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News and Reviews
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Reviews
Jonathan Keates in The Times Literary Supplement,
February 20, 2004:
" . . . a vivid, buoyantly entertaining and
often genuinely dramatic narrative. . . . Throughout From Paris
to Peoria, records of successive towns are skilfully framed
within a broader context of the nation's receptivity to foreign
artists, its enduring obsession with the famous, and the growth
of an indigenous culture of piano virtuosity." |
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Joseph Horowitz in Los
Angeles Times Book Review, August 31, 2003:
" . . . grateful scholars of the New World
appropriation of Old World music will profit - immeasurably - from
Lott's industry and discernment." |
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Michael Broyles in The Journal of American
History, September 2004:
"R. Allen Lott explores an essential component
in nineteenth-century American music life, the arrival of the virtuoso
from Europe. . . . Lott's study is meticulously researched, finely
crafted, and written in an easy-flowing, straightforward style." |
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Kenneth Morgan in Journal of American Studies,
April 2005:
"It is a welcome addition to the literature
dealing with the transmission of European high culture to the United
States. . . . should be required reading for courses in American
musical and cultural history."
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Joseph Smith in Piano Today, Fall 2006:
"R. Allen Lott's From Paris to Peoria
. . . is an absorbing, readable book in which music history
interacts with social history. Some readers may be familiar with
the outlines of this story, but the detailed account Lott offers,
rich in quotes from primary sources and musical examples, modifies
the generalizations and corrects the errors of earlier accounts."
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Mark McKnight in Notes: Quarterly Journal of
the Music Library Association, June 2004:
"Through his extremely thorough and meticulous
documentation of primary sources, Lott argues persuasively against
Lawrence Levine's 'high brow/low brow' view of cultural norms being
set primarily by the socially elite. . . . Lott's engaging book
. . . greatly adds to our understanding of music in nineteenth-century
America and its role in shaping modern attitudes toward the place
of Western European music in American cultural life." |
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Nancy Newman in Institute for Studies in American
Music Newsletter, Fall 2005:
". . . this book has been eagerly awaited
and much anticipated. Having been tantalized by brief glimpses and
advance reports, this reviewer is happy to attest that the wait
has been worthwhile. From Paris to Peoria offers the reader
a vivid portrait of a singular aspect of concert life in the United
States, the solo recitals of five notable pianists during the years
1845-1876: Leopold De Meyer, Henri Herz, Sigismund Thalberg, Anton
Rubinstein, and Hans von Bülow, performer–composers who
exerted tremendous influence on America’s musical life but
whose concert tours have never before been systematically examined."
Read
the complete review |
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Ivan Frazier in American Music Teacher (December/January
2003/2004):
This well-written volume holds special fascination for readers
interested in the piano, those who play it with panache, virtuosity
and notoriety, and the cultural history of nineteenth-century
America.
R. Allen Lott, relying on archival sources, contemporary media
accounts and periodicals, as well as recent historical research,
tells in vivid detail the experiences of five of Europe's most
important piano virtuosos as they braved precarious ocean voyages
and rail and river excursions to bring their art to the New World.
. . .
The author delineates several important themes that directly
impact concert and recital going in our day. For one, there is
the transition from the almost "P. T. Barnum" approach
to programming, publicity and audience manners in the earlier
mid-century events to Thalberg's matinees, to the respectful,
quiet attentiveness of audiences at solo recitals of Bülow
at the end of the period. Another is the decline of improvisation
in favor of museum-like performances of piano masterworks. The
business and entrepreneurial aspects are fascinatingly explored,
including the interplay between the virtuosos and piano manufacturers,
Erard in Europe and Scherr, Steinway and Chickering in America,
where endorsements and exclusive contracts for providing performance
instruments presage procedures of our time.
Lott also provides an appealing array of illustrations, including
contemporary newspaper cartoons, maps, sample program, posters,
sheet music covers and, in the case of de Meyer, Herz and Thalberg,
musical examples in score of original compositions and transcriptions.
Another welcome feature is what I am calling "windows"
set off against the main narrative in contrasting print. These
explore briefly in greater detail some phenomenon mentioned in
the text. Some of these include: Spontaneous Applause, The Publicity
Game, Audiences—The Fashionable and Rubinstein's Inaccuracies,
among many others.
Although scholarly and meticulously documented, the writing is
engaging and easy to follow, never pretentious or overly formal.
Lott has provided a valuable resource for those desiring to know
more about the cultural history of the United States and read
some individual biographies about these five colorful and successful
virtuoso pianists.
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Recent Bibliography |
Gooley, Dana. "Liszt, Thalberg,
and the Parisian Public." In The Virtuoso Liszt, 18-77.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Haas, Frithjof. "Das Abenteuer Amerika."
In Hans von Bülow, Leben und Wirken: Wegbereiter für
Wagner, Liszt und Brahms, pp. 93-110. Wilhelmshaven:
Noetzel, 2002.
Hamilton, Kenneth. After the Golden Age: Romantic
Pianism and Modern Performance. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007.
Horowitz, Joseph. Classical Music in America:
A History of Its Rise and Fall. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.
Kammertöns, Christoph. Chronique
scandaleuse: Henri Herz, ein Enfant terrible in der französischen
Musikkritik des 19. Jahrhunderts. Folkwang-Texte Bd. 15.
Edited by Josef Fellsches. Essen: Die blaue Eule, 2000.
Meredith, Sarah. "With a Banjo on Her Knee:
Gender, Race, Class, and the American Classical Banjo Tradition,
1880-1915." Ph.D. diss., Florida State University,
2003. Click
here to view complete text online. See "Thalberg and the
Banjo" on pp. 41-43.
Pruett, Laura Moore. "Louis Moreau Gottschalk,
John Sullivan Dwight, and the Development of Musical Culture in
the United States, 1853-1865." Ph.D. diss., Florida State University,
2007. Click
here to view complete text online.
Rosenblum, Sandra P. "A composer known here
but to few": Reception and Performance Styles of Chopin's Music
in America, 1839-1900." In The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary
Inquiries, ed. Halina Goldberg, 314-53. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2004.
Taylor, Philip S. Anton Rubinstein: A Life
in Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
Weber, William, ed. The Musician as Entrepreneur,
1700-1914: Managers, Charlatans, and Idealists. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2004. Articles includes William Weber,
"From the Self-Managing Musician to the Independent Concert
Agent," and Laure Schnapper, "Bernard Ullman-Henri Herz:
An Example of Financial and Artistic Partnership, 1846-1849."
Weber, William. The Great Transformation of
Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008. |
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