Listening for America

Inside the Great American Songbook from Gershwin to Sondheim

Häftad, Engelska, 2023

Av Rob Kapilow

269 kr

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“If you want to understand American history, listen to its popular music,” writes renowned NPR host Rob Kapilow. “If you want to understand America’s popular music, listen to its history.” Through the songs of eight legendary American composers—Kern, Porter, Gershwin, Arlen, Berlin, Rodgers, Bernstein, and Sondheim—Kapilow listens for the history not just of musical theater, but of America itself. Combining close readings of Broadway hits like “Summertime” and “Stormy Weather” with a wide-angled historical point of view, Listening for America shows us how we too can listen along as America discovered its identity through the epochal transformations of the twentieth century.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2023-02-17
Mått155 x 211 x 33 mm
Vikt464 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor480
FörlagW W Norton & Co Ltd
ISBN9781324092902

Tillhör följande kategorier

Musikböcker inom Kultur
Biografi: konst och underhållning inom Biografier
Musiker, sångare och grupper inom Kultur
Scenkonstens historia inom Kultur
Teater inom Kultur
Tonsättare och låtskrivare inom Kultur
Musikhistoria inom Kultur

"[An] enlightening study.... Rob Kapilow may be contemporary America’s most passionate evangelist for the quaint discipline known as 'music appreciation'... a winning combination of Leonard Bernstein and Bill Nye the Science Guy, an infectiously enthusiastic explainer of the inner mechanical workings of music.... A nifty companion website for the book includes helpful, easy-to-grasp audible demonstrations and vocals, as does the e-book version. For me at least, this digital crib-sheet was a vital tool for appreciating Kapilow’s arguments.... It is a testament to the depth and catholicity of Kapilow’s knowledge that he can effortlessly compare the sweet-sour takes on love in Rodgers and Hart’s “I Wish I Were in Love Again” with Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive.” He writes engagingly of Irving Berlin’s astonishing journey from a Russian village and Manhattan’s Lower East Side to the heights of fame, [and] astutely surveys the radical changes in popular taste in the 1960s and ’70s that dislodged the Broadway musical.... But it is the analysis of the songs that is the meat of the book — and something like its soul as well.... [Kapilow] rewards those patient enough to hold his hand as he walks them through just what makes these songs great."