MUSA 33. Early Published Blues and Proto-Blues (1850–1915)

Edited by Peter C. Muir

This volume will be a critical edition of early blues-related sheet music, including all known blues songs and instrumental compositions (forty-three total) from the first four years of the blues industry, 1912–15, and twenty-four pre-1912 proto-blues, that is, published works stylistically related to the emerging blues style (for instance, using a twelve-bar blues sequence) from 1850–1912. The purpose of the edition is to present in systematic form, and for the first time, the rise of popular blues culture. Up until 1920, sheet music rather than recordings was the dominant medium of blues dissemination. The first blues recordings did not appear until 1914, two years after the appearance of sheet music and furthermore, almost all the recordings of blues that did appear before 1920 were of pre-existent published compositions. This situation changed with the rise of the race record industry in the 1920s when the identity of blues became increasingly linked to recordings. For this earliest period of blues history, the documentation offered by sheet music is crucial. A majority of this music has not been reissued since its original publication, while some has never been published at all, and exists only as copyright deposits in the Library of Congress. As a body of work, it is little known to historians and musicians despite its importance to the understanding of the evolution of blues and popular music.

MUSA 34. Stephen Sondheim: Follies, Orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick

Edited by Jon Alan Conrad

Stephen Sondheim’s musical Follies is set in 1971, the year of its creation, at a reunion of the (fictional) “Weismann Follies” on the eve of their theater’s destruction. This scenario gives Sondheim, who wrote both music and lyrics, the opportunity to create what amounts to two interlocking scores. One explores the thoughts and interactions of the guests, the music often revealing the lies behind their words. The other, recalling the Follies performances of decades earlier, allows Sondheim to evoke the words and music of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and many other popular songwriters from the interwar period. The show culminates in a series of fantasy production numbers that unite past and present, displaying each of the four principals in his or her own “folly,” using materials evocative of the past to suggest the pain behind popular entertainment and the dangers of nostalgia. Publishing the music in full score (a rarity for musicals) allows a full appreciation of both its detail and Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations.

MUSA 35. Opera Parody Songs of Blackface Minstrels (1844–1860)

Edited by Renee Norris

During the American antebellum period, minstrelsy was (startling to present-day sensibilities) an ubiquitous form of entertainment typically performed by White men in blackface makeup who imitated, very often derisively, Black culture. Their songs typically were comic, up-tempo, and performed in a theatrical dialect that featured non-standard grammar and pronunciation. During this same period, operas imported from Europe were a regular part of American theater, particularly when they were translated to English.

Beginning in the mid-1840s, minstrels burlesqued various types of popular non-blackface entertainments, including Shakespeare’s plays, touring European concert musicians, and opera. These burlesques are advertised on playbills and mentioned in the press, but there are few sources for their actual music and lyrics. The thirty-nine pieces in Opera Parody Songs of Blackface Minstrels, 1844-1860, survive as complete, discrete songs published as musical sources.

Minstrels’ opera parody songs maintained negative stereotypes of Blacks, particularly slaves, of the time period. Their lyrics recast operatic characters as slaves who are as happy, childishly reliant on their paternalistic masters, and primitively agrarian. Their physical characteristics included clownish costumes and exaggerated features, such as extraordinarily large lips and feet (see the accompanying picture, which is from White’s Serenaders’ Song Book, 1851). These inaccurate portrayals of Blacks, severely offensive to many people today, were conventional in minstrelsy during the nineteenth century. They enabled easy parody of opera because they immediately brought low opera’s elevated aesthetics.

The thirty-nine songs of this edition each parody opera differently, suggesting minstrels’ inventiveness. They are rare and specific examples of the widespread practice of inter-genre borrowing and musical adaptation that was fundamental to minstrelsy.

MUSA 36. D. W. Griffith's "Way Down East" (1920): Full Orchestral Score

Edited by Gillian Anderson

A critical edition of the music of Way Down East, the 1920 film directed by D. W. Griffith (1875–1948), with a score by Louis Silvers (1889–1954) and William Frederick Peters (1871–1938). This motion picture exemplifies the best qualities of music for film, wherein the music transforms the moving images, the visual spectacle amplifies the music, and together they profoundly impact the audience. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, Griffith was one of the most prominent moving picture directors in the world, and Way Down East was his most successful motion picture, surpassing the attendance records of The Birth of a Nation. It lasts 2 1/2 hours, and has a combination composed and compiled score by two experienced Broadway composers. The score for full orchestra—in effect, an orchestral soundscape of contemporary America—featured everything from the original themes composed by the Leipzig-trained Peters, to compiled arrangements of nursery rhymes, sentimental songs, ragtime, ballroom and square dance tunes, Broadway show numbers, hymns and operatic overtures, many still familiar today. Each scene lasts from 20 to 75 seconds and follows the moving picture’s scenic arc. Musical transitions weave the seeming hodgepodge of scenes into a harmonious whole, just as the many short visual sequences unite to create the entire melodrama. This new edition will encourage performance and study, and allow audiences to experience a still vibrant, engaging, and effective piece of art combining music and film. Its inclusion in MUSA confirms the importance of film music in American musical traditions.

MUSA 37. Spirituals: A Critical Edition (1860–1930)

Edited by Sandra Jean Graham

Spirituals are sacred African American folk songs that originated in the early nineteenth century, songs of bondage that resonated among all Blacks, whether “free” or enslaved. Their poetry was a forceful mix of first-person declaration and metaphor in erratic rhyme schemes that communicated in images rather than through cohesive narrative, consequences of a compositional practice rooted in improvisation. Rather than attempt to give a definitive version of a particular spiritual, this critical edition aims to examine spirituals through the discourse of written representation: notation and transcriptions complemented by contemporaneous descriptions of performance and recordings. This approach is essential to understand a genre in which orality retained a key role even as notation became the prevalent mode of transmission. The volume will contain solo and choral vocal arrangements of approximately eighty songs. Taken as a whole, the critical essays in the volume can be read as a social history of the spiritual from antebellum times to the present day. Spirituals are legacy songs that are valued today because of their previous status as folklore. The MUSA edition, a strong endorsement of the musical heritage and quality of spirituals, will make scores available to a wide audience. It will also shed light on a long history with many actors who struggled to present and explain spirituals to an American public, who argued over authentic representation, and who sought to re-brand slave spirituals as national music, church music, and art music. It is that very history that this MUSA volume will illuminate.

MUSA 38. Louis Moreau Gottschalk: La nuit des tropiques and Á Montevideo

Edited by Laura Moore Pruett

Gottschalk (1829–1869), the nineteenth-century American composer best known for his solo piano works, wrote his first symphony, Symphonie romantique: La nuit des tropiques during 1859 in Matouba, a secluded region of Guadaloupe near an extinct volcano. It was first performed in Havana, Cuba. Gottschalk wrote Á Montevideo for an 1868 performance at the Teatro Solís in Montevideo, Uruguay. These symphonies represent Gottschalk’s contribution to the richly-intercultural aesthetics of mid-nineteenth-century American orchestral music. The MUSA edition will fill a scholarly lacuna and also serve as an informed, rigorous performance score that brings Latin American percussion into American classical music almost a century earlier than previously known. 

