NATIONAL E N D O W M E N T FOR THE HUMANITIES VOLUME 4 NUMBER 1 FEBRUARY 1983 Humanities Art, Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Art period of Abstract Expressionism, ward behavior might be indistin­ when decisions for or against The guishable between the two. In all these Image were fraught with an almost cases one must seek the differences religious agony, the crass and casual outside the juxtaposed and puzzling use of tacky images by the new examples, and this is no less the case artists seemed irreverent and juve­ when seeking to account for the dif­ nile. But the Warhol show raised a ferences between works of art and question which was intoxicating and mere real things which happen immediately philosophical, namely exactly to resemble them. why were his boxes works of art This problem could have been while the almost indistinguishable raised at any time, and not just with utilitarian cartons were merely con­ the somewhat minimal sorts of tainers for soap pads? Certainly the works one might suspect the Brillo minor observable differences could Boxes to be. It was always conceiva­ not ground as grand a distinction as ble that exact counterparts to the that between Art and Reality! most prized and revered works of BY ARTHUR C. DANTO A philosophical question arises art could have come about in ways Not very many years ago, whenever we have two objects inconsistent with their being works aesthetics—understood as the phi­ which seem in every relevant par­ at all, though no observable differ­ losophy of art—was regarded as the ticular to be alike, but which belong ences could be found. I have dim, retarded offspring of two to importantly different philosophi­ imagined cases in which an artist glamorous parents, its discipline and cal categories. Descartes for dumps a lot of paint in a centrifuge its subject. Philosophy in the twen­ example supposed his experience she then spins, just "to see what tieth century had become profes­ while dreaming could be indistin­ happens"—and what happens is that sionalized and technical, its methods guishable from his experience awake, it all splats against the wall in an formal, and its analytical aims the so that no internal criterion could array of splotches that cannot be discovery of the most fundamental divide delusion from knowledge. told by the unaided eye from The structures of thought, language, Wittgenstein noted that there is Legend of the True Cross, by Piero della logic and science. Philosophical nothing to distinguish someone's Francesca. Or an anarchist plants questions about art seemed periph­ raising his arm from someone's arm eral and its answers cloudy—far too going up, though the distinction cloudy for those caught up in the between even the simplest action reinvention of painting and music 1 and a mere bodily movement seems and literature to find much help in fundamental to the way we think of the dated, faded reflections of the our freedom. Kant sought a crite­ aesthetician. And students with a rion for moral action in the fact that primary interest in art who may it is done from principles rather have registered for courses in this than simply in conformity with condescendingly tolerated specialty those principles, even though out­ found themselves confronting a perplexingly irrelevant literature. In aesthetics, and I am certain 1 should 1954, the philosopher John Pass- never have gotten involved with it more published a paper with the had 1 not visited a singular exhibi­ accurate title "The Dreariness of tion at what was then the Stable Aesthetics," and it must have been Gallery on East 74th Street in New just about then that the wit and York in 1964. Andy Warhol had painter Barnett Newman delivered filled the space with piles of Brillo one of his most quoted sayings: boxes, similar to if somewhat stur­ "Aesthetics is for aft what ornithol­ dier than those brashly stenciled ogy is for the birds"—-a sneer whose cartons stacked in the storerooms of edge is blunted today by the fact supermarkets wherever soap pads that the vulgarism it echoes has are sold. I was familiar of course faded from usage. with the exploitation of emblems of I have always had a passionate popular and commercial labels by interest in art and a logical passion the Pop artists, and Warhol's por­ for philosophy, but nothing in my traits of Campbell's Soup cans were experience with either conflicted legendary. But as someone who with the general dismal appraisal of came to artistic age in the heroic dynamite in the marble quarry, and the tradition, to the degree that which are regarded as especially the explosion results in a lot of they had thought about art at all, "philosophical," like Raphael's School In this issue... lumps of marble which by a statisti­ thought chiefly about the art of of Athens or Mann's The Magic Moun­ cal miracle combine into a pile which their own time: Plato, about the illu- tain. Were someone to choreograph 1 Art, Philosophy, and the Philoso­ looks like The Leaning Tower at Pisa. sionistic sculptures of his contem­ Plato's Republic, that would not, phy of Art by Arthur C. Danto Or the forces of nature act through poraries; Kant, about the tasteful simply because of its exalted con­ 3 The International Encyclopedia millennia on a large piece of rock objects of the Enlightenment; tent, be more philosophical than of Dance until something not to be told apart Nietzsche, about Wagnerian opera; Coppelia or Petrouchka. In fact these from the Apollo Belvedere results. the Wittgensteinians, about the might be more philosophical, 4 Footnotes: The Study of Nor are these imaginary possibili­ extraordinary proliferation of styles employing as they do real dancers Choreography ties restricted to painting, sculpture, in the twentieth century, when a imitating dancing dolls imitating 5 Explaining and Understanding and architecture. There are the whole period of art history appeared real dancers! Music by Howard Mayer Brown famous chimpanzees who, typing at to last about six months. But the Where are the components for a random, knocked out all the plays of Warhol boxes, though clearly of theory of art to be found? I think a 7 The Critical Editions of Verdi Shakespeare. But Wordsworth their time, raised the most general first step may be made in recogniz­ and Lully sought to make poetry out of the question about art that can be ing that works of art are representa­ most commonplace language, while raised, as though the most radical tions, not necessarily in the old sense 8 The Letters of Arnold Schoen­ Auden invented a style of reading possibilities had at last been real­ of resembling their subjects, but in berg and Alban Berg poetry which was indistinguishable ized. It was, in fact, as though art the more extended sense that it is 1 0 Dustjackets: Catalogs, Discog­ from ordinary talking—so for all had brought the question of its own always legitimate to ask what they raphies and all that jazz! anyone could tell, Moliere's M. identity to consciousness at last. are about. Warhol's boxes were Jourdain could have been speaking However this identity is to be clearly about something, had a con­ 1 2 Back to Bach: Aston Magna poetry rather than prose all his life. articulated, it is clear that it cannot tent and a meaning, made a state­ John Cage has made the division be based upon anything works of ment, even were metaphors of a 1 4 Is the Medium the Message in Musical Performance? NO, by between music and noise problem­ art have in common with their sort. In a curious way they made Samuel Baron; YES, by Malcolm atic, leaving it possible that sets of counterparts. One prominent the­ some kind of statement about art, Bilson sounds from the street could be orist, for example, regards paintings and incorporated into their identity music, while other sets which we as very complex perceptual objects. the question of what that identity 1 7 Shakespeare's Scripts would spontaneously suppose music So they are, but since objects can be is—and it was Heidegger who pro­ happen not to be, just because of imagined perfectly congruent with posed that it is a part of the essence 1 8 Sixty Years of Chinese Drama the circumstances of their produc­ those which are not art works, of being a human that the question 2 0 Tuning in to the Humanities: tion. And it takes little effort to these must have equivalent com­ of what one is is part of what one is. The Children's Media Initiative imagine a dance in which the dancers plexity at the level of perception. But nothing remotely like this could do ordinary things in the ordinary After all, the problem arose in the be true of a mere soap box. Dances, 2 2 Grant Application Deadlines ways; a dance could consist in first place because no perceptual dif­ too, are representational, not simply someone sitting reading a book. I ference could be imagined finally in the way in which a pair of dancers 2 3 Recent NEH Grant Awards once saw Baryshnikov break into a relevant. But neither can possession may dance the dance the characters 2 5 NEH FY 1983 Budget football player's run on stage, and I of so-called "aesthetic qualities" dance in the action they imitate, but thought it altogether wonderful. serve, since it would be strange if a in the same wide sense in which 2 6 Editor's Notes True, it may seem difficult to sup­ work of art were beautiful but even the most resolutely abstract NEH Notes and News pose art could have begun with something exactly like it though not art has a pictorial dimension. 2 7 Positive Numbers: these puzzling works— but it cannot a work of art were not. In fact it has The Problem of Indiscernible Humanities Subscriber Survey be forgotten that when philosophy been a major effort of the philoso­ Counterparts follows from the first noticed art it was in connection phy of art to de-aestheticize the representationalistic character of 2 8 About the Authors with the possibility of deception. concept of art. It was Marcel works of art. Imagine a sentence Now the "dreariness of aesthet­ Duchamp, a far deeper artist than written down, and then a set of FOR INFORMATION ABOUT ics" was diagnosed as due to the Warhol, who presented as "ready­ marks which looks just like the SUBSCRIPTIONS, effort of philosophers to find a defini­ mades" objects chosen for their lack written sentence, but is simply a set SEE PAGE 27 tion of art, and a number of philo­ of aesthetic qualities—grooming of marks. The first set has a whole sophical critics, much under the combs, hat racks, and, notoriously, lot of properties the second set influence of Wittgenstein, con­ pieces of lavatory plumbing. "Aes­ lacks: it is in a language, has a syn­ tended that such a definition was thetic delectation is the danger to be tax and grammar, says something. Humanities neither possible nor necessary. It avoided," Duchamp wrote of his And its causes will be quite distinct was not possible because the class of most controversial work, Fountain, of in kind from those which explain A bimonthly review published by the art works seemed radically open, so 1917. It was precisely Duchamp's mere marks. The structure then of National Endowment for the much so that no set of conditions great effort to make it clear that art works of art will have to be differ­ Humanities could be imagined which would be is an intellectual activity, a concep­ ent from the structure of objects Chairman: William ). Bennett necessary and sufficient for some­ tual enterprise, and not merely which merely resemble them. Director of Public Affairs: Marion thing to be a member. Luckily, there something to which the senses and Now of course not all representa­ Blakey Editor: Judith Chayes Neiman was no need for a definition, since the feelings come into play. And this tional things are works of art, so the Managing Editor: Linda Blanken we seem to have had no difficulty in must be true of all art, even that definition has only begun. I shall not Editorial Board: James Blessing, Steven picking out the works of art without most bent upon gratifying the eye take the next steps here. All I have Cahn, Harold Cannon, Richard Ekman, benefit of one. And indeed some­ or ear, and not just for those works wished to show is the way that the Donald Gibson, Judith Chayes Neiman, thing like this may very well have philosophy of art has deep questions Armen Tashdinian. appeared true until the Warhol to consider, questions of representa­ Production Manager: Robert Stock boxes came along. For if something tion and reality, of structure, truth, Librarian: Jeannette Coletti is a work of art while something and meaning. In considering these Designed by Maria josephy Schoolman apparently exactly like it is not, it is things, it moves from the periphery extremely unlikely we could be cer­ to the center of philosophy, and in The opinions and conclusions expressed in tain we could pick the art work out so doing it curiously incorporates Humanities are those of the authors and do not even with a definition. Perhaps we necessarily reflect Endowment policy. Material the two things that give rise to it. appearing in Humanities may be freely repro­ really have no such skill at all. Still, For when art attains the level of duced although the editor would appreciate to the degree that there is a differ­ self-consciousness it has come to notice and copies for the Endowment's refer­ ence. Use of funds for printing this publication ence, some theory is needed to attain in our era, the distinction has been approved by the Office of Manage­ account for it, and the problem of between art and philosophy ment and Budget. Send address changes and finding such a theory becomes cen­ becomes as problematic as the dis­ requests for subscriptions to the Superintend­ ent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing tral and urgent. Nor is this merely a tinction between reality and art. Office, Washington, D.C. 20402. (USPS 521- matter of abstract concern to philos­ And the degree to which the appre­ 090) Other communications should be ad­ ophers, for it is in response to a ciation of art becomes a matter of dressed to Editor, Humanities, National Endow­ ment for the Humanities, Mail Stop 204, question which arose within the applied philosophy can hardly be Washington, D C. 20506 Telephone 202/724- world of art itself. Philosophers of overestimated. 1 8 4 0 . ISSN 0018-7526.

