CMS Monographs and Sourcebooks in American Music – serie

The Wind Band Music of Henry Cowell studies the compositions for wind band by twentieth-century composer Henry Cowell, a significant and prolific figure in American fine art music from 1914-1965. The composer is noteworthy and controversial because of his radical early works, his interest in non-Western musics, and his retrogressive mature style—along with notoriety for his imprisonment in San Quentin on a morals charge. Eleven chapters are organized both topically and chronologically. An introduction, conclusion, series of eight appendices, bibliography, and discography complete this comprehensive study, along with an audio playlist of representative works, hosted on the CMS website.

The Wind Band Music of Henry Cowell studies the compositions for wind band by twentieth-century composer Henry Cowell, a significant and prolific figure in American fine art music from 1914-1965. The composer is noteworthy and controversial because of his radical early works, his interest in non-Western musics, and his retrogressive mature style—along with notoriety for his imprisonment in San Quentin on a morals charge. Eleven chapters are organized both topically and chronologically. An introduction, conclusion, series of eight appendices, bibliography, and discography complete this comprehensive study, along with an audio playlist of representative works, hosted on the CMS website.

This volume honors and extends the contributions of educator and scholar Dr. Michael J. Budds to the field of musicology, particularly the study of American music. As the longtime editor of two book series for the College Music Society, Budds nurtured a wide range of scholarship in American music and had a lasting impact on the field. This book brings together scholars who worked with Budds as a colleague, editor, or mentor to carry on his legacy of passionate engagement with America’s rich and varied musical heritage. Ranging through jazz, gospel, Americana, and film music to American classical, and addressing music’s social contexts and analytical structure, the research gathered here attests to the diversity of the mosaic that is American music and the numerous scholarly approaches that have been taken to the subject.

This volume honors and extends the contributions of educator and scholar Dr. Michael J. Budds to the field of musicology, particularly the study of American music. As the longtime editor of two book series for the College Music Society, Budds nurtured a wide range of scholarship in American music and had a lasting impact on the field. This book brings together scholars who worked with Budds as a colleague, editor, or mentor to carry on his legacy of passionate engagement with America’s rich and varied musical heritage. Ranging through jazz, gospel, Americana, and film music to American classical, and addressing music’s social contexts and analytical structure, the research gathered here attests to the diversity of the mosaic that is American music and the numerous scholarly approaches that have been taken to the subject.

The Art Songs of Louise Talma presents some of Talma’s finest compositions and those most frequently performed during her life. It includes pieces appropriate for beginning, intermediate, and advanced singers and collaborative pianists. The songs include text settings of American, English, and French poets and writers, including Native American poems, works by W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, e. e. cummings, John Donne, Gerald Manley Hopkins, William Shakespeare, and Wallace Stevens, as well as poems from medieval France and religious texts. Because of the popularity of Talma’s choral works and the fact that her works for voice and piano were performed often, this sourcebook will be useful to singers at all stages of their careers, as well as scholars of twentieth-century music as a whole. The diversity of compositional approaches Talma used provides a snapshot of American trends in composition during the twentieth century; during the course of her career, Talma moved from neo-classicism to serialism and finally to non-strict serial-derived atonality in her works. Inclusion of performance and reception histories of the songs helps trace changing public taste in American art song and the repertoire of performers, particularly those interested in contemporary music.