MUSA 39. Mexican-American Music from Southern California (circa 1840–1920): The Lummis Cylinder Collection and Other Sources

Edited by John Koegel

In the year 1884, Charles Fletcher Lummis (1859–1928), a Massachusetts-born journalist who had been working in Ohio, was offered a position by the Los Angeles Times and walked across the continent to his new job. During that long journey he conceived an appreciation of the Spanish, Mexican, and Indian heritage of the United States, coming to believe that life in the Southwest “before the gringo” arrived had been “the happiest, the humanist, the most beautiful life that Caucasians have ever lived under the sun.” Once settled in Los Angeles, he fell in love with the Mexican songs he encountered, finding their passion and sensuousness “simpático,” and far removed from the ethos of English-language song. In 1903, Lummis obtained a cylinder machine to record Mexican and Indian songs, as sung by Los Angeles-area Mexican singers and guitarists and Native American musicians from California and the Southwest, and he hired trained musicians to help transcribe them. Composer Arthur Farwell, Lummis’s main helper, transcribed many of the melodies, and arranged, harmonized, and with Lummis published fourteen of them in 1923 under the title of Spanish Songs of Old California.

Lummis’s collection of over 300 Spanish-language cylinders (and many recordings of Indian music) from the Southwest Museum, is held by the Autry National Center, Los Angeles. The collection preserves most of the song types performed by Californio and Mexican musicians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: canciones, romances, early corridos, dance songs, children’s songs, and political and patriotic songs, among others. In this edition, sample songs from other collections of local Mexican and Mexican-American music, by Eleanor Hague, William J. McCoy, Ernesto González Jiménez, and others, will be included along with transcriptions from the Lummis Collection for comparative purposes. The edition also includes an essay overview of Mexican musical and theatrical life in California circa 1840-1920, biographical sketches of Lummis’s informants and other local musicians, a concordance between the Lummis collection and other published and manuscript collections and/or recordings, an analysis of this large musical repertory, and an examination of the role of Lummis, Hague, McCoy, González Jiménez and others in documenting and preserving Mexican-American musical traditions.

MUSA 40. Hawaiian Songs: Ancient and Modern

Edited by Amy Stillman

Hawaiian Songs: Ancient and Modern offers the first comprehensive overview of visual representations of “Hawaiian music.”  The volume will include 50 songs that span 13 named genres from the pre-European and westernized traditions. Several of the songs will be represented by the juxtaposition of multiple written, visual, and aural sources, thereby illustrating the wide range of forms in which the repertoire has been transmitted from the past. This approach also constitutes a methodological critique of longstanding musicological and philological principles for establishing single authoritative texts. Each song will be accompanied by comprehensive discographic documentation tracking the global circulation of Hawaiian music on commercial recordings.

The volume will include a substantial essay entitled “Representing Hawaiian Music” that will systematically assess terminological issues specific to the Hawaiian repertoire and theoretical concerns relevant to scholarly editing and textuality. The interplay of oral and written/literate practices bears important traces of the colonization experience of Native Hawaiians, as western musical elements, introduced by outsiders since the 1800s, were selectively incorporated on Hawaiian terms. The assemblage of sources reveals clear relationships between specific song genres and practices of oral transmission vs. written/literate dissemination. Thus I argue for the analytical centrality of genre, and for the use of visual representations to track important signposts in the practice of musical sound and performance.

See: Stillman, Amy. "Textualizing Hawaiian Music." American Music 23 (Spring 2005): 69-94.

MUSA 41. Nineteenth-Century American Hymnody

Edited by R. Allen Lott

The primary function of hymn singing in the nineteenth century was worship and evangelism, yet social and musical purposes overlapped; the social aspect has been preserved to this day among Sacred Harp singers, who still meet all day just to sing. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, sacred music had long been the domain of native American composers, and this remained true throughout the century. Early in the century, many hymn composers and tunebook compilers, like their eighteenth-century predecessors, had little musical training beyond basic note-reading. Soon, however, some began to acquire more formal training that occasionally included European influence and, more rarely, European training. Still, though most hymn composers late in the century had minimal training, they possessed a talent for writing carefully crafted miniatures ideally suited for conveying the emotion and spirit of a text.

The Nineteenth-Century American Hymnody volume will document America’s new and original contribution during the nineteenth century to the ongoing hymnic tradition by presenting a breadth and balance among genres. The most frequently printed hymn texts in nineteenth-century hymnals will be presented alongside the nineteenth-century American tunes most often paired with those texts, with attention given to theological interpretation of the texts and how they reflect various theological positions of the era.

MUSA 1. Ruth Crawford: Music for Small Orchestra (1926) and Suite No. 2 for Four Strings and Piano (1929)

Edited by Judith Tick and Wayne Schneider

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By the late 1920s, before composing her landmark String Quartet 1931, Ruth Crawford had already found a strong and individual voice as an American modernist. This edition presents two important unpublished compositions from that period: Music for Small Orchestra (1926) and Suite No. 2 for Four Strings and Piano (1929). The style of these works, dubbed "post tonal pluralism," shows Crawford handling tonality as an option rather than a given and responding to a wide range of musical, literary, and intellectual currents--including the music of Scriabin, Cowell, Rudhyar, and Ruggles, the poetry of Carl Sandburg, and the religious-philosophical movement known as Theosophy.

Reviews:

• Corneilson, Paul. Letter to the Editor. Notes 54, no. 1 (1997): 306.

• Dickinson, Peter. Review of Music for Small Orchestra (1926); Suite No. 2 for Four Strings and Piano (1929), by Ruth Crawford. Edited by Judith Tick and Wayne Schneider. Music & Letters 79, no. 1 (1998): 156-157.

• Nicholls, David. Review of Music for Small Orchestra (1926); Suite No. 2 for Four Strings and Piano (1929), by Ruth Crawford. Edited by Judith Tick and Wayne Schneider. Notes 53, no. 2 (1996): 626-627.

• Scott, Darwin. “Communications.” Notes 53, no. 3 (1996): 1008.

MUSA 2. Irving Berlin: Early Songs (1907–1914)

Edited by Charles Hamm

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Containing 214 songs by one of the most prominent of all America's songwriters, this three-part collection illuminates the early career of Irving Berlin with unprecedented completeness and accuracy, from the well-known "Alexander's Ragtime Band" to a number of songs published here for the first time. The period 1907–14 represents the first phase of Irving Berlin's songwriting career, when his primary concern was with individual songs, before he turned to focus on complete shows. Despite Berlin's stature as the era's leading songwriter, however, the majority of the over two hundred songs presented in this edition have been difficult to obtain. Offering all of these songs here, in chronological order and including numerous previously unpublished works, gives a complete picture of Berlin's early development as a songwriter. The extensive introduction places Berlin within the Tin Pan Alley tradition originating in the late nineteenth century and stretching well into the twentieth.

Reviews:

• Block, Geoffrey. Review of Early Songs, by Irving Berlin. Edited by Charles Hamm. Notes 53, no. 4 (1997): 1321-1325.

• Dickinson, Peter. Review of Early Songs, by Irving Berlin. Edited by Charles Hamm. Music & Letters 79, no. 1 (1998): 157-158.

• Schiff, David. “For Everyman, by Everyman.” Review of Early Songs, by Irving Berlin. Edited by Charles Hamm. The Atlantic Monthly 277, no. 3 (1996): 108-112.

• Stilwell, Robynn J. Review of Early Songs, by Irving Berlin. Edited by Charles Hamm. Popular Music 16, no. 1 (1997): 115-119.