2 Bicycle Wheel, 1964, a “ready-made" by Marcel Duchamp udiences for dance perform­ ultimately benefits all practical ances mushroomed from one aspects of the art." THE A million in 1965 to twelve million The Encyclopedia will cover three only one decade later, according to major areas of dance: theatrical, rit­ statistics collected by the National ual, and social. Essays will range Endowment for the Arts. More than from brief definitions to compre­ INTERNATIONAL 10,000 people a year now use the hensive essays on historical subjects world-renowned Dance Collection and thematic motifs. The complete of the New York Public Library- set will contain almost 1,000 illus­ ENCYCLOPEDIA Museum of the Performing Arts at trations, vital for understanding the Lincoln Center, reading from more visual dimensions of the art form. than 38,000 volumes and viewing Definitions include descriptions of more than 5,500 films. technical terms, including dance OF DANCE Books in Print currently lists more steps, structural vocabulary (e.g., pas than 300 books on dance, while de deux), equipment, personnel, more than 250 are included in its stagecraft, costume, and music. The paperback counterpart. New organ­ Encyclopedia defines rond de jambe, for izations have been formed, includ­ example, as "a ballet step [in which] ing the Dance History Scholars and the working leg, turned out from the Dance Critics Association, to the thigh to pointed toe, describes a promote professional standards and semicircle on the floor in one con­ achievements in research and tinuous movement, passing through writing. first position at the conclusion of Although recent years have seen the rotation." The essay goes on to a torrent of popular books and some explain distinctions in the four scholarly works on dance, there ways to execute the step and presently exists no comprehensive gives examples of choreography collection of material on current where variations of it have been research achievements. A landmark used, as in Balanchine's 1947 Theme one-volume Dance Encyclopedia pub­ and Variations. lished in 1947 by Anatole Chujoy Longer and less technical entries and revised in 1966 includes well- will include biographies of choreog­ documented inaccuracies; many raphers, dancers, patrons, libret­ believe it also has a distorted em­ tists, theater managers and others phasis on the personal interests of involved in theatrical dance, as well Mr. Chujoy. There is no parallel for as essays on particular titles of dance of the acclaimed Grove's Dic­ dance works, such as West Side tionary of Music and Musicians, first Story; generic terms, such as classical published in 1879. ballet or task choreography; train­ The dearth of scholarly research ing; art movements affecting dance, on dance has been blamed on many for example, surrealism; character factors: the recent development of types, such as sylphide or harlequin; The International the art form itself, a lack of substan­ performance practice; aesthetics; Encyclopedia of Dance tial body of written criticism, and and institutions and organizations. will be "inclusive and the separation of philosophical aes­ Essays are also planned on the catholic—an enormous boon thetics from analytical research. history of dance in individual coun­ to scholars," says Agnes De Scholarship is also difficult because tries, cross-cultural influences, Mille. The work will be a of the complexities of dance, espe­ genres of special importance, and reference for studies of cially its non-verbal, ephemeral, and other broad themes, such as the social dancing as well as multimedia character, encompass­ repertory system, the economic life for folk dancing, represented ing human movement, music, scen­ of a dancer, relationships between here by the National Folk ery, lighting, costumes, acting, and student and teacher or between Ballet of Yugoslavia, as even, in some experimental works, dancer and community. well as dance performance, poetry-reading and "everyday" Entries on ritual and recreational such as that by jaffe and movement. The anti-intellectualism dance will include religious, folk, Baryshnikov in Varia­ of some practitioners and the puri- social, and ceremonial dance, and tions on America. tanism of some intellectuals have anthropological studies. The Encyclo­ also been blamed for the paucity of pedia will also address the role of scholarly research. dance in related spectacles, such as A major contribution to dance social and political occasions, lyric scholarship has been funded by the theater, popular entertainment, NEH. International Encyclopedia sport, film, and television, as well as of Dance, to be published by topics on body sciences, such as Charles Scribner's Sons, will have dance therapy. about 7,000 entries in four volumes, Says Cohen of the project, "With plus index. Selma Jeanne Cohen, the rapidly growing interest in former editor of Dance Perspectives and dance in our time, demand has holder of a Ph.D. in English Litera­ mounted for a major reference ture, serves as editor-in-chief of the work. The Encyclopedia will bring Encyclopedia. Cohen is the author of together for the first time a vast numerous theoretical articles on quantity of information, logically dance as well as several books, organized and easily accessible. including her most recent, Next Much of this information has Week, Swan Lake. hitherto been scattered or known Jerome Robbins, choreographer only to a few specialists." for the New York City Ballet and Six associate editors have also numerous Broadway musicals, been named: George Dorris, Asso­ points out, "It is time to pay truly ciate Professor of English, York Col­ scholarly attention to the art of lege, City University of New York, dance through the publication of an critic, and founder and co-editor of encyclopedia, an attention which Dance Chronicle; Nancy Goldner, edi- 3 tor, author, and critic for The Chris­ 1976 for a conference held in New and ethnic—in this country over the material which is not heavily slanted tian Science Monitor and Dance News; York later that year. Additional last two decades has developed an toward ballet technique and the his­ Beate Gordon, Director, Performing planning meetings took place in audience which is more enthusiastic tory of theatrical performance of Arts Program, Asia Society; Nancy 1977, supported with another than informed," he notes. "What the last century, particularly ballet Reynolds, editor, lecturer, and Endowment grant to refine concepts has long been needed is a scholarly dancers," notes de Mille, herself the author of Repertory in Review: 40 Years of subject areas and approaches and basis of organized information author of several books on dance. of the New York City Ballet; David to identify potential collaborators. which can serve as a critical "Nothing is comprehensive, nothing Vaughan, critic, teacher, and author The Endowment awarded a grant in substructure." catholic, nothing sweeping, and this of Frederick Ashton and His Ballets; and 1981 to support research, writing Agnes de Mille, American choreog­ we must have. It will be an enor­ Suzanne Youngerman, anthropolo­ and editing of the Encyclopedia. rapher for the ballet and Broadway mous boon to all scholars." gist and Dance Research Coordina­ Lincoln Kirstein, co-director with stage, including such works as —Julie Van Camp tor at New York University. Dozens George Balanchine of the New York "Oklahoma!" and "Rodeo," praises Ms. Van Camp is an Endowment staff of "area consultants" are providing City Ballet, and a writer and scholar the planned Encyclopedia for its com­ member. technical expertise on the diverse in his own right, is a strong sup­ prehensive coverage of all types of "International Encyclopedia of Dance"/ areas of research. porter of the project. "The extraor­ dance. "There is, as far as I know, in Selma ]. Cohen/Dance Perspectives Founda­ Early Endowment support for the dinary development of interest in all the English language no inclusive tion, N Y C /$ 7 3,6 66 OR; $ 6 3 7 FM / project came in a planning grant in types of the dance—theatrical, social, dictionary or encyclopedia of dance 1981-83/Research Tools

came to this country in 1939. He Doris Humphrey, a major American tering on themes of the family. FOOT NOTES became convinced of the value of pioneer in modern dance. Doris In addition to the scores them­ notation in 1961, when he and Humphrey: The Collected Works, Volume selves, the books include glossaries Muriel Topaz, now executive direc­ II, to be published by the Dance to assist the novice in following the Dance is an elusive art form, exist­ tor of the Dance Notation Bureau, Notation Bureau, will complement notated score, suggestions for sup­ ing in the moment of performance. were both on the faculty of the Jul- the previously published Volume I. plemental reading material, and Its transience poses special obstacles liard School and four of his early Two Ecstatic Themes (1931) consists information about films and video­ to analysis by scholars. Program works were notated. Many small of two female solos, Circular Descent tapes of the works. Word notes are notes, reports by critics, personal companies around the country have and Pointed Ascent, the only surviving also included to aid in eliciting a vis­ memories, and still photographs been able to restage his work with­ solo pieces of the many chore­ ual image of each dance. Appendices provide secondary sources limited in out the considerable expense of ographed by Humphrey during the include details about the musical their potential for sustained analysis bringing Tudor or one of his assist­ 1920s and 30s. score, costuming, and lighting, and and study of actual dances. ants to teach the choreography. Air for the G String was chore­ selections from critical reviews of Videotapes and films capture Because of his positive experi­ ographed in 1928, the same year as original performances. actual performances but, in and of ences with the usefulness of nota­ the previously published Water Study. Notated scores are invaluable to themselves, do not differentiate the tion, Tudor stands out as one of the Both dances were created for scholars analyzing in detail the choreographic design from the often most enlightened choreographers in groups of female dancers, offering composition of historically signifi­ extensive nuances of interpretation permitting access to the notations of ample territory for analytical com­ cant choreographers. Scholars liter­ and interpolation by individual per­ his work for research and study parison. While Water Study relies ate in the notation can analyze the formers. Videotapes and films are purposes, such as classroom use of exclusively on human movement, complex rhythms and counterpoints also inadequate because they often the choreographies and research in A ir experiments extensively with of a choreographic design in ways cannot capture all movements of all comparative analysis, choreographic fabric manipulation to enhance the impossible to achieve by relying dancers, especially for works with analysis, and movement technique. human movement. only on the memory of performan­ large ensembles. Another grant from the NEH is The third work in the new collec­ ces and the sketch of videotape. The Dance Notation Bureau is supporting the publication of exist­ tion is Day on Earth (1947), an exam­ Creation of notated scores is undertaking a project with NEH ing notated scores of works by ple of her later dramatic works, cen­ expensive, however, as the notator support to preserve more accurately must be present while the work is the creations of the choreographer being created "on" dancers or, pref­ through a technique called "Labano- erably, when an existing work is tation." The Bureau defines Labano- being taught to a new group of tation as "one of several systems for dancers. Choreographers them­ recording human movement in a selves typically do not write the symbolic language, much the same notations. After many hours of way that notes are a symbolic lan­ observation, the notator makes a guage for music." pencil score and a second notator Developed by Rudolph Laban in checks its accuracy before a final 1928, Labanotation can record even inked score is made. the smallest gesture—the raising of V iMany researchers are not fluent an eyebrow, the lifting of a finger— in notation, another obstacle to its through the use of geometric sym­ widespread use. There is also con­ bols posed against a staff that siderable debate about the precise represents the human body. elements of a dance essential to its The NEH is supporting the nota­ identity as a particular dance. This tion of six major works by Antony uncertainty has encouraged many Tudor, choreographer emeritus of choreographers registering their the American Ballet Theater. The works for copyright to deposit both works being notated—Dim Lustre, a notated score and a videotape with Dark Elegies, Pillar of Fire, Undertow, the Copyright Office. and Jardin aux Lilas—complement ear­ Despite these problems, them­ lier work by Tudor already in nota­ selves the subject of considerable tion. Tudor has been actively scholarly interest, the growth and involved in the project, preparing dissemination of dance notation is a accompanying statements of his major step in the evolution of dance intentions for the works and other scholarship. —JVC insights of value to scholars in reconstructing and analyzing the "Doris Humphrey: The Collected Works, choreography. Volume II, ed. E. Stodelle"/Muriel Topaz/ Tudor is best known for his "psy­ Dance Notation Bureau, N YC/$4,500/ chological ballets," created mainly in 1981-82/Research Publications "Docu­ the 1940s, capturing inner emotions mentation of the Works of Antony Tudor"/ and conflicts in strong, sculpted $28,890 OR; $11,750 FM/1981-83/ movements. Born in England, Tudor Research Tools 4 Explaining and Understanding Music

BY HOWARD MAYER BROWN

"Musicology!" President Eliot of opment of music as a humanistic Harvard is said to have snorted discipline has taken place in America once. "Next they'll be asking me to almost entirely within my own appoint a professor of grandmother- lifetime. ology." Doubtless he was objecting As graduate students, my class­ to the rather graceless name by mates and I conceived of ourselves, I which the academic study of music think, as intelligent musicians first is known, but for all I know he may of all, studying the works of the well have objected, too, to the very and an awareness of that may assertion that music is a new disci­ great composers, trying to identify notion of the academic study of the slightly unsettle intellectuals. But pline among the humanities. and understand the artistically ineffable non-verbal art. Sterile the much more prosaic and probable Musicology—the systematic attempt important pieces whether or not debate about the word "musicology" explanation of the uneasy place to deal with music as an art, to they formed a part of the current has now more or less stopped— music has among the humanities is explain its nature, or the nature of concert repertory, and attempting presumably most of us agree that simply that it is so new as an intel­ particular repertories or individual to master the whole history of music will sound as sweet regardless lectual discipline. We musicologists, pieces, and to write its history—has western European music. We had of its name— but I am constantly at least, are used to explaining away been taught at European universi­ received exactly the same training surprised, and rather puzzled, by our failures because of the newness ties only since the late nineteenth as undergraduates that our class­ the quizzical, incredulous, or even of our discipline, but that claim is century. It is only a slight exaggera­ mates who wished to become com­ downright hostile reactions I get not, of course, quite true. There tion to say that musicology came to posers had received (undergraduates when 1 explain that 1 am a professor were people as early as the six­ America in the 1930s with the today still all have the same musical of music at an institution that does teenth century (and probably even influx of refugees from Europe. To training, a feature of our curriculum not offer courses of instruction in earlier) interested in studying be sure, there had been a native that goes a long way to explain why playing an instrument or singing. seriously the music of the past, and American tradition of music in musicologists can communicate with Music, I am frequently told, is to be there is a vast literature from the American universities before the composers better, say, than many composed or performed, not to be time of the ancient Greeks to the 1930s, but it was modeled more on art historians do with painters). studied. In my naivete, I had present day that attempts in one the English mixture of training in Little by little all of us have real­ thought that one of the points of way or another to explain the harmony and counterpoint and a bit ized, I am sure, that we cannot mas­ my own undergraduate education theory of music. Indeed, music is of performing on the side than on ter the whole history of western was to demonstrate the fallacy of one of the oldest academic disci­ the more academically rigorous European music, let alone the the axiom that "to analyze is to de­ plines. It was taught as part of the continental model of music as one of musics of all the other civilizations stroy," and I have never understood seven liberal arts in medieval and the humanistic or historical sub­ of the world (that we as students why the study of music seems to be Renaissance universities. But pro­ jects. So far as I know, Archibald T. hardly knew existed). Little by little, regarded as an exception to the fessors five or six hundred years Davison was the first person to be too, the nature of graduate training notion that the great achievements ago tried to teach their students awarded a Ph.D. in music at an in music has changed, as musicology of mankind, as well as the workings about the rational basis of the American university, for a disserta­ has grown richer, more varied, and of the natural world, need to be universe—the 'natural laws' that tion on "The Harmonic Contribu­ more like any other