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More About This Textbook
Overview
“Stempel has hit the trifecta: for academics, it’s a definitive work of scholarship; for students, it’s the perfect textbook; for ordinary lovers of musical theater, it’s a treat to savor at the end of a long day.”—Rose Rosengard Subotnik, Brown University
“Showtime is a sumptuous banquet of a book. This richly researched history allows us to be present at the birth of the musical theater and to be enthralled witnesses as it develops and metamorphoses into the wealth of forms we now enjoy. A century and a half of entertainment is a vast amount of ground to cover, but Stempel is the ideal tour guide. This is a book to treasure.”—Sheldon Harnick
“Showtime is a substantial work of American music history. Scrupulous but not fussy, learned but not pedantic, Stempel is a fine storyteller who delights in clarity and knows a good joke when he sees one. The precision of his thinking and writing gives the book an aura of authority keenly attuned to the tradition he critiques and celebrates.” —Richard Crawford, author of America’s Musical Life: A History
“I cannot put Showtime down—and it’s a heavy book! Showtime is my new favorite companion.” —John Mauceri, chancellor, University of North Carolina School of the Arts
“This is the book we have been waiting for—thoroughly readable and smart, informative and engaging.” —Ted Chapin, president, Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization
“This is by far the best book ever written about Broadway, a magisterial critical history, which will be required reading for anyone interested in musical theater.” —Kim H. Kowalke, Eastman School of Music
Editorial Reviews
The Washington Post
Large in spirit as well as scope, and as precise, humble, and wise as that Sondheim lyric with which it begins.— Lloyd RoseLloyd Rose
…Stempel spent so many years researching and writing this book that a reader might reasonably anticipate a trip with one of those obsessives who produce a lot of thin air, along with the occasional brilliant flash of insight. Well, this is a brilliant book, all right, but there's nothing narrow or eccentric about it. Showtime is large in spirit as well as scope, and as precise, humble and wise as that Sondheim lyric with which it begins.—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
Stempel, an associate professor of music at Fordham University, was a member of Lehman Engel's BMI Musical Theater Workshop in the late 1970s, where he first set out on his 25 years of research to compile this comprehensive survey of Broadway musicals. Spanning more than 150 years, the hefty history is divided into three sections: "Out of the 19th Century," "Into the 20th Century," and "Toward the New Millennium." He opens with the 1853 musical adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the aerial ballerinas of The Black Crook (1867), followed by the Gilded Age, with its minstrels, vaudeville, and comic operas. As George M. Cohan expanded his skits into "plays with music," writing 500 songs, the turn-of-the-century rise of Tin Pan Alley coincided with the relocation of New York's entertainment district to Times Square, placing Al Jolson at center stage. Covering musical milestones from Irving Berlin and Florenz Ziegfeld to Oklahoma!, Sondheim, and Fosse, Stempel shows how generic songs could be "shoehorned into a story" and details the antagonistic tensions that arose between performers, lyricists, and librettists. Throughout, as Stempel traces the evolution with exhaustive archival research, he offers a penetrating and illuminating analysis of various musical forms and influences. Many of the 105 carefully selected b&w illustrations are surprising and revelatory. Theater buffs will be delighted to find that this scholarly, definitive work is also a hugely entertaining read. 16 color pages. (Sept. 6)Product Details
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Meet the Author
Larry Stempel, an associate professor of music at Fordham University and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, was a member of Lehman Engel's BMI Musical Theater Workshop. He lives in Mount Vernon, New York.