The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity

The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity

Author: Raymond Knapp

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-06-21

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 9781400832682

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The American musical has long provided an important vehicle through which writers, performers, and audiences reimagine who they are and how they might best interact with the world around them. Musicals are especially good at this because they provide not only an opportunity for us to enact dramatic versions of alternative identities, but also the material for performing such alternatives in the real world, through songs and the characters and attitudes those songs project. This book addresses a variety of specific themes in musicals that serve this general function: fairy tale and fantasy, idealism and inspiration, gender and sexuality, and relationships, among others. It also considers three overlapping genres that are central, in quite different ways, to the projection of personal identity: operetta, movie musicals, and operatic musicals. Among the musicals discussed are Camelot, Candide; Chicago; Company; Evita; Gypsy; Into the Woods; Kiss Me, Kate; A Little Night Music; Man of La Mancha; Meet Me in St. Louis; The Merry Widow; Moulin Rouge; My Fair Lady; Passion; The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Singin' in the Rain; Stormy Weather; Sweeney Todd; and The Wizard of Oz. Complementing the author's earlier work, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity, this book completes a two-volume thematic history of the genre, designed for general audiences and specialists alike.


Book Synopsis The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity by : Raymond Knapp

Download or read book The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity written by Raymond Knapp and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-21 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American musical has long provided an important vehicle through which writers, performers, and audiences reimagine who they are and how they might best interact with the world around them. Musicals are especially good at this because they provide not only an opportunity for us to enact dramatic versions of alternative identities, but also the material for performing such alternatives in the real world, through songs and the characters and attitudes those songs project. This book addresses a variety of specific themes in musicals that serve this general function: fairy tale and fantasy, idealism and inspiration, gender and sexuality, and relationships, among others. It also considers three overlapping genres that are central, in quite different ways, to the projection of personal identity: operetta, movie musicals, and operatic musicals. Among the musicals discussed are Camelot, Candide; Chicago; Company; Evita; Gypsy; Into the Woods; Kiss Me, Kate; A Little Night Music; Man of La Mancha; Meet Me in St. Louis; The Merry Widow; Moulin Rouge; My Fair Lady; Passion; The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Singin' in the Rain; Stormy Weather; Sweeney Todd; and The Wizard of Oz. Complementing the author's earlier work, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity, this book completes a two-volume thematic history of the genre, designed for general audiences and specialists alike.


The American musical and the performance of personal identity

The American musical and the performance of personal identity

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13:

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Download or read book The American musical and the performance of personal identity written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity

The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity

Author: Raymond Knapp

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0691186200

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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.


Book Synopsis The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity by : Raymond Knapp

Download or read book The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity written by Raymond Knapp and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.


The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical

The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical

Author: Raymond Knapp

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2011-11-04

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 0195385942

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The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical offers new and cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling issues and topics in the growing, interdisciplinary field of musical-theater and film-musical studies. Taking the form of a "keywords" book, it introduces readers to the concepts and terms that define the history of the musical as a genre and that offer ways to reflect on the specific creative choices that shape musicals and their performance on stage and screen. The handbook offers a cross-section of essays written by leading experts in the field, organized within broad conceptual groups, which together capture the breadth, direction, and tone of musicals studies today.Each essay traces the genealogy of the term or issue it addresses, including related issues and controversies, positions and problematizes those issues within larger bodies of scholarship, and provides specific examples drawn from shows and films. Essays both re-examine traditional topics and introduce underexplored areas. Reflecting the concerns of scholars and students alike, the authors emphasize critical and accessible perspectives, and supplement theory with concrete examples that may be accessed through links to the handbook's website.Taking into account issues of composition, performance, and reception, the book's contributors bring a wide range of practical and theoretical perspectives to bear on their considerations of one of America's most lively, enduring artistic traditions. The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical will engage all readers interested in the form, from students to scholars to fans and aficionados, as it analyses the complex relationships among the creators, performers, and audiences who sustain the genre.


Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical by : Raymond Knapp

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical written by Raymond Knapp and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-11-04 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical offers new and cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling issues and topics in the growing, interdisciplinary field of musical-theater and film-musical studies. Taking the form of a "keywords" book, it introduces readers to the concepts and terms that define the history of the musical as a genre and that offer ways to reflect on the specific creative choices that shape musicals and their performance on stage and screen. The handbook offers a cross-section of essays written by leading experts in the field, organized within broad conceptual groups, which together capture the breadth, direction, and tone of musicals studies today.Each essay traces the genealogy of the term or issue it addresses, including related issues and controversies, positions and problematizes those issues within larger bodies of scholarship, and provides specific examples drawn from shows and films. Essays both re-examine traditional topics and introduce underexplored areas. Reflecting the concerns of scholars and students alike, the authors emphasize critical and accessible perspectives, and supplement theory with concrete examples that may be accessed through links to the handbook's website.Taking into account issues of composition, performance, and reception, the book's contributors bring a wide range of practical and theoretical perspectives to bear on their considerations of one of America's most lively, enduring artistic traditions. The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical will engage all readers interested in the form, from students to scholars to fans and aficionados, as it analyses the complex relationships among the creators, performers, and audiences who sustain the genre.


Identities and Audiences in the Musical

Identities and Audiences in the Musical

Author: Raymond Knapp

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-04

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0190877812

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Issues of identity have always been central to the American musical in all its guises. Who appears in musicals, who or what they are meant to represent, and how, over time, those representations have been understood and interpreted, provide the very basis for our engagement with the genre. In this third volume of the reissued Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, chapters focus on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, regional vs. national identity, and the cultural and class significance of the musical itself. As important as the question of who appears in musicals are the questions of who watches and listens to them, and of how specific cultures of reception attend differently to the musical. Chapters thus address cultural codes inherent to the genre, in particular those found in traditional school theater programs.


Book Synopsis Identities and Audiences in the Musical by : Raymond Knapp

Download or read book Identities and Audiences in the Musical written by Raymond Knapp and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Issues of identity have always been central to the American musical in all its guises. Who appears in musicals, who or what they are meant to represent, and how, over time, those representations have been understood and interpreted, provide the very basis for our engagement with the genre. In this third volume of the reissued Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, chapters focus on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, regional vs. national identity, and the cultural and class significance of the musical itself. As important as the question of who appears in musicals are the questions of who watches and listens to them, and of how specific cultures of reception attend differently to the musical. Chapters thus address cultural codes inherent to the genre, in particular those found in traditional school theater programs.


Learning, Teaching, and Musical Identity

Learning, Teaching, and Musical Identity

Author: Lucy Green

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2011-03-30

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0253222931

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Musical identity raises complex, multifarious, and fascinating questions. Discussions in this new study consider how individuals construct their musical identities in relation to their experiences of formal and informal music teaching and learning. Each chapter features a different case study situated in a specific national or local socio-musical context, spanning 20 regions across the world. Subjects range from Ghanaian or Balinese villagers, festival-goers in Lapland, and children in a South African township to North American and British students, adults and children in a Cretan brass band, and Gujerati barbers in the Indian diaspora.


Book Synopsis Learning, Teaching, and Musical Identity by : Lucy Green

Download or read book Learning, Teaching, and Musical Identity written by Lucy Green and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Musical identity raises complex, multifarious, and fascinating questions. Discussions in this new study consider how individuals construct their musical identities in relation to their experiences of formal and informal music teaching and learning. Each chapter features a different case study situated in a specific national or local socio-musical context, spanning 20 regions across the world. Subjects range from Ghanaian or Balinese villagers, festival-goers in Lapland, and children in a South African township to North American and British students, adults and children in a Cretan brass band, and Gujerati barbers in the Indian diaspora.


Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical

Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical

Author: Robert L. McLaughlin

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2016-08-11

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1496808568

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From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of American musical theater and expanded the possibilities of what musical plays can do, how they work, and what they mean. Sondheim's brilliant array of work, including such musicals as Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods, has established him as the preeminent composer/lyricist of his, if not all, time. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical places Sondheim's work in two contexts: the exhaustion of the musical play and the postmodernism that, by the 1960s, deeply influenced all the American arts. Sondheim's musicals are central to the transition from the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical that had dominated Broadway stages for twenty years to a new postmodern musical. This new style reclaimed many of the self-aware, performative techniques of the 1930s musical comedy to develop its themes of the breakdown of narrative knowledge and the fragmentation of identity. In his most recent work, Sondheim, who was famously mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, stretches toward a twenty-first-century musical that seeks to break out of the self-referring web of language. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical offers close readings of all of Sondheim's musicals and finds in them critiques of the operation of power, questioning of conventional systems of knowledge, and explorations of contemporary identity.


