Music 324 - History of Musical Theater - Cal Poly Textbook Information

Musical Theater: An Appreciation was written for people who are interested in the history of musical theater. However, the book also helps non-musicians to understand how music is crafted, developing a working musical vocabulary that can be applied to any style of music. The book itself can be obtained through many sources -- college and commercial bookstores, the publisher (Pearson / Prentice Hall), Amazon.com, and so forth.

Purchasers of the textbook will discover that there are no packaged CDs to accompany the text. Instead, recordings can be obtained from an iMix created as a companion iTunes playlist, allowing users to hear snippets of the selections and to purchase the complete pieces as desired. The free iTunes application is required to use the iMix playlist. You may download the iTunes program (Mac or PC) here:

Download iTunes

Here is the link to the iMix for the textbook:

iMix for Musical Theater: An Appreciation

Please be aware that when you click the link to the iMix, a pop-up window will want to open an "external application" -- that is the warning that your computer is launching the iTunes application, which is needed to display the iMix. (There is one tune discussed in the textbook that is not currently available in iTunes; this is Musical Example 2, taken from the The Beggar's Opera.)