Leta E. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038532
- eISBN:
- 9780252096440
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038532.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Grawemeyer Award, Aaron Jay Kernis achieved recognition as one of the leading composers of his generation while still in his thirties. Since then his ...
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Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Grawemeyer Award, Aaron Jay Kernis achieved recognition as one of the leading composers of his generation while still in his thirties. Since then his eloquent yet accessible style, emphasis on melody, and willingness to engage popular as well as classical forms has brought him widespread acclaim and admiring audiences. This biography offers the first survey of the composer's life and work. Immersed in music by middle school, and later training under Theodore Antoniou, John Adams, Jacob Druckman, and others, Kernis rejected the idea of distancing his work from worldly concerns and composed on political themes. His Second Symphony, from 1991, engaged with the first Gulf War; 1993's Still Moment with Hymn was a reaction to the Bosnian Genocide; and the next year's Colored Field and 1995's Lament and Prayer dealt with the Holocaust. Yet Kernis also used sources as disparate as futurist agitprop and children's games to display humor in his work. The book's analysis addresses not only Kernis's wide range of subjects but also the eclecticism that has baffled critics, analyzing his dedication to synthesis and the themes consistent in his work. The book gives a rare mid-career portrait of a major American cultural figure.Less
Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Grawemeyer Award, Aaron Jay Kernis achieved recognition as one of the leading composers of his generation while still in his thirties. Since then his eloquent yet accessible style, emphasis on melody, and willingness to engage popular as well as classical forms has brought him widespread acclaim and admiring audiences. This biography offers the first survey of the composer's life and work. Immersed in music by middle school, and later training under Theodore Antoniou, John Adams, Jacob Druckman, and others, Kernis rejected the idea of distancing his work from worldly concerns and composed on political themes. His Second Symphony, from 1991, engaged with the first Gulf War; 1993's Still Moment with Hymn was a reaction to the Bosnian Genocide; and the next year's Colored Field and 1995's Lament and Prayer dealt with the Holocaust. Yet Kernis also used sources as disparate as futurist agitprop and children's games to display humor in his work. The book's analysis addresses not only Kernis's wide range of subjects but also the eclecticism that has baffled critics, analyzing his dedication to synthesis and the themes consistent in his work. The book gives a rare mid-career portrait of a major American cultural figure.
Philip Lambert
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037603
- eISBN:
- 9780252094842
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037603.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
The music of Alec Wilder (1907–1980) blends several American musical traditions, such as jazz and the American popular song, with classical European forms and techniques. Stylish and accessible, ...
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The music of Alec Wilder (1907–1980) blends several American musical traditions, such as jazz and the American popular song, with classical European forms and techniques. Stylish and accessible, Wilder's musical oeuvre ranged from sonatas, suites, concertos, operas, ballets, and art songs to woodwind quintets, brass quintets, jazz suites, and hundreds of popular songs. Wilder enjoyed a close musical kinship with a wide variety of musicians, including classical conductors such as Erich Leinsdorf, Frederick Fennell, and Gunther Schuller; jazz musicians Marian McPartland, Stan Getz, and Zoot Sims; and popular singers including Frank Sinatra, Mabel Mercer, Peggy Lee, and Tony Bennett. In this biography and critical investigation of Wilder's music, Wilder's early work as a part-time student at the Eastman School of Music, his ascent through the ranks of the commercial recording industry in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s, his turn toward concert music from the 1950s onward, and his devotion late in his life to the study of American popular songs of the first half of the twentieth century are chronicled. The book discusses some of his best-known music, such as the revolutionary octets and songs such as I'll Be Around, While We're Young, and Blackberry Winter, and explains the unique blend of cultivated and vernacular traditions in his singular musical language.Less
The music of Alec Wilder (1907–1980) blends several American musical traditions, such as jazz and the American popular song, with classical European forms and techniques. Stylish and accessible, Wilder's musical oeuvre ranged from sonatas, suites, concertos, operas, ballets, and art songs to woodwind quintets, brass quintets, jazz suites, and hundreds of popular songs. Wilder enjoyed a close musical kinship with a wide variety of musicians, including classical conductors such as Erich Leinsdorf, Frederick Fennell, and Gunther Schuller; jazz musicians Marian McPartland, Stan Getz, and Zoot Sims; and popular singers including Frank Sinatra, Mabel Mercer, Peggy Lee, and Tony Bennett. In this biography and critical investigation of Wilder's music, Wilder's early work as a part-time student at the Eastman School of Music, his ascent through the ranks of the commercial recording industry in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s, his turn toward concert music from the 1950s onward, and his devotion late in his life to the study of American popular songs of the first half of the twentieth century are chronicled. The book discusses some of his best-known music, such as the revolutionary octets and songs such as I'll Be Around, While We're Young, and Blackberry Winter, and explains the unique blend of cultivated and vernacular traditions in his singular musical language.
Stephen Wade
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036880
- eISBN:
- 9780252094002
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036880.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book presents the rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the ...
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This book presents the rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. These performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. The book's author sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. The book reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: for example, prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on “the Library's recording machine” in a rendering of Rock Island Line. The profiles and abundant photos in the book bring to life largely unheralded individuals—domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners—whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, “amplifying tradition's gifts,” the book shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy.Less
This book presents the rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. These performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. The book's author sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. The book reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: for example, prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on “the Library's recording machine” in a rendering of Rock Island Line. The profiles and abundant photos in the book bring to life largely unheralded individuals—domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners—whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, “amplifying tradition's gifts,” the book shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy.