MUSA 3. Amy Beach: Quartet for Strings (In One Movement), Op. 89

Edited by Adrienne Fried Block

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Recognized as America's leading woman composer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Amy Beach (1867-1944) belonged to the Second New England School of composers. Her one-movement quartet, a lean yet lyrical work of great originality, incorporates Alaskan Inuit melodies as thematic material. Completed in 1929, the quartet was one of Beach's few unpublished works. This edition, which includes a facsimile of the 1921 draft score, makes the work available for the first time.

Reviews:

• Dickinson, Peter. Review of Quartet for strings (in one movement), op. 89, by Amy Beach. Edited by Adrienne Fried Block. Music & Letters 79, no. 1 (1998): 156-157.

• Yellin, Victor Fell. Review of Quartet for strings (in one movement), op. 89, by Amy Beach. Edited by Adrienne Fried Block. Notes 52, no. 4 (1996): 1314-1315.

MUSA 4. Daniel Read: Collected Works

Edited by Karl Kroeger

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Composer, singing master, and merchant, Daniel Read is today considered second in importance only to William Billings among early American psalmodists. If the number of contemporaneous reprints of his music gauges public acceptance, then Read stood as the most popular American psalmodist of his day. This edition centers on the ninety-five compositions that Read published between 1785 to 1810; it also includes an appendix comprising pieces from the 1770s that were later published and pieces from a manuscript collection of the 1830s in which Read repudiated the style of his earlier works.

Reviews:

• Review of Collected Works, by Daniel Read. Edited by Karl Kroeger. Early Music Review 22 (July 1996): 22.

• Schenbeck, Lawrence. "Historic American Choral Music in New Scholarly Editions." Choral Journal 41, no. 1 (2000): 57-59.

• Voloshin, Metro. Review of Collected Works, by Daniel Read. Edited by Karl Kroeger. American Music 16, no. 3 (1998): 343-348.

• Wolf, Edward C. Review of Collected Works, by Daniel Read. Edited by Karl Kroeger.  Notes 53, no. 4 (1997): 1328-1330.

MUSA 5. The Music and Scripts of "In Dahomey"

Edited by Thomas L. Riis

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With more than 1,100 performances in the United States and England between 1902 and 1905, In Dahomey became a landmark of American musical theater. Created and performed entirely by African Americans, it showcased the talents of conservatory-trained composer Will Marion Cook and the popular vaudevillians Bert Williams and George Walker. This edition presents the surviving musical and textual materials of In Dahomey in a comprehensive piano-vocal score. In Dahomey was a fluid production with an ever-changing script and series of musical novelties. Riis's research brings the show's widely dispersed sheet music sources and two extant versions of the script together for the first time, casting light on both African American cultural history and the performance traditions of American musical theater.

Review:

• Graziano, John. Review of The Music and Scripts of In Dahomey, edited by Thomas L. Riis. The Sonneck Society for American Music Bulletin 23, no. 3 (1997).

MUSA 6. Timothy Swan: Psalmody and Secular Songs

Edited by Nym Cooke

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Hat-maker and composer Timothy Swan (1758-1842) is an important figure in the early development of musical composition in America. Although his output was modest, he was arguably the most stylistically original composer working in the eighteenth-century New England singing school tradition. This comprehensive edition, based on a study of prints, manuscripts, sketches, and drafts, affords an unparalleled view of an eighteenth-century psalmodist at work. It also gives performers access to the music of one of America's first composers.

Reviews:

• Eskew, Harry. Review of Psalmody and Secular Songs, by Timothy Swan. Edited by Nym Cooke. The Sonneck Society for American Music Bulletin 24, no. 2 (1998): 55.

• Fenton, Shawn. Review of Psalmody and Secular Songs, by Timothy Swan. Edited by Nym Cooke. Notes 56, no. 2 (1999): 488-491.

• Schenbeck, Lawrence. "Historic American Choral Music in New Scholarly Editions." Choral Journal 41, no. 1 (2000): 57-59.

• Voloshin, Metro. Review of Psalmody and Secular Songs, by Timothy Swan. Edited by Nym Cooke. American Music 16, no. 3 (1998): 343-348.

MUSA 7. Harrigan and Braham: Collected Songs (1873–1896)

Edited by Jon W. Finson

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The plays of Edward Harrigan (1844-1911), and their attendant songs written with David Braham (1838-1905), reflect a turbulent era in New York City, which was just emerging as the cultural and economic center of American life. This edition presents the collected Harrigan-Braham songs drawn from plays and skits depicting a variety of ethnic groups during the artists' twenty-year reign over the New York stage. The music, texts, and introductory essay provide a complete view of works that Charles Hamm has described as "the beginning of urban popular song."

MUSA 8. Lou Harrison: Keyboard and Chamber Music (1937–1994)

Edited by Leta Miller

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A collection of seven works for chamber ensemble or keyboard solo spanning over fifty years: (1) France 1917-Spain 1937 (string quartet, 2 percussion), 1937-68; (2) Tributes to Charon (percussion trio), 1939-82; (3) Praises for Michael the Archangel (organ solo), 1947; (4) Vestiunt Silve (soprano, flute, 2 violas, harp), 1951-94; (5) Cinna (tack pianosolo), 1955-57; (6) Varied Trio (violin, piano, percussion), 1987; (7) Grand Duo (violin, piano), 1988. The prefatory essay explores, through the lens of these seven works, the sources of Harrison's syncretic style, focusing on its diverse aesthetic components: percussion, Asian music, gamelan, medieval music, the French baroque, melody, tuning systems, instrument building, and politics. Interwoven biographical material is based in part on the author's book, "Lou Harrison: Composing a World" (Oxford University Press, 1998).

Review:

• Nicholls, David. Review of Selected Keyboard and Chamber Music, 1937-1994 by Lou Harrison. Edited by Leta E. Miller. Notes 56, no. 3 (2000): 774-776.

MUSA 9. Harry Partch: Barstow—Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California (1968 Version)

Edited by Richard Kassel

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Composer, theorist, instrument builder, and performer Harry Partch (1902-1974) is a crucial figure in twentieth-century American music; yet his achievements are more legendary than genuinely known. By rejecting equal temperament as "the basic ingredient of the chaos" of Western music, and choosing to compose in the ancient system of just intonation, Partch limited accessibility to his music. His expression of pitches as ratios ("Monophony") and the need to invent many incompatible tablatures have limited the amount of serious musical criticism which has focused on Partch's personality and aesthetic.

Partch exemplified musical liberation, casting off European tradition when it burdened him artistically. Yet for all of his rebelliousness, he "never thought of [his] work as revolutionary, but only as evolutionary," insisting that "meaningfulness must have roots." Barstow, a watershed Monophonic work, was based on "very unusual inscriptions on a highway railing" in that southern California town in 1940. This "hobo concerto" was first written for voice and adapted guitar the following year; it went through several revisions until its final 1968 version for two voices and four instruments. This volume presents a facsimile of this version (long out of print), a new transcription into expanded standard notation, and an essay on Barstow's background and evolution.

Reviews:

• Gann, Kyle. “Songs of the Open Road.” Review of Barstow-Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California (1968 version), by Harry Partch. Edited by Richard Kassel. The Village Voice, 46, no. 4 (January 30, 2001): 114.

• Gilmore, Bob. Review of Barstow-Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California (1968 version), by Harry Partch. Edited by Richard Kassel. Notes 59, no. 3 (2003): 739-743.

