The rich history and tradition of the American wind band was heavily influenced by the influx of immigrants into the New York area during the 19th and 20th centuries. With their varied cultural backgrounds, building upon their diverse musical experiences and a wide variety of instruments and ensemble instrumentation, the seeds for the contemporary American wind band were planted. The story of the American wind band is revealed in this diverse collection of essays. Fascinating reading for band scholars everywhere!

Of the many brass bands that have flourished in Britain and Ireland over the last 200 years very few have documented records covering their history. This directory is an attempt to collect together information about such bands and make it available to all. Over 19,600 bands are recorded here, with some 10,600 additional cross references for alternative or previous names. This volume supersedes the earlier “British Brass Bands – a Historical Directory” (2016) and includes some 1,400 bands from the island of Ireland. A separate work is in preparation covering brass bands beyond the British Isles. A separate appendix lists the brass bands in each county

9th edition, 2019. A comprehensive list of books, articles, theses and other material covering the brass band movement, its history, instruments and musicology; together with other related topics (originally issued in book form in January 2009)

During the nineteenth century, nearly one hundred symphonies were written by over fifty composers living in the United States. With few exceptions, this repertoire is virtually forgotten today. In Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise, author Douglas W. Shadle explores the stunning stylistic diversity of this substantial repertoire and uncovers why it failed to enter the musical mainstream. Throughout the century, Americans longed for a distinct national musical identity. As the most prestigious of all instrumental genres, the symphony proved to be a potent vehicle in this project as composers found inspiration for their works in a dazzling array of subjects, including Niagara Falls, Hiawatha, and Western pioneers. With a wealth of musical sources at his disposal, including never-before-examined manuscripts, Shadle reveals how each component of the symphonic enterprise-from its composition, to its performance, to its immediate and continued reception by listeners and critics-contributed to competing visions of American identity. Employing an innovative transnational historical framework, Shadle's narrative covers three continents and shows how the music of major European figures such as Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, Brahms, and Dvorák exerted significant influence over dialogues about the future of American musical culture. Shadle demonstrates that the perceived authority of these figures allowed snobby conductors, capricious critics, and even orchestral musicians themselves to thwart the efforts of American symphonists despite widespread public support of their music. Consequently, these works never entered the performing canons of American orchestras. An engagingly written account of a largely unknown repertoire, Orchestrating the Nation shows how artistic and ideological debates from the nineteenth century continue to shape the culture of American orchestral music today.

Essays on the history of bands in America from ca. 1820 to 1930, offering new insights on a major sphere of music making that brought diverse repertories to wide audiences.The essays in this volume, written by leading scholars in the field of American-band history, examine a broad spectrum of issues, including biography, performance, repertoire, and marketing. Detailed studies of key turning points in the evolution of bands include P. S. Gilmore's 1864 New Orleans concerts, the Kaiser-Cornet-Quartett's 1872 tour, the 1892 transition from Gilmore's Band to Sousa's Band, C. G. Conn's lavish artist-endorsement posters, and the demise of the Sousa Band in the late 1920s. Additional essays seek to rectify oversights and add insights to the lives of key figures in band history. African American keyed bugler Frank Johnson's earliest works receive close scrutiny, as does the life of neglected cornet superstar Alice Raymond. A complete re-evaluation of Francesco Fanciulli, the U. S. Marine Band leader whose reputation suffered greatly from an 1897 scandal, shows his importance in the realm of conducting and composition. The repertoire of a town band in antebellum New Hampshire and a documentary study of Civil War bandsmen seek to better understand social aspects of bands in the 1850s and 1860s.Edited by Bryan Proksch and George Foreman. Contributors: Patricia Backhaus, Margaret Downie Banks, Steve Bornemann, Jim Davis, Dave Detwiler, Michael O'Connor, Eric Roefs, and Colin Roust. suffered greatly from an 1897 scandal, shows his importance in the realm of conducting and composition. The repertoire of a town band in antebellum New Hampshire and a documentary study of Civil War bandsmen seek to better understand social aspects of bands in the 1850s and 1860s.Edited by Bryan Proksch and George Foreman. Contributors: Patricia Backhaus, Margaret Downie Banks, Steve Bornemann, Jim Davis, Dave Detwiler, Michael O'Connor, Eric Roefs, and Colin Roust. suffered greatly from an 1897 scandal, shows his importance in the realm of conducting and composition. The repertoire of a town band in antebellum New Hampshire and a documentary study of Civil War bandsmen seek to better understand social aspects of bands in the 1850s and 1860s.Edited by Bryan Proksch and George Foreman. Contributors: Patricia Backhaus, Margaret Downie Banks, Steve Bornemann, Jim Davis, Dave Detwiler, Michael O'Connor, Eric Roefs, and Colin Roust. suffered greatly from an 1897 scandal, shows his importance in the realm of conducting and composition. The repertoire of a town band in antebellum New Hampshire and a documentary study of Civil War bandsmen seek to better understand social aspects of bands in the 1850s and 1860s.Edited by Bryan Proksch and George Foreman. Contributors: Patricia Backhaus, Margaret Downie Banks, Steve Bornemann, Jim Davis, Dave Detwiler, Michael O'Connor, Eric Roefs, and Colin Roust.

This book introduces the topics of Enlightenment, Counter-Enlightenment, and social demography in Western art musics and demonstrates their historical and sociological importance. The essays in this book explore the concepts of “existential irony” and “sanctification,” which have been mentioned or discussed by music scholars, historians, and musicologists only either in connection with specific composers’ works (Shostakovich’s, in the case of “existential irony”) or very parenthetically, merely in passing in the biographies of composers of “classical” musics. This groundbreaking work illustrates their generality and sociological sources and correlates in contemporary Western art musics.

Choral music represented an important part of American cultural life during the nineteenth century, whether integral to worship or merely for entertainment. Despite this history, choral music remains one of the more neglected studies in the scholarly community. In an effort to fill this gap, N. Lee Orr and W. Dan Hardin offer a new approach to the study of choral music by mapping out and bringing bibliographical control to this expansive and challenging field of study. Their unique guide focuses on literature related to choral music in the United States from the end of the second decade of the nineteenth century through the earlier part of the twentieth century. Choral Music in Nineteenth-Century America explores the entire range of choral music conceived, written, published, rehearsed, and performed by an ensemble of singers gathered specifically to present the music before an audience or congregation. The guide expertly sifts through the extensive literature to cite the most notable sources for study and provides individual chapters on the leading nineteenth-century composers who were instrumental in the development of choral music.