The Guitar In American Banjo Mandolin And Guitar Periodicals 1882 1933

In the early years of the twentieth century, O.G. Sonneck, the father of American musicology, decried the state of musical bibliography in this country, encouraging musical scholars to dedicate themselves to preserving, cataloging, and promoting the use of America’s musical ephemera, especially newspapers and magazines. Despite his century-old calls, much work in this area remains undone. This volume responds to Sonneck’s call for action by creating a bibliography of periodicals that document the use and place of the guitar in a little-known segment of America’s musical culture in the final decades of the nineteenth century through the first third of the twentieth century. Between 1880 and the mid-1930s, a unique musical movement grew and flourished in this country. Focused on the promotion of so-called “plectral instruments,” this movement promoted the banjo, the mandolin, and the guitar as cultivated instruments on a par with the classical violin or piano. The Banjo, Mandolin and Guitar (BMG) community consisted of instrument manufacturers, music publishers, professional teachers and composers, and amateur students. While some professional soloists achieved national recognition, the performing focus of the movement was ensemble work, with bands of banjos, mandolins and guitars ranging from quartets and quintets (modeled on the violin-family string ensembles) to festival orchestras of up to 400 players (mimicking the late romantic symphony orchestra). The repertoire of most ensembles included popular dances of the day as well as light classics, but more ambitious ensembles tackled Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and even Wagner. Although this movement straddled both popular and cultivated (classical) music-making, its elitist pretensions contributed to its demise in the wake of the explosive growth of modern American popular music linked to Tin Pan Alley or the blues. While the movement’s heyday spanned the early years of audio recording, only a handful of active BMG performers made recordings. As a result few musical scholars are aware of the BMG movement and its contribution to American musical culture, especially its influence on the physical and technical development of America’s instrument, the guitar The movement did, however, leave extensive traces of itself in periodicals produced by manufacturing and publishing concerns. Beginning in 1882, the leadership of the BMG movement fell to the publishers, editors, and contributors from these promotional journals, which were dedicated to the “interests of Banjoists, Mandolinists and Guitarists” While advertising dominated the pages of most of these periodicals, nearly all offered product and publication reviews, historical surveys, biographical sketches, and technical advice. In addition, the BMG magazines not only documented performances with reviews and program lists but also contained musical scores for solo instruments and plucked-string ensembles. These magazines are the primary sources which document this vibrant expression of America’s musical life. While one or two of the BMG magazines have been known by guitar scholars, most have not seen the light of day in decades. Similarly, a few of the leading guitar figures of the BMG movement—principally William Foden, Vahdah Olcott-Bickford, and George C. Krick—have been acknowledged and documented but many more remain completely anonymous. This bibliography offers access to the periodicals which help document the story of the guitar in America’s progressive era—a story of tradition and transformation—as lived and told by the guitar’s players, teachers, manufacturers, composers, and fans in the BMG movement. The bibliography consists of two large sections. The first contains a chronological list of articles, news items, advertisements, illustrations, and photographs as well as a list of musical works for guitar published in the BMG magazines. The second section of the bibliography is a series of indices which link names and subjects to the lists. With nearly 5500 entries and over 100 pages of indices, this bibliography offers researchers access to a musical world that has been locked away on library shelves for the past century.

In the early years of the twentieth century, O.G. Sonneck, the father of American musicology, decried the state of musical bibliography in this country, encouraging musical scholars to dedicate themselves to preserving, cataloging, and promoting the use of America’s musical ephemera, especially newspapers and magazines. Despite his century-old calls, much work in this area remains undone. This volume responds to Sonneck’s call for action by creating a bibliography of periodicals that document the use and place of the guitar in a little-known segment of America’s musical culture in the final decades of the nineteenth century through the first third of the twentieth century. Between 1880 and the mid-1930s, a unique musical movement grew and flourished in this country. Focused on the promotion of so-called “plectral instruments,” this movement promoted the banjo, the mandolin, and the guitar as cultivated instruments on a par with the classical violin or piano. The Banjo, Mandolin and Guitar (BMG) community consisted of instrument manufacturers, music publishers, professional teachers and composers, and amateur students. While some professional soloists achieved national recognition, the performing focus of the movement was ensemble work, with bands of banjos, mandolins and guitars ranging from quartets and quintets (modeled on the violin-family string ensembles) to festival orchestras of up to 400 players (mimicking the late romantic symphony orchestra). The repertoire of most ensembles included popular dances of the day as well as light classics, but more ambitious ensembles tackled Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and even Wagner. Although this movement straddled both popular and cultivated (classical) music-making, its elitist pretensions contributed to its demise in the wake of the explosive growth of modern American popular music linked to Tin Pan Alley or the blues. While the movement’s heyday spanned the early years of audio recording, only a handful of active BMG performers made recordings. As a result few musical scholars are aware of the BMG movement and its contribution to American musical culture, especially its influence on the physical and technical development of America’s instrument, the guitar The movement did, however, leave extensive traces of itself in periodicals produced by manufacturing and publishing concerns. Beginning in 1882, the leadership of the BMG movement fell to the publishers, editors, and contributors from these promotional journals, which were dedicated to the “interests of Banjoists, Mandolinists and Guitarists” While advertising dominated the pages of most of these periodicals, nearly all offered product and publication reviews, historical surveys, biographical sketches, and technical advice. In addition, the BMG magazines not only documented performances with reviews and program lists but also contained musical scores for solo instruments and plucked-string ensembles. These magazines are the primary sources which document this vibrant expression of America’s musical life. While one or two of the BMG magazines have been known by guitar scholars, most have not seen the light of day in decades. Similarly, a few of the leading guitar figures of the BMG movement—principally William Foden, Vahdah Olcott-Bickford, and George C. Krick—have been acknowledged and documented but many more remain completely anonymous. This bibliography offers access to the periodicals which help document the story of the guitar in America’s progressive era—a story of tradition and transformation—as lived and told by the guitar’s players, teachers, manufacturers, composers, and fans in the BMG movement. The bibliography consists of two large sections. The first contains a chronological list of articles, news items, advertisements, illustrations, and photographs as well as a list of musical works for guitar published in the BMG magazines. The second section of the bibliography is a series of indices which link names and subjects to the lists. With nearly 5500 entries and over 100 pages of indices, this bibliography offers researchers access to a musical world that has been locked away on library shelves for the past century.

