"IT HAS ACHIEVED WHAT VIRTUALLY AMOUNTS TO CANONIZATION AS OFFICIAL AMERICAN SYMPHONY"

SCHUMAN, William. Symphony No. III. New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., circa 1965. Quarto, original wrappers, pp.82. $500.

Study edition of the full score, inscribed on the list of instruments by the composer to fellow composer Phillip Ramey, "For my friend P. Ramey, Bill Schuman, 4/9/80."

After the positive response—both popular and critical—to Schuman's Symphony No. 2 in 1939, "His success was affirmed two years later when Koussevitzky introduced the Symphony No. 3. It is still the most played of Schuman's symphonies and together with the equally grandiloquent Thirds of Harris and Copland it has achieved what virtually amounts to canonization as Official American Symphony. Schuman composed some of our best music, music of hard-edged, deeply felt Romanticism. He wrote in many forms and genres, and with notable success for dance and chorus; it is, however, the series of symphonies that has particularly ensured his place as the sonorous rhetorician, the great Public Orator among America's composers" (Michael Steinberg, The Symphony, 496). The recipient of this copy was Phillip Ramey, a composer and writer who was closely associated with Schuman, Barber, Bernstein, and particularly Copland.

Text fine, faint staining to wrappers. A near-fine inscribed copy.