Music of the United States of America (MUSA): A National Series

FAIN: RQ-50327-08

American Musicological Society, Inc. (New York, NY 10012-1502)
Richard Crawford (Project Director: November 2007 to April 2016)

Preparation for publication of volumes 19-24 and continued editorial work on four other volumes. (36 months)

The American Musicological Society, through its Committee on the Publication of American Music (COPAM), has planned, organized, and is now publishing a national series of scholarly editions of American music. Funds are sought to continue the salary of the executive editor, who maintains the project's headquarters, assists the volume editors in their work, and acts as principal developmental editor and copy editor for the MUSA series.

Associated Products

Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 19: Florence Price: Symphonies No. 1 and 3 (Book)
Title: Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 19: Florence Price: Symphonies No. 1 and 3
Author: Rae Linda Brown
Author: Wayne Shirley
Abstract: Price (1887-1953), a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, spent most of the last three decades of her life in Chicago. Brown, her biographer, traces the career of a southern woman who, after receiving excellent musical training at the New England Conservatory, became a wife and mother skilled as a pianist, organist, accompanist, teacher, songwriter, and composer, and whose blend of talent, training, ambition, and perseverance led her to become the first African American female symphonist. Price’s two surviving symphonies appear in this volume; her Second Symphony is lost. These two works have been performed successfully in recent years, and MUSA’s package of a critical edition, rental parts, and a contextual essay promises to help Price’s symphonies establish themselves more widely.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/musa/publications/musa-19-florence-price
Primary URL Description: Press
Access Model: purchase
Publisher: A-R Editions
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780895796387
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 20: Songs from "A New Circle of Voices": The Sixteenth-Annual Pow-Wow at UCLA (Book)
Title: Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 20: Songs from "A New Circle of Voices": The Sixteenth-Annual Pow-Wow at UCLA
Author: Tara Browner
Abstract: The volume is intended as a complement to MUSA 11, Writing American Indian Music, a collection of historic transcriptions. MUSA 11, edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine, devoted to facsimile reprints with commentary of more than one hundred documents from the 1500s to the late 1900s. For MUSA 20, which contains thirteen selections from a 2001 pow wow, Professor Browner has devised an original, elegant, and easy-to-read notation that includes four separate elements: the vocal line, the verbal text, the drum line, and the dance movements. Her essay locates this notational approach in the historical line of attempts to represent American Indian music in writing. It makes a strong case that, in this Plains-based style of music making, widely disseminated through a Pan-Indian pow-wow culture, the drum line and the dance movements, often omitted from transcriptions, are essential.
Year: 2009
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/songs-from-a-new-circle-of-voices-the-sixteenth-annual-pow-wow-at-ucla/oclc/760271106
Primary URL Description: worldcat
Access Model: purchase
Publisher: A-R Editions
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780895796570
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 21: John Philip Sousa: Six Marches (Book)
Title: Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 21: John Philip Sousa: Six Marches
Author: Patrick Warfield
Abstract: The marches of John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) remain staples of the band repertoire, but our knowledge of Sousa’s music rests largely on modern editions designed for school (rather than professional) bands, or on reprintings of the original editions, which because of their small size and rushed publication contain countless inconsistencies and omissions. This volume contains full band scores for six Sousa marches, each prepared from the first printing of the band parts and informed by Sousa’s holograph and the original performance materials. The six marches—The Washington Post (1889), The Liberty Bell (1893), El Capitan (1896), The Stars and Stripes Forever (1896), Sabre and Spurs (1918), and George Washington Bicentennial (1930)—span Sousa’s career, from his tenure as leader of the United States Marine Band (1880-92) to his years conducting his own, commercial ensemble (1892-1932). Also included in the volume is an essay reexamining Sousa’s biography, source materials, performance practice, and place in American culture.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/musa/publications/musa-21-john-philip-sousa
Primary URL Description: publisher
Access Model: purchase
Publisher: A-R Editions
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 978-0-89579-67
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 22: The Ingalls Wilder Family Songbook (Book)
Title: Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 22: The Ingalls Wilder Family Songbook
Author: Dale Cockrell
Abstract: The eight Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957), anchored in her family’s history and filled with memories of frontier life, are cornerstone classics in American children’s literature. Embedded in them are citations to 127 pieces of music—from parlor songs, stage songs, minstrel show songs, patriotic songs, Scottish and Irish songs, hymns and spirituals, to fiddle tunes, singing school songs, play party songs, folk songs, broadside ballads, catches and rounds. No books in American literature of comparable standing and popularity feature America’s vernacular music so centrally, assign it such a major narrative role, and index it in such rich abundance. This edition is a reconstruction of "the family songbook," based on the music referenced in Wilder’s books. Although no such object ever existed, her representations of music-making have likely informed the imaginations of more Americans than many a paper-and-bindings anthology, for what millions of readers have come to know about America’s musical heritage is what they learned from the Little House books—the titles and lyrics to songs; how songs and tunes functioned; where they were heard; what they meant; the importance of music to individuals, families, and communities. Wilder’s references and her evocative images of music-making thus form the basis of understanding about "American music" to many readers. The Ingalls Wilder Family Songbook is an effort to give fresh voice and sound to the music inscribed in these great books and new appreciation about how music functioned during a place and time important in American history and mythology.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.areditions.com/ingalls-wilder-family-songbook-mu22-a071.html
Primary URL Description: publisher
Access Model: purchase
Publisher: A-R Editions
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 978-0-89579-68
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 23: Symphony No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 24 (Jullien) (Book)
Title: Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 23: Symphony No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 24 (Jullien)
Author: Katherine K. Preston
Abstract: George Frederick Bristow (1825–98), American composer, conductor, teacher, and performer, was a pillar of the New York musical community for the second half of the nineteenth century. His participation in an important mid-century battle of words—between William Henry Fry and the journalist Richard Storrs Willis, concerning a lack of support for American composers by the Philharmonic Society—has unfortunately overshadowed his accomplishments as a composer, which were significant. Bristow is remembered today primarily for his opera Rip van Winkle (1855) and oratorio Daniel (1866), but he was also a skillful and productive composer of orchestral music, one of only a handful of American orchestral composers active at mid-century. Bristow wrote his Symphony No. 2 in D Minor (Jullien) in 1853. It is a substantial work in four movements, scored for the standard orchestra of the early nineteenth century, and strongly influenced by the personal styles of Beethoven and Mendelssohn (whose works were performed regularly by the Philharmonic Society). The symphony is skillfully crafted and melodious—an intrinsically worthy work of musical artistry. It was named to honor the French conductor Louis Jullien, who visited the United States in 1853–54 with an unparalleled orchestra. While in the United States, Jullien both commissioned and performed American works (including this symphony); his support served as the catalyst for the Fry/Willis battle. The introductory essay to this symphony examines Bristow’s career, the composition of orchestral music in America at mid-century, and Jullien’s role in the musical battle. This edition makes available for the first time an important work that has been undeservedly forgotten for over 150 years.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.areditions.com/bristow-symphony-no-2-in-d-minor-op-24-jullien-mu23-a072.html
Primary URL Description: publisher
Access Model: purchase
Publisher: A-R Editions
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780895796844
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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