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This book investigates the role that vernacular, barbershop-style close harmony has played in American musical history, in American life, and in the American imagination. Starting with a discussion of the first craze for Austrian four-part close harmony in the 1830s, it traces the popularity of this musical form in minstrel shows, black recreational singing, vaudeville, early recordings, and in the barbershop revival of the 1930s. In his exploration of barbershop, the author uncovers a rich musical tradition — a hybrid of black and white cultural forms, practiced by amateurs, and part of a mythologized vision of small-town American life. This book critiques the nostalgic myths (especially racial myths) that have surrounded the barbershop revival, but also celebrates the civic-minded, participatory spirit of barbershop harmony.

This biography charts the career and legacy of the pioneering American music manager Arthur Judson (1881–1975), who rose to prominence in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. A violinist by training, Judson became manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1915 under the iconic conductor Leopold Stokowski. Within a few years, Judson took on management of the New York Philharmonic as well as several individual artists and most of the important conductors working in America. In addition to his colorful career behind the scenes at two preeminent American orchestras, Judson founded a nationwide network of local managers and later became involved in the relatively unexplored medium of radio, working first with WEAF in New York City and then forming his own national radio network in 1927. Providing valuable insight into the workings of these orchestras and the formative years of arts management, this book is a portrait of one of the most powerful managers in American musical history.

Edward MacDowell was born on the eve of the Civil War into a Quaker family in lower Manhattan, where music was a forbidden pleasure. With the help of Latin-American émigré teachers, he became a formidable pianist and composer, spending twelve years in France and Germany establishing his career. Upon his return to the United States in 1888 he conquered American audiences with his dramatic Second Piano Concerto and won his way into their hearts with his poetic Woodland Sketches. Columbia University tapped him as their first professor of music in 1896, but a scandalous row with powerful university president Nicholas Murray Butler spelled the end of his career. MacDowell died a broken man four years later, but his widow Marian kept his spirit alive through the MacDowell Colony, which she founded in 1907 in their New Hampshire home, and which is today the oldest and one of the most influential, thriving artist colonies in the United States. Drawing on private letters that were sealed for fifty years after his death, this biography traces MacDowell's compelling life story, with new revelations about his Quaker childhood, his efforts to succeed in the insular German music world, his mysterious death, and his lifelong struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder. MacDowell's story is a timeless tale of human strength and weakness set in one of the most vibrant periods of American musical history, when optimism about the country's artistic future made anything seem possible.