Reunion is the awkward, tender meeting between a father and daughter after nearly twenty years separation. Dark Pony is the telling of a mythical story by a father to his young daughter as they drive home in the evening.

"Nashville Cats: Record Production in Music City, 1945-1975 is the first history of record production during country music's so-called "Nashville Sound" era. This period of country music history produced some of the genre's most celebrated recording artists, including Country Music Hall of Fame inductees Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, and Floyd Cramer, and marked the establishment of a recording industry that has come to define Nashville in the national and international consciousness. Yet, despite country music's overwhelming popularity during this period and the continued legacy of the studios that were built in Nashville during the 1950s and 1960s, little attention has been given to the ways in which recording engineers, session musicians, and record producers shaped the sounds of country music during the time. Drawing upon a rich array of previously unexplored primary sources, Nashville Cats: Record Production in Nashville, 1945-1975 is the first book to take a global view of record production in Nashville during the three decades that the city's musicians established the city as the leading center for the production and distribution of country music"--

Recording the Classical Guitar charts the evolution of classical guitar recording practice from the early twentieth century to the present day, encompassing the careers of many of the instrument’s most influential practitioners from acoustic era to the advent of the CD. A key focus is on the ways in which guitarists’ recorded repertoire programmes have shaped the identity of the instrument, particularly where national allegiances and musical aesthetics are concerned. The book also considers the ways in which changing approaches to recording practice have conditioned guitarists’ conceptions of the instrument’s ideal representation in recorded form and situates these in relation to the development of classical music recording aesthetics more generally. An important addition to the growing body of literature in the field of phonomusicology, the book will be of interest to guitarists and producers as well as students of record production and historians of classical music recording.

From humble folk instrument to American icon, the story of the guitar is told in this “exceptionally well-written” memoir by the NPR commentator (Guitar Player). In this blend of personal memoir and cultural history, National Public Radio commentator Tim Brookes narrates the long and winding history of the guitar in the United States as he recounts his own quest to build the perfect instrument. Pairing up with a master artisan from the Green Mountains of Vermont, Brookes learns how a perfect piece of cherry wood is hued, dovetailed, and worked on with saws, rasps, and files. He also discovers how the guitar first arrived in America with the conquistadors before being taken up by an extraordinary variety of hands: miners and society ladies, lumberjacks and presidents’ wives. In time, the guitar became America’s vehicle of self-expression. Nearly every immigrant group has appropriated it to tell their story. “Part history, part love song, Guitar strikes just the right chords.” —Andrew Abrahams, People

The Guitar in America offers a history of the instrument from America\'s late Victorian period to the Jazz Age. The narrative traces America\'s BMG (banjo, mandolin, and guitar) community, a late nineteenth-century musical and com-mercial movement dedicated to introducing these instru-ments into America\'s elite musical establishments. Using surviving BMG magazines, the author details an almost unknown history of the guitar during the movement\'s heyday, tracing the guitar\'s transformation from a refined parlor instrument to a mainstay in jazz and popular music. In the process, he not only introduces musicians (including numerous women guitarists) who led the movement, but also examines new techniques and instruments. Chapters consider the BMG movement\'s impact on jazz and popular music, the use of the guitar to promote attitudes towards women and minorities, and the challenges foreign guitarists such as Miguel Llobet and Andres Segovia presented to America\'s musicians. This volume opens a new chapter on the guitar in America, considering its cultivated past and documenting how banjoists and mandolinists aligned their instruments to it in an effort to raise social and cultural standing. At the same time, the book considers the BMG community within America\'s larger musical scene, examining its efforts as manifestations of this country\'s uneasy coupling of musical art and commerce. Jeffrey J. Noonan, associate professor of music at Southeast Missouri State University, has performed professionally on classical guitar, Renaissance lute, Baroque guitar, and theorbo for over twenty-five years. His articles have appeared in Soundboard and NYlon Review .

Annotation: The Index is published in two physical volumes and sold as a set for $250.00. As America's geography and societal demands expanded, the topics in The Etude magazine (first published in 1883) took on such important issues as women in music; immigration; transportation; Native American and African American composers and their music; World War I and II; public schools; new technologies (sound recordings, radio, and television); and modern music (jazz, gospel, blues, early 20th century composers) in addition to regular book reviews, teaching advice, interviews, biographies, and advertisements. Though a valued source particularly for private music teachers, with the de-emphasis on the professional elite and the decline in salon music, the magazine ceased publication in 1957. This Index to the articles in The Etude serves as a companion to E. Douglas Bomberger's 2004 publication on the music in The Etude. Published a little over fifty years after the final issue reached the public, this Index chronicles vocal and instrumental technique, composer biographies, position openings, department store orchestras, the design of a successful music studio, how to play an accordion, recital programs in music schools, and much more. The Index is a valuable tool for research, particularly in the music culture of American in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With titles of these articles available, the doors are now open for further research in the years to come.