A candidate for the Ph.D. in Music, Beth Levy examines <em>American Music and the Idea of the American West, 1895-1945</em>. The dissertation offers a historical perspective on the mythology of the American West through a detailed examination of its influences on American musical life during the first half of the twentieth century. Levy investigates American composers’ attitudes toward the West not only in their statements about music, in their methods for incorporating folk songs into art music, and in their strategies for treating western topics in vocal and programmatic instrumental works. Taken together her work describes a gradual change in the favorite human images associated with the West–from Indians, to pioneers, to cowboys–and argues that these changes reflect other transformations in American society in the period.