Beautiful Dreamers: Pioneers of American Music

FAIN: TS-50028-06

New York Foundation for the Arts, Inc. (Brooklyn, NY 11201-8301)
Daniel Anker (Project Director: November 2005 to April 2010)

Scripting of a documentary film series on the development of American music over the course of the 19th century.

Beautiful Dreamers, a documentary film, presents a crucial yet forgotten period in America's cultural life: the lives and works of composers, performers, conductors, and critics who shaped American music in the 19th century. The film charts a course that begins with a unique era in "democratic" music-making, and ends at the turn of the next century with a split between the worlds of "popular" and "serious" music -- one that reverberates to this day. The project is submitted for consideration as part of the "We the People" initiative.