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.\n Written by a musicologist and supported by a wealth of illustrative audio examples (on the book's website), the book examines key historical...

Brahms's symphonies represent one of the most important bodies of work to come from the second half of the nineteenth century, when many of the difficult issues that have confronted composers and scholars in our own century were formulated. As the other arts at that time were turning away from romanticism, musicwaswitnessing an extended confrontation between two attitudes that had been fundamental to musical romanticism in the preceding generations: that music was on the one hand profoundly expressive...