- Essays
Commentary on songs and singing.
Song In American History And Culture
By Deane L. Root
Abstract: Song in Walt Whitman’s America was an everyday affair, and it remains so today. His praise is not of humming, nor of half-remembered ballads, but of full-throated songs. The rhythm of work, or nurturing care, of playtime throbbed to the sound of song throughout life and across society’s many constituent parts.
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"Setting the Historical Record, Song by Song," The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 5, 2012
By Pia CattonAbstract: Learning American history by listening to music may sound like a short cut, but when the teacher is opera star Thomas Hampson, it's more of a highbrow leg-up.
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Music from the New and Old Worlds
By Stefan DreesAbstract: While American culture developed primarily in conformity with European standards during the 19th century, native elements began to receive attention in Europe beginning in the early 20th.
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Pearl Harbor Music: Weill and Schoenberg
By Joe HorowitzAbstract: Of the distinguished refugee composers chased to the US by Hitler, two - Kurt Weill and Arnold Schoenberg - so memorably responded to Pearl Harbor that one is tempted to surmise that no American-born composer could have reacted with such exigent fervor to the Japanese attack.
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Song of America: Diary of a Nation
By Thomas HampsonAbstract: “America” has always meant different things to different people. The American poetic tradition is a particularly rich narration of our people and of becoming a culture--a culture chiseled with a fierce independence of mind and heart and soul unmistakably grounded in the very myriad of racial heritages from which it was born.
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