The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity

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.

Author: Raymond Knapp
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 04/16/2006
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.19lbs
Size: 9.26h x 6.26w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780691126135

About the Author
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.