticulous editing.
tion of jazz rhythms and sonata form performed at His organ work, Symphony in G Major (1931), is tech-
the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, and for nically and compositionally challenging, with compar-
eighty performances around the country in the next six isons to jazz. Pageant, another noted work, is a more
months. Sowerby soon abandoned composition in this structured organ composition, a bravura work but
realm and wrote folk-based music, as other Americans still composed with refinement, “breadth and sweep”
did at this time. in Sowerby’s own performance instructions. Passages
Settings of several English and American tunes for evoke jazz rhythms, pedal trills, and motivic develop-
voice and piano, plus a setting of “Pop Goes the Wea- ment. Sowerby also wrote Prairie at this time, a sweep-
sel” for woodwind quintet, helped set the stage for his ing tone poem based on poetry of Carl Sandburg,
development, including pieces with ethnic and social which was promoted by Howard Hanson.
overtones. Sowerby was noted for his choral writing during this
time, especially The Canticle of the Sun, a thirty-minute
Sowerby, for his part, viewed folk music as a cantata on a text by Francis of Assisi for which he won a
guiding force for musical modernism, a means second Pulitzer Prize. It draws on themes of nature and
of severing the shackles of Germanic tradition God, and was premiered at Carnegie Hall. Though it
and developing a more “authentic” voice. (p. 51) received many positive reviews by distinguished choral
composers, it is largely forgotten. The same is true with
Among Sowerby’s influential orchestral works in the his shorter anthems for the sacred service, such as his
late 1920s and early 1930s were the ballet Skyscrapers and setting of Psalm 122.
Leo Sowerby spent his final years in Washington
DC, at National Cathedral attempting to develop the
Some College of Church Musicians as well as composing,

specifically the anthem in memory of John F. Kennedy,
great little “Thy Word Is a Lamp unto My Feet.” He also wrote La
Corona for tenor, chorus, and orchestra, which was com-
numbers missioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation and based
on the Holy Sonnets of John Donne.
Perhaps the only addition this book could have ben-
for your efited from is a list of works, either chronological or
by category, complete or selected. This for an Ameri-
choir. can Romantic eclectic composer who “sought to nev-

er write the ‘same’ work twice” [Sargent quoting Jim
Ginsburg, p. 129]. Indeed, Leo Sowerby is an Ameri-
can treasure worth further exploration.

Donald Callen Freed
Toll-free: 1.877.246.7253 • sales@musicfolder.com Omaha, Nebraska

68 CHORAL JOURNAL September 2025 Volume 66 Number 2