humanistic dis­ explained in order to be understood things about us observe—by dem­ tion of Claude Debussy," in 1908 at cipline. It now takes almost all the more fully. onstrating the rational basis of musi­ Harvard. "Doc" Davison was still energy I have to understand what Music delights, intrigues, cal intervals and other musical teaching at Harvard when I was an the questions are that scholars are astounds, and even moves people phenomena. They were not inter­ undergraduate and then a graduate asking, let alone trying to find the just because—or perhaps in spite of ested at all or only peripherally student there in the late 1940s and answers. On the radical left, as it the fact that—it casts its spell with­ interested in music as an art, in the 1950s, still a time when American were, we have the theorists who out needing verbal concepts, with­ sound of music, as it were. professors of music did not nor­ believe we need a secure analytical out words. Music is a kind of magic, So there is some truth to the mally hold Ph.D. degrees. The devel­ theory and critical techniques to 5 explicate particular pieces or reper­ music as a part of intellectual or star conductors, opera singers, and beings have in common; or trying to tories. Sometimes they speak in a social history; they are trying to virtuoso players of nineteenth- understand the particular political pseudo-scientific jargon intelligible answer questions about the effect century concert repertory are system of a country during a partic­ only to one another, and they tend music had in the intellectual life of beginning to see, too, how impor­ ular time in order to understand to borrow their private language the times when it was written, tant it is for them to seek scholarly better what precisely happened in a from the sciences or from the avant about how particular kinds of music advice about editions to use, orna­ particular year or on a particular garde in literary circles. But some­ reflect the society for which they ments and cadenzas to improvise, day, or in order to understand the times they offer us brilliant insights were written, and how particular and even instruments to play. inevitable consequences of particu­ into the way composers think, and musical techniques can only be I have suggested by implication lar kinds of activities; or whether they help us to understand particu­ understood within the framework that there is a certain tension we are trying to understand Bee­ lar pieces better and in more depth of a particular society. among the practitioners of all these thoven's Fifth Symphony. Whether than other kinds of scholars. They The hostile people I mentioned at branches of musicology. Such ten­ we analyze the musical structure of constantly threaten to secede from the beginning of this polemic tend sion is healthy, simply because it the symphony, study the composer's our discipline altogether, and they to make the assumption that musi­ forces us constantly to ask ourselves sketches for it or the watermarks of will doubtless resent my even cologists, because they are neither why we are doing what we do. But the paper on which it was written, including them among the ranks of composers nor professional per­ in the end we need to realize that edit it in a way that makes as clear "musicologists." On the radical formers, must therefore be against there is no real conflict among us. as we possibly can what we can right, the textual critics believe we composition and performance. That We are all working towards a com­ make of Beethoven's own inten­ must first study the external char­ conclusion is, of course, absurd. mon goal: to understand and explain tions, compare it with related works acteristics of the manuscripts and Indeed, one of the easiest ways to music. We explain to understand, by Beethoven's predecessors and printed books which contain music. justify musicology (do we need to and we understand through our successors, or try to explain it as the They study watermarks, handwrit­ justify anthropology or political explanations. result of a particular set of social, ing, binding, and the relationship of science or psychology? Well, I guess Explanation and understanding political, economic or aesthetic con­ variant readings to one another in we do) is to point out the ways in are, of course, the touchstones of ditions, we are each in our own way the hope of avoiding the subjective which musicology is absolutely cru­ many, perhaps most, humanistic dis­ trying to explain it—its very special pitfalls of analysis and in an attempt cial to the performer. Musicians ciplines, whether we are trying to qualities, its importance to mankind, to date particular pieces more pre­ who play mostly music written understand and explain how non- its place (however defined) within cisely and to explain just where and before the eighteenth century are Western societies work, in an effort our history, or even simply its great why the pieces were copied or apt to accept such a collaboration to explain features of an alien beauty—so that we can understand printed. Sometimes they tell us only easily and naturally. But even our society or the things all human it better. trivia; they tend to forget that music is the principal object of their study, and they sometimes get mired in intense debates about irrelevant or not very important things. But they can sometimes produce astonishing results. Proba­ bly the most spectacular scholarly endeavor in music in the past thirty years has been the successful attempt to revise the chronology of J. S. Bach's music, and to change completely our image of his artistic life and personality through a close study of the handwriting, water­ marks and other external character­ "We received exactly the same istics of the manuscripts that con­ tain his music. training as undergraduates that In between those two extremes, musicologists study a much greater our classmates who wished to variety of problems and topics than become composers received we ever imagined existed when we were graduate students. Scholars (undergraduates today still have interested in the nineteenth century are in the process of discovering the same musical training, a that we really have no precise feature of our curriculum that notion, say, of Verdi's own concep­ tion of his operas. Available editions may explain why musicologists seriously distort his intentions, and scholars are therefore in the process can communicate with composers of preparing the first critical edition better, say, than many art of Verdi's music we shall ever have had. Others are busy studying the historians do with painters)". preliminary sketches composers made of their music, in the hope of finding out precisely how the crea­ tive process works, and what kinds of choices composers made in arriv­ ing at the final version of a piece. Some scholars are at last studying our own musical heritage and beginning to make us all aware of the great vitality of American music since the founding of the country. Other scholars are using paintings and other works of art as historical evidence in attempting to find out what art can tell us about the music of the past and about the place of music in society. And a few scholars are even finally trying to study 6 uled for engraving. James Levine, music director and principal conduc­ tor for the Metropolitan Opera, will see an early version of Ernani, an opera scheduled for the Met's 1983- 84 Centennial season. Verdi's eyes, of course, would be even better at checking the scores. "He used a lot of shorthand," says Chusid. "W e spend a great deal of time trying to figure out what we think he intended." But in the process, he says, one does begin sensing Verdi peering over one's shoulder, as if the com­ poser was making up for missed opportunities to supervise publica­ tion of his works. "He's there all the time," says Chusid. Summoning the spirit of Jean- Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), and col­ lecting the material necessary for a first edition of his work, comes a bit harder than it does with Verdi. "So much of the work we're doing is fundamental work, spadework," says Albert Cohen, a member of the Lully Committee formed in 1977 at the International Musicological Musicologists and performers work­ Although Verdi, who died in the theater that had commissioned Society meeting in Berkeley, Cali­ ing with scores composed in earlier 1901, may be the world's greatest the opera, or by Casa Ricordi. Until fornia. In addition to publishing centuries must often contend with composer of opera, and is a national the late nineteenth century, the Lully's works, a task Cohen expects errors accumulated through genera­ hero in Italy, no previous critical composer's orchestral scores, as will not be completed before the end tions of "creative" editors and care­ edition of his work has been rented out by Ricordi, were hand­ of the century, the committee (com­ less copiers. But the scholars who published. made copies prepared by the pub­ posed of Lully scholars from this are assembling the first critical edi­ "Only the German composers lishing house's employees. In the country, France, Germany, England, tions of works by composers Giu­ have had editions systematically successive stages of duplication, and Canada) intends to establish an seppe Verdi and Jean-Baptiste Lully done," says Martin Chusid. "That's wrong notes and other errors archive, at Stanford, of material must also contend with war and because the Germans invented crept in. concerning the composer. revolution. musicology. And because the G er­ "Copyists everywhere are prone Lully's music is seldom heard in The World War II bombing of man government, or the Volks- to mistakes," says Chusid. "What our day. "Even when the music is Casa Ricordi, Verdi's publisher in wagon Foundation will support"a happens sometimes is the mistakes available, it's very sketchy," says Milan, claimed many parts (the critical edition. are not quite strong enough to hear. Cohen. In 1930, he says, an earlier music singers and musicians use in Chusid, a professor of music at But, invariably, Verdi's intentions scholar began compiling a Lully edi­ performance) for Verdi operas. "The New York University, edited the [once deciphered] are stronger tion, but "Simply put, he died. The Ricordi Company kept very close opera Rigoletto, which in January dramatically." entire project collapsed." control of the parts because they 1983 will become the first volume Some of the mistakes were A violinist who went on to rented them," explains Martin published in the Verdi series. intended. Verdi's contemporaries become a musicologist, Cohen Chusid, director of the American The work "took a few years," he were known to improve his scores points out that, "If you work in Institute for Verdi Studies. "So they says, "largely because I was teach­ where they felt it necessary. "There seventeenth-century France, you had the only ones in Italy, and they ing, but also because you have to be were changes made," says Chusid. can't escape Lully." were destroyed." extraordinarily careful." "It's sometimes difficult to know "Lully set the style of French Similarly, much of the music of According to the Verdi prospectus whether Verdi authorized them, or opera so strongly that its character Lully, court composer to King Louis from Chicago Press, "O f all the the opera houses made them." remained the same up to the twen­ XIV, was consumed by the French music currently being performed, Chusid organized the American tieth century. He is considered to be Revolution. Sympathetic aristo­ the texts of the operatic master­ Institute for Verdi Studies in 1976. the originator of the modern sym­ crats saved some of the material on pieces of the Italian nineteenth cen­ He says the Institute's archive, con­ phony orchestra. He set the style of the run, but "all the court docu­ tury are probably the most corrupt sisting of "25 or 30,000 documents the French ballet, and that style ments were ravaged," says Albert and the furthest from their compos­ and letters, scores, librettos, produc­ eventually became the source of all Cohen, chairman of the Music ers' intentions." tion materials, scene designs, and so ballet. His grands motets set the pat­ Department at Stanford University. One may also take Verdi's word forth," has provided much material tern for the great oratorios of "It was a terrible time." for that: "I complain bitterly," he useful in editing Verdi's operas. Handel and the large choral works Work on both the Verdi and Lully wrote to Ricordi in 1855, after the What with the bombing of Casa of J.S. Bach. Finally, his organization editions is being funded partly by premiers of Rigoletto, II Trovatore, and Ricordi, he says, "The parts I found of the Royal Academy of Dance and the NEH. Each edition will demand La Traviata, "of the editions of my for Rigoletto I found here in America, Music is that of today's conservato­ monumental measures of time and last operas, made with such little at the Metropolitan Opera House, ries; that of his opera, today's great labor. care, and filled with an infinite their library, and at Princeton opera houses." The Verdi edition, a joint project number of errors." University." Composer, conductor, dancer, of the University of Chicago Press While major works of composers, As other scholars as well as deal­ violinist, and singer, Lully was also and Casa Ricordi, has been planned such as Wagner, Debussy, Schu­ ers in old books become aware of the man to whom Louis XIV in three ten-year cycles, with one mann, and others, were prepared in the project, still more Verdiana is "turned for any musical advice," volume to be published yearly. A printed editions supervised by the likely to turn up before the year adds Cohen. "He was the supervisor fresh generation of Verdi scholars artists, the scores of twenty-four of 2 010 —projected deadline for the of all musical events performed at will complete the work left undone Verdi's thirty-two operas have overall edition. the court. A very powerful man." by fading elders. The most ambi­ never been published, and are avail­ To check on the work of Verdi When revolution came to France, tious music edition yet attempted by able only as manuscript copies. experts editing the operas, engrav­ Lully's reputation suffered. His an American publisher, "it has awed When Verdi composed his operas, ers' proofs of the scores will be tomb is said to have been pillaged; us as much as anybody else," says and finished the handwritten reviewed by prominent conductors much of his music was destroyed. Wendy Strothman, a Verdi-project orchestral manuscript—all this of opera. Zubin Mehta is expected What survived is scattered through director and music editor at the often only days before the first to proofread Verdi's Messa da a dozen countries and many libraries. Chicago Press. performance—copies were made by Requiem, the second volume sched­ Members of the Lully Committee 7 decided an early goal would be to the two schools share the riches establish a central archive of pri­ through a cooperative library pro­ mary sources, preserved on micro­ gram). But Cohen was hard pressed film. The first phase of the project, to remember "the last time I heard a supported by the NEH, has involved performance" of music by the collecting "just about all the sources composer. we could possibly have" on Lully's Among problems faced by schol­ ballets, says Cohen. In early 1981, ars working on the project, "time the Stanford libraries purchased and distance" rank high, says three eighteenth-century manus­ Cohen. With Lully experts almost as cript collections of instrumental widely scattered as the composer's music from Lully's ballets and works, "To resolve a small point operas. takes I don't know how many letters Only one page of musical manu­ and telegrams, or waiting for schol­ script exists in Lully's hand. Plagued arly meetings where we will be with poor eyesight, the composer together." dictated his music to secretaries. Gathering necessary material is "Copies have been made of copies, also a challenge. "We have had some and it often is very difficult to problems," Cohen says diplomati­ determine which are the most cally, with one collection of twenty- authoritative sources," says Cohen. two manuscripts in Prague. After 1679, when Lully began "They [the Czechoslovakians] having the firm of Christoph Bal­ don't always answer letters. We lard print his music, corrections can't pay them in cash, for the were done on separate sheets. In microfilm. They want to be paid in time, many of those pages were lost. books for their library. They send According to guidelines estab­ us a list, and we have to scramble to lished by the Lully Committee, for find the books." the composer's dramatic works (of Then, there is the scholarly sleuth­ which there are more than 40) edi­ ing involved in tracing the contents tors will aim "to produce a score of small, private libraries that, over reflecting the way the work might the years, have been dismantled. have been performed during an "There's a lot of detective work," authoritative run, normally but not says Cohen. "That's part of the always the first. By 'authoritative frustration, and part of the fun." run' we mean a run produced under —Michael Lipske Lully's direction or for which Lully Mr. Lipske is a free-lance writer. wrote music." Although the Lully archive at "The Critical Edition of the Works of Stanford and the critical edition Verdi"/Philip Gossett/U. of Chicago, IL/ being printed in book form are each $51,000 FM/1981-83/Research Editions/ intended to serve scholars, the "Publication of a Critical Edition of (Rigo­ Committee also hopes to bring the letto), by Guiseppe Verdi; edited by Martin composer's music into the hands of Chusid/Wendy ]. Strothman/U. of Chi­ performers. A Lully opera will be cago, IL /$ 1 9,3 0 9 /1 980-82/Research produced in 1983 at the University Publications/"An Edition of the Ballets of of California at Berkeley (both Stan­ ]. B. Lully (1632-1687)"/Albert Cohen/ ford and Berkeley possess a number Stanford U., C A /$36,028/1982-83/Research of Lully manuscripts and scores, and Editions

