Music: American Music

Much more than a revision of Ewen's Popular American Composers (1962) and its supplement (CH, Jan '73), American Songwriters is revamped and meatier, containing 146 biographies of composers and lyricists of the American popular song. Lyricists were not included in the earlier books. Some new names have been added and coverage has been considerably expanded, with many songwriters assisting in the compilation of the material. Individuals were chosen from the past two centuries (e.g., John Hill Hewitt, Alan Jay Lerner, Bruce Springsteen) who have shown ``sustained creative achievement.'' Performance histories of individual songs is new, and there is a song index for the 5,600 compositions mentioned. Lyricists working with various composers are treated separately; those identified with one composer are treated with that composer. Cross-references are included. There are occasional errors-e.g., a wrong page number is given for a song in the index, and some material is not totally up-to-date owing to Ewen's death in 1985. But this dictionary is extremely interesting, thoughtful, and thorough, and is highly recommended for academic and public libraries.

Presents in-depth coverage of 300 United States composers (by birth or citizenship) dating from colonial times to young contemporary composers (in 1976) whose achievements have received national attention. Each biography concludes with a detailed list of principal works followed by a select bibliography.

This reference for students and music aficionados covers over 650 American classical composers from the eighteenth century to the present. Each entry contains basic biographical information and a critical analysis of the composer's key works and ideas along with worklists and bibliographic information. Whenever possible, the entries have been checked by the composers themselves. The volume is illustrated with over 200 b&w photographs. A special section found in the appendix traces the connections between important American composers and their students.

For fans of musicals, singing, Hollywood history, and the lives of stars, no other work equals this new three-volume reference to the on- and off-camera careers of more than 100 performers who made major contributions to the American screen musical. From June Allyson to Mae West,Hollwood Songstersprovides a detailed narrative-ranging from 2,000 to 5000 words each-of the lives and careers of stars forever etched in our memories. Each entry includes a filmography, discography (of both albums and CDs), Broadway appearances, radio work, television appearances and series, and a full-page photo of the subject. This is the ideal reference work for everyone one from the mildly curious to the devoted fan.

Surveys the documents of American music (printed and manuscript music, programs and catalogs, institutional and personal papers, photographs, sound recordings, etc.) from the 1600s through 1941 located in 3,000 libraries and other repositories in the United States and abroad. Geographically organized with an index of personal and institutional names.

The Cambridge History of American Music celebrates the richness of America's musical life. It is the first study of music in the United States to be written by a team of scholars. American music is an intricate tapestry of many cultures, and the History reveals this wide array of influences from Native, European, African, Asian, and other sources. The History begins with a survey of the music of Native Americans and then explores the social, historical, and cultural events of musical life in the period until 1900. Other contributors examine the growth and influence of popular musics, including film and stage music, jazz, rock, and immigrant, folk, and regional musics. The volume also includes valuable chapters on twentieth-century art music, including the experimental, serial, and tonal traditions.

Boyd provides a personal and insightful study of the Southeast Alabama man who, during the Great Depression, appropriated the concept of the popular Shape-note tunebook into a new tunebook for African Americans that began what is now considered an important American folk music tradition. Boyd, a journalist and folklorist, uses research he began in the 1960s to create a portrait of Jackson and his music. The book, which was funded partly by the Alabama State Council for the Arts, includes a CD with 27 historical recordings.

This authoritative reference work investigates the roots of the Sacred Harp, the central collection of the deeply influential and long-lived southern tradition of shape-note singing. Where other studies of the Sacred Harp have focused on the sociology of present-day singers and their activities, David Warren Steel and Richard H. Hulan concentrate on the regional culture that produced the Sacred Harp in the nineteenth century and delve deeply into history of its authors and composers. They trace the sources of every tune and text in the Sacred Harp, from the work of B. F. White, E. J. King, and their west Georgia contemporaries who helped compile the original collection in 1844 to the contributions by various composers to the 1936 to 1991 editions. The Makers of the Sacred Harp also includes analyses of the textual influences on the music--including metrical psalmody, English evangelical poets, American frontier preachers, camp meeting hymnody, and revival choruses--and essays placing the Sacred Harp as a product of the antebellum period with roots in religious revivalism. Drawing on census reports, local histories, family Bibles and other records, rich oral interviews with descendants, and Sacred Harp Publishing Company records, this volume reveals new details and insights about the history of this enduring American musical tradition.

The Sacred Harp , a tunebook that first appeared in 1844, has stood as a model of early American musical culture for most of this century. Tunebooks such as this, printed in shape notes for public singing and singing schools, followed the New England tradition of singing hymns and Psalms from printed music. Nineteeth-century Americans were inundated by such books, but only the popularity of The Sacred Harp has endured throughout the twentieth century. With this tunebook as his focus, John Bealle surveys definitive moments in American musical history, from the lively singing schools of the New England Puritans to the dramatic theological crises that split New England Congregationalism, from the rise of the genteel urban mainstream in frontier Cincinnati to the bold "New South" movement that sought to transform the southern economy, from the nostalgic culture-writing era of the Great Depression to the post-World War II folksong revival. Although Bealle finds that much has changed in the last century, the custodians of the tradition of Sacred Harp singing have kept it alive and accessible in an increasingly diverse cultural marketplace. Public Worship, Private Faith is a thorough and readable analysis of the historical, social, musical, theological, and textual factors that have contributed to the endurance of Sacred Harp singing.

A compelling account of contemporary Sacred Harp singing, Traveling Home describes how this vibrant musical tradition brings together Americans of widely divergent religious and political beliefs. Named after the most popular of the nineteenth-century shape-note tunebooks--which employed an innovative notation system to teach singers to read music--Sacred Harp singing has been part of rural Southern life for more than 150 years. In the wake of the folk revival of the 1950s and '60s, this participatory musical tradition attracted new singers from all over America. All-day "singings" from The Sacred Harp now take place across the country, creating a diverse and far-flung musical community. Meanwhile, the advent of internet discussion boards and increasing circulation of singer-produced recordings have changed the nature of traditional transmission and sharpened debates about Sacred Harp as an "authentic" form of southern musical expression. Blending historical scholarship with wide-ranging fieldwork, Kiri Miller presents an engagingly written study of a musical movement that some have christened "a quintessential expression of American democracy."

The Sacred Harp Musical Heritage Association (SHMHA) sponsors this web site. SHMHA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose purpose is the preservation and perpetuation of Sacred Harp singing and its traditions. SHMHA’s interests include Sacred Harp music, history, traditional singing practices, singing schools, singings, and singing conventions.

"The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives."