A Tidal Wave of Encouragement: American Composers' Concerts in the Gilded Age

(Hardback)

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In July of 1884, pianist Calixa Lavallee performed a recital of works by American composers that began a highly influential series of such concerts. Over the course of the next decade, hundreds of all-American concerts were performed in the United States and Europe, a movement that fostered both the development and the perception of American music as a unique art form. A Tidal Wave of Encouragement-the title of which is derived from one observer's description of the movement-is the first in-depth study of this significant period in American music. Providing a comprehensive history of the Concerts as well as detailed accounts of the intense critical debate surrounding them, author E. Douglas Bomberger reveals how one decade shaped the future of American classical music and very much impacted the way we hear it today.

Reviews

[T]here is much to admire about Bomberger's A Tidal Wave of Encouragement. It deserves to be placed high on an American-music reading list. The book and the story confirm yet again the interconnectedness of all aspects of music (cultivated and vernacular styles as well as composer, critc, performer, audience) with the society that creates and consumes it.-College Music Symposium
Expertly researched and elegantly written, this book is an indispensable addition to the core library of books on American music history. All readers.-Choice
"There is much to admire about Bomberger's A Tidal Wave of Encouragement. It deserves to be placed high on an American-music reading list. The book and the story confirm yet again the interconnectedness of all aspects of music (cultivated and vernacular styles as well as composer, critc, performer, audience) with the society that creates and consumes it."-College Music Symposium
"Expertly researched and elegantly written, this book is an indispensable addition to the core library of books on American music history. All readers."-Choice
"[T]here is much to admire about Bomberger's A Tidal Wave of Encouragement. It deserves to be placed high on an American-music reading list. The book and the story confirm yet again the interconnectedness of all aspects of music (cultivated and vernacular styles as well as composer, critc, performer, audience) with the society that creates and consumes it."-College Music Symposium

Author Bio

E. DOUGLAS BOMBERGER is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The author of many journal articles, he is the editor of Brainard's Biographies of American Musicians (Greenwood, 1999).