On March 31, 1913, composer But music scholars and the public of the time and atmosphere in Arnold Schoenberg's Chamber at large may come to a better which they compose." THE Symphony premiered in his native understanding of the Promethean The atmosphere during their Vienna to less-than-flattering composer with the forthcoming early association was one of intellec­ reviews. One critic compared the publication of his correspondence tual ferment, although it became LETTERS OF arid and austere music to a field of over a twenty-nine-year period to and bitter in the later years. weeds and turnips mixed together, from Alban Berg, a Schoenberg pupil Berg, a tall, handsome young man while another dubbed it the "Horror who eventually became a famous with an expressive face and features Chamber Symphony." composer in his own right. reminiscent of Goethe or Oscar ARNOLD A near-riot broke out in the audi­ The correspondence, being trans­ Wilde, was born in Vienna in 1885 torium before the performance had lated and arranged into book form of well-to-do parents. His early ended, as the audience expressed its by two young musicologists with training was in the flowery roman­ disapproval by whistling, hissing assistance from NEH, could become tic music still dominant in that era. SCHOENBERG and banging its seats. Gustav an important source of material for But his life and music changed when Mahler, the great, graying composer future research on the composers. he became a private pupil of who had influenced Schoenberg's Much of the correspondence has Schoenberg in 1905, just as the lat­ AND ALBAN early work, literally leaped to his never been published before in ter was beginning his experiments colleague's defense, commanding either German or English. in atonal music. silence from his box seat. "There really is no full or com­ Schoenberg, born in Vienna in Later, however, Mahler confided plete biography of either composer," 1874, had become a musician after BERG to his wife, "I do not understand his notes Christopher Hailey, one of the being fired as a bank clerk. With the work. But he is young, and may well translators, who believes the letters restless mind of a scientist, he tried be right. I am old, and perhaps do will assist future biographers. The to ignore fashionable attitudes not have the ear for his music." correspondence—ranging from about music and find a scientific Seventy years later, many still birthday and holiday greetings to basis for what he felt intuitively. lack an ear for the music of Schoen­ anguished comments on artistic Together in Vienna with Berg and berg, who liberated dissonance en struggles to the heel-clicking state several other pupils including com­ route to becoming (with Stravinsky) of early Nazi Germany—"enables us poser Anton Webern, the self- one of the twentieth century's two to get closer to the creative pro­ taught Austrian began formulating most influential composers. cess," says Hailey. "W e get a feeling the theories that would revolution­ 8 ize the musical world. tive" about his methods of writing, Judaism to Christianity as a young Harris, now dean of the Hartt "Every tone relationship that has finally "began to open up a little." In man, hostility was directed against School of Music at the University of been used too often must finally be one instance, Schoenberg described him as a "Jewish" composer by Nazi Hartford, who spent several years regarded as exhausted. It ceases to the process involved in completing papers, which blamed Jews for every­ collecting copies of the correspon­ have power to convey a thought the first act of an opera in progress. thing from the worldwide depres­ dence from the Austrian National worthy of it," Schoenberg wrote. "It's almost 1,000 measures long. sion to the unfavorable terms of the Library, the Library of Congress, "Therefore, every composer is But I have also finished almost 250 Versailles Treaty. the Pierpont Morgan Library and obliged to invent anew, to present of the second act and am taking a On January 30, 1933, Hitler the Schoenberg family. new tone relations." small break (break, indeed; I think became Germany's chancellor. The final book, now being The Berg-Schoenberg correspon­ I've worked at least a few hours Within weeks, he prevailed on the assembled by Hailey and fellow dence, begun in 1906 and continued every day during this break). . .. new assembly to pass the "Enabling musicologist Juliane Brand, will until the younger man's death in Strangely enough, I work in the Act" which essentially transformed include some 175 letters from 1935, shows that Berg looked up to exactly same fashion: final text is the nation into a dictatorship. By Schoenberg and 275 from Berg, in Schoenberg "as if he were a god," finished only during the composi­ April, the Nazi government's hostil­ addition to summaries of their other Hailey notes. When the elder com­ tional process, in fact, sometimes ity toward Jews came into the open, correspondence. The book will con­ poser decided to leave Vienna tem­ not until afterwards... that is only as it began dismissing Jews from tain brief annotations aimed at clari­ porarily after a fracas with another possible if one already has a very government service and the univer­ fying factual inconsistencies or lin­ tenant in his apartment house, Berg precise overall conception, and the sities. Schoenberg's letters during guistic problems. More detailed discussed his departure in typically art lies not only in continually keep­ this time reflect concern about his notes will be contained in appen­ florid terms. "Is it not the fulfill­ ing this vision alive, but in further country's course. dices. The correspondence itself will ment of the fate of genius?" he strengthening, enriching and Perhaps anticipating the coming be divided into three sections, each asked. "We mortals can only bow expanding it while working out the Holocaust, Schoenberg fled Berlin preceded by an introduction. before your destiny, and must real­ details... I'm afraid of only one along with many other Jewish But in addition to scholarly mate­ ize that even our most fervent thing: that by [the time the work is artists and intellectuals. On his way rials, the book also will contain hopes are insignificant." finished], I'll have forgotten every­ to the United States, where he con­ some material with great enter­ Schoenberg generally "was more thing I've written. Already I hardly tinued to teach and compose until tainment value. Consider this aloof," as befit his master-pupil rela­ recognize what I composed last his death in 1951, he stopped off at Schoenberg letter, whose irony tionship, Hailey notes. "Genius year. And if it weren't for a kind of Paris. There, on July 24, he officially should delight even the most hard­ learns by itself, talent mainly from unconscious memory, which instinc­ rejoined Judaism at a public cere­ ened modern-day whistlers and others," the master observed at one tively leads me back to the original mony. Writing to Berg several seat-bangers. point. "Genius learns from nature— train of musical and dramatic months later, Schoenberg said, "As "Radio is a wonderful thing," .... Talent learns from art." thought, I'd have no idea how the you must surely have noticed, my Schoenberg said. "But turning it off In 1925, just as Schoenberg was whole could have any organic return to the Jewish faith occurred remains the greatest pleasure: when striving to develop the so-called coherence." long ago, and is discernible even in in an instant one can shake off the "twelve-tone" system of musical Schoenberg's later letters, Hailey the unpublished sections" of several nightmare of those horrible, awful composition invented by fellow notes, also "give you something of works, including his new opera, sounds and moments later free Austrian Joseph Hauer, Berg finally the flavor of Berlin in the late twen­ "Moses and Aaron." He was disap­ one's ears again— that is deliverance became a success. That year was the ties and early thirties." The brown- pointed that Berg chose to remain not paid for too dearly with the premiere of his opera “Wozzeck," shirted Nazis, led by Adolph Hitler, behind in Vienna. preceding agony." based on the dramatic fragment by became the nation's largest political The Hitler government quickly —Francis J. O'Donnell Georg Buchner. After its favorable party and began scuffling with banned the "degenerate" works of Mr. O'Donnell is a frequent contributor to reviews (which Hailey notes made those who opposed their doctrines. Schoenberg and his school. The Humanities. Schoenberg "a little jealous"), the By that time, Schoenberg was resulting loss of income staggered younger composer ceased being a serving what he thought was a life­ Berg, who continued to compose "The Correspondence of Alban Berg and sycophant, and began addressing his time appointment as teacher of the until his death in 1935, of complica­ Arnold Schoenberg"/ Christopher T. Hailey/ former teacher as an equal. master class of composition at the tions arising from an insect bite. $10,000 OR; $6,000 FM/1982-83/ And Schoenberg, who previously Academy of Arts in Berlin. The translation project is being Translations had been what Hailey calls "secre­ Although he had converted from supervised by Berg scholar Donald

Arnold Schoenberg (left) and his famous pupil, Alban Berg, are shown against a backdrop of the Vienna Opera House. The correspondence of the two famous atonal composers continued from 1 906 until 1935, when the younger man died in Nazi Germany. U.S. U.S. Library of Congress DUSTJACKETS Catalogs, Discographies and all that Jazz!

National Endowment for the of its music. from the second half of the eight­ provide the first systematic look at Humanities grants in music not only This music was transmitted eenth century. At this time a new the birth of a new art form, the help individual researchers: many of mostly by manuscript. For the first form, the symphony, became the symphony. And if any of us ever them help to make available pre­ century it was, in fact, transmitted principal form of orchestral music. does find a manuscript of a hitherto viously unorganized bodies of mate­ by manuscript only. It was with the Composers, both the great—Haydn, unknown work labeled "Sinfonia di rial, aiding researchers of both pres­ successful printing of music by Mozart, the young Beethoven—and Giuseppe Haydn," we will have a ent and future years. This article movable type, which began in 1502 the barely competent, turned out place to check our find before calling will look briefly at seven such proj­ (with a book with the entertaining symphonies in vast numbers: well the newspapers. ects, involving music as early as the title Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A), over ten thousand symphonies from Not all m anuscripts are old; not beginning of the Renaissance and as that a second form of transmission the eighteenth century exist in all are European. Given the econom­ recent as the publication of this became possible. By the middle of known sources. ics of music publishing in America article. the new century, print had become The standard way of circulating it's not surprising to find that many The earliest of the seven involves the dominant form of transmission; these symphonies was in the form large-scale works by American com­ creating an index to music more yet manuscripts remained an impor­ of manuscript parts. Even publish­ posers exist only in manuscript. than five centuries old— from the tant means of disseminating music. ers found it cheaper to pay a copyist Locating this material—each years 1400-1550, the years of the Almost all manuscripts of the to make the occasional set of parts manuscript unique, each located in Early and High Renaissance in period are anthologies, containing needed for their business than to one place alone—is a major chal­ music. (Scholars in other fields many works. Sometimes these pay an engraver to engrave a work lenge to students of American delight in debates as to what date works are gathered together in a of which they might need only two music. marks the real start of the Renais­ rational grouping; sometimes they or three. As copy was prepared One of the largest collections of sance: musicians, however, gener­ seem put together for no particular from copy, not only did the usual manuscript music by American ally accept the change in style which reason, like books shelved together textual errors creep in, but a more composers is that of the New York happened ca. 1400 as the watershed at random. Whatever its arrange­ serious form of adulteration also Public Library. This collection has between musical Middle Ages and ment, each manuscript is a unique took place: works began to be extensive holdings of composers musical Renaissance.) These were anthology containing a different set attributed to other than their true ranging from George Frederick the years which saw the first flow­ of works. composers. Haydn, as the most Bristow, who was writing successful ering of choral polyphony, as well as With support from NEH, scholars famous composer of the time, was symphonies before the Civil War, to the development of elegant, lyrical from the University of Illinois at the most victimized, with at least still-active composers such as Elliott styles of music for the voice and the Urbana-Champaign and other coop­ 150 symphonies in which he had no Carter and Paul Simon. Between earliest abstract, non-dance-related erating institutions are now prepar­ part charged to his paternity. But Bristow and Simon is a wealth of instrumental works. ing a census-catalog of all the confusion was, in fact, all- varied materials: music of the dash­ Major composers, from Dunstable known manuscript sources of poly­ encompassing; Jan LaRue estimates ing mid-nineteenth-century vir­ and Dufay through Ockeghem, phonic music from 1400 to 1550, that one in fifteen eighteenth- tuoso Louis Moreau Gottschalk; of Obrecht and Josquin des Pres to thus for the first time giving the century symphonies "may be falsely American Classicist Edward Gombert and Clemens non Papa scholar control of this entire body of attributed or otherwise confused in MacDowell; of pioneer Impressionist (whose negative name served to dis­ material. The first two volumes the sources." Charles Tomlinson Griffes; of the tinguish him from Pope Clement have already appeared; the third is For many years the standard granitic Vermonter Carl Ruggles; of VII) flourished during this century- expected this spring; the entire four source for solving problems of attri­ melodist Charles Wakefield Cad- and-a-half, and hundreds of lesser volumes should be published bution of eighteenth-century sym­ man; of ultramodern Edgar Varese masters contributed to the richness by 1986. phonies has been the card-file of and conservative Henry Hadley; of The value of this census to schol­ American musicologist Jan LaRue. jazz greats from Duke Ellington and ars is enormous. Its most obvious LaRue's files, containing more than Fletcher Henderson to Andre Previn use—to serve as an index to all 13,000 entries, have been invaluable and Mel Powell. manuscript versions of a particular for researchers on orchestral Until now, none of this material piece—is only the beginning. The music of this period. Now, partly has appeared in the catalogs of the information brought together in the because of a series of NEH grants, New York Public Library. Some of it census will make it much easier for LaRue's work will be published as A was available to scholars who knew the scholar to study the interrela­ Thematic Catalogue of Eighteenth-Century tionships between manuscripts —both Symphonies. The catalog will giving a chance to evaluate the appear as a published book; it will trustworthiness of a given version also be available as a permanently of a piece, and telling us something up-datable data base available for about the piece's history: where was on-line consultation by telephone, it sung? how long was it sung? and as a purchasable computer tape. what was it sung with? what hap­ The availability of the catalog pened to it on its way? Answering in book form will allow it to be questions such as this benefits both taken along to the many still uncata­ the performer and the listener: the loged European collections of piece begins to take on the reson­ eighteenth-century manuscripts ance of its surroundings and can be (most of them housed in castles and heard more nearly as it was heard in monasteries not noted for easy its own century. computer access.) For stay-at-home The second project looks at music musicologists the catalog will 10 that it was there from articles, press catalogs laid out so that it is possible marginal interest; some are outright releases, or finding aids. Other to find works for a particular "ghosts": there is no indication as to material, which had come in too instrument, while scholars will want where the recordings can be located. great a bulk to be processed, had to know what works by a particular The Rutgers catalog, on the other simply to be put aside regretfully composer the Center owns. The hand, is a description of a definite until funds could be found to deal National Endowment for the Hu­ collection. Every entry represents with it. (Remember, every manu­ manities is now helping the Ameri­ an actual recording; every recording script is unique; the cooperation can Music Center to produce its in the catalog can be found at a spe­ between libraries, which has made catalogs. Thanks to the cooperation cific location. the cataloging of books much of the New York Public Library, Previous jazz discographies have quicker than it was at the turn of these catalogs will also appear on also been published on a the century, is helpless before this the New York Public Library's data shoestring—listed most often by uniqueness.) base, and through it on RLIN. Thus principal artist, with perhaps an A grant from the National the good work of the American index by other performers, they Endowment for the Humanities will Music Center will be made known were difficult to use for someone now allow these manuscripts to be to scholars consulting a standard seeking various versions of the cataloged and made accessible data base as well as to those who same song or trying to construct a nationally through the Research turn directly to the American