MUSA 10. Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller: Performances in Transcription (1927–1943)

Edited by Paul S. Machlin

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The seventeen transcriptions in this volume reveal the compositional artistry and comic play of Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (1904-1943), virtuoso jazz pianist, organist, singer, bandleader, parodist, comedian, and composer in the Harlem stride tradition. Using pairs of transcriptions of the same tune, this volume explores the creative process within Waller's improvisations by demonstrating the wide variety of gesture and idea captured in the moment of recording. Alternate takes of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," for example, show how deep the stylistic gulf between two versions of a single song could become, even within the same recording session, while alternate takes of "Waiting At The End Of The Road" performed on piano and pipe organ demonstrate Waller's ability to exploit the different expressive possibilities inherent in the two instruments. Drawn from recordings made throughout Waller's career, other pairs include a broad sampling of solo piano and pipe organ performances, popular songs, and small ensemble work: "Ain't Misbehavin', " "Gladyse," "Honeysuckle Rose," "I Ain't Got Nobody," "I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby," and "Rusty Pail." A single transcription of Waller's little-known homemade acetate of "That Does It" from his 1943 show Early To Bed completes the volume. The accompanying essay, " All Those Fine Arabian Things Your Little Heart Pines For," explores the nature of Waller's compositional and lyrical ingenuity, illustrated by recently discovered manuscript sketches that provide clues to Waller's musical imagination. Serving performers and scholars alike, this volume hopes to provide new insight into Waller's musical achievements.

Reviews:

• Budiansky, Stephen. “Resurrecting Fats.” Review of Performances in Transcription, 1927-1943, by Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller. Edited by Paul S. Machlin. The Atlantic Monthly 285, no. 3 (2000): 100-104.

• Martin, Henry. Review of Performances in Transcription, 1927-1943, by Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller. Edited by Paul S. Machlin. Music and Letters 84, no. 1 (2003): 163-165.

• Shipton, Alyn. Review of Performances in Transcription, 1927-1943, by Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller. Edited by Paul S. Machlin. American Music 20, no. 3 (2002): 344-346.

MUSA 11. Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notations, and Arrangements

Edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine

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This edition explores the history of musical contact, interaction, and exchange between American Indians and European-Americans, as documented in musical transcriptions, notations, and arrangements. The edition contributes to an understanding of American music that reflects our cultural reality, by depicting the reciprocal influences among Native Americans, scholars, composers, and educators, and by illustrating some of the consequences of the encounter for American musical life in general. Culled from a published record of over 8,000 songs, this edition contains 116 musical examples reproduced in facsimile. These include the earliest attempts to represent tribal music in European notation, archetypal transcriptions in the scholarly literature of ethnomusicology, and recent contributions by contemporary scholars. Some of the notations included in the edition inspired composers in search of a distinctively American musical idiom to write works based on American Indian melodies. Other notations presented here captured the imagination of generations of school children, whose concept of American cultural and musical identity became intimately connected with American Indians. Native scholars, educators, and indigenous notations, and recent compositions by native composers working in the classical vein are also represented in this volume. As a compendium of historic materials, the edition thus illustrates the development of European-American attitudes and approaches to American Indian musics, the infusion of native musics into American musical culture, and native responses to and participation in the enterprise.

Reviews:

• Bardi, Aloma. Review of Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notation and Arrangements, edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine. Giornale della Musica no. 184 (July-August 2002): 27.

• Goertzen, Chris. Review of Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notation and Arrangements, edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine. Journal of the American Musicological Society 59, no. 2 (2006): 518-526.

• Romero, Brenda M. Review of Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notation and Arrangements, edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine. American Music Research Center Journal 12 (2002): 99-102.

• Spinney, Ann Morrison. Review of Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notation and Arrangements, edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine. Notes 59, no. 3 (2003): 624-626.

• Vennum, Thomas. Review of Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notation and Arrangements, edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine. Ethnomusicology 48, no. 3 (2004): 440-442.

MUSA 12. Charles Ives: 129 Songs

Edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock 

Finalist for the 2005 Claude V. Palisca Award

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Ives is well known as a song composer, and probably no earlier American composer (except possibly Stephen Foster) is so universally identified as such. Yet, ironically, Ives's songs have only rarely been edited in any way. Virtually every page of the songs printed during his lifetime--his book of 114 Songs (privately printed in 1922), 34 Songs (1933), and 19 Songs (1935) (printed in Henry Cowell's New Music), all still available for purchase, all unchanged from their first printings--reveal palpable musical and textual errors, problematic notation, and puzzling inconsistencies. These songs have long cried out for scholarly critical editing.

With agreement from the three music publishers who hold the copyrights, the MUSA collection of 129 Songs by Ives comprises such a critical edition. It is based on comprehensive research into, and comparative study of, the voluminous extant musical and textual sources: Ives's manuscript sketches and fair copies; his many copyists' scores; songs he revised for the New Music prints; annotations and marginalia by him in personal copies of 114, 34, and 19 Songs; proof sheets (few survive); and authoritative manuscript and published text-sources (by Ives himself, his wife, and other authors). It will include all of the 114 Songs plus thirteen songs printed for the first time in the 1930s and later, and two unpublished songs among Ives's manuscripts (complete musically, but lacking texts)--in other words, all of Ives's songs for voice and piano not already published in critical editions. (Previous publications in critical editions, all by John Kirkpatrick, are: Eleven Songs and Two Harmonizations [1968], Sunrise [1977], and Forty Earlier Songs [1993].)

A prefatory essay assesses Ives as songwriter in the context of American song of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and addresses his solo songs--which span his entire career as a composer (c.1887-c.1926)--in the context of his own musical convictions and predilections, as well as his overall output, within which the solo-song genre occupies an especially important place.

Reviews:

• Carman, Judith. Review of 129 Songs, by Charles Ives. Edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock. Journal of Singing 62, no. 1 (2005): 107-114.

• Dickinson, Peter. Review of 129 Songs, by Charles Ives. Edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock. Music and Letters 87, no. 4 (2006): 606-613.

• Magee, Gale Sherwood. Review of 129 Songs, by Charles Ives. Edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock. ISAM Newsletter 34, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 11, 15.

• Nicholls, David. Review of 129 Songs, by Charles Ives. Edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock. Notes 62, no. 3 (2006): 794-796.

• Von Glahn, Denise. Review of 129 Songs, by Charles Ives. Edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock. American Music 24, no. 2 (2006): 228-231.

MUSA 13. Leo Ornstein: Quintette for Piano and String Quartet

Edited by Denise Von Glahn and Michael Broyles

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Leo Ornstein was a wildly famous Russian-American pianist-composer who in the late 1910s simultaneously outraged and riveted audiences with his unprecedented dissonant piano works and then unexpectedly surprised them when he dropped out of sight to pursue a quieter life of composition and teaching. In 1927 Ornstein returned to the spotlight with a new work, his Quintette for Piano and Strings (Op. 92). Here was a piece of breadth and scope reflective of a mature musical mind. Its lyricism and super-charged expressivity seemed to be in sharp contrast to the hammering physicality of Danse Sauvage or Suicide in an Airplane, two of the show-stoppers from his days as a touring virtuoso. But what many perceived to be a regression in style was in fact an expansion of that earlier voice, now more reflective, more thoughtful, and more finished. Ornstein’'s Quintette for Piano and Strings is an impassioned work that reveals the raw emotions of a proudly intuitive composer. It is a worthy companion to the quintets of Schumann, Brahms, Dvorák, Frank, Fauré, and Bloch, and like them it will stand the test of time.

