Listening and Longing

"Listening and Longing performs a valuable service in connecting modern conceptions of fame, fandom, and self-consciously specialized forms of 'audiencing' to their nineteenth-century roots."

~Franklin Bruno, Los Angeles Review of Books

""Daniel Cavicchi's Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum is an ambitious, original book well worth careful reading for its integrated historical, historiographical, and methodological arguments.""

~Karen Ahlquist, Journal of the Society for American Music

""The intersections and overcrossings highlighted in these pages further enrich the already multifarious dialogue about nineteenth-century music in the United States.""

~Laura Moore Pruett, Journal of the American Musicological Society

""Cavicchi tracks the interplay among music, social prestige, and geographical reputation, the development of listening as a distinct skill, and the early history of music fans.""

~Scott Gac, American Historical Review

""a well-researched, elegant and thought-provoking book.""

~David W. Stowe, Commonplace

""Cavicchi has written an excellent book that should be read by historians, cultural critics, and musicologists. All would find points of insight and interest.""

~Michael Broyles, The Journal of American History

""a detailed look at 19th-century music consumers thatstands as a painstaking, groundbreaking work of scholarship that adds substantially to our understanding.""

~Robert Christgau, Barnes & Noble Review

""As the title reveals, Cavicchi's purpose is to put emphasis on 'music-listening' rather than on the more common 'music making.' Cavicchi did extensive research and the book is well argued, from several points of view.""

~W.K. Kearns, Choice

""Listening and Longing performs a valuable service in connecting modern conceptions of fame, fandom, and self-consciously specialized forms of 'audiencing' to their nineteenth-century roots.""

~Franklin Bruno, Los Angeles Review of Books

""Daniel Cavicchi's fascinating Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum, has been blowing my mind.""

~Frank Oteri, New Music Box

"Impeccably researched, Listening and Longing shows us how Jenny Lind was the Lady Gaga of her day. Cavicchi's excellent use of primary materials, such as 19th-century diary entries and periodicals, documents how the seeds were germinated for today's music-fan culture."

~Holly George-Warren, coauthor of The Road to Woodstock

"Impeccably researched, Listening and Longing shows us how Jenny Lind was the Lady Gaga of her day. Cavicchi's excellent use of primary materials, such as 19th-century diary entries and periodicals, documents how the seeds were germinated for today's music-fan culture."

~Holly George-Warren, coauthor of The Road to Woodstock

"Cavicchi's book is a richly detailed, lucid account of how and why music-listening is an active, participatory aspect of music-loving. Listening and Longing has changed fundamentally the way I think about the development of America's musical culture.""

~Dale Cockrell, author of Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World