The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity

by Raymond Knapp

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.

Genres: Music, Theatre, History

384 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2004

About the author

Raymond Knapp came to UCLA in 1989, with degrees from Harvard (BA cum laude in music), Radford (MA in composition), and Duke (PhD in musicology). He has authored four books and co-edited a fifth: Brahms and the Challenge of the Symphony (1997), Symphonic Metamorphoses: Subjectivity and Alienation in Mahler’s Re-Cycled Songs (2003), The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity (2005; winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism), The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity (2006), and Musicological Identities: Essays in Honor of Susan McClary (2008, with UCLA alumni Steven Baur and Jacqueline Warwick). His published essays address a wide range of additional interests, including Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, nationalism, musical allusion, music and identity, and film music. His current projects include a book that considers Haydn and American popular music in the context of German Idealism, and a book co-edited with Stacy Wolf and UCLA’s Mitchell Morris (forthcoming from Oxford). He has originated courses on Mozart and on the American Musical, and has recently given seminars on nationalism, Mahler, Haydn, Mozart, absolute music, allusion, and the American musical.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a good book to read if you're someone unfamiliar with the history of musical theater and want a general overview (for that, see Our Musicals, Ourselves), but it's fascinating if you already have some knowledge on the subject and want analysis of specific shows from a more critical eye with regards to social implications. As far as how interesting and useful I found the specific analyses, I think almost everyone would have different opinions on this, but I found the Oklahoma! analysis revelatory, the Assassins analysis insightful and interesting, and the choice to have a chapter progressing from The Mikado through The King and I to Pacific Overtures practically genius, but I thought the West Side Story analysis was highly disappointing.

[Jehnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A detailed analysis of select musicals, but a less well organized argument about their overarching role in American national conscience.