John Wriggle
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040405
- eISBN:
- 9780252098826
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040405.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Behind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music's unsung heroes: the arrangers. This book takes the reader behind the scenes of ...
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Behind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music's unsung heroes: the arrangers. This book takes the reader behind the scenes of New York City's vibrant entertainment industry of the 1930s and 1940s to uncover the lives and work of jazz arrangers, both black and white, who left an indelible mark on American music and culture. The book traces the extraordinary career of arranger Chappie Willet—a collaborator of Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and many others—to revisit legendary Swing Era venues and performers from Harlem to Times Square. The book's insightful music analyses of big band arranging techniques explore representations of cultural modernism, discourses on art and commercialism, conceptions of race and cultural identity, music industry marketing strategies, and stage entertainment variety genres. Drawing on archives, obscure recordings, untapped sources in the African American press, and interviews with participants, the book is a study of the arranger during this dynamic era of American music history.Less
Behind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music's unsung heroes: the arrangers. This book takes the reader behind the scenes of New York City's vibrant entertainment industry of the 1930s and 1940s to uncover the lives and work of jazz arrangers, both black and white, who left an indelible mark on American music and culture. The book traces the extraordinary career of arranger Chappie Willet—a collaborator of Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and many others—to revisit legendary Swing Era venues and performers from Harlem to Times Square. The book's insightful music analyses of big band arranging techniques explore representations of cultural modernism, discourses on art and commercialism, conceptions of race and cultural identity, music industry marketing strategies, and stage entertainment variety genres. Drawing on archives, obscure recordings, untapped sources in the African American press, and interviews with participants, the book is a study of the arranger during this dynamic era of American music history.
Amy C. Beal
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036361
- eISBN:
- 9780252093395
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036361.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This is the first comprehensive treatment of the remarkable music and influence of Carla Bley, a highly innovative American jazz composer, pianist, organist, band leader, and activist. Giving ...
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This is the first comprehensive treatment of the remarkable music and influence of Carla Bley, a highly innovative American jazz composer, pianist, organist, band leader, and activist. Giving attention to Bley's diverse compositions over the last fifty years spanning critical moments in jazz and experimental music history, this book provides a long-overdue representation of a major figure in American music. Bley is best known for her jazz opera “Escalator over the Hill,” her role in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, and her collaborations with artists such as Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, Robert Wyatt, and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason. She has successfully maneuvered the field of jazz creating works that range from the highly accessible and tradition-based to commercially unviable and avant-garde. The book details the staggering variety in Bley's work as well as her use of parody, quotations, and contradictions, examining the vocabulary Bley has developed throughout her career and highlighting the compositional and cultural significance of her experimentalism. The book also points to Bley's professional and managerial work as a pioneer in the development of artist-owned record labels, the cofounder and manager of WATT Records, and the cofounder of New Music Distribution Service. The book shows Bley to be not just an artist but an activist who has maintained musical independence and professional control amid the profit-driven, corporation-dominated world of commercial jazz.Less
This is the first comprehensive treatment of the remarkable music and influence of Carla Bley, a highly innovative American jazz composer, pianist, organist, band leader, and activist. Giving attention to Bley's diverse compositions over the last fifty years spanning critical moments in jazz and experimental music history, this book provides a long-overdue representation of a major figure in American music. Bley is best known for her jazz opera “Escalator over the Hill,” her role in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, and her collaborations with artists such as Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, Robert Wyatt, and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason. She has successfully maneuvered the field of jazz creating works that range from the highly accessible and tradition-based to commercially unviable and avant-garde. The book details the staggering variety in Bley's work as well as her use of parody, quotations, and contradictions, examining the vocabulary Bley has developed throughout her career and highlighting the compositional and cultural significance of her experimentalism. The book also points to Bley's professional and managerial work as a pioneer in the development of artist-owned record labels, the cofounder and manager of WATT Records, and the cofounder of New Music Distribution Service. The book shows Bley to be not just an artist but an activist who has maintained musical independence and professional control amid the profit-driven, corporation-dominated world of commercial jazz.
David C. Paul
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037498
- eISBN:
- 9780252094699
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037498.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book, a sweeping survey of intellectual and musical history, tells the new story of how the music of American composer Charles E. Ives (1874–1954) was shaped by shifting conceptions of American ...
