Wednesdays 2:30-4:30 PM
September 29 through November 3, 2004)
Hanover Sr./Comm. Ctr.
For a certain generation, the popular music of this period remains a constant in their lives, uncomplicated music full of purity and innocence, with singable melodies and sensible lyrics! Why have these songs endured over these many years? And why did this genre of music begin to fall victim to the rock-and-roll movement in the mid-Fifties?
This course of six two-hour sessions will survey the musical trends and cultural forces that influenced American popular music during this “Golden Age.” The songwriters and performers who brought the music to us will be examined and critiqued. The enduring “standards” of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley will be featured as we learn about Rodgers and Hart (and Hammerstein), the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, and other lesser known lyricists and composers. Performers such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Dinah Shore, the Dorseys, Jo Stafford, and others will be highlighted. Of special interest will be an explanation of the technical “anatomy” of a typical popular song of that period: harmonic structure, musical form, and melodic techniques. This course will be similar to the one that was first presented in 2003.
Course format will be a combination of lecture, live performance (piano), selected CD recordings, discussion, an inexpensive paperback reference book, “name that tune” contests, and perhaps spontaneous group singing and dancing in the aisles!
Class is limited to 25 members.
FRANK LOGAN is a native of Topeka, Kansas, and a graduate of Dartmouth College. He earned a master’s degree in composition from the Indiana University School of Music. A pianist since the age of four, he has had a lifelong interest in American popular music, nurtured by teenage years spent playing with local dance bands and combos. Frank is a retired Dartmouth administrator and a thirty-one-year resident of Hanover. He is currently a volunteer musician at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and a frequent performer at regional senior centers, retirement communities and other gatherings.