Review:

• Nicholls, David. Review of Quintette for Piano and Strings, op. 92, by Leo Ornstein. Edited by Denise Von Glahn and Michael Broyles. Notes 63, no. 4 (2007): 938-940.

MUSA 14. Dudley Buck: American Victorian Choral Music

Edited by N. Lee Orr

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By the turn of the twentieth century, the choral music of Dudley Buck (1839-1909) had become virtually synonymous with Victorianism in this country. His choral music, which was widely disseminated and performed, assumed enormous cultural authority as a signifier of bourgeois taste and status; by the 1890s he had become the most popular composer of church music in the United States. This volume is one of the first to rigorously study Victorian choral music in its aesthetic, nationalistic, and religious context. Each of the major genres popular in Victorian America is represented here: the anthem, the sacred and secular cantata, and the partsong.

The full orchestral score for The Centennial Meditation of Columbia appears here as one of the archetypal secular American cantatas. The two partsongs frame the stylistic poles of Victorian secular music. "In Absence" (op. 55, no 2) shows Buck's fluent handling of the early-Romantic style with its hymn-like texture and Schubertian chromaticism. By contrast, "The Signal Resounds from Afar!" (op. 92, no. 5) is a remarkable example of the late-Victorian male partsong and one of Buck's most complex works in the genre. The three anthems in this volume illustrate the changing styles of this essential Victorian genre. Buck's setting of the beloved Anglo-American text for Augustus Toplady's "Rock of Ages" (op. 65, no. 3, 1873) reveals his polished compositional technique through a subtle, unforced restraint that highlights the genteel emotional mood of the work. "Grant to Us Thy Grace," on the other hand, is an expansive late work showing the distant influence of French romantic opera. With its fluid structure, rhythmic serenity, operatic solo section, and delicately shaped chromaticism, the piece is an excellent example of proper, refined High Victorian church music. The "Festival Te Deum" (op. 63, no. 1) was Buck's best known liturgical anthem. The sacred cantata The Forty-Sixth Psalm attests to the firm hold the oratorio format maintained on Anglo-American choral music throughout the nineteenth century. Buck's immersion in the German Romantic musical tradition shows in this work's clear emulation of Mendelssohn's psalm settings, especially those of "Psalm 42," which it closely resembles, and "Psalm 95."

Reviews:

• Bomberger, E. Douglas. Review of American Victorian Choral Music, by Dudley Buck. Edited by N. Lee Orr. Journal of the Society for American Music 5, no. 2 (2011): 275-279.

• Magee, Gayle Sherwood. Review of American Victorian Choral Music, by Dudley Buck. Edited by N. Lee Orr. Notes 64, no. 1 (2007): 138-140.

• Owen, Barbara. Review of American Victorian Choral Music, by Dudley Buck. Edited by N. Lee Orr. The American Organist 40, no. 12 (2006): 86-88.

MUSA 15. Earl "Fatha" Hines: Selected Piano Solos (1928–1941)

Edited by Jeffrey Taylor 

Winner of the 2007 Claude V. Palisca Award

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As accompanist, ensemble player, and soloist, Earl "Fatha" Hines (1903-1983) revolutionized the role of the piano in jazz. This publication focuses on his solo artistry and will include complete transcriptions of fourteen solo recordings made by Hines between 1928 and 1941. These pieces show how Hines integrated Harlem stride, blues, novelty piano, and Western classical music with the work of other improvising soloists (especially trumpeter Louis Armstrong) to develop an innovative and highly personal style that continues to influence jazz pianists today. The thirteen-year span of the edition will also allow the scholar to trace the development of Hines's improvisational approach, and evaluate how Hines adapted to the changing stylistic language of the 1930s and early 1940s. To facilitate study of Hines's improvisational process, each transcription will be accompanied by the sheet music for the source tune being used as a basis for the performance (when available). Alternate versions of two improvisations will be included to show how Hines approached the same tune in subsequent performances. A tune history, discography, and stylistic commentary for each piece will be provided, as well as a prefatory essay examining Hines's life and career, his piano style, and his role in the development of the jazz piano solo as a genre.

Reviews:

• Block, Geoffrey. Review of Selected Piano Solos, 1928-1941, by Earl “Fatha” Hines. Edited by Jeffrey Taylor. Notes 63, no. 4 (2007): 934-938.

• Harker, Brian. Review of Selected Piano Solos, 1928-1941, by Earl “Fatha” Hines. Edited by Jeffrey Taylor. Journal of the Society for American Music 6, no. 1 (2012): 118-120.

MUSA 16. David Moritz Michael: Complete Wind Chamber Music

Edited by Nola Reed Knouse

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The Complete Wind Chamber Music of David Moritz Michael includes sixteen multi-movement works in this volume that are based on manuscript sources and edited by Nola Reed Knouse, who has been director of research of programs for the Moravian Music Foundation since 1992. Scorings for the works (as with the familiar Harmoniemusik) begin with paired clarinets, horns, and one or two bassoon parts, and to this basic ensemble a single trumpet or flute is sometimes added. Michael (1751-1827) trained as a bandsman in Westphalia before he joined the Moravian Church and moved to the USA, where he spent most of life teaching in and composing music for various Moravian settlements in Pennsylvania. As Knouse states in her introductory essay, Moravian music in general is noteworthy because of its craftsmanship, musicality, and sincere portrayal of spiritual values, and these works are representative of this standard. Written for capable amateurs, these works generally avoid virtuosic display, but they are never simplistic or condescending.

Review:

• Sampsel, Laurie. Review of David Moritz Michael: Complete Wind Chamber Music, by David Moritz Michael. Edited by Nola Reed Knouse. Journal of the Society for American Music 8, no. 2 (2014): 256-258.

MUSA 17. Charles Hommann: Surviving Orchestral Music

Edited by Joanne Swenson-Eldridge

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Composer and musician Charles Hommann (1803-ca. 1872) was born in Philadelphia at a time when instrumental music—especially European classical music—was becoming increasingly prominent in the United States. Hommann was encouraged in his compositional activities by the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia (to which he was elected a professional member in 1825), an organization founded in 1820 and dedicated to "the cultivation of skill and diffusion of taste in music." The organization's work permeated and enriched the city's culture, and provided, through its orchestral and choral performing groups and an Academy of Music (1825-1831), many musical opportunities for its members and Philadelphians in general.

Programs from the Society's concerts show that the orchestra—including violinist and violist Charles Hommann—performed a wide range of overtures and symphonies by prominent late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European composers, including Méhul, Romberg, Rossini, Beethoven, Auber, Paer, Vogel, Mozart, Haydn, Boieldieu, and Weber. Hommann's surviving orchestral compositions—two overtures and a symphony—are a fitting response to the musical milieu created by the Society and its members. Although little-remembered today, Hommann was a respected composer in his day:  one of his overtures received a gold medal prize from the Philharmonic Society of Philadelphia in 1835. Hommann's two other surviving orchestral works—a Symphony in E-flat Major, and another overture—probably predate the prize overture. None of them were published, and Hommann's work has languished in relative obscurity.

This edition of Hommann's three extant orchestral works, accompanied by an essay discussing his cultural and historical milieu, will bring renewed attention to the enterprising Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia and make accessible for study and performance the earliest-known products of an emerging tradition of notable orchestral works by American composers.

Review:

• Urrows, David Francis. Review of Surviving Orchestral Music, by Charles Hommann. Edited by Joanne Swenson-Eldridge. Journal of the Society for American Music 7, no. 3 (2013): 322-329.

