The Guitar in America

"Jeffery J. Noonan's The Guitar in America offers a history of the instrument from the late Victorian period to the Jazz Age. The opening chapter traces the guitar's use in this country from the colonial era up to the 1880s. The narrative continues with the BMG (banjo, mandolin, and guitar) community, a late nineteenth-century musical and commercial movement dedicated to introducing these instruments into elite musical establishments." "This volume opens a new chapter on the guitar in the United States, considering its cultivated past and documenting how banjoists and mandolinists aligned their instruments to it in an effort to raise social and cultural standing. At the same time, the book considers the BMG community within the nation's larger musical scene, examining the community's efforts as manifestations of the country's uneasy coupling of musical art and commerce."--Jacket.