Monday, June 29, 2015

The Sound of Music Companion by Laurence Maslo

The Sound of Music Companion
by Laurence Maslon [Music 782.14 qRodZm]
 


This edition of this book came out in 2007, to coincide with a British stage revival of The Sound of Music, being produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber — who writes the introduction to this volume. The book has subsequently been re-edited and re-released in a 2015 “50th Anniversary” edition as well.

2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the feature film version of The Sound of Music, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s masterful musical, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. This musical, adapted from the stage musical, which itself was a highly fictionalized version of the life of real life Austrian musical family The Trapp Family Singers, has enjoyed constant and unending popular success in all its many iterations over the years. This book seeks to provide an overview of the history of The Sound of Music‘s development into both stage and film productions. Filled with rare and wonderful photos, lyrics from all the famous songs, and reproductions of rare handwritten documents from the producers, writers, lyricists and directors of many different versions of the show, this should be a must-read for anyone with a love for the movie. Having enjoyed seeing TSoM on the big screen during this year’s 50th anniversary tour, I found this tome fascinating and it really enhanced my viewing of the movie.

[If you like this item, you might like these too – There are several other books that chronicle the history of this movie (and stage show), often in more detail, and I also recommend the biographies of the various actors, actresses and musical industry personnel who were associated with The Sound of Music in its many incarnations.]

[ Sound of Music film page on Wikipedia ]
Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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