American Music Research Center Journal

American Music Research Center Journal American Music Research American Music Research Center Journal Volume 28 • 2019 Volume 28 2019 Volume American Music Research Center Journal Volume 28 • 2019 Susan Thomas and Thomas L. Riis Editors-in-Chief Matthew J. Jones Managing Editor American Music Research Center College of Music University of Colorado Boulder The American Music Research Center Susan Thomas, Director Stephanie Bonjack, Faculty Head, Howard Waltz Music Library Megan Friedel, Head of Archives Heather Bowden, Special Collections & Archives Eric J. Harbeson, University Libraries Sister Mary Dominic Ray, O. P. (1913-1994), Founder Karl Kroeger, Archivist Emeritus Robert Shay, Dean, College of Music Robert McDonald, University Libraries Eric Hansen, Editorial Assistant Editorial Board Susan Cook Tom C. Owens Paul Laird Katherine Preston Victoria Lindsay Levine Ann Sears Kip Lornell Jessica Sternfeld Portia Maultsby Joanne Swenson-Eldridge Nancy Newman Graham Wood The American Music Research Center Journal is published annually. Subscription rate is $25.00 per issue ($28.00 outside the U.S. and Canada) Please address all inquiries to AMRC, 288 UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0288. Email: [email protected] The American Music Research Center website address is www.colorado.edu/amrc ISBN 1058-3572 © 2019 by Board of Regents of the University of Colorado Information for Authors The American Music Research Center Journal is dedicated to publishing articles of general interest about American music, particularly in subject areas relevant to its collections. We welcome submission of articles and proposals from the scholarly community, ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 words (exclud- ing notes). All articles should be addressed to Susan Thomas, College of Music, Universi- ty of Colorado Boulder, 301 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0301. Each separate article should be submitted in two double-spaced, single-sided hard copies. All musical examples, figures, tables, photographs, etc., should be accompanied by a list of captions. Their placement in the paper should be clearly indicated. If a manuscript is accepted for publication by the editorial committee, the author will be asked to supply a brief biographical paragraph and an email attachment with the text, sent to [email protected]. Once accepted, the preparation of final copy in electronic form will require the following: abstract of no more than 200 words; article text in MSWord including endnotes and ap- pendices (preferably as a .doc or .docx file). All references should be included in the notes; no separate bibliography is required. Musical examples and figures for final production should be high resolution (at least 300 dpi) images. In general the AMRC Journal follows the formats and guidelines of the Journal of the Society for American Music and The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). For further instructions on foot- notes, bibliography, discographic references, etc., please consult this volume or the editor. Contents American Progressives of the 1970s: A Colloquy JAY KEISTER, JOHN J. SHEINBAUM, JEREMY L. SMITH ............1 Black Prog: Soul, Funk, Intellect and the Progressive Side of Black Music of the 1970s JAY KEISTER ...............................................5 There’s an Opera Out on the Turnpike: Springsteen’s Early Epics and the Fantasy of the Real JOHN J. SHEINBAUM .......................................23 Reading Carole King’s Tapestry as a Penelopean Retelling of the Homeric Odyssey JEREMY L. SMITH ..........................................41 Letters from Nadia Boulanger to Lydia Loudon in the Collection of the American Music Research Center JOAN S. SEGAL ............................................75 The Suffolk Symphonic Orchestra and Society Papers GISELE SCHIERHORST ......................................95 Contributors to This Issue ....................................153 Jay Keister, John J. Sheinbaum, Jeremy L. Smith American Progressives of the 1970s: A Colloquy The articles of this colloquy originated from a panel presented at the 2nd In- ternational Conference of the Progect Network for the Study of Progressive Rock on 26 May 2016. In his pioneering study, Edward Macan defines progressive rock as a style based on the contributions of a select group of white male British bands of the 1970s.1 According to Macan, progressive rock is “best remembered for its gargantuan stage shows, its fascination with epic subject matter drawn from science fiction, mythology, and fantasy literature, and above all for its attempts to combine classical music’s sense of space and monumental scope with rock’s raw power and energy.”2 Progressive rock has long been a favorite target of rock critics who have