In Making Light Raymond Knapp traces the musical legacy of German Idealism as it led to the declining prestige of composers such as Haydn while influencing the development of American popular music in the nineteenth century. Knapp identifies in Haydn and in early popular American musical cultures such as minstrelsy and operetta a strain of high camp-a mode of engagement that relishes both the superficial and serious aspects of an aesthetic experience-that runs antithetical to German Idealism's musical paradigms. By considering the disservice done to Haydn by German Idealism alongside the emergence of musical camp in American popular music, Knapp outlines a common ground: a humanistically based aesthetic of shared pleasure that points to ways in which camp receptive modes might rejuvenate the original appeal of Haydn's music that has mostly eluded audiences. In so doing, Knapp remaps the historiographical modes and systems of critical evaluation that dominate musicology while troubling the divide between serious and popular music.

Issues of identity have always been central to the American musical in all its guises. Who appears in musicals, who or what they are meant to represent, and how, over time, those representations have been understood and interpreted, provide the very basis for our engagement with the genre. In this third volume of the reissued Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, chapters focus on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, regional vs. national identity, and the cultural and class significance of the musical itself. As important as the question of who appears in musicals are the questions of who watches and listens to them, and of how specific cultures of reception attend differently to the musical. Chapters thus address cultural codes inherent to the genre, in particular those found in traditional school theater programs.

The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical offers new and cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling issues and topics in the growing, interdisciplinary field of musical-theater and film-musical studies. Taking the form of a "keywords" book, it introduces readers to the concepts and terms that define the history of the musical as a genre and that offer ways to reflect on the specific creative choices that shape musicals and their performance on stage and screen. The handbook offers a cross-section of essays written by leading experts in the field, organized within broad conceptual groups, which together capture the breadth, direction, and tone of musicals studies today.
Each essay traces the genealogy of the term or issue it addresses, including related issues and controversies, positions and problematizes those issues within larger bodies of scholarship, and provides specific examples drawn from shows and films. Essays both re-examine traditional topics and introduce underexplored areas. Reflecting the concerns of scholars and students alike, the authors emphasize critical and accessible perspectives, and supplement theory with concrete examples that may be accessed through links to the handbook's website.
Taking into account issues of composition, performance, and reception, the book's contributors bring a wide range of practical and theoretical perspectives to bear on their considerations of one of America's most lively, enduring artistic traditions. The Oxford Handbook of The AmericanMusical will engage all readers interested in the form, from students to scholars to fans and aficionados, as it analyses the complex relationships among the creators, performers, and audiences who sustain the genre.

In Making Light Raymond Knapp traces the musical legacy of German Idealism as it led to the declining prestige of composers such as Haydn while influencing the development of American popular music in the nineteenth century. Knapp identifies in Haydn and in early popular American musical cultures such as minstrelsy and operetta a strain of high camp-a mode of engagement that relishes both the superficial and serious aspects of an aesthetic experience-that runs antithetical to German Idealism's musical paradigms. By considering the disservice done to Haydn by German Idealism alongside the emergence of musical camp in American popular music, Knapp outlines a common ground: a humanistically based aesthetic of shared pleasure that points to ways in which camp receptive modes might rejuvenate the original appeal of Haydn's music that has mostly eluded audiences. In so doing, Knapp remaps the historiographical modes and systems of critical evaluation that dominate musicology while troubling the divide between serious and popular music.

The American musical has long provided an important vehicle through which writers, performers, and audiences reimagine who they are and how they might best interact with the world around them. Musicals are especially good at this because they provide not only an opportunity for us to enact dramatic versions of alternative identities, but also the material for performing such alternatives in the real world, through songs and the characters and attitudes those songs project.

This book addresses a variety of specific themes in musicals that serve this general function: fairy tale and fantasy, idealism and inspiration, gender and sexuality, and relationships, among others. It also considers three overlapping genres that are central, in quite different ways, to the projection of personal identity: operetta, movie musicals, and operatic musicals.

Among the musicals discussed are "Camelot, Candide; Chicago; Company; Evita; Gypsy; Into the Woods; Kiss Me, Kate; A Little Night Music; Man of La Mancha; Meet Me in St. Louis; The Merry Widow; Moulin Rouge; My Fair Lady; Passion; The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Singin' in the Rain; Stormy Weather; Sweeney Todd;" and "The Wizard of Oz."

Complementing the author's earlier work, "The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity," this book completes a two-volume thematic history of the genre, designed for general audiences and specialists alike.