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This book, a sweeping survey of intellectual and musical history, tells the new story of how the music of American composer Charles E. Ives (1874–1954) was shaped by shifting conceptions of American identity within and outside of musical culture. The book focuses on the critics, composers, performers, and scholars whose contributions were most influential in shaping the critical discourse on Ives, many of them marquee names of American musical culture themselves, including Henry Cowell, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, and Leonard Bernstein. The book explores both how Ives positioned his music amid changing philosophical and aesthetic currents and how others interpreted his contributions to American music. Although Ives's initial efforts to find a public in the early 1920s attracted a few devotees, the resurgence of interest in the American literary past during the 1930s made a concert staple of his “Concord” Sonata, a work dedicated to nineteenth-century transcendentalist writers. The book shows how Ives was subsequently deployed as an icon of American freedom during the early Cold War period and how he came to be instigated at the head of a line of “American maverick” composers. It also examines why a recent cadre of scholars has beset the composer with Gilded Age social anxieties.Less
This book, a sweeping survey of intellectual and musical history, tells the new story of how the music of American composer Charles E. Ives (1874–1954) was shaped by shifting conceptions of American identity within and outside of musical culture. The book focuses on the critics, composers, performers, and scholars whose contributions were most influential in shaping the critical discourse on Ives, many of them marquee names of American musical culture themselves, including Henry Cowell, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, and Leonard Bernstein. The book explores both how Ives positioned his music amid changing philosophical and aesthetic currents and how others interpreted his contributions to American music. Although Ives's initial efforts to find a public in the early 1920s attracted a few devotees, the resurgence of interest in the American literary past during the 1930s made a concert staple of his “Concord” Sonata, a work dedicated to nineteenth-century transcendentalist writers. The book shows how Ives was subsequently deployed as an icon of American freedom during the early Cold War period and how he came to be instigated at the head of a line of “American maverick” composers. It also examines why a recent cadre of scholars has beset the composer with Gilded Age social anxieties.
Kyle Gann
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252040856
- eISBN:
- 9780252099366
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040856.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
In January 1921, New York insurance company executive Charles Ives mailed self-published scores of a piano sonata he had written to 200 strangers. Unprecedentedly complex and modern beyond any music ...
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In January 1921, New York insurance company executive Charles Ives mailed self-published scores of a piano sonata he had written to 200 strangers. Unprecedentedly complex and modern beyond any music the recipients had seen before, the piece was subtitled “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860,” and the four sonata movements were named for American authors: “Emerson,” “Hawthorne,” “The Alcotts,” “Thoreau.” Ridiculed in the press at first, the Concord Sonata gained admirers (including composers like Copland and Gershwin and writers like Henry Bellamann), and when finally given its complete world premiere by John Kirkpatrick in 1939, it was hailed as “the greatest music composed by an American.” The piece is so complex that it has never been fully analyzed before, and this book is the first to explore and detail its methods on every page. Likewise, Ives wrote a book to accompany the sonata, titled Essays Before a Sonata, purporting to explain his aesthetic thinking, and no one has ever before seriously examined Ives’s aesthetic through-argument.Less
In January 1921, New York insurance company executive Charles Ives mailed self-published scores of a piano sonata he had written to 200 strangers. Unprecedentedly complex and modern beyond any music the recipients had seen before, the piece was subtitled “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860,” and the four sonata movements were named for American authors: “Emerson,” “Hawthorne,” “The Alcotts,” “Thoreau.” Ridiculed in the press at first, the Concord Sonata gained admirers (including composers like Copland and Gershwin and writers like Henry Bellamann), and when finally given its complete world premiere by John Kirkpatrick in 1939, it was hailed as “the greatest music composed by an American.” The piece is so complex that it has never been fully analyzed before, and this book is the first to explore and detail its methods on every page. Likewise, Ives wrote a book to accompany the sonata, titled Essays Before a Sonata, purporting to explain his aesthetic thinking, and no one has ever before seriously examined Ives’s aesthetic through-argument.
Michael Hicks and Christian Asplund
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037061
- eISBN:
- 9780252094163
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037061.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book, the first interpretive narrative of the life and work of Christian Wolff, traces the influences and sensibilities of a contemporary composer's atypical career path and restless ...
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This book, the first interpretive narrative of the life and work of Christian Wolff, traces the influences and sensibilities of a contemporary composer's atypical career path and restless imagination. Written in full cooperation with Wolff, including access to his papers, this volume is a much-needed introduction to a leading avant-garde composer still living, writing music, and speaking about his own work. Wolff has pioneered various compositional and notational idioms, including overtly political music, indeterminacy, graphic scores, and extreme virtuosity. The book covers Wolff's family life and formative years, his role as a founder of the New York School of composers, and the context of his life and work as part of the John Cage circle, as well as his departures from it. Critically assessing Wolff's place within the experimental musical field, this volume captures both his eloquence and reticence and provides insights into his broad interests and activities within music and beyond.Less
This book, the first interpretive narrative of the life and work of Christian Wolff, traces the influences and sensibilities of a contemporary composer's atypical career path and restless imagination. Written in full cooperation with Wolff, including access to his papers, this volume is a much-needed introduction to a leading avant-garde composer still living, writing music, and speaking about his own work. Wolff has pioneered various compositional and notational idioms, including overtly political music, indeterminacy, graphic scores, and extreme virtuosity. The book covers Wolff's family life and formative years, his role as a founder of the New York School of composers, and the context of his life and work as part of the John Cage circle, as well as his departures from it. Critically assessing Wolff's place within the experimental musical field, this volume captures both his eloquence and reticence and provides insights into his broad interests and activities within music and beyond.
Robert M. Marovich
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039102
- eISBN:
- 9780252097089
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039102.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
In this book, the author, a gospel announcer and music historian, shines a light on the humble origins of a majestic genre and its indispensable bond to the city where it found its voice: Chicago. ...
