Description
Irving Lowens’ research and writing in American music form a cornerstone for American music history. As the principal founder and guiding spirit of the Sonneck Society (now the Society for American Music) and its first president from 1974 to 1981, he was largely responsible for making the study of American music a respected and thriving area in musicology today. During his remarkable career he became distinguished in music criticism, musicology, and music librarianship. In his positions as music critic for the Washington Star (1953–1977), music reference librarian at the Library of Congress (1962–1966), and as Dean at the Peabody Conservatory of Music (1977–1982), he served in turn the public, the scholar, and the music student. The Irving Lowens Book Award commemorates this remarkable man and his contributions to the study of American music.
The Lowens Book Award represents one of our most prestigious honors and carries with it a monetary prize as well as a citation that will be presented at the annual national conference each spring.
We define “American music” in its broadest, most inclusive sense meaning all musics of the Americas, in their historical and contemporary styles and contexts, including art and popular cultures, ethnic groups and minorities, immigrant composers, performers, and communities, along with American music’s ramifications on cultures elsewhere in the world.
Eligibility
The Society for American Music invites scholars to submit books published in the year 2025 for consideration for the Irving Lowens Book Award. The Society annually awards this prize to the book judged as the best in the field of American music. Any book on American music with a year 2025 imprint is eligible.
Application Requirements
Publishers should send one copy of the book to each committee member. Those wishing to submit books for consideration should fill out this form or click the button below. The committee chair will contact you directly for mailing information.
Deadline
Books must be received by June 1 (books received after this date will not be considered).
Past Winners
| Year | Winners |
|---|---|
| 2026 | Matthew D. Morrison, Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States |
| 2025 | Benjamin J. Harbert, Instrument of the State: A Century of Music in Louisiana's Angola Prison |
| 2024 | Brigid Cohen, Musical Migration and Imperial New York: Early Cold War Scenes (University of Chicago Press, 2022) |
| 2023 | Jessica Bissett Perea, Sound Relations: Native Ways of Doing Music History in Alaska (Oxford University Press) |
| 2022 | Shana L. Redmond, Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke University Press, 2020) |
| 2022 | Honorable Mention: Rae Linda Brown, The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price (University of Illinois Press, 2020) |
| 2021 | W. Anthony Sheppard, Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination |
| 2020 | Naomi André, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (University of Illinois Press, 2018) |
| 2019 | Nancy Rao, Chinatown Opera Theater in North America (University of Illinois Press, 2017) |
| 2016 | David Brackett, Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-Century Popular Music (University of California Press) |
| 2015 | Allison McCracken, Real Men Don’t Sing: Crooning in American Culture (Duke University Press) |
| 2014 | Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism (W. W. Norton & Co.) |
| 2013 | Christopher J. Smith, The Creolization of American Culture: William Sidney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy (University of Illinois Press) |
| 2012 | Beth E. Levy, Frontier Figures: American Music and the Mythology of the American West (University of California Press) Honorable mention: Jeffrey Magee, Irving Berlin’s American Musical Theater (Oxford University Press) |
| 2011 | Sabine Feisst, Schoenberg’s New World: The American Years (Oxford University Press) Honorable mention: Larry Hamberlin, Tin Pan Opera: Operatic Novelty Songs in the Ragtime Era (Oxford University Press) |
| 2010 | Larry Stempel, Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater (W. W. Norton & Co.) |
| 2009 | John Koegel, Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York City, 1840–1940 (University of Rochester Press) |
| 2008 | Charles Hiroshi Garrett, Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century (University of California Press) |
| 2007 | Michael Broyles and Denise Von Glahn, Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices (Indiana University Press) |
| 2006 | Anne Danielsen, Presence and Pleasure: The Funk Grooves of James Brown and Parliament (Wesleyan University Press) |
| 2005 | Jeffrey Magee, The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz (Oxford University Press) |
| 2004 | Tim Brooks, Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry 1890–1919 (University of Illinois Press) |
| 2003 | Gage Averill, Four Parts, No Waiting: A Social History of American Barbershop Harmony (Oxford University Press) |
| 2002 | Walter van de Leur, Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn (Oxford University Press) |
| 2001 | Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life: A History (W. W. Norton & Co) |
| 2000 | Carol Oja, Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (Oxford University Press) |
| 1999 | Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man (University of Illinois Press) |
| 1998 | Adrienne Fried Block, Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian (Oxford University Press) |
| 1997 | Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger; A Composer’s Search for American Music (Oxford University Press) |
| 1996 | Ingrid Monson, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (University of Chicago Press) |
| 1995 | S. Frederick Starr, Bamboula! The Life and Times of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (Oxford University Press) |
| 1994 | Joseph Horowitz, Wagner Nights: An American History (University of California Press) |
| 1993 | Robert Walser, Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Wesleyan University Press) |
| 1993 | Ronald Radano, New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique (University of Chicago Press) |
| 1993 | Stephen Banfield, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals (University of Michigan Press) |
| 1992 | Stuart Feder, Charles Ives, “My Father’s Song”: A Psychoanalytical Biography (Yale University Press) |
| 1991 | Susan Porter, With an Air Debonair: Musical Theatre in America (Smithsonian Institution Press) |
| 1990 | Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance (Praeger) |
| 1989 | Dale Cockrell, Excelsior: Journals of the Hutchinson Family Singers (Pendragon Press) |
| 1989 | Vivian Perlis, Copland: Since 1943 (St. Martin’s Press) |
| 1988 | Russell Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business (Oxford University Press) |
| 1987 | D.W. Krummel, Bibliographical Handbook of American Music (University of Illinois Press) |
| 1986 | Gunther Schuller, Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller (Oxford University Press) |
| 1985 | J. Peter Burkholder, Charles Ives: The Ideas Behind the Music (Yale University Press) |
| 1984 | Richard Crawford, Core Repertory of Early American Psalmody (A-R Editions) |
| 1983 | Charles Hamm, Music in the New World (W. W. Norton & Co.) |