IMS Musicological Brainfood 3, No. 2 (2019)
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IMS Musicological Brainfood3, no. 2 (2019) Margaret Bent and Lewis Lockwood, the first re‐ books. My mother couldn’t see any need for me cipients of theIMS Guido Adler Prize (IMS GAP), to continue with education. It was a teacher at share their thoughts on how the field of musicol‐ school who made sure that I went on. But I did ogy has changed over half a century and on the encounter more obstacles along the way. My values that drive their research. mercurial and controversial mentor, Thurston Dart, put up a lot of objections to me doing Daniel K. L. Chua (DC). Good evening every‐ research, then eventually let me through—but I one.It’sgreattoseeallofyouhereattheopening reallyhadtofightforthat.IfIhadstayedinEng‐ of the Intercongressional IMS Symposium in land, I would not have had the career I’ve had. Lucerne. It is also a great honor for me to wel‐ The double move to the United States and back come two eminent and legendary musicologists to England made it all possible. If I were to start here this evening; they are the first recipients of now, it would be much easier. But at that time, I theIMSGuidoAdlerPrize.Pleasejoinmeinwel‐ didn’t have any role models, and that was not coming professors Margaret Bent and Lewis easy. I just assumed that men got the jobs. My Lockwood. [Applause.] then husband was offered a job. I did my re‐ I know that the only thing separating you search because I enjoyed it, alongside part-time from your dinner this evening is me. [Audience work and being a mother, and didn’t have any laughter.] So instead of moderating long keynote career expectations. I think partly because of addresses from both our recipients, I’m going to that I have been very, very lucky in the way it have a relatively brief and informal conversation workedout.AndIhaven’tsufferedfromjealousy with them. So, you can relax. because I had no expectations. [Laughter.] The IMS was founded in 1927. At that time, Guido Adler was acknowledged as our honorary DC. Still, it must have been very difficult. Many president. He was literally foundational when ofusseeyouasamodel,apioneer,forwomenin we were founded. When I think of Adler as one musicology. Did you feel that you were repre‐ of the pioneers of our discipline, I realize how senting that change? young musicology is. It is only somewhat more than a hundred years old, yet, looking back over MB.Isupposeso,withoutreallytrying.Iwasthe the course of its development, so much has first woman to do various things; I was the only changed. What is astounding, as I sit here this woman on various committees. I was very used evening, is that both our recipients have been in‐ to the idea that I’d say something and then it volved in about half of this history. Meg and would be ignored. A man would make the same Lewis, over the last fifty or sixty years, you were point a minute later and everyone would say, both making musicology happen. So, my first “Oh, what a good idea!” I was the thirteenth question is: What was it like sixty years ago? It tenured woman at Princeton, the first female must have been so very, very different. department chair there, and the first woman elected as a senior research fellow at All Souls Margaret Bent (MB).Well, I think it was par‐ College in Oxford. And I was very touched in the ticularly difficult for me as a woman. I never ex‐ GAP citation that it was mentioned that I’ve pected to have a career. I came from a lower- done my best to help young scholars and espe‐ class family. I grew up in a house with almost no cially young women. 3 IMS Musicological Brainfood3, no. 2 (2019) DC. Where are we now on this issue? It is a book about cultural secrecy, about hidden chromatic passages within the motets. A lot of MB. I’m pleased to see many younger women people didn’t want to believe it, but Lowinsky doingwellintheircareers,butthereisstillaway was a passionate advocate of his ideas. He sent to go. The IMS so far has not yet had a female me on to graduate school in Princeton, and there president. I encountered a much larger panoply of ideas, worlds, and subjects. Principal professors at that DC. I know! time for me were Oliver Strunk, Arthur Mendel, NinoPirrotta(whocameasaguest);andthefirst MB. The Royal Musical Association has never Beethoven seminar I took was with Elliot Forbes, hadawomanpresident.Iwasthesecondwoman while he was revising Thayer’sLife of Beethoven. president of the AMS back in 1985. The AMS has It was an extraordinary time! been ahead on this. DC. Who had the most influence on you at that DC. Yes, that’s definitely something we have to time? do something about. Lewis, I was wondering, how different things were