The Music of Alec Wilder

This concluding chapter evaluates Alec Wilder's music. Listeners are often struck by the tunefulness of Wilder's creations, whether a popular song or a concerto or sonata. Indeed, many of his melodies, in music of all types, easily satisfy one of his own standards of measurement in his book, American Popular Song (1972): that a good tune should be capable of standing alone, without accompaniment or any other contextualizing factors. At the same time, Wilder was equally devoted to a melody's harmonic setting. As he explained in American Popular Song, some effective melodies are “conceived in terms of harmony” and may not work so well in isolation. To his popular songs he brought the harmonic language of late romanticism. To his music for the concert hall he brought the language of jazz harmony. The personality and distinction of his musical language in general are as much determined by his chord constructions and progressions as by the melodies they support.