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Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall
Classical Music in America A History of Its Rise and Fall Author:Joseph Horowitz A chronicle of the tensions and contradictions of a musical high culture borrowed and homegrown in unequal measure.Classical Music in America is a pioneering history by an award-winning scholar and leading authority on American symphonic culture. Joseph Horowitz argues that classical music in the United States is peculiarly perfo... more »rmance-driven, and he traces a musical trajectory rising to its peak at the close of the nineteenth century and receding after World War I. He defines the decades of ascendancy as the quest for an American compositional voice, painting vivid vignettes of America's most celebrated performers and such pathbreaking institutions as the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. He explores a century of decline characterized by illustrious orchestras, conductors, and virtuosos, mostly foreign born, and in a final chapter he exposes a crisis of leadership and suggests new musical directions in our postmodern age. As with his acclaimed cultural histories, Horowitz here fashions a sweeping narrativepacked with personality and incident, textured by literature, sociology, and intellectual historythat freshly illuminates the American experience. 32 pages of illustrations.« less