American Popular Music and Its Business

This is the first of three volumes designed, in the author's words, to tell 'the story of America's popular songs, the people who wrote them, and the business they created and sustained'.

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This is the first of three volumes designed, in the author's words, to tell 'the story of America's popular songs, the people who wrote them, and the business they created and sustained'. Volume I traces the beginning of the music publishing business in Elizabethan England, and provides detailed coverage of musical activity in England up to 1790. Popular balladry, copyright problems, the start of music printing, religious music, professional music makers, musical theatre, 18th-century music and such leading figures as Purcell, Handel, and Haydn, are among the subjects dealt with in this section, whilst the American material follows the beginnings of musical theatre and black music, and the relationship of the Great Awakening to music publishing. Music historians interested in popular and/or American music.