miscast the genre as an escapist fantasy that lacked political and social relevance. We numbered among those at the conference who sought to challenge such stereotypes of progressive rock, in particular the notion that the aesthetic of progressiveness could or should be confined to a genre of music that has been virtually defined by race, gender, and nationality. Working from Theodor Adorno’s definition of a “progressive artistic consciousness” that “appropri- ates the most advanced materials” and responds “to the historical substance sedimented in them,” we argue that the term progressive is an appropriate descriptor for the wide range of music in the post-Sgt. Pepper/A Love Su- preme era that tended toward the use of extended forms, eclectic sources, and self-conscious, politicized lyrics.3 In this broader sense, progressive is a term that applies not only to groups labeled as prog rock such as Yes, Gene- sis, and King Crimson. It is an era much better understood when a traditionally compartmentalized white progressive movement is viewed as part of a much larger movement that includes American artists of all races and genders who 2 American Music Research Center specialized in what we call “black prog” as well as the conceptual works of their iconic singer-songwriter compatriots Carole King and Bruce Springsteen. Our first paper, by Jay Keister, “Black Prog: Soul, Funk, Intellect and the Pro- gressive Side of Black Music of the 1970s,” re-examines African American music of the early 1970s with a focus on the progressive poetics that dom- inated popular music of that period. The extended forms and cross-genre appropriation commonly associated with progressive rock are not only found in the music of artists as diverse as George Clinton, Sun Ra, and Stevie Won- der, but works of “black prog” were also fraught with the aesthetic and political tensions that characterized African American music of the 1970s. The individualism and artistic autonomy so valued by progressive musicians were at odds with the search for a black aesthetic that could serve the collective needs of the African American community. In “Reading Carole King’s Tapestry as a Penelopean Retelling of the Homeric Odyssey,” the second paper, Jeremy L. Smith argues that King’s iconic album, long viewed as a collection of disparate songs, is marked throughout by the- matic coherence. Through the process of retelling, King, in this reading, brings new life to a canonic work of Western literature. Specifically, by shifting the epic’s original, Odyssean, male perspective to that of his wife, Penelope, King produces a complex, album-long narrative that is provocative, innovative, and meaningful on political and social as well as musico-literary levels. When seen in this light, Tapestry is not only musically and socially progressive, but it also, as a work of art, sheds new light on King’s times and our own. In the third paper, “There’s an Opera Out on the Turnpike: Springsteen’s Ear- ly Epics and the Fantasy of the Real,” John J. Sheinbaum considers Bruce Springsteen’s tendency to construct songs that fit broadly under a “prog” rubric musically by including through-composed elements and other stylistic / formal complexities, but where visions of utopia or escape are simultaneously grounded in a lyrical realism rather than the fantastic imagery most commonly associated with classic progressive rock of the time. Springsteen’s early epics also evoke prog by highlighting the E Street Band as a musical collective, met- aphorically complicating the notion of a fundamentally selfish “Me Decade.” Underlining all three studies of this colloquy is a view that rethinks the wider historiography of 1970s popular music. We argue that progressive music can be considered closer to the center of the era’s popular music than is usually suggested, given that most historical treatments of popular music consider prog something of an unfortunate tributary, rather than a main stream in the popular music of the time.4 Extended compositions, immersive musical jour- neys, and other hallmarks of prog can all be found in various 1970s styles well American Progressives of the 1970s: A Colloquy 3 beyond narrowly delineated boundaries of “progressive rock.” Perhaps more importantly, such a perspective questions the assumption that progressive music necessarily lacks a socially engaged stance. NOTES 1 Edward Macan, Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counter- culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 2 Macan, Rocking the Classics, 3. For other critical studies of the genre, see John Covach, “Progressive Rock, ‘Close to the Edge,’ and the Boundaries of Style,” in Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis, John Covach and Graham M. Boone, eds. (New York: Oxford

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