AMS Newsletter February 2017
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AMS NEWSLETTER THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY CONSTITUENT MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES VOLUME XLVII, NUMBER 1 February 2017 ISSN 0402-012X Rochester: The Flower City Beckons Vancouver 2016 Wrap-Up AMS Rochester 2017 cause Rochester once hosted a number The eighty-second Annual Meeting of the 9–12 November of companies that sold seeds in the mid- American Musicological Society took place www.ams-net.org/rochester nineteenth century, it is known as the in the beautiful mountain-and-ocean-ringed Flower City. Even earlier, Rochester boast- It is likely that when you hear the word landscape of Vancouver. Many participants ed a number of flour mills, arninge it the took time to enjoy the natural beauty of the “Rochester,” you think of snow. You are short-lived, homonymic nickname “Flour environs, taking the short stroll to the bay or not wrong in calling this to mind, but it City.” It is still home to one of the oldest, the slightly longer trip to Stanley Park. The is my job to not let New York State’s third- continuously-operating farmer’s markets program reflected the ever-widening fields largest city be defined by its unruly level in the country (open year round). The city of inquiry embraced by musicology, and the of frozen precipitation. Instead, I warmly also has a history of being at the forefront joint meeting with the Society for Music The- welcome you to attend the eighty-third of social justice. Frederick Douglass spent ory meant a packed schedule with sometimes Annual Meeting of the American Musico- almost half of his life in Rochester speaking agonizing choices to be made between paral- logical Society in Rochester, New York, to out against slavery. Susan B. Anthony like- lel sessions. Opera and film studies continued be held in the Joseph A. Floreano Roch- their strong showings of recent years, while wise advocated for women’s suffrage in the ester Riverside Convention Center, on the the omnipresence of technology in our lives Flower City. Both Douglass and Anthony east bank of the Genessee River. yielded a plethora of papers discussing radio, are buried in Rochester’s historic Mount Originally inhabited by the Seneca tribe video games and digital technology, and ex- Hope Cemetery. Each Election Day in No- of Native Americans, the area was settled tending our awareness of technology’s influ- vember, Rochesterians gather at Anthony’s by immigrants about 1800. When the ence on culture from the “mendacious tech- grave and put their “I Voted!” stickers on Erie Canal was completed in 1823, Roch- nology” behind the violin’s claim to historic- her headstone. The burial site made na- ester became an important port for ship- ity to the use of music as surveillance. Sound- tional news on 8 November 2016, remain- ping from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic scape, environmentalism, and ecomusicology ing open well after the usual closing time (the advent of railroads led to the demise were the focus of two dedicated sessions, but to allow citizens to visit Anthony’s place threaded through myriad others, from the of the canal only a few decades later). Be- of rest in honor of presidential candidate sounds of Parisian streets in the nineteenth Hillary Clinton. century to the soundscape artist Hildegard In This Issue… The Eastman School of Music, princi- Westerkamp to the noise of political advertis- ing in twenty-first-century America. Archival President’s Message ...............2 pally located on one square block a ten- research in Bombay, Lima, Lisbon, Mexico AMS Public Lectures..............4 minute walk from the convention center, City, Paris, Rio, Shanghai, Singapore, and Women and Gender Lecture .......5 will grace the conference with outstanding many other places underpinned many of the Treasurer’s Message ...............5 performance halls and the enviable musi- presentations, and genres ranging from the National Humanities Alliance ......5 cal talent of its student body. It will serve thirteenth-century mini-clausula of the Mag- Awards, Prizes, Honors ............6 as the artistic epicenter of the meeting nus Liber to the monumental symphonies of AMS Demographic Report ........ 11 and several exciting musical events are in Bruckner were discussed. Vancouver Post-Conference Survey . 12 the works. Among its strengths, Eastman In addition to daytime paper sessions, the Executive Director’s Message ......13 is particularly well known in the area of Elections 2017 .................14 conference hosted a variety of other research organ. Not only does the School employ formats. Poster sessions, in their third year on Historical Notation Bootcamp .....16 some of the most renowned organists, but 16 the AMS program, offered, inter alia, a digital News Briefs ................... a coordinated effort between the School Grants, Awards, Fellowships .......17 map of nineteenth-century Parisian theaters and the community called the Eastman Committee News ...............18 and a video landscape of twentieth-century Rochester Organ Initiative has produced Study Group News ..............21 American marching bands. A much-discussed Papers Read at Chapter Meetings ...23 an unparalleled selection of historic and alternative-format session was the panel “Sex- CFPs and Conferences ...........28 modern instruments around the city, ual Violence on the Stage: How Musicolo- Financial Statement .............29 which is considered the organ capital of the gists Promote Resistance in the Twenty-First Obituaries ....................30 continued on page continued on page President’s Message Greetings from a cold Chicago winter land. both before and during the main conference, composition and improvisation. Though the I hope this message finds you all well and something new was clearly in the air, some- main exempla were drawn from eighteenth- warm. As I contemplate the reality of deep thing suggesting new configurations of musi- century Naples and Venice, a remarkable divisions in our world, I find myself wanting cal and sonic knowledge and new kinds of case dealt with a young child from present- to take a moment to reflect on what AMS is exchanges. Race matters were also the direct day England. I was struck by resonances be- and what it can accomplish. Members of our focus of a Special Session on Race, Ethnicity, tween Gjerdingen’s talk and the Society’s re- Society work in a broader range of subjects and the Profession, hosted by the Planning newed emphasis on teaching, as evinced in its using more disparate methods than ever be- Committee of the same name and featuring Teaching award, Pedagogy Study Group, and fore. This multiplicity continually challenges presentations by Ellie Hisama, Mark Bur- the latter’s Journal of Music History Pedagogy our most basic notions of what music is and ford, and Bonnie Gordon (now collected on and inscribed in our recently revised mission does. Our work provokes and divides us as our blog Musicology Now, musicologynow. statement, which puts teaching on an equal easily as it comforts and binds. Yet we share ams-net.org). The post-presentation discus- footing with research and learning with the something powerful: the commitment to sion elicited broad and thoughtful participa- words “the object of the Society shall be the inquiring into subjects that involve research- tion from the floor that raised difficult, some- advancement of scholarship in the various ing, teaching, and learning about music and times painful issues with no easy answers. It fields of music through research, learning, sound. If there is a distressing dearth of har- was the kind of conversation we need to be and teaching.” mony in our world these days, perhaps the having. So what might such work tell us about what microsociety that is AMS and our dedication Conspicuous among other fields on display to its fundamental goals can yield something were radio studies (the subject of three full we in our pluralistic mini-society might ac- special in the way of common cause. sessions), sound studies, disability studies, complish? Perhaps it tells us that moving into The most recent witness to the commit- ludomusicology, critical organology, stud- the future we can feel optimistic about be- tedness and sometimes fraught diversity of ies of colonial musics, critical histories of coming effective teachers and interlocutors. AMS was its 2016 Annual Meeting in Van- world music, and feminist studies (notably Having long been committed to teaching couver last November. Vancouver showed us a session called “Sexual Violence on Stage”). future generations, we know well that speech both its storied beauty and its storied capac- Many other sessions and papers affirmed that is rarely maximally effective, nor is it ever ity for near-perpetual rain. Attendees spent the Society also continues to do marvelous completely “free.” It demands work and vigi- many an hour indoors snaking their way to lance. That means not just advancing good meetings and sessions through the Shera- arguments with sound evidence, intelligence, ton’s long, curvaceous corridors. There were Open exchange is dynamic, contin- conviction, or even courage; it means being giggles from those who attended early morn- gent, and open-ended willing to listen and try to understand oth- ing meetings in a room named “Cracked ers. And it means knowing that dissonance Ice,” which, alongside others with names like doesn’t always resolve. Open exchange—as “Beluga” and “Gulf Islands,” made for inter- new things with older subjects. A fascinat- the Special Session on race made clear—is esting speculation about what might go on ing session organized by the Program Com- dynamic, contingent, and open-ended. And there. On our way to and fro, we got to enjoy mittee was called “After Machaut and before practicing it, as I think we’re learning to do, book exhibits sprinkled throughout hallways, Monteverdi: Current Trends in Music of is exhilarating but difficult. We should feel perched behind escalators, and tucked into the Renaissance.” Other sessions dealt with good about the steps we’re taking toward be- foyers—a refreshing change from the usual such varied themes as musical literacy in the coming better interlocutors, not least in the bunkering of exhibition rooms.