SUSKIN, Steven [Charles Strouse].
The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations.
New York: Oxford University Press , 2009.
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First Edition of Steven Suskin's The Sound of Broadway Music; From the Collection of Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
First edition of Steven Suskin's definitive history of the art of Broadway orchestration. Octavo, original publisher's boards. From the collection of Tony, Grammy, and Emmy Award–winning composer Charles Strouse and his wife, choreographer Barbara Siman. Over his 50-year career, Charles Strouse wrote the music for such iconic musical theater hits as Bye Bye Birdie, Applause, and Annie, as well as the theme song for the classic sitcom All in the Family (“Those Were the Days”). His partnership with Martin Charnin on Annie produced one of Broadway’s most successful scores ever, with “Tomorrow” and other songs from the production becoming enduring American musical standards admired by generations. His reach knew no genre or generation — from a number-one Billboard hit in 1958 to Jay-Z’s Grammy-winning sampling of “It’s the Hard-Knock Life” four decades later — and his honors include three Tony Awards and induction into both the Songwriters and Theater Halls of Fame. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by James Bricker.
The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations (2009) by Steven Suskin, the author of numerous reference works on the Broadway musical including the celebrated Opening Night on Broadway series and Show Tunes, is the first book ever written on the subject of Broadway orchestration, recovering and celebrating the work of the largely unsung craftsmen whose arrangements gave the American musical theater its distinctive and incomparable sonic identity. The book examines the careers of Broadway's major orchestrators and follows the song as it travels from the composer's piano to the orchestra pit, devoting sustained analytical attention to figures including Robert Russell Bennett, whose career stretched from Show Boat to The Sound of Music; Don Walker, the immensely productive arranger behind Guys and Dolls and dozens of other classic productions; Philip J. Lang, whose work on Hello, Dolly! and My Fair Lady defined the sound of the golden age; Hans Spialek, whose 1936 charts for On Your Toes sparked renewed interest in orchestration when the show was revived in 1983; and Jonathan Tunick, the preeminent orchestrator of Stephen Sondheim's works. Suskin meticulously tracked down thousands of original orchestral scores, piecing together enigmatic notes and notations with long-forgotten documents and current interviews with dozens of composers, producers, conductors, and arrangers, producing a volume the Newark Star-Ledger praised as a charming tribute to vital, hitherto-forgotten talents, and which stands as the definitive scholarly and popular account of the musical architecture behind Broadway's greatest shows.
The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations.
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