Music general chronology of jazz record­ Libraries Information Network, C enter. ings. The Rutgers catalog, done (RLIN). Holdings will also be Not all great music is written with the aid of a computer, is cap­ reported in the National Union down. In fact, one of the greatest able of many different kinds of Catalog of Manuscript Collections. American musics—jazz—is created access. The grant also provides funds for in perform ance rath er than on The catalog of jazz-related com­ essential points of data for finding the physical processing of manu­ paper. If it's written down, it's often mercial 78-rpm recordings of the exactly the right performance to scripts: housing in acid-free folders written down after the fact, to Acoustic Period (1917-1927) of the study. and the treatment of deteriorating secure a copyright or a degree. Institute of Jazz Studies has been An even more ambitious project is manuscripts—many on crumbling Thus the prime document for the completed. This catalog has been being undertaken by the Association paper, many held together with every­ study of jazz is the recording, not made accessible to American li­ for Recorded Sound Collections. thing from common pins to super­ the score. (How many great jazz braries through OCLC (a national ARSC is making a survey of the annuated transparent tape. So not works must have gone unrecorded bibliographic network) as well as on complete holdings of "pre-'LP' only will we have new access to the and thus disappeared from this microfiche. Already it has proved of commercial disc sound recordings" stuff of American music history, we earth!) The largest repository of use both to scholars and to libraries, (substantially, 78 RPM discs, but will also be assured that the jazz recordings—the Institute of some of which have begun catalog­ not excluding those discs recorded material is saved for later Jazz Studies at Rutgers University— ing their own collections of jazz at another speed) of five leading generations. is cataloging and controlling its col­ recordings by reference to the archives of recorded sound. These Thirteen blocks south of the New lections with support from NEH. Rutgers catalog. Indeed, Rutgers institutions include two great public York Public Library at Lincoln Cen­ The basic tool of the record entries on OCLC have set national libraries—the Library of Congress ter is another of the great collec­ library is the discography—a list of cataloging standards for jazz and the New York Public Library— tions of American music, that of the recordings as the bibliography is a recordings. and three leading universities: Stan­ American Music Center. If the list of books. There has been much A second NEH grant has helped ford, Syracuse, and Yale. manuscripts in the collections of the good work done in the discography the Rutgers Jazz Institute to con­ If jazz discography has before New York Public Library are a of jazz. Traditionally, however, the tinue cataloging "78's" and to now been done on a shoestring, prime source for American music basic work has been done from a va­ catalog selected long-playing records general discography has been— save history, the collections of the Amer­ riety of sources—phonograph com­ for which there is little available dis- for Clough and Cuming's heroic ican Music Center make it the great pany logbooks, record catalogs, cographic information. Microfiche World's Encyclopaedia of Recorded information center for current newspaper advertisements—in an indexes, generated from Rutgers M usic—mainly a series of studies of American music. The Center, which attempt to list every record of a par­ OCLC archival tapes, allow access recordings of individual composers was formed in 1940 by a group of ticular kind that has been made. by title, performer(s), label name, or by individual recording artists. composers including Marion Bauer, Many of these recordings are of matrix and issue numbers—all The ARSC project will help to solve Aaron Copland, Howard Hanson, many of the problems facing and Otto Luening, has the largest researchers working on recordings circulating collection of contempo­ of the pre-LP era. It will, of course, rary American music scores in the help in answering the basic ques­ world. It houses not only printed tions: what was recorded, by whom, music but also unpublished works, and where the recording can be the latter either in manuscript or in found (the latter question has until photocopy. Much of the unpub­ now been answerable in most cases lished material has been given the only by writing to individual institu­ Center with the understanding that tions and asking them whether they copies may be furnished to scholars have a copy of a given record). It and performers at cost; the Center, will also help us in the solution of therefore, serves as a publisher for larger puzzles. For example, it will these works. Thanks to the good finally be possible to document the work of the Center, works that will growth and interrelationship of the not repay a commercial publisher— various recording labels, a form of works for unusual instruments, corporate history at least as compli­ works for unusual combinations of cated as that of the usual multina­ instruments, works by composers tional corporation. whose reputation is not as yet This project will aid not only the national—can be given a far better scholar but also the general listener, chance of reaching their performers, for it is from such tools as this that and through them their audience, record companies can most intelli­ than would otherwise be the case. gently produce the reissues of In time the works themselves will important recordings that can keep be transferred to the research col­ the great performances sounding to lections of the New York Public new generations of listeners. Library, where they will be perma­ Recordings not only preserve nently available for scholarly study. great performances: they can also Good catalogs are essential to the document and preserve a heritage. functioning of the American Music This computer printout is taken from the Thematic Identifier Catalogue of 18th Since the early years of this cen­ Center. Performers must have Century Symphonies, compiled and edited by ]an LaRue. tury, when folksong collectors such 11 as Bela Bartok, Percy Grainger, and Aston Magna players Frances Densmore first succeeded in rehearse The Brandenberg catching folksongs "as they were Concertos. sung" on their recording machines, the recorder has been an impor­ tant tool of the folklorist. From 1937 to 1947 folklorist Louis Watson Chappell traveled from county to isolated county in the West Virginia mountains with a custom-made recording machine. (Chappell is best known for his 1933 publication John Henry, which placed the celebrated steel driver at West Virginia's Big Bend Tunnel in the late nineteenth century and is still regarded as the most scholarly and analytic analysis of a single ballad.) Setting up his heavy recorder in var­ ious West Virginia hotel rooms, Chappell recorded more than 2,000 songs and ballads performed by more than ninety people. The 647 aluminum discs that hold the record of these performances—stories in music of great events and people, a ast July 2, a group of music- more finely pointed. The combined composite description of work, love, lovers gathered in St. James's performance practices, resurrected tragedy, humor and religion in LChurch in Great Barrington, from Mozart's day, produced a Appalachian life— form a large part Massachusetts, for a unique Inde­ greater clarity of sound, as well as of the sound archives of the pendence Day celebration. The an energy and dynamic range sel­ Regional History Collection in the occasion was the inaugural concert dom heard in modern-day perfor­ West Virginia University Library. of the tenth annual Aston Magna mances of Mozart's music. An NEH grant has helped the Festival, and for the closing work The Aston Magna Festivals began library organize the sound archives Artistic Director Albert Fuller had in 1973 as series of concerts dedi­ and produce a computer-generated chosen Mozart's Symphony in D cated to such performances of the catalog of the folk music holdings. Major, K.250, written less than music of the seventeenth and eigh­ In addition to the Chappell three weeks after the Declaration of teenth centuries. They are the prod­ Archive, the collection contains Independence was signed. As the ucts of the philosophy of founder Afro-American music from south­ sound of Mozart's music began to Albert Fuller. "I realized I was very ern West Virginia recorded during fill the church hall, listeners noticed alone," he recalls. "As a harpsichord­ the early 1950s and sacred music something "revolutionary" about ist, I discovered that it was very from the state's northern rural this performance—at least to mod­ difficult to find colleagues to play churches dating several years later. ern eyes and ears. Bach sonatas with. There was great Thomas Brown, an assistant profes­ Most strikingly, there was no 'grinding' going on every time I sor of music education at the Uni­ conductor. Instead, the orchestra wanted to play these pieces of Bach versity, traveled throughout the was led by its concertmaster, as with a violinist. And I found that order to participate fully in the state in the seventies to make field would have been the performers in 'grinding' of aims in the perfor­ reproduction of the music, his fel­ recordings for the archive. The two Mozart's time. Secondly, the per­ mance came from the fact that I was low musicians needed to know more hundred reels of tape resulting from forming ensemble consisted of playing a harpsichord which was about the total context in which it his work are now being processed. twenty-two people, in contrast to essentially the kind that Bach used; was composed and originally The archivists at West Virginia the sixty to eighty-five players used whereas, the violinist was playing performed. devised a classification system based in most performances of Mozart eighteenth-century music on a Fuller, whose impressive back­ on a list of thirty "key topics." With symphonies today. And the sound nineteenth-century altered instru­ ground includes a thorough ground­ this classification researchers look­ of the eighteenth-century instru­ ment in a twentieth-century Rus­ ing in art history, is fond of using a ing for songs on the blues, coal ments used was noticeably different sian manner— and it didn't work." visual metaphor to explain the dif­ mines, death and suicide, drinking, from their modern counterparts: Fuller, who had been teaching at ferences between performing Bach loggers, lovers, murder, orphans, the hum from gut strings, for the Julliard School for nearly twenty in twentieth-century style and per­ outlaws, politics, railroads or reli­ example, was less shrill and steely years, was well aware that the goal forming the music as originally gion will find them organized by than that of modern violin strings, of violin teachers and concert vio­ intended. "It's a little bit like the dif­ these and other headings. Varia­ and the articulation was sharper, linists today is not to play in ference between the eighteenth- tions of tunes as familiar as "Little eighteenth-century style. His per­ century oils of a Veronese, for Brown Jug" and "Barbry Allen" as sonal commitment to the faithful example, and the acrylics of a well as rarer songs with intriguing reproduction of the music as Bach Rauschenberg. They both use red, titles like "Confessions on the Gal­ intended it led him to seek col­ but their reds have quite different lows" and "Fishin' Without a Fly," leagues willing to experiment with affects, different psychological feel­ are accessible through the compu­ older instruments, techniques, and ings. Even in the best reproduction, terized catalog not only by subject styles to discover what Bach— you can't see the difference in brush but by title, name of performer, and Mozart, and Monteverdi, and other strokes and luminosity, and rapidity medium of performance. great composers—really had in mind of application, and what that means The hundreds of recordings in the when they put pen to paper. to the artist's experience of paint­ West Virginia University Library Fuller had no trouble finding will­ ing. Yet it's red. Since music is invis­ hold a unique and panoramic view ing participants for his project. And ible, we're making an effort to dis­ of day-to-day American history. yet, he soon found that he asso­ cern very carefully the difference And thus these research collections ciated ideas with this music which between the red of Veronese and involving music help us to learn his colleagues, however well- the red of Rauschenberg, or the six­ more about the people we are as trained, did not share: visual images teenth notes of Ravel and the six­ well as the music we make. related to works of art of the same teenth notes of Mozart—but not —Wayne D. Shirley period, aesthetic ideals held by Bach because of the sixteenth notes Mr. Shirley is a musicologist and reference and his contemporaries, an under­ themselves, but of the feeling that librarian in the Music Division of the standing of what society expected of the music was made to generate. Library of Congress. art at the time. He realized that in "For us," he adds, speaking for 12 those who have shared the experi­ and eighteenth centuries. Word ies, but many have not; for all, the ence of Aston Magna, "music is feel­ spread about the academies, and in opportunity to examine a period ing. It's all a means to an end of feel­ 1980, Professor Erickson returned from a wide variety of angles is a ing, in as many ways as genius to the NEH with a second appeal for strong attraction. composers have laid out the support. A second grant was made, The breadth of scholarship in the patterns to feeling." for a second series of three pro­ humanities is demonstrated by the Out of this desire to understand grams. The first would return to lecture topics of the fourth the music in its historical context, Italy to study "Venice in the Age of Academy, "Venice in the Age of the first Aston Magna Festival was Monteverdi"; the second, to France Monteverdi: 1575-1650." In addition born in the summer of 1973. As in the time of Louis XIV; and the to clearly musicological subjects Fuller gathered colleagues to third and final academy in the ser­ such as "The Madrigal Tradition in explore the music of the seven­ ies, to be held this summer, will Verse and Music," "The Venetian teenth and eighteenth centuries, he explore the relationship between Liturgy," and the study of specific included friends who were not European and American culture dur­ works such as Monteverdi's Orfeo musicians—an art historian and an ing the Age of Revolution. and L'lncoronazione di Poppea, lectures architect. During the breaks At most summer music festivals, delved into the relationship of music between rehearsals, these guests music students and young profes­ to the other arts: "Music and the gave informal lectures to the per­ sional musicians in their twenties Aesthetics of Space," "Musical formers. "I wanted to expose stu­ and thirties gather for a summer of Themes in Venetian Painting," and dents and colleagues to that intense music-making. At Aston "Death and Resurrection of moment, to see music in its social Magna, individual scholars and per­ Theater," an exploration of the evo­ context the way the composer saw formers ranging from twenty to lution from written plays to the egalitarian spirit of chamber music it," Fuller explains. Both the art his­ over seventy years of age gather for commedia dell'arle to opera. Other lec­ in the Academies themselves. For torian and the architect could help three weeks to immerse themselves tures on the architecture of Palladio, this reason, all academic titles are the performers understand "what not only in the music, but in the Scamozzi and Longhena and on the dispensed with, and everyone com­ kind of rooms we would imagine entire social, political, and cultural emergence of Venice's ruling noble municates as colleagues on a first- ourselves in." context of an era. The twenty or so class sought to place the arts in a name basis. Raymond Erickson, founder and faculty members, specialists in a va­ larger cultural context. And finally, "Aston Magna is not a place for professor of music at the Copland riety of fields including music per­ to summarize the three weeks' dis­ individual glory. We choose our par­ School of Music at Queens College, formance, music history, art his­ cussions, Professor Erickson pres­ ticipants very carefully. The reason who was a private student of tory, architecture, education, dance, ented a public lecture, "Venice in is that we try to maintain a certain Fuller's, was invited to that first and social and political history, are the Age of Monteverdi," character­ level of expectation, and, as a result Aston Magna program. He imme­ chosen not only for their scholar­ izing Venetian society of the time, of that expectation, a level of diately responded to Fuller's ship, but for their willingness to touching on the physical aspects of accomplishment. But I'm also very approach. "It quite literally changed open themselves to the cross- the city, its complex class system concerned, not only that the faculty my life," he recalls with enthusiasm. disciplinary experience. The partici­ and social customs, its government, are known in their fields, but also "It was my first exposure to the real pants, numbering around forty-five and the forces for change, which that they are the kinds of people sounds of Baroque music." Excited each summer, range from graduate during the seventeenth century who will learn from the experience, by the potential contribution of students to distinguished professors affected both the city's political posi­ regardless of their ages. scholars from other fields, he pro­ in fields related to the specific tion and its artistic achievements in "We want people to leave Aston posed that the yearly gatherings of theme of the summer's academy. the century to follow. Magna and spread the gospel—and scholars be formalized, each having Their main responsibility is to The formal educational structure by that gospel, I don't mean that