Table of Contents

Part One: The First Three Centuries; 1. The First Song: Native American Music; 2. European Inroads: Early Christian Music Making; 3. From Ritual to Art: The Flowering of Sacred Music; 4. 'Old, Simple Ditties': Colonial Song, Dance, and Home Music Making; 5. Performing 'By Particular Desire': Colonial Military, Concert, and Theatre Music; 6. Maintaining Oral Traditions: African Music in Early America; 7. Correcting 'the Harshness of Our Singing': New England Psalmody Reformed; Part Two: The Nineteenth Century; 8. Edification and Economics: The Career of Lowell Mason; 9. Singing Praises: Southern and Frontier Devotional Music; 10. 'Be It Ever So Humble': Theatre and Opera, 1800-1860; 11. Blacks, Whites, and the Minstrel Stage; 12. Home Music Making and the Publishing Industry; 13. From Ramparts to Romance: Parlour Songs, 1800-1845; 14. Of Yankee Doodle and Ophicleides: Bands and Orchestras, 1800 to the 1870s; 15. From Church to Concert Hall: The Rise of Classical Music; 16. From Log House to Opera House: Anthony Philip Heinrich and William Henry Fry; 17. A New Orleans Original: Gottschalk of Louisiana; 18. Two Classic Bostonians: George W. Chadwick and Amy Beach; 19. Edward MacDowell and Musical Nationalism; 20. 'Travel in the Winds': Native American Music from 1820; 21. 'Make a Noise!': Slave Songs and Other Black Music to the 1880s; 22. Songs of the Later Nineteenth Century; 23. Stars, Stripes, and Cylinders: Sousa, the Band, and the Phonograph; 24. 'After the Ball': The Rise of Tin Pan Alley; Part Three: The Twentieth Century; 25. 'To Stretch Our Ears': The Music of Charles Ives; 26. 'Come On and Hear': The Early Twentieth Century; 27. The Jazz Age Dawns: Blues, Jazz and a Rhapsody; 28. 'The Birthright of All of Us': Classical Music, the Mass Media, and the Depression; 29. 'All That is Native and Fine': American Folk Song and Its Collectors; 30. From New Orleans to Chicago: Jazz Goes National; 31. 'Crescendo in Blue': Ellington, Basie, and the Swing Band; 32. The Golden Age of the American Musical; 33. Classical Music in the Postwar Years; 34. 'Rock Around the Clock': The Rise of Rock and Roll; 35. Songs of Loneliness and Praise: Postwar Vernacular Trends; 36. Jazz, Broadway, and Musical Permanence; 37. Melting Pot or Pluralism? Popular Music and Ethnicity; 38. From Accessibility to Transcendence: The Beatles, Rock, and Popular Music; 39. Trouble Girls, Minimalists, and The Gap: The 1960s to the 1980s; 40. Black Music and American Identity

About the Author

Richard Crawford, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and past president of the American Musicological Society, has published ten books on American music. He lives in Michigan.

Reviews

When It Comes to American music, America's Musical Life is "the best one-volume history yet on the subject for musicians and enthusiasts, professional or amateur" (Kirkus Reviews). "Well-researched and sensitively constructed" (Library Journal) and "a book that welcomes the reader, who is happy to keep returning for more" (Music Library Association Notes), America's Musical Life tells the story of American music making in rich detail. In chronicling American music's bountiful heritage, this "superb book presents the whole sweep of U.S. cultivated and traditional music--from 16th-century Native American music through late 20th-century hip-hop culture." A substantial cultural achievement, "this definitive history of music in the U.S. is sure to delight music aficionados and history buffs alike, and is a must for anyone interested in what music has meant to America and what America has meant to music"