The American musical is a paradox. On stage or screen, musicals at once hold a dominant and a contested place in the worlds of entertainment, art, and scholarship. Born from a melange of performance forms that included opera and operetta, vaudeville and burlesque, minstrelsy and jazz, musicals have always sought to amuse more than instruct, and to make money more than make political change. In spite of their unapologetic commercialism, though, musicals have achieved supreme artistry and have influenced culture as much as if not more than any other art form in America, including avant-garde and high art on the one hand, and the full range of popular and commercial art on the other. Reflecting, refracting, and shaping U.S. culture since the early twentieth century, musicals converse with shifting dynamics of gender and sexuality, ethnicity and race, and the very question of what it means to be American and to be human. The chapters gathered in this book, Volume I of the reissued Oxford Handbook, explore the American musical from both the outside and the inside. This first volume concentrates in particular on large-scale, more philosophical issues of relevance to the genre, considering issues of historical situations and formal procedure as they bear on the narratives we make concerning productions and performers, artists and audiences, commerce and context. The first four essays discuss ways of defining histories and texts, and apprehending the formal choices of singers and dancers; the second group of four take up the subtle challenges of the genre's signal transformations out of minstrelsy and Tin Pan Alley to "integration" and beyond.

The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical offers new and cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling issues and topics in the growing, interdisciplinary field of musical-theater and film-musical studies. Taking the form of a "keywords" book, it introduces readers to the concepts and terms that define the history of the musical as a genre and that offer ways to reflect on the specific creative choices that shape musicals and their performance on stage and screen. The handbook offers a 9780199973842 of essays written by leading experts in the field, organized within broad conceptual groups, which together capture the breadth, direction, and tone of musicals studies today. Each essay traces the genealogy of the term or issue it addresses, including related issues and controversies, positions and problematizes those issues within larger bodies of scholarship, and provides specific examples drawn from shows and films. Essays both re-examine traditional topics and introduce underexplored areas. Reflecting the concerns of scholars and students alike, the authors emphasize critical and accessible perspectives, and supplement theory with concrete examples that may be accessed through links to the handbook's website. Taking into account issues of composition, performance, and reception, the book's contributors bring a wide range of practical and theoretical perspectives to bear on their considerations of one of America's most lively, enduring artistic traditions. The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical will engage all readers interested in the form, from students to scholars to fans and aficionados, as it analyses the complex relationships among the creators, performers, and audiences who sustain the genre.

The American musical has achieved and maintained relevance to more people in America than any other performance-based art. This thoughtful history of the genre, intended for readers of all stripes, offers probing discussions of how American musicals, especially through their musical numbers, advance themes related to American national identity.

Written by a musicologist and supported by a wealth of illustrative audio examples (on the book's website), the book examines key historical antecedents to the musical, including the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, nineteenth and early twentieth-century American burlesque and vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, and other song types. It then proceeds thematically, focusing primarily on fifteen mainstream shows from the twentieth century, with discussions of such notable productions as "Show Boat" (1927), "Porgy and Bess" (1935), "Oklahoma " (1943), "West Side Story" (1957), "Hair" (1967), "Pacific Overtures" (1976), and "Assassins" (1991).

The shows are grouped according to their treatment of themes that include defining America, mythologies, counter-mythologies, race and ethnicity, dealing with World War II, and exoticism. Each chapter concludes with a brief consideration of available scholarship on related subjects; an extensive appendix provides information on each show discussed, including plot summaries and song lists, and a listing of important films, videos, audio recordings, published scores, and libretti associated with each musical.

For the past several years, the American musical has continued to thrive by reflecting and shaping cultural values and social norms, and even commenting on politics, whether directly and on a national scale (Hamilton) or somewhat more obliquely and on a more intimate scale (Fun Home). New stage musicals, such as Come from Away and The Band's Visit, open on Broadway every season, challenging conventions of form and content, and revivals offer audiences a different perspective on extant shows (Carousel; My Fair Lady). Television musicals broadcast live hearken back to 1950s television's affection for musical theatre and aim to attract new audiences through the accessibility of television. Film musicals, including Les Miserables and Into the Woods, capitalize on the medium's technical capabilities of perspective and point of view, as well as visual spectacle. Television has embraced the genre anew, and with unexpected gusto, not only devising musical episodes for countless dramatic and comedy series, but also generating musical series such as Galavant and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. And animated musicals, such as Disney's Moana, hail child and adult audiences with their dual messages, vibrant visual vocabulary, and hummable music. The chapters gathered in this book, Volume II of the reissued Oxford Handbook, explore the American musical from the various media in which musicals have been created to the different components of a musical and the people who do the work to bring a musical to life.