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In this book, the author, a gospel announcer and music historian, shines a light on the humble origins of a majestic genre and its indispensable bond to the city where it found its voice: Chicago. The book follows gospel music from early hymns and camp meetings through the Great Migration that brought it to Chicago. In time, the music grew into the sanctified soundtrack of the city's mainline black Protestant churches. In addition to drawing on print media and ephemera, the book utilizes hours of interviews with artists, ministers, and historians—as well as discussions with relatives and friends of past gospel pioneers—to recover many forgotten singers, musicians, songwriters, and industry leaders. The book also examines how a lack of economic opportunity bred an entrepreneurial spirit that fueled gospel music's rise to popularity and granted social mobility to a number of its practitioners. As the book shows, gospel music expressed a yearning for freedom from earthly pains, racial prejudice, and life's hardships. In the end, it proved to be a sound too mighty and too joyous for even church walls to hold.Less
In this book, the author, a gospel announcer and music historian, shines a light on the humble origins of a majestic genre and its indispensable bond to the city where it found its voice: Chicago. The book follows gospel music from early hymns and camp meetings through the Great Migration that brought it to Chicago. In time, the music grew into the sanctified soundtrack of the city's mainline black Protestant churches. In addition to drawing on print media and ephemera, the book utilizes hours of interviews with artists, ministers, and historians—as well as discussions with relatives and friends of past gospel pioneers—to recover many forgotten singers, musicians, songwriters, and industry leaders. The book also examines how a lack of economic opportunity bred an entrepreneurial spirit that fueled gospel music's rise to popularity and granted social mobility to a number of its practitioners. As the book shows, gospel music expressed a yearning for freedom from earthly pains, racial prejudice, and life's hardships. In the end, it proved to be a sound too mighty and too joyous for even church walls to hold.
Don M. Randel, Matthew R. Shaftel, and Susan Forscher Weiss (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040092
- eISBN:
- 9780252098307
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040092.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Balancing sophisticated melodies and irresistible rhythms with lyrics by turns cynical and passionate, Cole Porter sent American song soaring. Timeless works like I Get a Kick Out of You and At Long ...
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Balancing sophisticated melodies and irresistible rhythms with lyrics by turns cynical and passionate, Cole Porter sent American song soaring. Timeless works like I Get a Kick Out of You and At Long Last Love made him an essential figure in the soundtrack of a century and earned him adoration from generations of music lovers. This book offers essays on little-known aspects of the master tunesmith's life and art. Here are Porter's days as a Yale wunderkind and his nights as the exemplar of louche living; the triumph of Kiss Me Kate and shocking failure of You Never Know; and his spinning rhythmic genius and a turkey dinner into You're the Top while cultural and economic forces take Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye in unforeseen directions. Other entries explore notes on ongoing Porter scholarship and delve into his formative works, performing career, and long-overlooked contributions to media as varied as film and ballet.Less
Balancing sophisticated melodies and irresistible rhythms with lyrics by turns cynical and passionate, Cole Porter sent American song soaring. Timeless works like I Get a Kick Out of You and At Long Last Love made him an essential figure in the soundtrack of a century and earned him adoration from generations of music lovers. This book offers essays on little-known aspects of the master tunesmith's life and art. Here are Porter's days as a Yale wunderkind and his nights as the exemplar of louche living; the triumph of Kiss Me Kate and shocking failure of You Never Know; and his spinning rhythmic genius and a turkey dinner into You're the Top while cultural and economic forces take Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye in unforeseen directions. Other entries explore notes on ongoing Porter scholarship and delve into his formative works, performing career, and long-overlooked contributions to media as varied as film and ballet.
Christopher J. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037764
- eISBN:
- 9780252095047
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037764.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book examines the artworks, letters, sketchbooks, music collection, and biography of the painter William Sidney Mount (1807–1868) as a lens through which to see the multi-ethnic antebellum world ...
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This book examines the artworks, letters, sketchbooks, music collection, and biography of the painter William Sidney Mount (1807–1868) as a lens through which to see the multi-ethnic antebellum world that gave birth to blackface minstrelsy. As a young man living in the multiethnic working-class community of New York's Lower East Side, Mount took part in the black-white musical interchange his paintings depict. An avid musician and tune collector as well as an artist, he was among the first to depict vernacular fiddlers, banjo players, and dancers precisely and sympathetically. His close observations and meticulous renderings provide rich evidence of performance techniques and class-inflected paths of musical apprenticeship that connected white and black practitioners. Looking closely at the bodies and instruments Mount depicts in his paintings as well as other ephemera, the book traces the performance practices of African American and Anglo-European music-and-dance traditions while recovering the sounds of that world. This book uses Mount's depictions of black and white vernacular fiddlers, banjo players, and dancers to open up fresh perspectives on cross-ethnic cultural transference in Northern and urban contexts, showing how rivers, waterfronts, and other sites of interracial interaction shaped musical practices by transporting musical culture from the South to the North and back. The “Africanization” of Anglo-Celtic tunes created minstrelsy's musical “creole synthesis,” a body of melodic and rhythmic vocabularies, repertoires, tunes, and musical techniques that became the foundation of American popular music.Less
This book examines the artworks, letters, sketchbooks, music collection, and biography of the painter William Sidney Mount (1807–1868) as a lens through which to see the multi-ethnic antebellum world that gave birth to blackface minstrelsy. As a young man living in the multiethnic working-class community of New York's Lower East Side, Mount took part in the black-white musical interchange his paintings depict. An avid musician and tune collector as well as an artist, he was among the first to depict vernacular fiddlers, banjo players, and dancers precisely and sympathetically. His close observations and meticulous renderings provide rich evidence of performance techniques and class-inflected paths of musical apprenticeship that connected white and black practitioners. Looking closely at the bodies and instruments Mount depicts in his paintings as well as other ephemera, the book traces the performance practices of African American and Anglo-European music-and-dance traditions while recovering the sounds of that world. This book uses Mount's depictions of black and white vernacular fiddlers, banjo players, and dancers to open up fresh perspectives on cross-ethnic cultural transference in Northern and urban contexts, showing how rivers, waterfronts, and other sites of interracial interaction shaped musical practices by transporting musical culture from the South to the North and back. The “Africanization” of Anglo-Celtic tunes created minstrelsy's musical “creole synthesis,” a body of melodic and rhythmic vocabularies, repertoires, tunes, and musical techniques that became the foundation of American popular music.