MUSA 18. Virgil Thomson: Four Saints in Three Acts

Edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Charles Fussell

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With music by Virgil Thomson and a libretto by Gertrude Stein, Four Saints in Three Acts was completed in 1928 but waited almost six years for its first performances. After a week’s run in Hartford, Connecticut, in February 1934, it moved to New York where--with some sixty performances in six weeks--it became the longest-running opera that Broadway up to that time had experienced.

This critical edition by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Charles Fussell features the scenario by Maurice Grosser and is based on the full score that Thomson commissioned from copyist Ben Weber for his 1947-48 revision; it includes the 32-measure orchestral prelude to the Act II "Dance of the Angels," and it makes comparisons primarily to the manuscript scores held at the Library of Congress and Yale University. The critical apparatus applies as much to the music as to the Stein text, the principal source for which is the 1929 first publication.

Review:

• Swayne, Steve. Review of Four Saints in Three Acts, by Virgil Thomson. Edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Charles Fussell. Journal of the Society for American Music 8, no. 1 (2014): 101-103.

MUSA 19. Florence Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3

Edited by Rae Linda Brown and Wayne Shirley

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Florence Beatrice Smith Price (1887-1953), who settled in Chicago in 1927, was the most widely known African American woman composer from the 1930s until her death. This edition presents two important unpublished orchestral works: the Symphony No. 1 in E Minor (1932) and the Symphony No. 3 in C Minor (1940). The style of these works is quite different. Price's Symphony in E Minor is squarely in the nationalist tradition, and it may be more fully considered in the context of the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro Movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Cultural characteristics are borne out in the pentatonic themes, call-and-response procedures, syncopated rhythms of the third movement's Juba dance, the preponderance of altered tones, and the timbral differentiation of instrumental choirs (the juxtaposition of the brass and woodwind choirs, for example).

The Symphony in C Minor was inspired by new philosophical, political, and social currents, stemming from the Chicago Renaissance, underway from 1935-1950. The Great Migration (of Blacks from the south to Chicago), the Depression, and the adjustment to urban life provided vivid life experiences as subject matter for Chicago Renaissance writers and artists (including Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Margaret Bonds). Price's third symphony, which omits overtly Black themes and simple dance rhythms, presents a modern approach to composition--a synthesis of, rather than a retrospective view, of African American life and culture.

MUSA 20. Songs from "A New Circle of Voices": Sixteenth Annual Pow-Wow at UCLA

Edited by Tara Browner 

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Along with an introductory essay and explanatory notes, this volume contains transcriptions by ethnomusicologist Tara Browner of thirteen songs performed in May 2001 by the Cedartree Singers (from Falls Church, Virginia) and Native Thunder (from Thunder Valley, South Dakota) at the sixteenth annual pow-wow sponsored by UCLA’s American Indian Student Association. The transcriptions are complete in that they feature not only vocal lines for lead singers and ensembles, but also lines for drums and--with notation invented especially for this edition--movement patterns for both male and female dancers; the vocal material (including vocables and texts in the Lakota and Pawnee languages) are presented in full, with translations offered in the explanatory notes for each song.

Review:

• Levine, Victoria Lindsay. Review of Songs from “A New Circle of Voices”: The Sixteenth Annual Pow-wow at UCLA, edited by Tara Browner. Journal of the Society for American Music 6, no. 3 (2012): 377-379.

MUSA 21. John Philip Sousa: Six Marches

Edited by Patrick Warfield

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The marches of John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) remain staples of the band repertoire, but our knowledge of Sousa’s music rests largely on modern editions designed for school (rather than professional) bands, or on reprintings of the original editions, which because of their small size and rushed publication contain countless inconsistencies and omissions. This volume contains full band scores for six Sousa marches, each prepared from the first printing of the band parts and informed by Sousa’s holograph and the original performance materials. The six marches—The Washington Post (1889), The Liberty Bell (1893), El Capitan (1896), The Stars and Stripes Forever (1896), Sabre and Spurs (1918), and George Washington Bicentennial (1930)—span Sousa’s career, from his tenure as leader of the United States Marine Band (1880-92) to his years conducting his own, commercial ensemble (1892-1932). Also included in the volume is an essay reexamining Sousa’s biography, source materials, performance practice, and place in American culture.

Reviews:

• Judkins, Jennifer. Review of Six Marches, by John Philip Sousa. Edited by Patrick Warfield. Notes 68, no. 1 (2011): 174-176.

• Kreitner, Kenneth, and Mona Kreitner. Review of Six Marches, by John Philip Sousa. Edited by Patrick Warfield. Journal of the Society for American Music 7, no. 3 (2013): 329-335.

MUSA 22. The Ingalls Wilder Family Songbook

Edited by Dale Cockrell

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The eight Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957), anchored in her family’s history and filled with memories of frontier life, are cornerstone classics in American children’s literature. Embedded in them are citations to 127 pieces of music--from parlor songs, stage songs, minstrel show songs, patriotic songs, Scottish and Irish songs, hymns and spirituals, to fiddle tunes, singing school songs, play party songs, folk songs, broadside ballads, catches and rounds. No books in American literature of comparable standing and popularity feature America’s vernacular music so centrally, assign it such a major narrative role, and index it in such rich abundance.

This edition is a reconstruction of "the family songbook," based on the music referenced in Wilder’s books. Although no such object ever existed, her representations of music-making have likely informed the imaginations of more Americans than many a paper-and-bindings anthology, for what millions of readers have come to know about America’s musical heritage is what they learned from the Little House books—the titles and lyrics to songs; how songs and tunes functioned; where they were heard; what they meant; the importance of music to individuals, families, and communities. Wilder’s references and her evocative images of music-making thus form the basis of understanding about "American music" to many readers. The Ingalls Wilder Family Songbook is an effort to give fresh voice and sound to the music inscribed in these great books and new appreciation about how music functioned during a place and time important in American history and mythology.

Laura's Music:

Laura's Music is a seven-volume series published by A-R Editions that contains musical selections from The Ingalls Wilder Family Songbook without the full edition's critical apparatus. Each volume in Laura's Music contains music from one or two of Wilder's books: By the Shores of Silver Lake, Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy, Little House on the Prairie, Little Town on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, The Long Winter, and These Happy Golden Years.

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Recordings:

• Commercial recordings of musical selections from The Ingalls Wilder Family Songbook are available from http://www.laura-ingalls-wilder.com/

MUSA 23. George Frederick Bristow: Symphony no. 2 in D Minor, Op. 24 ("Jullien")

Edited by Katherine K. Preston

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George Frederick Bristow (1825-98), American composer, conductor, teacher, and performer, was a pillar of the New York musical community for the second half of the nineteenth century. His participation in an important mid-century battle-of-words (between William Henry Fry and the journalist Richard Storrs Willis and concerning a lack of support for American composers by the Philharmonic Society) has unfortunately overshadowed his accomplishments as a composer, which were significant. Bristow is remembered today primarily for his opera Rip van Winkle (1855) and oratorio Daniel (1866), but he was also a skillful and productive composer of orchestral music - one of only a handful of American orchestral composers active at mid-century.

