As many of the Cambridge Companion series do, The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, edited by William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, provides a fine platform for bridging the historical facts and academic criticism on the musical. Instead of taking the musical into theatre history, the book focuses intently on the history of the American Musical itself and its status in contemporary American music and culture. The book is chronologically categorized into four parts with nineteen essays. These collected essays are saturated with specific historical moments and each essay is authored by different scholars of musicology and music history. The companion consists of four parts with 4-6 essays each: “Adaptations and transformations: before 1940”; “Maturations and formulations: 1940 to 1970”; “Evolutions and integrations: after 1970”; and “Legacies and transformations.” While the first edition consists of only three parts, the second edition has added the final part emphasizing contemporary scholarship in the 21st century in addition to the historical trajectory of American musicals. The first part talks about how American musicals have been constructed. Katherine K. Preston starts the companion with the American musical theater in …show more content…
John Snelson opens the chapter with the influence of the British musical theater from 1935 to 1960. Ann Sears highlights the significance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s works and continues to talk about the legacy of Rodgers and Hammerstein in the 1940s and the 1960s with Thomas L. Riis in the next chapter. Sears and Riis try to document the details of American musical chronologically. Bruce D. McClung and Laird focus on Kurt Weill's influence on the American theater and his impact on Leonard Bernstein. Comparing their styles and their approaches to the Broadway musical, McClung and Laird highlight the sophistication process of Broadway