Marian Wilson Kimber
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040719
- eISBN:
- 9780252099151
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040719.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Poetry recitation and music intersected in performances by American women between ca. 1850 and 1950. Through oral interpretation of literature, women aspired to a place in high culture, yet in taking ...
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Poetry recitation and music intersected in performances by American women between ca. 1850 and 1950. Through oral interpretation of literature, women aspired to a place in high culture, yet in taking to the platform, female elocutionists transgressed the previous boundaries between private and public domains. Nonetheless, programs, press reports, and archival materials from women’s clubs, elocution schools, women’s colleges, and the Chautauqua circuit demonstrate that musical and literary entertainments by professional and amateur female performers were widespread. Repertoire was selected to be socially acceptable for women and to distinguish elocutionists from morally-suspect actresses. Many of the performance practices typical of spoken word and accompaniment are unknown today because they fall outside our conception of the musical work. Although women’s increasing dominance of the field of elocution resulted in its subsequent denigration as a “feminine” profession, their spoken-word performance tradition influenced the history of music, and they became the primary composers of melodramatic compositions in twentieth-century America. The Elocutionists is thus a study of the intersection of gender and genre, demonstrating female elocutionists’ role in the creation of musically-accompanied recitation and women composers’ transformations of late nineteenth-century practices in creating works that would appeal specifically to women.Less
Poetry recitation and music intersected in performances by American women between ca. 1850 and 1950. Through oral interpretation of literature, women aspired to a place in high culture, yet in taking to the platform, female elocutionists transgressed the previous boundaries between private and public domains. Nonetheless, programs, press reports, and archival materials from women’s clubs, elocution schools, women’s colleges, and the Chautauqua circuit demonstrate that musical and literary entertainments by professional and amateur female performers were widespread. Repertoire was selected to be socially acceptable for women and to distinguish elocutionists from morally-suspect actresses. Many of the performance practices typical of spoken word and accompaniment are unknown today because they fall outside our conception of the musical work. Although women’s increasing dominance of the field of elocution resulted in its subsequent denigration as a “feminine” profession, their spoken-word performance tradition influenced the history of music, and they became the primary composers of melodramatic compositions in twentieth-century America. The Elocutionists is thus a study of the intersection of gender and genre, demonstrating female elocutionists’ role in the creation of musically-accompanied recitation and women composers’ transformations of late nineteenth-century practices in creating works that would appeal specifically to women.
Beth Abelson Macleod
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039348
- eISBN:
- 9780252097393
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039348.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
One of the foremost piano virtuosi of her time, Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler reliably filled Carnegie Hall. As a “new woman,” she simultaneously embraced family life and forged an independent career ...
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One of the foremost piano virtuosi of her time, Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler reliably filled Carnegie Hall. As a “new woman,” she simultaneously embraced family life and forged an independent career built around a repertoire of the German music she tirelessly championed. Yet after her death she faded into obscurity. This first book-length biography reintroduces a figure long, and unjustly, overlooked by music history. Trained in Vienna, Bloomfield-Zeisler significantly advanced the development of classical music in the United States. Her powerful and sensitive performances, both in piano recitals and with major orchestras, won her followers across the United States and Europe and often provided her American audiences with their first exposure to the pieces she played. The European-style salon in her Chicago home welcomed musicians, scientists, authors, artists, and politicians, while her marriage to attorney Sigmund Zeisler placed her at the center of a historical moment when he defended the anarchists in the 1886 Haymarket trial. In its re-creation of a musical and social milieu, the book paints a vivid portrait of a dynamic artistic life.Less
One of the foremost piano virtuosi of her time, Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler reliably filled Carnegie Hall. As a “new woman,” she simultaneously embraced family life and forged an independent career built around a repertoire of the German music she tirelessly championed. Yet after her death she faded into obscurity. This first book-length biography reintroduces a figure long, and unjustly, overlooked by music history. Trained in Vienna, Bloomfield-Zeisler significantly advanced the development of classical music in the United States. Her powerful and sensitive performances, both in piano recitals and with major orchestras, won her followers across the United States and Europe and often provided her American audiences with their first exposure to the pieces she played. The European-style salon in her Chicago home welcomed musicians, scientists, authors, artists, and politicians, while her marriage to attorney Sigmund Zeisler placed her at the center of a historical moment when he defended the anarchists in the 1886 Haymarket trial. In its re-creation of a musical and social milieu, the book paints a vivid portrait of a dynamic artistic life.
