The remarkable career of composer-orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981) encompassed a wide variety of both "legitimate" and popular music-making in Hollywood, on Broadway, and for television. Bennett is principally responsible for what is known worldwide as the "Broadway sound" and for greatly elevating the status of the theater orchestrator. He worked alongside Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, and Frederick Loewe on much of the Broadway canon, eventually providing orchestrations for all or part of more than 300 musicals between 1920 and 1975. This work is the first publication of Bennett's autobiography, which was written in the late 1970s. It also includes eight of his most important essays on the art of orchestration.
George J. Ferencz is professor of music at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater.
Details
First Published: 15 Sep 1999
13 Digit ISBN: 9781580460828
Pages: 375
Size: 9 x 6
Binding: Paperback
Imprint: University of Rochester Press
Series:
Eastman Studies in MusicSubject:
MusicBIC Class: AV
Details updated on 02 Sep 2010
Contents
- 1 The Bennett Family Tree
- 2 Growing Up in Freeman
- 3 To New York, 1916
- 4 To Paris, 1926
- 5 Rodgers and Hart in London
- 6 To Hollywood, 1930
- 7 Hollywood Beckons Again
- 8 Russell Bennett's Notebooks and Other Adventures in Network Radio
- 9 Victory at Sea
- 10 The Sound of Music
- 11 Remembrances
- 12 "The Bohemians"
- 13 Eight Selected Essays by Robert Russell Bennett