for you when you LL. Of these, Strunk was the most deeply influ‐ started. ential, for his breadth of knowledge, his quiet de‐ meanor, and his generosity of spirit. A couple of Lewis Lockwood (LL).Let me share some of wordsaboutStrunk:OliverStrunkwasthesonof my early musicological background. The first the English professor, William Strunk, who had thing I say is I’m a New Yorker, born and bred. written at Cornell, years and years ago, a little This means that I grew up in a time where classi‐ book calledThe Elements of Style, about how to calmusicwaseverywhere.IsatinthetopofCar‐ write good English. “Omit needless words,” said negie Hall and heard young people’s concerts Professor Strunk, the father, and that’s what his by the New York Philharmonic. I was fortunate son Oliver did all his life. Oliver Strunk omitted enoughtogototheHighSchoolofMusicandArt words more eloquently than anybody I have ever in the late 1940s which at that time was a high known. He would stand against the blackboard school with six orchestras, two choruses, and a with a Camel cigarette in one hand—you could full academic program. It transformed the lives smoke then—and in very few words he would of all of us who were fortunate enough to go outline some enormous topic, like “How Dufay’s there. Of course, it was a public high school. You music gradually transformed itself from the con‐ hadtohavesomecredentialstogetin,andIhad. ditions that prevailed in the fourteenth century, I was a young cellist at the time, and may I say, for example, isorhythm, down to the wonderful, Istillplay.Ikeepmychambermusicupnomatter lyrical, and complex works of his last years.” what happens. Strunk was self-taught; he had, however, a laser- ThenIwenttoQueensCollege,alongsubway like ability to focus on the main issues. For him, ride from where I lived, but it didn’t matter. (By you learned any subject or field by finding out theway,theNewYorksubwaythenworked,and what we know and what the sources of our it cost ten cents, which is no longer the case.) knowledge are. Then how to go directly to them There I found a wonderful music department. toseewhatnewinsightscouldbefound.Itdidn’t Edward Lowinsky arrived on the scene while I matter if it were medieval chant, early poly‐ was a student, and he was an enormous in‐ phony,Josquin,ortheoriginsofopera.Inafunny fluence on me—not only as a music historian way, his model stays with you, you internalize it but also as a musician. He was a very dynamic into your world, and I can’t avoid having that scholar with extremely original and even highly model in mind. controversial ideas. His important book had just been published two years before when I arrived DC. Your research subject has certainly moved at Queens College in the early 1950s, entitled in different directions, but I guess the underlying Secret Chromatic Art in the Netherlands Motet. model is the same Strunk-like approach. 4 IMS Musicological Brainfood3, no. 2 (2019) LL.Yes, I first started out doing Renaissance be‐ DC. Today, when we consider your early work, cause the Lowinskyan wave was still washing some people tend to think that it’s all a bit old over me. In my dissertation on late sixteenth- fashioned. But we forget that it was innovative century sacred music, I focused on a cultural- research. Meg, what was path-breaking about political problem—namely, what did the promise the Old Hall Manuscript you worked on? Or of the Counter-Reformation want sacred music Lewis, the work you did on the duchy of Ferrara, to be? The answer is: They wanted it so that the how was that path-breaking? texts would be intelligible. Now, to make the text intelligible in complex polyphony is a job, and MB. I think we need to take a step back here. very few people were satisfactorily doing it. When I started my research work, you did re‐ Palestrina does it in his inimitable way. But I search on what we didn’t know. We didn’t do found an interesting composer, Vincenzo Ruffo, research on Beethoven, because we “knew” who did do it, and became the musical agent of Beethoven. So, that accounts for the stream of CardinalCarloBorromeo.(Bytheway,itisCarlo dissertations, particularly from NYU and Indi‐ Borromeo about whom Lord Acton said, “power ana, on the “life-and-works” of little-known Re‐ corrupts, and absolute power corrupts abso‐ naissance composers. And, in my generation lutely.” And I throw that out because these days most people went into early music because it absolutepowerisshowingsignsofcorruptingon was relatively unknown. This may well be why many fronts.) Lewis started out in Renaissance music and Later,forvariousreasons,Iwantedtodomore only later felt able to work professionally on in the Renaissance, and I went up to see Nino Beethoven.