Selected, Prepared, and Introduced by Bill F. Faucett

$46.00.  CMS Member Price: $36.80.
Paperbound [7 by 10; 258 pp.]
ISBN-10: 1576471411
ISBN-13: 978-1576471418

During the years between the onset of the Civil War and the armistice of World War I music in American life flourished as never before. Some American musicians of the era remained mindful of their European counterparts while others concentrated just as enthu-siastically on expanding local traditions. Their achievements were many, as well as influ-ential of later developments.

• The lively music business, initially led by a network of regional publishers, coalesced into a centralized commercial giant and made New York City's Tin Pan Alley legendary.
• The wind band movement took hold in towns and cities to become a staple of public entertainment and public education.
• Now-venerated institutions and ensembles were founded and cultivated.
• The quest for a distinctively national concert music attracted many champions.
• A "golden age" of music criticism transpired, thanks to the propagation of journals and newspapers.
• The emergence of ragtime and jazz in the African-American community and new trends in social dancing transformed the landscape of entertainment music.
• New technologies revolutionized the dissemination and preservation of performances of all kinds.

For this volume Dr. Bill F. Faucett has selected a cogent sampling of the published commentary of participants and observers responding to such developments. His anthology offers readers a fresh opportunity to reconsider a formative era in American music hi