its own theme. And after several absorb as much as they can from of the Academies includes morning there is an Aston Magna way of years of planning, the first Aston both the formal and informal activi­ and afternoon lectures by faculty performing things, but rather that Magna Academy, aided by funds ties in Aston Magna. And, since members; rehearsals by artist- there is a humanistic approach to from the National Endowment for 1981, there have also been Academy faculty, coupled with lecture- any subject; in this case, it just the Humanities, took place. Fellows, free-ranging participants demonstrations; and master classes, happens to be the study of music The initial grant was to support a (many of whom have attended a as well as various presentations by and the history of music." series of three annual academies, previous Academy) who receive participants and Fellows. But the The potential impact of the covering Italian, French, and G er­ room and board for one week's stay. real function of all the structured Academy on education in this coun­ man cultures of the seventeenth A number of those who come to activities is, as Erickson puts it, try, through lectures by its Aston Magna as lecturers, partici­ "intellectual 'pot stirring.'" The faculty and participants outside of pants, or Fellows have already been culinary image is hardly accidental, the confines of Aston Magna, is involved in cross-disciplinary stud­ for much of the "cross-fertilization" something about which both direc­ for which the Academies are known tors have strong convictions. "We takes place around the fine meals would like to see education changed, that are served there. Fuller's guid­ because we are very concerned ing spirit is again evident behind the about that," Erickson says. "I think Academy's gastronomic philosophy. of education for musicians, as well as "Albert is fond of saying, 'You can't for anyone else, in the almost moral go from Bach to hot dogs.'" and total sense of the Greeks, Not only is there a high intellec­ where we are not educating people tual level in conservation at Aston to solve specific problems, but teach­ Magna, but there is also a great sen­ ing people to think so that they can sitivity to the way in which ideas solve any problem. are communicated. "We view the "What we are doing is probing, as whole thing as chamber music, in a deeply and seriously as we can, way," says Erickson. "Everybody has some of the most profound utteran­ his or her role to play, but no one ces of man, and bringing them to can get along without the others. light in a way that people's souls can We are mutually dependent in the be moved." most positive way: on the expertise —Elizabeth Heston here, or the insight there. . . . The Ms. Heston is a Music Program Specialist spirit of chamber music pervades at the National Endowment for the Arts. the program; not only is there a "The Aston Magna Academies on Baroque great deal of chamber music played, Music and Art"/Raymond Erickson/Aston but even the symphonic music of Magna Foundation for Music, Inc., the period is performed without a NYC/$ 175,482/1977-80/"Aston 'star system,' without a leader or Magna Interdisciplinary Academies on conductor." 17th- and 18th-Century Culture"/ Erickson strives to preserve this $2 74,680/1980-83/Education Programs 13 IS THE MEDIUM IN MUSICAL YES BY MALCOLM BILSON

for Bach-Stokowski. highly questionable to me, for I have been teaching at Cornell instruments do have characteristics University for about fifteen years. of their own; they are not simply During that time we have had vir­ neutral tools that we use. Instru­ tually all the "great" pianists of ments can teach us music through today on our major artists series. their particular qualities, to a far Only one of these did not include a greater extent than is generally Beethoven piano sonata on his pro­ realized. Think, for example, how a gram; all others did. I would ven­ Birgit Nillson and an Elly Ammel- ture to say that all of these pianists, ing have learned to sing via their with no exception, used Urtexts (original quite different instruments. And editions of the works with no edi­ the reader will easily imagine the torial additions), and I'm quite sure differences that will be obtained that a good many of them had from a French horn where all notes access to the autograph manuscript can be readily gotten by depressing as well. Nowadays most pianists valves, and from one on which the otherwise. I suppose one could say appear to want to recreate Beetho­ player has to "stop" the horn with that it was that waiter's opinion ven according to his intentions, not his hand to get passing notes. In that the "real thing" would not be according to their individual whims. Brahms' day both existed. Brahms "valid" for my palette. They worry a great deal about specified a natural horn for his The same situation exists in whether a particular sforzando Trio, Opus 40; is a valve horn per­ much of our contemporary musical (sharp accent) is on the second or formance of this work, as is usually life. Most of the highest paid con­ third beat of a particular measure; it heard today, valid? cert artists today, whether they be may not be clear in the autograph. Authenticity, on the other hand, r. Baron and I agreed on violinist, pianist or singer, have a But they learn and perform on a has never been of much interest to the words “authenticity" certain style they bring forth in vir­ piano that has no sforzando in the me. We will never be able to cap­ Mand "validity" for our dis­ tually all the music they play. Pian­ Beethovenian sense, for the modern ture it, and I for one am not even cussion, so that we should not find ists generally favor the most pow­ piano has no real sforzando; it has only sure that I am very anxious to try ourselves talking at cross-purposes. erful pianos, and the most loud notes! Indeed, the modern piano to do so. What does interest me These are not easy terms to deal sought-after tone production is big, is in so many respects a different passionately, however, is aesthetics. I with, however. Authenticity is an rich and full. Violinists almost instrument from the one Beethoven like being a performer because, like unattainable chimera, unless the without exception play with a con­ knew, that I for one feel that a an actor, I can gain all sorts of expe­ very ghost of Beethoven descend stant heavy vibrato, regardless of great amount of the "musical mes­ riences directly through the music I from wherever he may be, complete the repertoire. The most successful sage" is simply lost by playing play and may, if I am lucky, trans­ with instruments, halls, candle- singers are those with the biggest Beethoven's music on it. mit some of them to others through lighting, etc. Valid, on the other voices and largest, smoothest Here I question the validity of my performances. Now the aesthet­ hand, could be virtually any per­ sounds. Neither performer nor lis­ such a performance. At least, I ics of Mozart and Liszt are very dif­ formance, it seems to me, that con­ tener in this situation may be at all question the degree of validity. To ferent, and the aesthetics of the veys something from one person to interested in hearing "authentic" return to Chinese food—any pack­ instruments for which they com­ another in a manner both consider Schubert or Brahms; the player has age of frozen Chinese food from an posed are likewise very different. satisfactory. So what, then, should a "gorgeous sound" and plays with American company with a gentle Mozart wrote several letters to his be my argument? Let us begin with great intensity and this is very rearrangement of ordinary Ameri­ (Continued on page 16) validity, the more interesting of the satisfying. As long as there are can ingredients and flavors, dressed two concepts, since it is invested those who prize this kind of music up to look and smell a little Orien­ with a range of meaning. making, it must be considered as tal, is perfectly valid, as long as A few years ago 1 found myself in valid. someone is happy to eat it. But if London. As is well known, London I would consider similarly valid one is interested in getting to know has a good number of fine Chinese the old Stokowski arrangements of real Chinese cuisine, such a concoc­ restaurants, but I was not lucky; 1 the Bach organ works for full tion must be considered absurd. I invariably landed on a mediocre orchestra; indeed, the application of feel the same to be true of the one. Finally, one evening, 1 spied a the full orchestra sound to the con­ above-mentioned pianists. And I restaurant filled with Chinese eat­ trapuntal works of J. S. Bach brings recently encountered a string ing what looked to be all kinds of forth a kind of music that can be quartet that went to considerable delicacies. I went in and sat down, found nowhere else—it is Bach's trouble to get a photocopy of the but when the waiter brought me music with Mahler's orchestra. And manuscript of a Haydn string the menu, it showed only the most since Mahler didn't write anything quartet, then proceeded to play the ordinary "Westernized" dishes. I similar, if we don't use Bach- work on nineteenth-century rein­ pointed to a wonderful-looking Stokowski, we simply won't have forced string instruments with plate at the next table, but the any such music at all! But—if, on the nineteenth-century bows using waiter informed me patiently that other hand, what we are searching principles of sound production that "such foods would not be to my lik­ for is Bach's message as distinct from would have been totally foreign to ing," and I could not convince him Mahler's, then we can have little use Haydn. The validity of this seems 14 THE MESSAGE PERFORMANCE? NO BY SAMUEL BARON

would like at the outset to state embellishing or improvising prac­ what it is that I am against. I am tice, the harmonic and structural Iagainst the substitution of a patterns, etc. Yes, if the performer museum atmosphere for what was skilled enough on the modern should be a live music-making ex­ instrument to suggest the sound of perience in the area of performance, the old instrument. Yes, if the per­ and 1 am against the absolutism in former could play the music on the the judging of performances of old modern instrument and not remind music which measures everything listeners of the many associations by whether the proper old instru­ that music written for that modern ments are used. instrument has created in the minds It is now fashionable for critics to of listeners. But above all, yes, if the dismiss performances of Bach or performer understood the work, Mozart by saying something to the believed in it, and could communi­ effect that "the instruments used cate to his or her listeners the were modern, which of course di­ essential greatness and enduring minishes from the true effect this value of the music. know about the last point. How­ music should have... and at the I would like to suggest a different ever, there was also no contrary same time praise to the skies per­ question for today: "Is it possible to tradition of making that music that formances and recordings of this have an invalid performance of old was there to refute or contradict music on period instruments be music on old instruments?" The Pro Musica. they ever so feebly done. In effect, a answer to this question would have Another old instrument project new central focus has been estab­ to be, "O f course, if the performers that has had a far different result is lished for judging performances of do not understand the music, have the Harnoncourt series of the works music before Wagner (and even no feeling for it, are not gifted as of Bach including all the cantatas, (mainly in the recording areas of Wagner will not escape if conduc­ performers, i.e., communicators of passions, oratorios, and masses. high fidelity and digital sound) and tors get into the old horns with musical thoughts, ideas, and feel­ This monumental undertaking has with twentieth-century people a their many crooks), namely what ings, and play their instruments had a stupefying effect on Bach slice of musical life of eighteenth- instruments are being played. This badly." I believe that this might performances—stupefying and stul­ century Leipzig. All of this is most stands things on their head. bring us back to a more sane atti­ tifying. Harnoncourt, with the most impressive, if not overwhelming. A question which used to be tude on the matter. persistent thoroughness, has Can anything be faulted about this posed in courses in musicology was The question of period instru­ addressed the question of how Bach incredible project (well-subsidized "Is it possible to have a valid per­ ments presents different faces cantatas sounded in Bach's own per­ for years by the recording firm formance of old music on modern according to the period of music formances. To this end, he has Telefunken)? instruments?" (Nowadays I suspect that is being performed. When musi­ trained boy choirs to do the alto and Well, yes. It is that the perfor­ that many scholars might answer a cal compositions of the Middle Ages soprano voices of Bach's choral mances reveal glaring deficiencies of flat, "No.") In general there was a and of the Renaissance are studied, music, he has performed and tone, mood, and feeling. In move­ range of answers beginning with we soon realize that there is no con­ recorded in churches that acousti­ ment after movement, Harnon­ "Yes, if. ..." Yes, if the performer tinuous performing tradition from cally resemble Bach's own churches court's light and dancing approach understood the performing practice those periods to ours. The music in Liepzig, he has trained many contradicts not only Bach's texts, of the period in terms of rhythmic may be described as lost or broken wind players in the playing of the but more importantly the com­ conventions, phrasing, articulation, in terms of its transmission to later baroque oboes d'amore, and oboes poser's powerful and expressive centuries by performances that da caccia, also the baroque horns settings. Rhetorical devices are created any kind of aural tradition. and trumpets. In many cases he had routinely flattened out. An expres­ When Noah Greenberg founded the to build these instruments or have sive blandness seems to be the celebrated Pro Musica Antiqua them built. When I say that Har­ desired result. Is this too great ensemble in New York City in the noncourt trained the musicians, I a price to pay for the illuminating late forties, he had to recreate con­ mean that he has provided them work in sound that Harnoncourt cepts of what the music he was per­ with enough work for the players to has consistently offered us? Not if forming sounded like from scratch. stay with these instruments long we keep in mind the values of per­ This he did brilliantly and most enough to develop respectable play­ formance and the ways in which inspiringly. The performers who ing skills on them, and in some cases performances function to help a worked with him zealously learned more than respectable skills. He has work of music or to obstruct it, the to play shawms, sackbuts, and the provided his string players with ways in which they focus or refract like, and sought out specimens of modified instruments, curved bows, the rays of light which come from those instruments or had new repli­ gut strings, shortened necks. He the composer and which shine cas built from any existing models works at a lower tuning. Everything through his work. If we could see or pictures. Greenberg's work was he does is recorded, which gives his these Harnoncourt recordings as exciting, stimulating, full of the ex­ performers opportunity to hear polished museum pieces possibly perience of live music making, and their own work and refine it. In helping to refine the work of more may even have been historically short, he has created with vital performers, all would be well. authentic. There is no real way to twentieth-century technology (Continued on page 16) 15 (YES, continued from page 14) most famous Viennese builder from father when he encountered Stein's about 1815 to 1840. Beethoven's pianos, describing them in great last piano was a Graf; the Schu­ detail and with highest praise. manns had a Graf and it was the (Johann Andreas Stein is credited piano most closely associated with with being the perfecter of the so- Schubert.) If I have an old Steinway called Viennese fortepiano in the in wretched condition, I can have it early 1770s.) There is a testimony restored, because I and the restorer from Liszt to the Steinway com­ have a clear conception of what a pany (among others) praising their first-class Steinway should sound pianos as highly. 