Katherine K. Preston
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780252043420
- eISBN:
- 9780252052309
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043420.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898), a pillar of the nineteenth-century New York musical community, was educated, lived, and worked in New York for his entire life. A skilled performer (piano, ...
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George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898), a pillar of the nineteenth-century New York musical community, was educated, lived, and worked in New York for his entire life. A skilled performer (piano, organ, violin, conducting), he was a decades-long member of the Philharmonic Societies of New York and Brooklyn, and conducted the Harmonic Society, Mendelssohn Union, numerous church choirs, and pickup choral and instrumental ensembles organized for special events. He taught music privately and in the public school system. Bristow’s professional activities were those of a highly skilled urban journeyman musician--typical of many who worked in America during the period. Bristow was a steadfast and outspoken supporter of American composers throughout his career. This started in 1854 with his participation--along with William Henry Fry and editor Richard Storrs Willis--in a months-long journalistic battle that centered on the Philharmonic Society’s lack of support for American composers, an activity that has dominated his historical reputation. But he was also a prolific composer: of five symphonies, two oratorios, an opera, many secular and sacred choral pieces, chamber music, songs, and works for piano and organ. As a quiet and self-effacing individual, Bristow was not a self-promoter. But many of his contemporaries regarded him as a skilled performer, a generous colleague, and the most important American classical composer during much of the mid-century period.Less
George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898), a pillar of the nineteenth-century New York musical community, was educated, lived, and worked in New York for his entire life. A skilled performer (piano, organ, violin, conducting), he was a decades-long member of the Philharmonic Societies of New York and Brooklyn, and conducted the Harmonic Society, Mendelssohn Union, numerous church choirs, and pickup choral and instrumental ensembles organized for special events. He taught music privately and in the public school system. Bristow’s professional activities were those of a highly skilled urban journeyman musician--typical of many who worked in America during the period. Bristow was a steadfast and outspoken supporter of American composers throughout his career. This started in 1854 with his participation--along with William Henry Fry and editor Richard Storrs Willis--in a months-long journalistic battle that centered on the Philharmonic Society’s lack of support for American composers, an activity that has dominated his historical reputation. But he was also a prolific composer: of five symphonies, two oratorios, an opera, many secular and sacred choral pieces, chamber music, songs, and works for piano and organ. As a quiet and self-effacing individual, Bristow was not a self-promoter. But many of his contemporaries regarded him as a skilled performer, a generous colleague, and the most important American classical composer during much of the mid-century period.
James M. Doering
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037412
- eISBN:
- 9780252094590
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037412.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This biography charts the career and legacy of the pioneering American music manager Arthur Judson (1881–1975), who rose to prominence in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth ...
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This biography charts the career and legacy of the pioneering American music manager Arthur Judson (1881–1975), who rose to prominence in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. A violinist by training, Judson became manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1915 under the iconic conductor Leopold Stokowski. Within a few years, Judson took on management of the New York Philharmonic as well as several individual artists and most of the important conductors working in America. In addition to his colorful career behind the scenes at two preeminent American orchestras, Judson founded a nationwide network of local managers and later became involved in the relatively unexplored medium of radio, working first with WEAF in New York City and then forming his own national radio network in 1927. Providing valuable insight into the workings of these orchestras and the formative years of arts management, this book is a portrait of one of the most powerful managers in American musical history.Less
This biography charts the career and legacy of the pioneering American music manager Arthur Judson (1881–1975), who rose to prominence in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. A violinist by training, Judson became manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1915 under the iconic conductor Leopold Stokowski. Within a few years, Judson took on management of the New York Philharmonic as well as several individual artists and most of the important conductors working in America. In addition to his colorful career behind the scenes at two preeminent American orchestras, Judson founded a nationwide network of local managers and later became involved in the relatively unexplored medium of radio, working first with WEAF in New York City and then forming his own national radio network in 1927. Providing valuable insight into the workings of these orchestras and the formative years of arts management, this book is a portrait of one of the most powerful managers in American musical history.
Jean E. Snyder
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039942
- eISBN:
- 9780252098109
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039942.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Harry T. Burleigh (1866–1949) played a leading role in American music, and African American music in particular, in the twentieth century. Celebrated for his arrangements of spirituals, Burleigh was ...
