pt. 1. The first three centuries. The first song : Native American music -- European inroads : early Christian music making -- From ritual to art : the flowering of sacred music -- "Old, simple Ditties" : Colonial song, dance, and home music making -- Performing "By particular desire" : Colonial military, concert, and theater music -- Maintaining oral traditions : African music in early America -- Correcting "the harshness of our singing" : New England psalmody reformed --

pt. 2. The nineteenth century. Edification and economics : the career of Lowell Mason -- Singing praises : Southern and frontier devotional music -- "Be it ever so humble" : theater and opera, 1800-1860 -- Blacks, whites, and the minstrel stage -- Home music making and the publishing industry -- From ramparts to romance : parlor songs, 1800-1865 -- Of Yankee Doodle and Ophicleides : bands and orchestras, 1800 to the 1870s -- From church to concert hall : the rise of classical music -- From log house to opera house : Anthony Philip Heinrich and William Henry Fry -- A New Orleans original : Gottschalk of Louisiana -- Two classic Bostonians : George W. Chadwick and Amy Beach -- Edward MacDowell and musical nationalism -- "Travel in the winds" : Native American music from 1820 -- "Make a noise!" : slave songs and other black music to the 1880s -- Songs of the later nineteenth century -- Stars, stripes and cylinders : Sousa, the band, and the phonograph -- "After the ball" : the rise of the Tin Pan Alley --

pt. 3. The twentieth century. "To stretch our ears" : the music of Charles Ives -- "Come on and hear" : the early twentieth century -- The jazz age dawns : blues, jazz and rhapsody -- "The birthright of all of us" : classical music, the mass media, and the Depression -- "All that is native and fine" : American folk song and its collectors -- From New Orleans to Chicago : jazz goes national -- "Crescendo in blue" : Ellington, Basie and the swing band -- The golden age of the American musical -- Classical music in the postwar years -- "Rock around the clock" : the rise of rock and roll -- Songs of loneliness and praise : postwar vernacular trends -- Jazz, broadway, and musical permanence -- Melting pot or pluralism? : popular music and ethnicity -- From accessability to transcendence : the Beatles, rock, and popular music -- Trouble girls, minimalists, and the gap : the 1960s to the 1980s -- Black music and American identity.