Book Synopsis Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical by : Robert L. McLaughlin

Download or read book Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical written by Robert L. McLaughlin and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2016-08-11 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of American musical theater and expanded the possibilities of what musical plays can do, how they work, and what they mean. Sondheim's brilliant array of work, including such musicals as Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods, has established him as the preeminent composer/lyricist of his, if not all, time. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical places Sondheim's work in two contexts: the exhaustion of the musical play and the postmodernism that, by the 1960s, deeply influenced all the American arts. Sondheim's musicals are central to the transition from the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical that had dominated Broadway stages for twenty years to a new postmodern musical. This new style reclaimed many of the self-aware, performative techniques of the 1930s musical comedy to develop its themes of the breakdown of narrative knowledge and the fragmentation of identity. In his most recent work, Sondheim, who was famously mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, stretches toward a twenty-first-century musical that seeks to break out of the self-referring web of language. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical offers close readings of all of Sondheim's musicals and finds in them critiques of the operation of power, questioning of conventional systems of knowledge, and explorations of contemporary identity.


Rethinking American Music

Rethinking American Music

Author: Tara Browner

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2019-03-16

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 0252051157

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In Rethinking American Music, Tara Browner and Thomas L. Riis curate essays that offer an eclectic survey of current music scholarship. Ranging from Tin Pan Alley to Thelonious Monk to hip hop, the contributors go beyond repertory and biography to explore four critical yet overlooked areas: the impact of performance; patronage's role in creating music and finding a place to play it; personal identity; and the ways cultural and ethnographic circumstances determine the music that emerges from the creative process. Many of the articles also look at how a piece of music becomes initially popular and then exerts a lasting influence in the larger global culture. The result is an insightful state-of-the-field examination that doubles as an engaging short course on our complex, multifaceted musical heritage. Contributors: Karen Ahlquist, Amy C. Beal, Mark Clagu,. Esther R. Crookshank, Todd Decker, Jennifer DeLapp-Birkett, Joshua S. Duchan, Mark Katz, Jeffrey Magee, Sterling E. Murray, Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., David Warren Steel, Jeffrey Taylor, and Mark Tucker


Book Synopsis Rethinking American Music by : Tara Browner

Download or read book Rethinking American Music written by Tara Browner and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2019-03-16 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rethinking American Music, Tara Browner and Thomas L. Riis curate essays that offer an eclectic survey of current music scholarship. Ranging from Tin Pan Alley to Thelonious Monk to hip hop, the contributors go beyond repertory and biography to explore four critical yet overlooked areas: the impact of performance; patronage's role in creating music and finding a place to play it; personal identity; and the ways cultural and ethnographic circumstances determine the music that emerges from the creative process. Many of the articles also look at how a piece of music becomes initially popular and then exerts a lasting influence in the larger global culture. The result is an insightful state-of-the-field examination that doubles as an engaging short course on our complex, multifaceted musical heritage. Contributors: Karen Ahlquist, Amy C. Beal, Mark Clagu,. Esther R. Crookshank, Todd Decker, Jennifer DeLapp-Birkett, Joshua S. Duchan, Mark Katz, Jeffrey Magee, Sterling E. Murray, Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., David Warren Steel, Jeffrey Taylor, and Mark Tucker


A Problem Like Maria

A Problem Like Maria

Author: Stacy Ellen Wolf

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780472067725

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The Broadway tomboys, rebel nuns, and funny girls, who upset the 1950s gender norms: Mary Martin, Ethel Merman, Julie Andrews, and Barbra Streisand


Book Synopsis A Problem Like Maria by : Stacy Ellen Wolf

Download or read book A Problem Like Maria written by Stacy Ellen Wolf and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Broadway tomboys, rebel nuns, and funny girls, who upset the 1950s gender norms: Mary Martin, Ethel Merman, Julie Andrews, and Barbra Streisand


The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical

The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical

Author: Raymond Knapp

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-03

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 019998736X

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This text presents keywords and critical terms that deepen analysis and interpretation of the musical. Taking into account issues of composition, performance, and reception, the book's contributors bring a range of practical and theoretical perspectives to bear on their considerations of American musicals.


Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical by : Raymond Knapp

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical written by Raymond Knapp and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text presents keywords and critical terms that deepen analysis and interpretation of the musical. Taking into account issues of composition, performance, and reception, the book's contributors bring a range of practical and theoretical perspectives to bear on their considerations of American musicals.