MUSA (Music of the United States of America)

FAIN: RQ-50550-11

American Musicological Society, Inc. (New York, NY 10012-1502)
Richard Crawford (Project Director: November 2010 to December 2014)

Preparation for publication of volumes 24-28 in the Music of the United States of America series, and editorial work on one additional volume. (36 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

Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 24: Sam Morgan's Jazz Band: Complete Recorded Works in Transcription (Book)
Title: Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 24: Sam Morgan's Jazz Band: Complete Recorded Works in Transcription
Author: Sam Morgan
Editor: Dorothea Gail, Executive Editor
Editor: John J. Joyce, Jr., Volume Editor
Editor: Bruce Boyd raeburn, Volume Editor
Editor: Anthony M. Cummings, Volume Editor
Editor: Richard Crawford, Editor-in-Chief
Abstract: This edition consists of musical transcriptions of all eight recordings of Sam Morgan’s Jazz Band, made in New Orleans in 1927. These are among the first recordings of black New Orleans jazz bands made in their home city and, as the band consisted of musicians who stayed on in New Orleans after the Great Exodus to Chicago and New York in the early 1920s, the recordings preserve a purer form of the collectively improvised ensemble of the earliest black jazz bands. It is a loosely integrated, purely linear ensemble mass, a collective projecting of melodic lines close to the unassimilated heterophonic singing of the Black Primitive Baptist and Sanctified Churches. This proto jazz style was being rapidly eclipsed in the 1920s by more flamboyant and technically brilliant forms of New Orleans jazz being recorded by Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Jelly Roll Morton. The scores contained herein are the first complete transcriptions of this rare and distinctive music to appear in print.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/complete-recorded-works-in-transcription/oclc/796700418&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: Worldcat listing
Secondary URL: https://areditions.com/rr/rra/a073.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: A-R Editions, Inc.
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780895797247

Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 25: Mary Lou Williams, Selected Works for Big Band (Book)
Title: Music of the United States of America (MUSA), Volume 25: Mary Lou Williams, Selected Works for Big Band
Author: Mary Lou Williams
Editor: Dorothea Gail, Executive Editor
Editor: Theodore E. Buehrer, Volume Editor
Editor: Richard Crawford, Editor-in-Chief
Abstract: Careful listeners and readers need to spend little time perusing Mary Lou Williams’s solo piano recordings or her music manuscripts to realize her immense talent. A two-time Guggenheim Fellow, Williams (1910–81) honed her craft as a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger during a career that spanned five decades. The eleven selections in this volume are representative of her work for big band, pieces written for orchestras led by Andy Kirk, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie. Included in the volume is Williams’s earliest arrangement (Mess-a-Stomp, 1929), as well as compositions from the 1930s, 40s, and 60s, allowing her stylistic evolution to be traced. A variety of source materials, including extant scores and parts, was used in the preparation of this edition. Where no written music survives, transcriptions drawn from audio recordings were created. The resulting edition and accompanying essay shed well-deserved light upon this gifted yet relatively unknown giant of American jazz.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/selected-works-for-big-band/oclc/840828004&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: Worldcat listing
Secondary URL: https://www.areditions.com/rr/rra/a074.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: A-R Editions, Inc. for the American Musicological Society
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780895797629
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Sousa: Six Marches (Book)
Title: Sousa: Six Marches
Author: Patrick Warfield
Author: John Philip Sousa
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: http://www.worldcat.org/title/six-marches/oclc/934309421&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: publisher web site
Secondary URL: http://www.areditions.com/sousa-six-marches-mu21-a069.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's website
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Middleton, WI: A-R Editions
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780895796752
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

The Ingalls Wilder Family Songbook (Book)
Title: 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.worldcat.org/title/ingalls-wilder-family-songbook/oclc/805019746&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://www.areditions.com/ingalls-wilder-family-songbook-mu22-a071.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's website
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Middleton, WI: A-R Editions
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780895796875
Copy sent to NEH?: No

---