Examines America's early reception to Beethoven, the use of his work and image in American music, movies, stage works, and other forms of popular culture, and related topics.
An illustrated history of America's musical heritage ranges from the earliest examples of Native American traditional song to the innovative sound of contemporary rock and jazz.
Examines America's early reception to Beethoven, the use of his work and image in American music, movies, stage works, and other forms of popular culture, and related topics.
John Sullivan Dwight (1813-1893), the first American critic of art music and the founder of Dwight's Journal of Music, set a new standard for musical criticism in the 1840s by fostering the American reception of Ludwig van Beethoven's then unfamiliar symphonies. Drawing upon extraordinary and painstaking research, Ora Frishberg Saloman details the progressive and influential musical vision of the young Dwight, offering a dramatic and long overdue corrective to the conservative image of the critic that has prevailed for most of this century.
In this unique study of the myth-making process across two centuries, Comini examines the contradictory imagery of Beethoven in contemporary verbal accounts, and in some 200 paintings, prints, sculptures, and monuments.
An award-winning scholar and leading authority on American symphonic culture argues that classical music in the United States is peculiarly performance-driven, and he traces a musical trajectory rising to its peak at the close of the 19th century and receding after World War I.
This book features a panorama of the lives of selected personalities, whose roots had origin in the Czech lands and who, in the US, reached extraordinary success and who, with their activities, substantially influenced the growth and development of their new homeland. It is a saga of plain, as well as powerful, people whose influence and importance often exceeded the borders of the US. A great portion of included individuals may be unknown to readers since it concerns persons whose Czech origin was usually not known. The book covers the total period from the times of the discovery of New World to the end of the twentieth century. During the selection, little concern was given to nationalistic or ethnographic criteria, the only prerequisite was that the respected individuals were either born on the territory of the Czech lands or were descendants of emigrants from the Czech lands. The image on the front cover is a portrait of Augustine Herman, Lord of Bohemia Manor, the first documented Czech immigrant in the United States. The portrait comes from his famous Map of Maryland and Virginia, dated 1670. The colorful story of his life would be unbelievable if made into a movie. Pioneer, merchant, explorer, surveyor, map maker, patriot, rebel, diplomat, and finally Lord! Read more about him in the book.