Harnessing harmony : music, power, and politics in the United States, 1788-1865 /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Coleman, Billy, author.
Imprint:Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2020]
©2020
Description:xv, 249 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Language:English
Subject:
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12478016
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9781469658865
1469658860
9781469658872
1469658879
9781469658889
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 209-234) and index.
Summary:"'Harnessing harmony' uses music to unravel the relationship between elite power and the people through their uses of culture in politics from the early national period to the Civil War. Coleman traces how understandings of musical power were used to shape the development of a popular American political culture. It explores primarily how elites, at a time of mass democratization and rapid social change, looked to music to persuade Americans to rise above political and partisan conflict to instead create a more unified, orderly, and deferential society. In doing so the work identifies a distinctively conservative strain of musical thought and action. As our readers point out, it impressively challenges prevailing scholarly assumptions about political music being more 'bottom up' than 'top down'"--