Buy the Book

Frank E. Tours was a leading music director for operettas and musicals during the first half of the twentieth century. Throughout his career as a conductor, he was also a prolific composer of songs for voice and piano. Over a thirty-year period, he set more than seventy lyrics to music, while most of his evenings were spent in the orchestra pits of London’s West End and Broadway.  

Tours’ concert songs were central to the development of the British and American ballad tradition in the twentieth century and occupy a middle ground between the Victorian ballad and post-Romantic art song. This volume presents thirty-eight of his songs in facsimile—his ballads as well as songs for musical theatre and film—along with a biography, commentaries on the songs, and other details about his career.                   

If you would like to purchase a copy of the book, please send a check for $45.00 to:

Studio for the Early American Musical

Attn: Frank Tours song book

1849 Geary Blvd.

P.O. Box 15643

San Francisco, CA 94115-9991

(Please include address and email contact information with your order. Allow 3-5 weeks for delivery.)