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This chapter discusses Wilder's first professional successes in the 1930s and 1940s. Wilder's first big impact on the music of his time, a series of short pieces with unusual instrumentation that he wrote between 1938 and 1940, came about through the support and persistence of his Eastman friend Mitchell Miller—one of the premiere oboists in New York. Wilder and Miller eventually formed the Alec Wilder Octet, along with harpsichordist Yella Pessl and the CBS Orchestra, releasing records in 1939 and 1940 on Brunswick and Columbia. As the 1940s progressed, Wilder solidified his standing in popular music with new arranging projects and original songs. He then continued to explore stylistic boundaries in a new series of octet recordings and he revived his theatrical ambitions in scores for three musicals with new collaborators.

This chapter presents an excerpt from Alec Wilder's 1972 book titled American Popular Song: The Great Innovators. This book is about the successful opening the musical Tip-Toes in December 1925, which was written by George and Ira Gershwin. Wilder compares the show to other musicals and suggestes that it had the most excellent opening number in the song The Certain Feeling and the most number of memorable hit songs including Looking for a Boy, Sweet and Low-Down, and Nice Baby!. He also describes the uniqueness of George's compositions.

This chapter presents an excerpt from Alec Wilder's 1972 book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators focusing on his review of the movie musical A Damsel in Distress. Wilder suggests that the most popular tune in this musical was A Foggy Dance composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by his brother Ira. He notes Gershwin's use of repeated notes in this song and argues that it was one of the best-known lyrics by Ira.

This introductory chapter explores Alec Wilder's musical experiences through the early 1930s. Wilder's decision to pursue a career in music came in 1925 or early 1926, following a passion that had been growing for some time. During one recent summer vacation, he had taken up the banjo and had learned to play well enough to be hired for dances and welcomed into local bar bands at the Jersey Shore. He had also begun teaching himself to play the piano and read staff notation. Eventually, he had amassed a collection of popular sheet music and had made a few attempts at writing songs of his own. These were the musical experiences he brought with him when he decided to return to Rochester in 1926, seeking enlightenment in the elegant halls of a relatively new institute for serious musical study.

This concluding chapter evaluates Alec Wilder's music. Listeners are often struck by the tunefulness of Wilder's creations, whether a popular song or a concerto or sonata. Indeed, many of his melodies, in music of all types, easily satisfy one of his own standards of measurement in his book, American Popular Song (1972): that a good tune should be capable of standing alone, without accompaniment or any other contextualizing factors. At the same time, Wilder was equally devoted to a melody's harmonic setting. As he explained in American Popular Song, some effective melodies are “conceived in terms of harmony” and may not work so well in isolation. To his popular songs he brought the harmonic language of late romanticism. To his music for the concert hall he brought the language of jazz harmony. The personality and distinction of his musical language in general are as much determined by his chord constructions and progressions as by the melodies they support.