The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical

by Raymond Knapp (Editor), Mitchell Morris (Editor), Stacy Wolf (Editor)

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 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.

480 pages, Hardcover

First published November 4, 2011

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.