• Paperback
• 240 pages
• 25 illustrations
• ISBN: 978-1-84379-117-1
• Publication date: April 2007
• Free access to a dedicated website with hours of extra music

A History of American Classical Music celebrates a legacy built up from Colonial times to the present, containing riches unfamiliar even to sophisticated music lovers.

Barrymore Laurence Scherer, a distinguished American author, leads the reader through an enthralling history, illustrating the importance of not only renowned names, such as Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, Joplin and Sousa, but also those formally in the shadows, such as William Henry Fry and Alan Hovhaness. And, of course, we even step into Broadway for that most American step-child of opera: the musical.

This development, tracked largely by key composers, is set against America’s tempestuous history, putting neatly into context the achievements of the time. The book also contains 2 CDs of carefully chosen music, along with information on free access to a dedicated website with hours of extra music.

About the Author

Barrymore Laurence Scherer, a native New Yorker, is a music critic for The Wall Street Journal and a contributing editor of Art & Auction magazine, where he specializes in 19th-century art and decorative arts. On radio, he has been a commentator for NPR’s Performance Today. Named a Speaker in the Humanities by the New York Council for the Humanities, he has taught on “Oscar Wilde and the Belle Epoque” at Sarah Lawrence College, and as an independent scholar he has lectured extensively on opera, classical music, and the Victorian age for Lincoln Center Great Performers, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic as well as at venues around the country. In addition, as a scriptwriter and actor he writes and does voiceover work. Mr. Scherer is also author of the critically acclaimed book Bravo! A Guide to Opera for the Perplexed. With his wife and their dog he lives amidst a gratifying number of kindred spirits in Westchester, New York.