1 am absolutely like. If I have an old Graf, I can try convinced that both Stein and to restore it, but to what standard? Steinway built pianos of their genre There are none; there are simply no that could not be improved upon. I Grafs in tip-top condition that I would be perfectly happy to apply know of anywhere. any later principles or materials to There is a similar question about making a Stein piano better that it the standards by which we can mea­ was in 1780, but asyet have been sure performances on original able to find none. And Steinway, instruments. Most performers on whose piano reached its present early instruments are, let's face it, form around 1870, has been able to terribly dull. But most performers on make no real improvements on its modern instruments are pretty dull instruments since that time. When too; it's just that with the modern one considers what advances have instruments standards exist which do (NO, continued from page 15) and intermissions, always wanted to been made in technology and mate­ not yet exist for the old instru­ Alas, this has not been the case. tell the younger performers how rials, these facts seem all the more ments. To be more specific—Julliard Harnoncourt's records were cham­ difficult the music was. The startling. And thus we come rather has about 300 pianists enrolled; out pioned as the last word, the norm younger players were often puzzled circuitously to authenticity. I like of these there are probably five or against which all the other Bach by what the fuss was all about. Mozart on a Stein not because it is ten one would find genuinely excit­ performances were to be measured, Could we not play this music by more authentic per se, but because ing to listen to. But when any Jul­ and so it was that the great Bach "ear" so to speak? Hadn't we lis­ a Stein piano, with its light bass and liard students gives his Master's rec­ conductor Karl Richter began to be tened to it, absorbed it, didn't we rapid decay, is far better suited to ital, he has a very high standard the recipient of a standard criticism understand it and feel it? Well, the Mozart's textures and articulations that he must conform to that keeps at the end of his life, namely that older performers said, "You don't than is a modern piano with its all such playing above a certain his performances were "typical of understand what it was like." fuller, but at the same time heavier, level. In forte-piano, harpsichord or the old-fashioned way of doing John Harbison, the distinguished tone, and its rich, but muddy bass Baroque violin, such standards Bach," a catch phrase of little mean­ young American composer, has said, register, designed expressly for the barely exist.Thus performers and ing except as an indication that "I know enough about performance aesthetics of Franz Liszt and his instruments of a quality that would these writers had heard the "new to like to think that in the next cen­ contemporaries a century later. not be tolerated with their modern sounding" Harnoncourt recordings tury, when they play my music, per­ A final word must be said about counterparts find themselves on and could use these as a stick to beat formers won't go to the recordings the use of appropriate instruments stages and recordings simply Richter with. Automatically and that are made right now, even by versus modern ones. (Let me limit because they are the only ones to be overwhelmingly the verdict was dedicated performers who have myself again to pianos, but the had. A dull player on a second-rate formed that the "new" way was bet­ taken care to do their best, and try reader must understand that vio­ instrument can give no revelations ter and the "old" way could not be to copy them, but will play my lins, French horns and bassoons of any sort. What is needed is the tolerated any longer. I know that in music as a natural part of their own have changed accordingly, and best players up to the standards of later generations listeners will real­ musical perspectives." (I am quoting modern ones are being similarly all good players on modern instru­ ize that the comparison, if one is to Harbison from memory and from challenged for the performance of ments. They should be studying and be made, is between a dedicated various conversations.) earlier music.) If I want to buy a performing on old instruments that artist, Richter, expressing his per­ Is there an analogy between the Steinway, Bechstein or Bosendorfer are as good as the best modern sonal view of the music, attempting evolution of performance in con­ piano, I can do quite a lot of shop­ ones; only then will we begin really to plumb the depths of Bach's work temporary music (all music was con­ ping, examining many pianos, until to take advantage of what those from every point of view, including temporary once) and the evolution 1 find just the one I want. If I want older instruments can teach us the theological, and the dedicated of performance in old music? I a Graf copy made, I can order one about music. We need, in short, the scholar, Harnoncourt, concentrating believe there is. Yes, we would like from a builder and hope it will turn proper ingredients and the most tal­ on the pursuit of the historical task to recreate the newness of a piece of out well. (Conrad Graf was the ented cooks! to the virtual exclusion of all else. In music, its fresh sound, its startling, this generation, however, absolut­ never-before-heard qualities, but ism holds sway, and the version this is far different from trying to with the old instruments dominates. preserve the historical moment by My own personal experience in strangling the poor work of music performing contemporary music at birth. To say that a work of gives me a basis for understanding music should be heard for all time how performance can and does exactly the way in which the com­ evolve in ways that help the compo­ poser heard it in the historical sition and serve to illuminate it ever period of its creation is to take an more clearly to successive genera­ extreme position indeed. One may tions of listeners and players. I admire the work of scholars who remember the first performance I are recreating Shakespeare's Globe was ever involved in of Schoen­ Theater and who can make us see berg's Pierrot Lunaire. Stories the conditions of Shakespeare's per­ abounded of how at its first per­ formances without decreeing that formance this work required some­ the only authentic Shakespeare per­ where in the neighborhood of 140 formances are those that have no rehearsals. Two members of my curtains, no lights, and in which all ensemble were in fact veterans of female parts are taken by men. performances under Schoenberg's There is an absolutism which is direction, though the rest of us repugnant, which would like to put (including the conductor) were a stop to the resonance of great younger musicians in their early works, and their quality of seeming twenties. The veterans, around always new, of having something to whom we clustered gladly at breaks say to each generation. 16 Duncan. Then he decides to do it. actors was more manageable for How does Lady Macbeth persuade fledgling directors than scenes with him? crowds of people. Each scene was "Then we work on scenes where assigned to two participants so that it is not so obvious what is happen­ differing interpretations would be ing. For example, in Act III, Scene 5 possible. of Much Ado About Nothing, the action For two-and-a-half weeks, as turns on a message that is not teachers-cum-directors worked to delivered." transform script into stage produc­ The concentration on word-by- tion, they kept journals recording SHAKESPEARE'S word analysis that this approach to their work with the actors and Shakespeare demands uncovers a spent time on their own research in SCRIPTS character's motivation and spirit. the University of Iowa library, The thoroughness produces, there­ which has a complete and up-to- fore, a fuller understanding of the date collection of Shakespeare whole play. criticism. “The Merchant of Venice still Gilbert regards the workshop provokes public debate and criticism portion of the seminar as an oppor­ every time it receives a major pro­ tunity for active involvement with duction," Gilbert says. "It is tempt­ the text. "It is one thing to offer a ing to write off the problem of Shy- suggestion while sitting in a class­ lock as one of Elizabethan room with a group of colleagues and insensitivity, but a close reading of quite another to be responsible for the text shows something beyond helping actors understand a scene Elizabethan or even twentieth- clearly enough to play it," she says. From the time that English litera­ the plays." century stereotypes." "Nothing makes you know a text as ture entered the canon of the teach­ She found that many colleagues Considering the plays as produc­ well as having to explain it to some­ able arts, Shakespeare has occupied lament their lack of experience in tions also enlivens the teaching of one else, especially when that some­ the most hallowed ground. Yet, in the theater and "don't feel comfort­ them. Gilbert asked the class to one has to speak the lines, not just the teaching of Shakespeare a able talking about performance and block out scenes based on implica­ write about them." paradox has persisted: the words interpretation." She realized that tions contained in the script. Using In the seminar's final week-and-a- that he wrote as lines for actors to although she reads plays as scripts the play within the play in Hamlet half, the group met regularly to recite on stage are instead read as a matter of course, teachers and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and a view the scenes each had directed silently in classrooms, where the without theater experience don't scene from Troilus and Cressida in and then to consider such questions plays are examined primarily for know how. She devised an eight- which a conversation is overheard, as how each had solved major inter­ their literary rather than their week course-semester-workshop to Gilbert tried to demonstrate how pretive problems and which theatrical qualities. teach them. Based on an analysis of audiences' sympathy can be con­ moment in a scene seemed "deter­ The first major critic to turn the the steps she herself takes in trans­ trolled by the physical placement of mined" by the text or which called Shakespearean spotlight onto the lating words into stage production, actors. The class also discussed pro­ for invention. Elizabethan stage was Harley the seminar, "Shakespeare's Plays duction style. Bill Davis, Director of Theater Granville-Barker, British actor and As Scripts" was funded by the NEH At the end of four weeks, having and professor at Eureka College in playwright. Beginning in 1927, his Summer Seminars for College developed a skill in interpreting Illinois, says that before the seminar Prefaces to Shakespeare explicated Teachers program and was held in scripts, seminar participants had an he had become set in his directing the dramas as they might have been 1979 and again in 1981. opportunity to work with actors to style, inhibited from taking risks by performed, emphasizing the com­ In each of the seminars she try out their talents as directors. deadlines and the desire to produce paratively bare stage of Shakes­ worked with twelve participants— Each was assigned two actors to a good performance. In the seminar peare's time rather than the over­ English teachers lacking a back­ direct in a Shakespearean scene. environment, he found an oppor­ decorated Victorian stage. ground in drama, drama teachers Picked by Gilbert through audition, tunity to take risks. "N ow I am wil­ Miriam Gilbert, professor at the who felt insecure about working the actors were graduate students, ling to spend more time with the University of Iowa, says that in the with Shakespeare, and teachers of reasonably experienced, but not script and to let the production grow last thirty years English teachers the humanities whose experience professional. from the words, rather than from a have moved away from an exclu­ with Shakespeare was limited to Creating scenes for only two pre-production mind-set. I place sively literary focus on the plays traditional literature courses. toward a treatment of the works as For the first four weeks, the drama. "In the 1950s," she says, classes met three times a week in PRINCESS'StTHoxroHD *______«T»EET "when J. L. Styon (English professor two-hour sessions. They began with at Northwestern University) wrote the basic problem, "What do the iidslhkeh wm m u . The Elements of Drama and Shakespeare's words mean?" then they moved on Stagecraft, he had to write in a to "How can the actor convey that polemic tone. Now his tone is 'do it meaning?" and you don't have to apologize for Working with both familiar and it.'" unfamiliar plays, the group pored While scholars are increasingly over the texts almost word by word, aware of the merit of treating the seeking clues to action, gesture, plays as scripts, "it is far easier to movement and ultimately, meaning. say so than to do so," says Gilbert. Gilbert calls this "line crawling." Her own background happens to "We began with the simple encompass literary scholarship, con­ things," Gilbert says, "lines which siderable experience directing plays, express a gesture or a movement." and long hours spent observing When King Lear awakens in Act IV, others, most notably the Royal Scene 7, and says to Cordelia, 'Be Shakespeare Company, take a play your tears wet?' I asked the class to from the incipient moments of cast­ tell me the gesture to go with these ing to performance before an words. The gesture is implied by the audience. Gilbert has taught at Iowa line— Lear reaches out and touches since receiving her Ph.D. from the her face. University of Indiana in 1969. For "From this level we moved on to some time she has been offering a more complicated scenes. How does short course to Iowa colleagues who a character change his mind in the teach introductory literary courses middle of a speech? M acbeth in Act I, A playbill of 1856 from the Folger Shakespeare Library; John Wojda as Bassanio, The and "want to know what to do with Scene 7, says he will not murder Merchant of Venice, one of the Folger theater's recent productions. Photographs courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library 17 Shakespeare's texts. Believing that this fits into what she is doing, she says, "Think of an image for what it tells about what a character is Sixty thinking." We also should look at kinds of language, she says. She credits John Benton of the Royal Shake­ Years of speare Company with approaching Shakespeare as if each character chooses the language in which he speaks. "W hat kind of person would Chinese say this? Talk about what words mean and then find out what kind of person would speak them." The techniques Gilbert uses to Drama interpret Shakespeare can be applied to works of other playwrights. However, Gilbert says, "not all are The Great Proletarian Cultural as good and therefore, the informa­ Revolution (GPCR), staged by Mao tion is not in the language." Tse-tung to purge the People's The techniques also can be trans­ Republic of what he called "reac­ ferred to other branches of litera­ tionary" and "revisionary" ideolo­ ture, especially poetry. In one class gies, opened in 1965, according to she tried an experiment with O. Edmund Clubb in Twentieth- Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mis­ Century China, with an attack on a tress. She asked a student to read the playwright. Under Mao's influence, poem straight, with no emotion. the Shanghai newspaper Wen Hui Then she gave the reader directions Pao censured playwright Wu Han, for tone and pauses, as if the poem who was also the deputy mayor of were a dramatic utterance. The class Peking, for being a "counterrevolu­ had no trouble recognizing the strik­ tionary" in a political review of his ing difference. 1961 play, Hai ]ui Dismissed from When teaching novels, she often Office. The next few months saw the takes a "scene" written from one formation of the Red Guard and the character's point of view and asks toppling of Peking officials con­ students to write papers in which nected with the unfortunate Wu they try to imagine what is going on Han, and the Revolution had begun. in the minds of other characters. The opening scene of the GPCR is Recently, an assignment on Pride and but one illustration of a mixing of Prejudice brought "some lovely pa­ politics in drama, and drama in poli­ pers on Mrs. Bennett, a very shal­ tics, that Westerners may deplore as low character." an adulteration of both. But Next summer Gilbert is teaching twentieth-century Chinese an NEH-funded seminar for secon­ politicians—and dramatists— respect dary school teachers on Shakespeare: the pratice as a blending of means to Text and Theatre without actors or achieve one end: the advancement workshop, "not to teach method but of socialist culture. There is no to discover, or rediscover a major modern Chinese drama that does text." —Anita Mintz not have as its focus a political issue. more trust in the actors and let the Mrs. Mintz is a frequent contributor to Edward M. Gunn, professor of production evolve." The Merchant of Venice still provokes Humanities. Chinese literature at Cornell Uni­ Another participant, David Brai- public debate and criticism every time it "Shakespeare's Plays as Scripts"/Miriam versity, has recently edited an low, professor of English at McKen- receives a major production," says Miriam Gilbert/The U. of Iowa, Iowa City/ anthology of plays that demon­ dree College in Lebanon, Illinois, Gilbert, Iowa University professor of $45,525/197 9/$50,7 03/ 1981/ strates the dependence of Chinese says that "the idea of basing analysis English. Summer Seminars for College Teachers literature on Chinese politics. He of literature, especially dramatic writes in the introduction to the literature, on imagining actual per­ forthcoming collection, "Indeed, for formances has changed my whole most Chinese writers the form of approach to teaching." spoken drama itself was an icono­ Brailow, using techniques that he clastic statement, designed to con­ learned from his work in the vey broader views for social reform summer seminar, is having students and revolution." enact scenes from the plays they are The anthology, Twentieth Century studying in his dramatic literature Chinese Drama, is to be published in courses this semester. "Students May by Indiana University Press begin to understand a play in ways with an NEH subvention grant. It that can come only through produc­ will contain translations of sixteen tion," Brailow says, noting that dis­ representative plays, most of them covering the meaning of a scene by appearing in English for the first acting it is a more powerful learning time, that illustrate the develop­ experience than listening to a lec­ ment of the modern dramatic ture explicating the text. "There is a theater in China from its origin in third dimension which brings the Republican Period through the insight into the play and oneself," Japanese occupation, Mao's ascen­ he says. dency, and the Cultural Revolution. A dramatic approach to teaching The iconoclasm that Gunn refers Shakespeare does not mean a break to in the introduction had as its with the past. Gilbert cites a long object the traditional Chinese op­ tradition that stresses the impor­ eras that enact in highly stylized tance of character imagery in spectacle various stories from Photographs courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library 18 M ost Chinese see drama not as it is written for stage, hut as it is adapted for film . This scene is from Third Sister Liu, a comic opera, which enjoys greater popularity in China than the newer “spoken dram a."

