Overview

"From patriotic ""God Bless America"" to wistful ""White Christmas,"" Irving Berlin's songs have long accompanied Americans as they fall in love, go to war, and come home for the holidays. Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater is the first book to fully consider this songwriter's immeasurable influence on the American stage. Award-winning music historian Jeffrey Magee chronicles Berlin's legendary theatrical career, providing a rich background to some of the great composer's most enduring songs, from ""There's No Business Like Show Business"" to ""Puttin' on the Ritz."" Magee shows how Berlin's early experience singing for pennies made an impression on the young man, who kept hold of that sensibility throughout his career and transformed it into one of the defining attributes of Broadway shows. Magee also looks at darker aspects of Berlin's life, examining the anti-Semitism that Berlin faced and his struggle with depression. Informative, provocative, and full of colorful details, this book will delight song and theater aficionados alike as well as anyone interested in the story of a man whose life and work expressed so well the American dream."

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9780195398267

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Reviews

[A] very welcome book, the first to focus on the span of Berlin's career in American musical theatre ... Drawing on extensive archival resources, Magee includes both musicological and literary analysis along with the sociological setting with a thoroughness that often enlightens. George Bornstein, Times Literary Supplement

<br> Drawing on a vast and previously unexplored gold mine of archival materials, Magee brilliantly shapes fresh perspectives on key shows by Irving Berlin, delivering a text that is simultaneously erudite and accessible. --Carol Oja, William Powell Mason Professor of Music, Harvard University<p><br> An outstanding account of one of the leading composers of the Broadway and Hollywood musical. Magee has an unrivaled command of the sources, and offers important new critical approaches to this music in its theatrical contexts: the benefits are clear in his treatment of Annie Get Your Gun. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in American musical theater of the mid twentieth century. --Tim Carter, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Oklahoma! The Making of an American Musical (2007) <br><p><br> An astonishingly rich book. Everything about it is appealing. The research is prodigious; the cultural analysis fresh and compelling. Like Berlin himself, Magee makes s

<br> Drawing on a vast and previously unexplored gold mine of archival materials, Magee brilliantly shapes fresh perspectives on key shows by Irving Berlin, delivering a text that is simultaneously erudite and accessible. --Carol Oja, William Powell Mason Professor of Music, Harvard University <br><br><p><br> An outstanding account of one of the leading composers of the Broadway and Hollywood musical. Magee has an unrivaled command of the sources, and offers important new critical approaches to this music in its theatrical contexts: the benefits are clear in his treatment of Annie Get Your Gun. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in American musical theater of the mid twentieth century. --Tim Carter, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Oklahoma! The Making of an American Musical (2007) <br><br><p><br> An astonishingly rich book. Everything about it is appealing. The research is prodigious; the cultural analysis fresh and compelling. Like Berlin himself, Magee makes show business come alive, from the first song to the last. --Rose Rosengard Subotnik, Professor of Music Emerita, Brown University <br><br><p><br>

Author Information

Jeffrey Magee is Professor of Music and Theater at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of The Uncrowned King of Swing, winner of the Irving Lowens Award from the Society for American Music.

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