MUSA: Music of the United States of America

FAIN: RQ-255711-17

American Musicological Society, Inc. (New York, NY 10012-1502)
Amy C. Beal (Project Director: December 2016 to present)

Editorial work on four volumes in the series Music of the United States of America. (12 months)

Applying the principles of critical editing to a variety of American idioms, including jazz, psalmody, popular song, nineteenth- and twentieth-century symphonic and chamber music, art song, Native American ceremony, and the Broadway show, MUSA (Music of the United States of America) is devoted to expanding the legacy of American music available for study and performance. MUSA is publishing a 40-volume series of scholarly editions of American music. In addition to musical notation, each volume includes a substantial essay and a critical editorial apparatus. By bringing notated music and scholarly interpretation together in the same volume, each MUSA volume seeks to place the sounds of music making in the United States within the context of the nation's cultural life. Founded in 1988, MUSA is a collaborative venture administered by the American Musicological Society through its Committee on the Publication of American Music (COPAM) and is published by A-R, Editions.

Associated Products

Machito and his Afro Cubans: Selected Transcriptions, Volume 26 in The Music of the United States of America (Book)
Title: Machito and his Afro Cubans: Selected Transcriptions, Volume 26 in The Music of the United States of America
Author: Francisco Raúl Grillo
Author: Mario Bauzá
Editor: Gayle Magee, Co-Editor-in-Chief
Editor: Paul Austerlitz, Volume Editor
Editor: Jere Laukannen, Volume Editor
Editor: Andrew Thomas Kuster, Executive Editor
Editor: Mark Clague, Co-Editor-in-Chief
Abstract: 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.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/machito-and-his-afro-cubans-selected-transcriptions-an-overture-for-the-capital-theatre-new-york/oclc/947796297&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://www.areditions.com/publications/musa/machito-and-his-afro-cubans-selected-transcriptions-mu26-a078.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Middleton, Wisconsin: A-R Editions, Inc.
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780895798282
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Music of the United States of America: Di Goldene Kale, Part 1, Volume 27A (Book)
Title: Music of the United States of America: Di Goldene Kale, Part 1, Volume 27A
Author: Joseph Rumshinsky
Editor: Michael Ochs
Abstract: The Yiddish-American musical theater of the 1920s helped Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe make meaning of their lives as strangers in this new land, reminding them of the "old home" while highlighting the benefits of the new. Past and present fused folkloric songs, liturgical chants, dances, and theatrical Jewish music with American rhythms and social topics. These musical works chart a community’s acculturation and assimilation, providing insights into the absorption of immigrant groups into the American mainstream. Di goldene kale (The golden bride) premiered at the 2,000-seat Second Avenue Theater in New York on February 9, 1923, one of 14 Yiddish programs in the city that night. It ran for 18 weeks and was then performed in Boston, Philadelphia, other U.S. cities, Buenos Aires, and venues in Europe. 13 recordings of songs from the show were released at the time, sheet music for 2 numbers was published, and it was still being performed 25 years later. It was written and produced at a critical time of transition, when laws passed in 1921 and 1924 reduced immigration from eastern Europe to a trickle. Thus it represents the period in the U.S. in which the arrival of some 2 million Russian and other east-European “foreigners” had peaked. Di goldene kale is a rich sampling of traits that audiences of the period could expect. The music is by Joseph Rumshinsky, dean of Yiddish operetta composers in the U.S., “the Jewish Victor Herbert,” who wrote over 100 such works. The libretto is by Frieda Freiman, about nothing is known except that some of her scripts, including this one, were wrongly credited to her husband, Louis Freiman. The lyrics are by Louis Gilrod, who collaborated with leading composers of Yiddish songs and musicals. Included is the full score, lyrics, and libretto in transliterated Yiddish, and an English translation. This work is the first from the Yiddish-American musical stage to appear in print other than vocal scores of individual songs.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/di-goldene-kale-part-1/oclc/1008895731&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://www.areditions.com/rumshinsky-di-goldene-kale-part-1-mu27a-a080.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, Inc.
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780895798527
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Music of the United States of America: Di Goldene Kale, Part 2, Volume 27B (Book)
Title: Music of the United States of America: Di Goldene Kale, Part 2, Volume 27B
Author: Joseph Rushminsky
Editor: Michael Ochs