Bristow wrote his Symphony no. 2 (the "Jullien") in 1853. It is a substantial work in four movements, scored for the standard orchestra of the early nineteenth century, and strongly influenced by the personal styles of Beethoven and Mendelssohn (whose works were performed regularly by the Philharmonic Society). The symphony is skillfully crafted, melodious, and an intrinsically worthy work of musical artistry. It was named to honor the French conductor Louis Jullien, who visited the United States in 1853-54 with an unparalleled orchestra. While in the United States Jullien both commissioned and performed American works (including this symphony); his support served as the catalyst for the Fry/Willis battle. The introductory essay to this MUSA volume examines Bristow's career, the composition of orchestral music in America at mid-century, and Jullien's role in the musical battle; the edition makes available for the first time an important work that has been undeservedly forgotten for over 150 years.

Performance Video:

Watch on YouTube a performance of the symphony at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in conjunction with the 2011 meeting of the American Musicological Society. The performance was preceded by introductory remarks by editor Katherine K. Preston.

Reviews:

• Shadle, Douglas. Review of Bristow’s Symphony No. 2 in D Minor, op. 24 (“Jullien”), by George Frederick Bristow. Edited by Katherine K. Preston. Notes 70, no. 1 (2013): 176-180.

• Urrows, David Francis. Review of Bristow’s Symphony No. 2 in D Minor, op. 24 (“Jullien”), by George Frederick Bristow. Edited by Katherine K. Preston. Journal of the Society for American Music 7, no. 3 (2013): 322-329.

MUSA 24. Sam Morgan's Jazz Band: Complete Recorded Works in Transcription

Edited by John J. Joyce, Jr., Bruce Boyd Raeburn, and Anthony M. Cummings 

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This edition consists of musical transcriptions of all eight recordings of Sam Morgan's Jazz Band, made in New Orleans in 1927. These are among the first recordings of Black New Orleans jazz bands made in their home city and, as the band consisted of musicians who stayed on in New Orleans after the Great Exodus to Chicago and New York in the early 1920s, the recordings preserve a purer form of the collectively improvised ensemble of the earliest Black jazz bands. It is a loosely integrated, purely linear ensemble mass, a collective projecting of melodic lines close to the unassimilated heterophonic singing of the Black Primitive Baptist and Sanctified Churches. This proto jazz style was being rapidly eclipsed in the 1920s by more flamboyant and technically brilliant forms of New Orleans jazz being recorded by Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Jelly Roll Morton. The scores contained in this volume are the first complete transcriptions of this rare and distinctive music to appear in print.

Review:

• Barry Kernfeld. Review of Sam Morgan's Jazz Band. Complete Recorded Works in Transcription. Edited by John J. Joyce Jr., Bruce Boyd Raeburn, and Anthony M. Cummings. Notes 70, no. 3 (2014): 529-533.

MUSA 25. Mary Lou Williams: Selected Works for Big Band

Edited by Theodore E. Buehrer

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Careful listeners and readers need to spend little time perusing Mary Lou Williams's solo piano recordings or her music manuscripts to realize her immense talent. A two-time Guggenheim Fellow, Williams (1910–1981) honed her craft as a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger during a career that spanned five decades. The eleven selections in this volume are representative of her work for big band, pieces written for orchestras led by Andy Kirk, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie. Included in the volume is Williams’s earliest arrangement (Mess-a-Stomp, 1929) as well as compositions from the 1930s, 40s, and 60s, allowing her stylistic evolution to be traced.

A variety of source materials, including extant scores and parts, was used in the preparation of this edition. Where no written music survives, transcriptions drawn from audio recordings were created. The resulting edition and accompanying essay shed well-deserved light upon this gifted yet relatively unknown giant of American jazz.

Review:

• Knauer, Wolfram. Review of Selected Works for Big Band, by Mary Lou Williams. Edited by Theodore E. Buehrer. Jazzinstitut Darmstadt (June 2013). http://www.jazzinstitut.de/books/books_2013.html#2013buehrer

MUSA 26. Machito and His Afro-Cubans: Selected Transcriptions

Edited by Paul Austerlitz and Jere Laukkanen

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Machito (Francisco Raúl Grillo, 1909–1984) was born into a musical family in Havana, Cuba, and was already an experienced vocalist when he arrived in New York City in 1937. In 1940 he teamed up with his brother-in-law, the Cuban trumpeter Mario Bauzá (1911–1993), who had already made a name for himself with top African American swing bands such as those of Chick Webb and Cab Calloway. Together, Machito and Bauzá formed Machito and his Afro-Cubans. With Bauzá as musical director, the band forged vital pan-African connections by fusing Afro-Cuban rhythms with modern jazz and by collaborating with major figures in the bebop movement. Highly successful with Latino as well as Black and White audiences, Machito and his Afro-Cubans recorded extensively and performed in dance halls, nightclubs, and on the concert stage. In this volume, ethnomusicologist Paul Austerlitz and bandleader and professor Jere Laukkanen (both experienced Latin jazz performers) present transcriptions from Machito’s recordings which meticulously illustrate the improvised as well as scored vocal, reed, brass, and percussion parts of the music. Austerlitz’s introductory essay traces the history of Afro-Cuban jazz in New York, a style that exerted a profound impact on leaders of the bebop movement, including Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, who appears as a guest soloist with Machito on some of the music transcribed here. This is MUSA’s first volume to represent the significant Latino heritage in North American music.

MUSA 27. Joseph Rumshinsky: Di goldene kale (1923)

Edited by Michael Ochs

Winner of the 2018 Claude V. Palisca Award

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The Yiddish-American musical theater of the 1920s served to help Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe make meaning of their lives as strangers in this new land. Like most earlier and later newcomers to America, they faced homesickness, deprivation, and language difficulty. The Yiddish musical helped them come to terms with their environment by reminding them of the "old home" while highlighting the benefits of the New World. It confronted the past with the present and fused the folkloric songs, liturgical chants, dances, and theater styles of Jewish music with American rhythms and social topics to help resolve on stage the conflicts and stalemates in the lives of new inhabitants. These comic and dramatic musical works chart the evolution of a community in its acculturation to America and its inevitable assimilation. This edition and study of a successful Yiddish musical will provide multifaceted insights into the absorption, not only of Jews, but of every immigrant group into the American mainstream.

Di goldene kale (The golden bride) was premiered at the 2,000-seat Second Avenue Theater in New York on February 9, 1923, one of fourteen Yiddish programs in the city that night. It ran for eighteen weeks and was then performed in Boston, Philadelphia, and other American cities, as well as Buenos Aires and venues in Europe. Thirteen recordings of songs from the show were released at the time, sheet music for two numbers was published, and it was still being performed twenty-five years later. It was written and produced at a critical time of transition, between a law passed in May 1921 that greatly limited immigration from eastern Europe and another, in 1924, that reduced such immigration to a trickle. Thus it represents—and illuminates—the period in the United States in which the arrival of some two million Russian and other east-European “foreigners” had peaked. While no single work can embody the wealth of diversity found in the Yiddish musical genre during its flourishing years—the 1880s to the 1940s—Di goldene kale offers an especially rich sampling of traits that audiences of the period could expect. The music is by Joseph Rumshinsky, the undisputed dean of Yiddish operetta composers in the U.S. (aptly called “the Jewish Victor Herbert”), who wrote the music for well over 100 such works. The libretto is by Frieda Freiman, about whom almost nothing is known except that some of her scripts, including this one, have been erroneously credited to her husband, Louis Freiman. The lyrics are by Louis Gilrod, who collaborated with leading composers of Yiddish songs and musicals.

This edition includes the full score, lyrics, and libretto in transliterated Yiddish, together with an English translation. This work is the first from the entire Yiddish-American musical stage to appear in print in any form other than vocal scores of individual songs.

