The American popular ballad of the golden era, 1924-1950
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The American popular ballad of the golden era, 1924-1950
Princeton University Press, c1995
Available at 14 libraries
Note
Includes index and bibliographical references (p. [349]-350)
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In this pathbreaking book, Allen Forte uses modern analytical procedures to explore the large repertoire of beautiful love songs written during the heyday of American musical theater, the Big Bands, and Tin Pan Alley. Covering the work of such songwriters as Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, and Harold Arlen, he seeks to illuminate this extraordinary music indigenous to America by revealing its deeper organizational characteristics. In so doing, he aims to establish it as a unique corpus of music that deserves more intensive study and appreciation by scholars and connoisseurs in the broader fields of American popular music and jazz. Expressing much of the traditional tonality associated with European music in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the love songs of the Golden Age are shown to draw on a rich variety of elements - popular harmony, idiomatic lyric-writing, and Afro-American dance rhythms. His analyses of such songs as "Embraceable You" or "Yesterdays" in particular exemplify his ability to convey the sublime, unpretentious simplicity of this great music.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction 2The Harmonic Language of the Popular Ballad 3Rhythmic Features of the Popular Ballad 4Melodic Design: Descriptive Categories 5The Lyric: Its Qualities and Melodic Roles 6Form: Nomenclature and Templates 7The Large-Scale View: A Primer 8Ballads of Jerome Kern 9Ballads of Irving Berlin 10Ballads of Cole Porter 11Ballads of George Gershwin 12Ballads of Richard Rodgers 13Ballads of Harold Arlen 14Ballads of Richard Whiting, Walter Donaldson, Harry Warren, Jimmy McHugh, Vincent Youmans, Duke Ellington, and Kurt Weill 15Ballads of Hoagy Carmichael, Arthur Schwartz, Vernon Duke, John Green, Burton Lane, and Jimmy Van Heusen 16Ballads of Kay Swift, Bernice Petkere, Ann Ronell, Dana Suesse, and Ruth Lowe 17Concluding Reflections Notes Bibliography Copyright Credits Index
by "Nielsen BookData"