Broadway rhythm : imaging the city in song / Dominic Symonds.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Symonds, Dominic, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• National Book Committee.
• Musicals--New York (State)--New York--History and criticism.
• Musicals.
• New York (State)--New York.
• New York (N.Y.)--Songs and music--History and criticism.
• New York (N.Y.)--Drama--History and criticism.
• New York (N.Y.)--History.
• History.
• Drama.
• Songs.

Genre:

• Drama.
• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History.

Physical Description:

xi, 300 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2017]

Summary:

Broadway Rhythm is a guide to Manhattan like nothing you've ever read. Author Dominic Symonds calls it a performance cartography, and argues that the city of New York maps its iconicity in the music of the Broadway songbook. A series of walking tours takes the reader through the landscape of Manhattan, clambering over rooftops, riding the subway, and flying over skyscrapers. Symonds argues that Broadway's songs can themselves be used as maps to better understand the city though identifiable patterns in the visual graphics of the score, the auditory experience of the music, and the embodied articulation of performance, recognizing in all of these patterns, corollaries inscribed in the terrain, geography, and architecture of the city. Through musicological analyses of works by Gershwin, Bernstein, Copland, Sondheim and others, the author proposes that performance cartography is a versatile methodology for urban theory, and establishes a methodological approach that uses the idea of the map in three ways: as an impetus, a metaphor, and a tool for exploring the city.

Contents:

• Pre-amble: The Great White Way 1
• Walk 1: A Glance at New York 33
• Walk 2: Another Hundred People 67
• Walk 3 Broadway Rhythm 97
• Walk 4: Stairway to Paradise 129
• Walk 5: Time Steps 169
• Walk 6: So Great They Named It Twice 195
• Next Steps: Performance Cartography 225.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

• 9780472130597
• 0472130595

OCLC:

985760390