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Harry T. Burleigh (1866–1949) played a leading role in American music, and African American music in particular, in the twentieth century. Celebrated for his arrangements of spirituals, Burleigh was also the first African American composer to create a significant body of art song. An international roster of opera and recital singers performed his works and praised them as among the best of their time. This book traces Burleigh's life from his Pennsylvania childhood through his fifty-year tenure as soloist at St. George's Episcopal Church in Manhattan. As a composer, Burleigh's pioneering work preserved and transformed the African American spiritual; as a music editor, he facilitated the work of other black composers; as a role model, vocal coach, and mentor, he profoundly influenced American song; and in private life he was friends with Antonín Dvořák, Marian Anderson, Will Marion Cook, and other American luminaries. The book provides rich historical, social, and political contexts that explore Burleigh's professional and personal life within an era complicated by changes in race relations, class expectations, and musical tastes.Less
Harry T. Burleigh (1866–1949) played a leading role in American music, and African American music in particular, in the twentieth century. Celebrated for his arrangements of spirituals, Burleigh was also the first African American composer to create a significant body of art song. An international roster of opera and recital singers performed his works and praised them as among the best of their time. This book traces Burleigh's life from his Pennsylvania childhood through his fifty-year tenure as soloist at St. George's Episcopal Church in Manhattan. As a composer, Burleigh's pioneering work preserved and transformed the African American spiritual; as a music editor, he facilitated the work of other black composers; as a role model, vocal coach, and mentor, he profoundly influenced American song; and in private life he was friends with Antonín Dvořák, Marian Anderson, Will Marion Cook, and other American luminaries. The book provides rich historical, social, and political contexts that explore Burleigh's professional and personal life within an era complicated by changes in race relations, class expectations, and musical tastes.
James Revell Carr
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038600
- eISBN:
- 9780252096525
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038600.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book explores the performance, reception, transmission, and adaptation of Hawaiian music on board ships and in the islands, revealing the ways both maritime commerce and imperial confrontation ...
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This book explores the performance, reception, transmission, and adaptation of Hawaiian music on board ships and in the islands, revealing the ways both maritime commerce and imperial confrontation facilitated the circulation of popular music in the nineteenth century. The book shows how Hawaiians initially used music and dance to ease tensions with, and spread information about, potentially dangerous foreigners, and then traces the circulation of Hawaiian song and dance worldwide as Hawaiians served aboard American and European ships. Drawing on journals and ships' logs, the book highlights the profound contrasts between Hawaiians' treatment by fellow sailors who appreciated their seamanship and music, versus antagonistic American missionaries determined to keep Hawaiians on local sugar plantations, and looks at how Hawaiians achieved their own ends by capitalizing on Americans' conflicting expectations and fraught discourse around hula and other musical practices. It also examines American minstrelsy in Hawaii, including professional touring minstrel troupes from the mainland, amateur troupes consisting of crew members of visiting ships, and local indigenous troupes of Hawaiian minstrels. In the process he illuminates how a merging of indigenous and foreign elements became the new sound of native Hawaiian culture at the turn of the twentieth century—and made loping rhythms, falsetto yodels, and driving ukuleles indelible parts of American popular music.Less
This book explores the performance, reception, transmission, and adaptation of Hawaiian music on board ships and in the islands, revealing the ways both maritime commerce and imperial confrontation facilitated the circulation of popular music in the nineteenth century. The book shows how Hawaiians initially used music and dance to ease tensions with, and spread information about, potentially dangerous foreigners, and then traces the circulation of Hawaiian song and dance worldwide as Hawaiians served aboard American and European ships. Drawing on journals and ships' logs, the book highlights the profound contrasts between Hawaiians' treatment by fellow sailors who appreciated their seamanship and music, versus antagonistic American missionaries determined to keep Hawaiians on local sugar plantations, and looks at how Hawaiians achieved their own ends by capitalizing on Americans' conflicting expectations and fraught discourse around hula and other musical practices. It also examines American minstrelsy in Hawaii, including professional touring minstrel troupes from the mainland, amateur troupes consisting of crew members of visiting ships, and local indigenous troupes of Hawaiian minstrels. In the process he illuminates how a merging of indigenous and foreign elements became the new sound of native Hawaiian culture at the turn of the twentieth century—and made loping rhythms, falsetto yodels, and driving ukuleles indelible parts of American popular music.
John Caps
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036736
- eISBN:
- 9780252093845
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036736.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Through film composer Henry Mancini, mere background music in movies became part of pop culture—an expression of sophistication and wit with a modern sense of cool and a lasting lyricism that has not ...
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Through film composer Henry Mancini, mere background music in movies became part of pop culture—an expression of sophistication and wit with a modern sense of cool and a lasting lyricism that has not dated. This, the first comprehensive study of Mancini's music, describes how the composer served as a bridge between the Big Band period of World War II and the impatient eclecticism of the Baby Boomer generation, between the grand formal orchestral film scores of the past and a modern American minimalist approach. Mancini's sound seemed to capture the bright, confident, welcoming voice of the middle class's new efficient life: interested in pop songs and jazz, in movie and television, in outreach politics but also conventional stay-at-home comforts. As the book shows, Mancini easily combined it all in his music. He wielded influence in Hollywood and around the world with his iconic scores: dynamic jazz for the noirish detective TV show Peter Gunn, the sly theme from The Pink Panther, and his wistful folk song Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Through insightful close readings of key films, the book traces Mancini's collaborations with important directors and shows how he homed in on specific dramatic or comic aspects of the film to create musical effects through clever instrumentation, eloquent musical gestures, and meaningful resonances and continuities in his scores.Less
Through film composer Henry Mancini, mere background music in movies became part of pop culture—an expression of sophistication and wit with a modern sense of cool and a lasting lyricism that has not dated. This, the first comprehensive study of Mancini's music, describes how the composer served as a bridge between the Big Band period of World War II and the impatient eclecticism of the Baby Boomer generation, between the grand formal orchestral film scores of the past and a modern American minimalist approach. Mancini's sound seemed to capture the bright, confident, welcoming voice of the middle class's new efficient life: interested in pop songs and jazz, in movie and television, in outreach politics but also conventional stay-at-home comforts. As the book shows, Mancini easily combined it all in his music. He wielded influence in Hollywood and around the world with his iconic scores: dynamic jazz for the noirish detective TV show Peter Gunn, the sly theme from The Pink Panther, and his wistful folk song Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Through insightful close readings of key films, the book traces Mancini's collaborations with important directors and shows how he homed in on specific dramatic or comic aspects of the film to create musical effects through clever instrumentation, eloquent musical gestures, and meaningful resonances and continuities in his scores.
