American Musical and the Formation of National Identity
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American Classic
American Musicological Society
American Pop
American popular music
An American in Paris (musical)
Anschluss
Author_Raymond Knapp
Bertolt Brecht
Blackface
Bob Cole (composer)
Burlesque
Cabaret (musical)
Candide (operetta)
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Cohan
Cole Porter
Concept musical
Coon song
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Exoticism
Fiddler on the Roof
For Example
Genre
George Gershwin
George M. Cohan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Give My Regards to Broadway
Grand opera
Guys and Dolls
H.M.S. Pinafore
Igor Stravinsky
In Dahomey
In Town (musical)
Ira Gershwin
Irving Berlin
Kurt Weill
Leonard Bernstein
Marc Blitzstein
Meet Me in St. Louis (musical)
Melodrama
Minstrel
Minstrel show
Music and Lyrics
Musical film
Musical theatre
Oklahoma!
Operetta
Orientalism
Oscar Hammerstein II
Pantomime
Parody
Phrase (music)
Popular music
Porgy and Bess
Richard Rodgers
Rip Van Winkle (operetta)
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Romanticism
Savoy opera
Seventy-Six Trombones
Show Boat
Singing
Stephen Sondheim
Tevye
The Black Crook
The Cradle Will Rock
The King and I
The Music Man
Tin Pan Alley
Vaudeville
W. S. Gilbert
World War II
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Product details
- ISBN 9780691126135
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 16 Apr 2006
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The American musical has achieved and maintained relevance to more people in America than any other performance-based art. This thoughtful history of the genre, intended for readers of all stripes, offers probing discussions of how American musicals, especially through their musical numbers, advance themes related to American national identity. Written by a musicologist and supported by a wealth of illustrative audio examples (on the book's website), the book examines key historical antecedents to the musical, including the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, nineteenth and early twentieth-century American burlesque and vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, and other song types. It then proceeds thematically, focusing primarily on fifteen mainstream shows from the twentieth century, with discussions of such notable productions as Show Boat (1927), Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), West Side Story (1957), Hair (1967), Pacific Overtures (1976), and Assassins (1991). The shows are grouped according to their treatment of themes that include defining America, mythologies, counter-mythologies, race and ethnicity, dealing with World War II, and exoticism.
Each chapter concludes with a brief consideration of available scholarship on related subjects; an extensive appendix provides information on each show discussed, including plot summaries and song lists, and a listing of important films, videos, audio recordings, published scores, and libretti associated with each musical.
Raymond Knapp is Professor in the Department of Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of "Symphonic Metamorposes: Subjectivity and Alienation in Mahler's Re-Cycled Songs and Brahms and the Challenge of the Symphony".
