Description
Book SynopsisBefore one can seriously study, analyze, or theorize about a subject, one needs to understand its foundation and be comfortable with its basic premises. Music in North America and the West Indies from the Discovery to 1850, in conjunction with the author''s first Scarecrow Press book, Music in Ibero-America to 1850, intends to lay the groundwork for the musical and cultural history of North America. Music in North America is a survey of the people, events, and institutions that helped shape music in the early centuries of North America. Collecting information from various historical data, author Daniel Mendoza de Arce presents straightforward descriptions of both religious and secular early music. Basic historical information about the Renaissance and Baroque periods in North America and the Caribbean are presented chronologically through 1850 along musical, geographic, and cultural lines. A valuable study for researchers, students, and interested readers alike, this treatise helps readers achieve a sense of perspective and a broader understanding of their place in world culture.
Trade ReviewMendoza de Arce, a former professor of Hispanic studies and sociology who has published on music and the social sciences, traces sacred and secular music in the New World-North America and the West Indies-from the 1600s to 1850. In a social and historical context, he focuses on cultivated rather than vernacular music, and treats both performers and composers. Specifically, he addresses how music in the European classical tradition developed in America and describes it according to geographic relationship-through discussions of the musical cultures of France, Spain, Portugal, England, and Germany and their adaptation in the New World. Both subject and name indexes are supplied. * Reference and Research Book News, November 2006 *
