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• Title:Music for the melodramatic theatre in nineteenth-century London & New York / Michael V. Pisani.
  
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• Author/Creator:Pisani, Michael V., author.
  
• Published/Created:Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, [2014]
  

• Holdings

  Holdings Record Display

  • Location:MAA LIBRARY (IKB) stacksWhere is this?
    
  • Call Number: ML1731.8.L7 P57 2014
    
  • Number of Items:1
    
  • Status:Available
    

   
• Library of Congress Subjects:Dramatic music--England--London--History and criticism.
  
• Description:xxvi, 386 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
  
• Series:Studies in theatre history and culture.
  
• Summary:"Throughout the nineteenth century, people heard more music in the theatre--accompanying popular dramas such as Frankenstein, Oliver Twist, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Lady Audley's Secret, The Corsican Brothers, The Three Musketeers, as well as historical romances by Shakespeare and Schiller--than they did in almost any other area of their lives. But unlike film music, theatrical music has received very little attention from scholars and so it has been largely lost to us. In this groundbreaking study, Michael V. Pisani goes in search of these abandoned sounds. Mining old manuscripts and newspapers, he finds that starting in the 1790s, theatrical managers in Britain and the United States began to rely on music to play an interpretive role in melodramatic productions. During the nineteenth century, instrumental music--in addition to song--was a common feature in the production of stage plays. The music played by instrumental ensembles not only enlivened performances but also served other important functions. Many actors and actresses found that accompanimental music helped them sustain the emotional pitch of a monologue or dialogue sequence. Music also helped audiences to identify the motivations of characters. Playwrights used music to hold together the hybrid elements of melodrama, heighten the build toward sensation, and dignify the tragic pathos of villains and other characters. Music also aided manager-directors by providing cues for lighting and other stage effects. Moreover, in a century of seismic social and economic changes, music could provide a moral compass in an uncertain moral universe. Featuring dozens of musical examples and images of the old theatres, Music for the Melodramatic Theatre charts the progress of the genre from its earliest use in the eighteenth century to the elaborate stage productions of the very early twentieth century." -- Publisher's description
  
• Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 319-360) and index.
  
• ISBN:9781609382308 (pbk)
  1609382307 (pbk)
  9781609382650 (ebk)
  160938265X (ebk)
  
• Contents:Machine generated contents note: pt. ONE FORGING A NEW MUSICO - DRAMATIC GENRE
  1. Eighteenth-Century Roots of Melos
  2. Rise of Melodrama in the Age of Revolution
  3. Early Popular Drama in the Public Theatres
  pt. TWO PROPAGATING THE POPULAR DRAMA
  4. Anglo-American Melodrama and Its Music
  5. Victorian Theatre Bands and Their Leaders
  6. Craft of Melos in Rehearsal and Performance
  7. Music, Suspense, and the Sensation Drama
  pt. THREE TRANSFORMING THE POPULAR DRAMA
  8. Melos in Crisis
  9. Nationalism, "Prestige Music", and Irving's Lyceum
  10. Melodrama and Glamour at Century's End.