Stephanie Vander Wel
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043086
- eISBN:
- 9780252051944
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Well before the success of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, female artists were integral to the commercial expansion and aural reception of country music. Women in early country music took on and ...
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Well before the success of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, female artists were integral to the commercial expansion and aural reception of country music. Women in early country music took on and redefined the theatrical and musical roles of the hillbilly maiden, the unruly Okie, the singing cowgirl, and the honky-tonk angel in live performance, on radio, in film, and in the recording studio. This book accounts for the vibrant presence of female country artists through an interdisciplinary focus on performance and vocal expression in relation to the cultural currents of the 1930s and 1950s. Across a variety of media, women’s country music engendered new ways of making sense of public and private spaces (such as the home, the dance hall, and the honky-tonk) that were integral to the real and imagined lives of working-class women striving for upward social mobility and/or resisting the rigidity of middle-class codes of behavior. Connecting the female singing voice to the theatrics of the popular stage and to the musical practices of specific country styles, this study shows how women in country music wielded a range of performative devices in order to work within and against social and commercial expectations.Less
Well before the success of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, female artists were integral to the commercial expansion and aural reception of country music. Women in early country music took on and redefined the theatrical and musical roles of the hillbilly maiden, the unruly Okie, the singing cowgirl, and the honky-tonk angel in live performance, on radio, in film, and in the recording studio. This book accounts for the vibrant presence of female country artists through an interdisciplinary focus on performance and vocal expression in relation to the cultural currents of the 1930s and 1950s. Across a variety of media, women’s country music engendered new ways of making sense of public and private spaces (such as the home, the dance hall, and the honky-tonk) that were integral to the real and imagined lives of working-class women striving for upward social mobility and/or resisting the rigidity of middle-class codes of behavior. Connecting the female singing voice to the theatrics of the popular stage and to the musical practices of specific country styles, this study shows how women in country music wielded a range of performative devices in order to work within and against social and commercial expectations.
Kevin Mungons and Douglas Yeo
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780252043840
- eISBN:
- 9780252052743
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043840.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Homer Rodeheaver rose to national prominence in the early 20th century as the trombone-playing songleader for Billy Sunday. For twenty years they captured attention with city-wide revival meetings, a ...
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Homer Rodeheaver rose to national prominence in the early 20th century as the trombone-playing songleader for Billy Sunday. For twenty years they captured attention with city-wide revival meetings, a mix of sincere devotion, popular religion, and modern marketing methods. In an era when music styles were emerging as marketable genres, Rodeheaver created a brand of gospel music that cast an enormous influence on popular music. Borrowing from evangelical hymns, African American spirituals, and popular music, he built a publishing empire in Chicago, selling hymnals as a way to encourage community singing. When tabernacle revivalism declined after World War I, Rodeheaver shifted to other ventures, bolstered by his personal popularity in a growing celebrity culture. He started the first gospel record label in 1920, then shifted to radio, where his community sing programs ran on three national networks. Near the end of his life, he strongly influenced Billy Graham and Cliff Barrows, the next generation of evangelical revivalists. The authors explore the birth of the commercial Christian music industry and its roots in congregational singing—its early rise as a communal, populist form that would later divide into racial and regional distinctions known as southern gospel and black gospel. As the first major biography of Homer Rodeheaver, the book explores the impact of racial segregation, the influence of technology, and the consequences of commercial Christian music.Less
Homer Rodeheaver rose to national prominence in the early 20th century as the trombone-playing songleader for Billy Sunday. For twenty years they captured attention with city-wide revival meetings, a mix of sincere devotion, popular religion, and modern marketing methods. In an era when music styles were emerging as marketable genres, Rodeheaver created a brand of gospel music that cast an enormous influence on popular music. Borrowing from evangelical hymns, African American spirituals, and popular music, he built a publishing empire in Chicago, selling hymnals as a way to encourage community singing. When tabernacle revivalism declined after World War I, Rodeheaver shifted to other ventures, bolstered by his personal popularity in a growing celebrity culture. He started the first gospel record label in 1920, then shifted to radio, where his community sing programs ran on three national networks. Near the end of his life, he strongly influenced Billy Graham and Cliff Barrows, the next generation of evangelical revivalists. The authors explore the birth of the commercial Christian music industry and its roots in congregational singing—its early rise as a communal, populist form that would later divide into racial and regional distinctions known as southern gospel and black gospel. As the first major biography of Homer Rodeheaver, the book explores the impact of racial segregation, the influence of technology, and the consequences of commercial Christian music.