An expanded and updated edition of this acclaimed, wide-ranging survey of musical theatre in New York, London, and elsewhere.

Recounts the history of the Von Trapp family, traces the evolution of the popular musical from stage to screen, and describes the contributions of its composers, writers, and performers.

Experiencing Broadway Music: A Listener’s Companion explores approximately the last century of American musical theater, beginning with the early–twentieth-century shift from European influenced operettas and bawdy variety shows to sophisticated works of seamlessly integrated song and dance that became uniquely American. It concludes with an examination of current musical trends and practices on Broadway. As a musician who works on Broadway and in developmental musical theater, Kat Sherrell draws on her knowledge both as a historian of Broadway musical form and as a professional Broadway musician to offer an insider’s perspective on the development and execution of the past and present Broadway scores. Despite its enormous breadth, and given the historical significance of the musical in modern popular culture, Experiencing Broadway Music provides listeners—whether they know musical theater well or not at all—with the tools and background necessary to gain an understanding of the highly variegated structure and character of the Broadway musical over the past century.

The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical is dedicated to the musical's evolving relationship to American culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the past decade-and-a-half, international scholars from an ever-widening number of disciplines and specializations have been actively contributing to the interdisciplinary field of musical theater studies. Musicals have served not only to mirror the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural tenor of the times, but have helped shape and influence it, in America and across the globe: a genre that may seem, at first glance, light-hearted and escapist serves also as a bold commentary on society. Forty-four essays examine the contemporary musical as an ever-shifting product of an ever-changing culture. This volume sheds new light on the American musical as a thriving, contemporary performing arts genre, one that could have died out in the post-Tin Pan Alley era but instead has managed to remain culturally viable and influential, in part by newly embracing a series of complex contradictions. At present, the American musical is a live, localized, old-fashioned genre that has simultaneously developed into an increasingly globalized, tech-savvy, intensely mediated mass entertainment form. Similarly, as it has become increasingly international in its scope and appeal, the stage musical has also become more firmly rooted to Broadway--the idea, if not the place--and thus branded as a quintessentially American entertainment.

The Companion to Baroque Music is an illuminating survey of musical life in Europe and the New World from 1600 to 1750. With informative essays on the social, national, geographical, and cultural contexts of the music and musicians of the period by such internationally known scholars as Peter Holman, Louise Stein, Michael Talbot, Julie Anne Sadie, Stanley Sadie, and David Fuller, the Companion offers a fresh perspective on the musical styles and performance practices of the Baroque era. The Companion to Baroque Music is an illuminating survey of musical life in Europe and the New World from 1600 to 1750. With informative essays on the social, national, geographical, and cultural contexts of the music and musicians of the period by such internationally known scholars as Peter Holman, Louise Stein, Michael Talbot, Julie Anne Sadie, Stanley Sadie, and David Fuller, the Companion offers a fresh perspective on the musical styles and performance practices of the Baroque era.