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Pacific Coast Musician

(Los Angeles, 1911-1948)

RIPM Preservation Series: European and North American Music Periodicals (2020)

Editors: Frank H. Colby, R. Vernon Steele

Periodicity: Monthly, Weekly, Bi-Weekly

Publisher: Pacific Coast Musician Company, Colby and Pryibil, Frank H. Colby, Myrtile P. Colby, R. Vernon Steele

Language: English

Lacunae: Vol. 12 nos. 11-12, 16; Vol. 13 no. 18; Vol. 15 no, 19. A copy of these issues could not be located.

Published in Los Angeles and spanning nearly the entire first half of the twentieth-century, the Pacific Coast Musician documents the remarkable musical growth in Los Angeles and on the entire west coast of the United States. For some time a competitor to the San Francisco-based Pacific Coast Musical Review (1903-1933), the Pacific Coast Musician began with a deliberate focus on southern California, though within a few years, monthly columns on music in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Spokane, San Diego, and elsewhere appeared. The publication size grew quickly; monthly issues ran to forty-eight or more pages; eventually the periodicity increased alongside the volume of content.

The journal chonicles the growth of musical insitutions, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Hollywood Bowl concerts, music at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Southern California (USC), and other colleges and universities. Music in the film industry, centered in Hollywood, is treated, and the arrival of European musicians, notably Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, is discussed. Photography is regularly included in the 1920s and 1930s; musical supplements are a feature of the 1910s.

It is unclear why the journal ceased; the final editor, R. [Roscoe] Vernon Steele ultimately died in Spain in 1959.

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