Abstract: The Yiddish-American musical theater of the 1920s helped Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe make meaning of their lives as strangers in this new land, reminding them of the "old home" while highlighting the benefits of the new. Past and present fused folkloric songs, liturgical chants, dances, and theatrical Jewish music with American rhythms and social topics. These musical works chart a community’s acculturation and assimilation, providing insights into the absorption of immigrant groups into the American mainstream. Di goldene kale (The golden bride) premiered at the 2,000-seat Second Avenue Theater in New York on February 9, 1923, one of 14 Yiddish programs in the city that night. It ran for 18 weeks and was then performed in Boston, Philadelphia, other U.S. cities, Buenos Aires, and venues in Europe. 13 recordings of songs from the show were released at the time, sheet music for 2 numbers was published, and it was still being performed 25 years later. It was written and produced at a critical time of transition, when laws passed in 1921 and 1924 reduced immigration from eastern Europe to a trickle. Thus it represents the period in the U.S. in which the arrival of some 2 million Russian and other east-European “foreigners” had peaked. Di goldene kale is a rich sampling of traits that audiences of the period could expect. The music is by Joseph Rumshinsky, dean of Yiddish operetta composers in the U.S., “the Jewish Victor Herbert,” who wrote over 100 such works. The libretto is by Frieda Freiman, about nothing is known except that some of her scripts, including this one, were wrongly credited to her husband, Louis Freiman. The lyrics are by Louis Gilrod, who collaborated with leading composers of Yiddish songs and musicals. Included is the full score, lyrics, and libretto in transliterated Yiddish, and an English translation. This work is the first from the Yiddish-American musical stage to appear in print other than vocal scores of individual songs.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/di-goldene-kale-part-2/oclc/1008915822&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://www.areditions.com/rumshinsky-di-goldene-kale-part-2-mu27b-a081.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, Inc.
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780895798534
Translator: Michael Ochs
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Music of the United States of America, Volume 28: George Whitefield Chadwick, The Padrone (Book)
Title: Music of the United States of America, Volume 28: George Whitefield Chadwick, The Padrone
Author: George Whitefield Chadwick
Editor: Marianne Betz
Abstract: 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. (The Padrone exists only in manuscript form and has 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 dramatic music.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/padrone/oclc/1012346130&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: https://www.areditions.com/chadwick-the-padrone-mu28-a082.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, Inc.
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780895798558
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Music of the United States of America: Di Goldene Kale, Piano-Vocal Score, Volume 27P (Book)
Title: Music of the United States of America: Di Goldene Kale, Piano-Vocal Score, Volume 27P
Author: Joseph Rumshinsky
Editor: Michael Ochs
Abstract: The Yiddish-American musical theater of the 1920s helped Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe make meaning of their lives as strangers in this new land, reminding them of the "old home" while highlighting the benefits of the new. Past and present fused folkloric songs, liturgical chants, dances, and theatrical Jewish music with American rhythms and social topics. These musical works chart a community’s acculturation and assimilation, providing insights into the absorption of immigrant groups into the American mainstream. Di goldene kale (The golden bride) premiered at the 2,000-seat Second Avenue Theater in New York on February 9, 1923, one of 14 Yiddish programs in the city that night. It ran for 18 weeks and was then performed in Boston, Philadelphia, other U.S. cities, Buenos Aires, and venues in Europe. 13 recordings of songs from the show were released at the time, sheet music for 2 numbers was published, and it was still being performed 25 years later. It was written and produced at a critical time of transition, when laws passed in 1921 and 1924 reduced immigration from eastern Europe to a trickle. Thus it represents the period in the U.S. in which the arrival of some 2 million Russian and other east-European “foreigners” had peaked. Di goldene kale is a rich sampling of traits that audiences of the period could expect. The music is by Joseph Rumshinsky, dean of Yiddish operetta composers in the U.S., “the Jewish Victor Herbert,” who wrote over 100 such works. The libretto is by Frieda Freiman, about nothing is known except that some of her scripts, including this one, were wrongly credited to her husband, Louis Freiman. The lyrics are by Louis Gilrod, who collaborated with leading composers of Yiddish songs and musicals. Included is the full score, lyrics, and libretto in transliterated Yiddish, and an English translation. This work is the first from the Yiddish-American musical stage to appear in print other than vocal scores of individual songs.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/goldene-kale/oclc/1101970215&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: https://www.areditions.com/rumshinsky-di-goldene-kale-pv-score-mu27p-a080p.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, INc.
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9781987200553
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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