Christopher Emile Mehrens, Ph.D. 1998

Advisor: Thomas Warburton

Dissertation Title: The Critical and Musical Work of Deems Taylor in Light of Contemporary Cultural Patterns

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Dissertation Abstract:

Deems Taylor (1885-1966) was one of the most visible figures in American art music during the 1920s. Known for his activities as an intellectual, critic and composer, Taylor has been often described as a conservative or post-Romantic. Careful reconsideration of his work proves that although such labels are indeed accurate, they were also too narrow and too simplistic, for at times his critical views were in conflict with his musical practices. As a critic he was sympathetic to the work of many musical modernists, yet as a composer he was unable to break free from the more conservative romantic tradition. 

Taylor’s work was a consequence of the global atavism which grew in response to the tremendous aesthetic and stylistic ferment of modernism. Some composers responded by seeking inspiration and revitalization from primitive, early (neoclassicism for example), folk and popular music. In Taylor’s case, he searched for inspiration, accommodation, and revitalization along more antimodern lines. As defined by T. J. Jackson Lears, antimodernism was a “retreat to oriental or medieval aesthetics, the pursuit of intense physical or spiritual experiences, and the search for a sense of selfsufficiency.” Taylor’s life and work embodied these activities. This dissertation traces Taylor’s life and work, beginning in the late 1880s and ending in 1931. Particular emphasis is placed on his work from 1918 to 1931, especially his article on music for Harold Edmund Stearns’s Civilization in the United States: An Inquiry by Thirty Americans, his critical writings for the New York World, and his musical settings of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen. 

Dr. Mehrens went on to get a second Master’s degree in Library Science from Indiana University, Bloomington. He is currently the music librarian at Arizona State University’s Tempe campus.