The transcriptions and concert pieces collected here are all big, beautiful, examples of nostalgic American music. But this is timeless music too, and its romanticism, spirit of adventure, playfulness, and purity tap into collective memory, underlying, ongoing, deeply American nostalgia for what all know as, simply, some other time.

Two rival suitors, one a poet, the other a composer, vie for the love of a beautiful woman who must decide which one she loves.