Performances of Di goldene kale by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene earned high acclaim:

• Watch a video excerpt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82M7Y9znPRI)

• New York Times Critic’s Pick review (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/theater/review-the-golden-bride-walks-down-the-aisle-again.html?_r=0)

• A musicologist’s review (http://www.classical-scene.com/2016/01/12/1923-golden-bride/)

• Two 2016  Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Revival of a Musical and Outstanding Director of a Musical

• (http://variety.com/2016/legit/news/drama-desk-awards-nominations-2016-full-list-1201762667/)

MUSA 28. George Whitefield Chadwick: The Padrone

Edited by Marianne Betz

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George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931), a Massachusetts native identified with the so-called second “New England School” of composers, is among the most important and creative American composers in the generation that bridged the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Trained in part in Germany, he spent much of his working life educating other musicians at the New England Conservatory of Music, which he led from 1897 until his death. Chadwick fashioned a compelling individual musical voice rooted in a Euro-American musical idiom; his orchestral and chamber music was performed with some frequency in his own day and has been revived in ours. His opera The Padrone, set to a libretto by David K. Stevens (based on an idea from Chadwick himself), was composed in 1912; it was strongly influenced by the “verismo” operas of the time (Such as Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Puccini’s Tosca), which attempted to bring to opera the naturalism of such late  nineteenth-century writers as Zola and Ibsen. The Padrone is set in an American city (presumably the North End of Boston) in the “present.” The story, a tragic tale in two acts with an orchestral interlude, revolves around a ruthless member of the Italian community (“the padrone”) and his exploitation of more recently arrived immigrants.

Chadwick composed The Padrone for submission to the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York, but the opera was rejected, probably because of its gritty realism, and was never staged during Chadwick’s lifetime. (Prior to this edition, The Padrone existed only in manuscript form and had never been published; its only public performance so far took place in 1997.) In contrast to American operas of its generation that dramatize myths and legends from the ancient past, The Padrone brings a modern story to the stage, set to music of dramatic power and superb craftsmanship.

MUSA 29. Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle: Shuffle Along (1921)

Edited by Lyn Schenbeck and Lawrence Schenbeck

Winner of the 2019 Claude V. Palisca Award

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The Broadway musical Shuffle Along—with book by Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, lyrics by Noble Sissle, and music by Eubie Blake—premiered on 23 May 1921 at the Cort Theatre on 63rd Street and became the first overwhelmingly successful African American musical on Broadway. Langston Hughes, who saw the production, said that Shuffle Along marked the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. Both Black and White audiences swarmed to the show, which prompted the integration of subsequent Broadway audiences. The dances were such a smash that choreographers for White Broadway shows hired Shuffle Along chorus girls to teach their chorus lines the new steps. “Love Will Find a Way,” the first successful unburlesqued love song in a Black Broadway show, was so well-received that audiences demanded multiple encores. The show’s influences went far beyond Broadway: Some of the period’s most influential Black musicians, including dancer Josephine Baker, vocalist Paul Robeson, composer Hall Johnson, and composer William Grant Still, all got their start in Shuffle Along. The editors have assembled the full score and libretto for this critical edition from the original performance materials. The critical report thoroughly explains all sources and editorial decisions. The accompanying scholarly essay examines the music, dances, and script of Shuffle Along and places this influential show in its social, racial, and historical context.

MUSA 30. David Tudor: Solo for Piano by John Cage, Second Realization

Edited by John Holzaepfel

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"When I think of music, I think of you and vice-versa," John Cage told David Tudor in the summer of 1951. Looking back years later, Cage said that every work he composed in the ensuing two decades was composed for Tudor—even if it was not written for the piano, Tudor’s nominal instrument.

The collaboration of Cage and Tudor reached an apex in the Solo for Piano from Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58). None of Cage’s previous works had employed more than a single type of notation. In contrast, the Solo for Piano consists of eighty-four notational types, ranging from standard line-and-staff notation to extravagant musical graphics. The notational complexity of the Solo for Piano led Tudor to write out—or realize—a performance score, from which he played at the premiere of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra in May 1958. The next spring, when Cage requested music to complement his ninety-minute lecture “Indeterminacy,” Tudor created a second realization, for which he devised a new temporal structure to implement Cage’s notations.

This edition of Tudor’s second realization of the Solo for Piano presents Tudor’s performance score in the spatial-temporal layout of its proportional notation. An introductory essay discusses the early collaborations of Cage and Tudor, as well as the genesis, creative process, and performance history of the Solo for Piano. The critical commentary examines each of Tudor’s methods of realization; which notations from Cage’s score Tudor selected and why; how Tudor interpreted Cage’s often ambiguous performance instructions; how Tudor distributed the resulting sounds temporally; and the ways in which Tudor’s realization fulfills, transcends, and sometimes contravenes the instructions of Cage’s score.

MUSA 31. Aaron Copland: Appalachian Spring (Original Ballet Version)

Edited by Jennifer DeLapp-Birkett and Aaron Sherber

Winner of the 2021 Claude V. Palisca Award

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Edition website: https://appalachianspring.info

Appalachian Spring is perhaps the most popular work by Aaron Copland (1900–1990). Composed as a ballet for the renowned choreographer Martha Graham (1894–1991), it was the result of a close collaboration between Copland and Graham, and the music quickly took on a life of its own. However, the best known versions of the score, those most frequently recorded and heard in concert, differ in form and musical content from the original ballet, which was scored for a chamber ensemble of thirteen instruments and premiered by the Martha Graham Dance Company at the Library of Congress on 30 October 1944.

This edition presents the first completed engraving of the original version of Appalachian Spring, providing musicians and scholars access to the score as it has been performed for more than 75 years by the Graham Company. On each page of the score, the editors have included stills from the 1958 film of the ballet, with Graham dancing the lead role, in order to highlight the connection between music and dance.

An introductory essay explores the creation of the work, the musical structure, the origins of and differences among multiple versions of the score, and the continued significance and influence of Copland’s music. The critical commentary draws on manuscript and published sources, as well as Graham Company performance practice, to illuminate editorial decisions. The edition also includes appendices that present a comparison of historical tempi, markings from the Graham tradition for augmenting the orchestration, and a selected discography of different versions of the score.

MUSA 32. An American Singing Heritage: Songs from the British-Irish-American Oral Tradition as Recorded in the Early Twentieth Century

Edited by Norm Cohen, Carson Cohen, and Anne Dhu McLucas

Winner of the 2022 Claude V. Palisca Award

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This edition brings together representative transcriptions of folk songs and ballads in the British-Irish-American oral tradition that have enjoyed widespread familiarity throughout twentieth-century America. Within are the one hundred folk songs that most frequently occurred in a methodical survey of Roud’s Folk Song Index, catalogues of commercial early country (or "hillbilly") recordings, and relevant archival collections. The editors selected sources for transcriptions in a broad range of singing styles and representing many regions of the United States. The selections attempt to avoid the biases of previous collections and provide a fresh group of examples, many heretofore unseen in print. The sources for the transcriptions are recordings of traditional musicians from the 1920s through the early 1940s drawn from (1) commercial recordings of "hillbilly” musicians, and (2) field recordings in the collection of the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song, now part of the Archive of Folk Culture. Each transcription is accompanied by a brief contextualizing essay discussing the song’s history and influence, recording and performance information (whenever available), and an examination of the tune. The edition begins with a substantive essay about the history of folk song recordings and folk song scholarship, and the nature of traditional vocal music in the United States.

All the audio recordings for this edition are on YouTube.