The remarkable career of composer-orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981) encompassed a wide variety of both -legitimate- and popular music-making in Hollywood, on Broadway, and for television. Bennett is principally responsible for what is known worldwide as the -Broadway sound- and for greatly elevating the status of the theater orchestrator. He worked alongside Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, and Frederick Loewe on much of the Broadway canon, eventually providing orchestrations for all or part of more than 300 musicals between 1920 and...

This book by Dr. David Whitwell is destined to be regarded as one of the most important works on the subject. It emphasizes the philosophic and aesthetic concepts of conducting and will cause ensemble directors to re-examine their ideas about the way they look at music making.