legend or popular history. The new fully its characters are portrayed, tice that a municipal bureaucrat of writers, pointed out that the "spoken drama" (as opposed to Gunn feels that the Western reader describes in Scene 5: nature of society, which the play sung) turned away from fantasy and can still find aesthetic interest in portrays as demoralized, had since CHENG: (with a wry smile) Sure. the past toward realism and the these plays. More valuable, how­ changed. The play, therefore, was An eighth assistant bureau chief depiction of contemporary social ever, is the glimpse they give of life simply no longer accurate. naturally ought to give way to a values. in the People's Republic of China. A similar fate befell Cuckoo Sings party municipal committee secre­ The first play in the anthology, "There are things to be learned A gain, written by Yang Lu-fang in tary. The higher the rank, the The Greatest Event in Life, published by about a society," says Gunn, "that 1957 about a girl on a farm coopera­ greater the privileges. Privilege. If philosopher Hu Shih in 1919, is are not necessarily learned from tive who aspires to be a tractor you have power, then you have called by Gunn "the watershed in reading newspapers," Decision mak­ driver. One of the few plays written privileges to go with it. the development of a new theater." ers fill journalists' reports; the about rural life in China, Cuckoo Sings With a new purpose to instruct his machinery of government is usually Gunn, who translated this and A gain is a lig h th earted but irre v e r­ audience in modern ideas, Hu Shih their substance. We learn from several of the other plays in the col­ ent comment on bending individual presents themes of feminism and them how a socialist or communist lection, was asked to change the thinking to ideological orthodoxy social change in a realistic story that system is set up, but in the plays we title "If I Were Real" because of its and a derision of the bureaucratic shows the strong influence of Hen­ see how people live within it. "W e existential implications that were mentality. Gunn explains in the rik Ibsen's A Doll's House. At one see how they manipulate it," says most likely not intended by the wri­ introduction that the play "ran afoul point in the play, the female protago­ Gunn, "as people will manipulate ters. The play will be published in of powerful critics" in the period fol­ nist storms Nora-like from the any organization." another work as "The Imposter." lowing the Great Leap Forward house in search of greater inde­ The most obvious example of this But Gunn believes that the last when "bourgeoise individualism" pendence. Difficulty in finding a is If 1 Were Real, the last play in the scene does signify existentialism to was cited by Mao as an enemy of woman intrepid enough to portray anthology, written in 1979 by th re e a degree. When the young man says the State. The playwright Yang Lu- this character, whose rebellion merribers of the Shanghai People's "If I were real" to the tribunal, he fang does not appear in the "Notes would have been unacceptable in Art Theater. Set in the late 1970s means to show that his actions to on Authors and Texts" appended to the contemporary society, post­ following the purge of the Gang of gain special favors would have been the introduction. Gunn could find poned the production of the play for Four, the play satirizes the attain­ legal behavior for the society's elite. no trace of him. several years. ment of privileges through Party But besides pointing out such injus­ Gunn compares the occupational "The dramas tend not to have influence. Throughout the play the tice, the phrase also questions the hazards of the playwright in the lives independent of the sociopoliti­ main character poses as the son of meaning of existence for the ordi­ PRC to problems with American cal issues they confront," says an influential Party cadre in order to nary Chinese citizen. washing machines. "There's a cer­ Gunn. But though literary criticism obtain special favors and at the end If I W ere Real was performed in tain amount of built-in obsoles­ in China is more concerned with is finally brought to trial as an several cities until the Party decided cence," he suggests. analysis of a work's political view­ imposter. What is also tried in court, that the play contained ideological —Linda Blanken point than its use of language, what however—and here the audience, flaws. Party Chairman Hu Yao M s. Blanken is managing editor of form its action takes, or how art­ too, passes judgment—is the prac­ Bang, addressing a 1980 con feren ce Humanities.

"Sixty Years of Chinese Drama 1919- This diagram of the set for 1979: An Anthology, translated and edited Under Shanghai Eaves by Edward M. Gunn"/Janet Rabinowitch/ shows the cross-section of a Indiana U. Press, Bloomington/$6,000/ "lane house" typical of 1982-83/Research Publications Shanghai's east side in 193 7 when the play was written. Through the five families who occupy the tiny structure, playwright Hsia Yen shows human determination in the face of financial misery. Indiana University Press t Photograph courtesy of the American Film Institute

19 TUNING IN TO THE HUMANITIES

audience. Among the recently the most difficult periods in our But the grand story of "Booker" funded projects now underway are: history. belongs within an important peda­ — "Booker," a one-hour television Directing the project is Avon gogical tradition of literature and story of two critical boyhood years Kirkland, an independent producer theater: teaching young people his­ in the life of Booker T. Washington. based in Berkeley, who created and tory through the exemplary lives Born in slavery before the Civil produced the Public Broadcasting and deeds of heroes.” War, Washington founded the Tus- Service series on black family life, —"Tales of the Unknown South," a kegee Institute and became, accord­ "Up and Coming," and formerly two-hour, four-part television adap­ ing to his recent biographer, Louis directed instruction services for the tation of stories by Edgar Allen Poe, Harlan, America's "schoolbook hero San Francisco public television sta­ Ambrose Bierce and DuBo.se Hey­ for more than half a century" fol­ tion, KQED. From the wealth of ward, produced by the ETV lowing the publication of his autobi­ documentation now available on Endowment of South Carolina. The ography, Up From Slavery, in 1901. Washington's extraordinary boy­ stories, all gothic tales set or reset in their counterparts all over the But during the 1960s, Washington hood, Kirkland aims to make a film the low-country South, are chosen world, most American children, was dismissed by many black leaders that reflects the highest standards to appeal to the taste and imagina­ according to some estimates, watch who rejected what were, by that of historical accuracy and at the tion of a national teenage audience. between 3,000 and 4,000 hours of decade's standards, his conservative same time presents the work of Almost nothing on television is television before they enter the first political and social beliefs. Despite scholars in a persuasive and enter­ geared specifically to this group— grade—more hours than it takes to the serious scholarly research on taining way. Advisers to "Booker" fourteen- to eighteen-year-olds who earn a college degree. Washington's life and career since include Raymond Smock and Louis are just beginning the serious study Television clearly is the most per­ his papers were opened some thirty Harlan, coeditors of the authorita­ of literature. The host for the series vasive and influential medium in the years ago, he is a major black histor­ tive Washington papers, as well as will be the poet, critic and novelist, lives of our children. But aside from ical figure who remains neglected in historians Leon Litwack and Nathan James Dickey. a handful of exemplary programs popular imagination. Huggins. —A major radio series, "The Spider's (most of them on noncommercial In fact, Washington's early life is a The working alliance between Web," produced by WGBH in Bos­ television), the fare offered by child­ classic, emotionally satisfying story scholars and film people, Kirkland ton, to dramatize classic American ren's programming is universally of a poor boy's triumph over adver­ reports, represents the challenge of literature for an audience of young deplored. sity. A film about young Booker distilling an overwhelming mass of people from about nine to fourteen. In an attempt to harness and during the formative years from documentary material into a televi­ One hundred programs of dramatic exploit the inherent power of the nine to eleven, when he learned to sion format that will appeal to a readings will include such classics as electronic media to educate as well read, is a natural vehicle for present­ general audience. The historian's The Red Badge of Courage, Rip Van Win­ as captivate young minds, the NEH ing historical themes of slavery, the natural tendency is to want to con­ kle, Little Women, as well as short has launched the children's media Civil War and the early days of vey the "full picture," something stories by Jack London, Bret Harte, initiative. This new program aims to Reconstruction. While depicting the that isn't possible in one hour while O. Henry, Twain, Poe, Fenimore improve the quality and humanities life and times of a famous figure, the filmmaker's aim is to develop Cooper and Melville, the great popu­ content of radio and television pro­ the film is also a poignant story dramatic characters. Compromise is lar nineteenth-century American gramming directed at a children's about a little boy caught in one of inevitable, if not always easy. writers whose work has for genera­ y tions enthralled young readers. Each story in the series, planned for dis­ tribution over National Public Radio Children's classics from such great nineteenth-century authors this fall, will feature a prominent as M ark Twain, Jack London and Herman Melville will be actor supported by players from the the basis for a major radio series, "The Spider's Web." Yale School of Drama. —Another radio series for Ojibwa Indian children produced by WOJB, located on the Lac Courte Orilles Ojibwa Indian reservation in northwestern Wisconsin. The chil­ dren on the reservation will not only be the audience for programs exploring history, philosophy, lan­ guage, and religion through Ojibwa legend and culture. They will also be part of the program. The children will participate in workshops, sing-alongs, and cultu­ ral education programs to be recorded for broadcast over WOJB and other public radio stations in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Work­ shops and sing-alongs will be led by Winston Wuttenee, master story­ teller, composer and singer from the Cree nation of Canada, and Basil Johnston, an Ojibwa ethnologist and linguist from the Royal Ontario Museum. Is there a child in America who doesn't love Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Grover, Bert and Ernie and the rest of the denizens of Sesame Street? The program has nine mil­ lion regular viewers, more pre­ schoolers than any other daytime television offering. Sesame Street is, 20 simply, the most powerful educator of young children in the United States, and much of the rest of the world as well. Since its inception in 1969, Sesame Street has enlarged its basic cognitive emphasis, which produced the catchy alphabet and number songs that adults find themselves hum­ ming, by adding new areas such as health, safety and Lcience. The new curriculum has proved to be as attractive to the series' devoted fans as the original one, not to mention their parents and older siblings who watch with them. With NEH support, the Children's Television workshop will produce a sixty-minute public television spe­ cial, Sesame Street at the Metropolitan Museum. The program, which also has the enthusiastic cooperation of the Museum staff, will be shown in an early evening time period and will introduce museums, their arti­ facts and the past to young children and their families. The themes will be simple: there are museums; they are full of beau­ tiful and interesting things that people have made and used in the past; looking at them and thinking about them is fun. As the producers of Sesame Street know, this is a lot for very young children to learn in one gulp. (The program's target audience is ages three to six.) But the program will present just enough basic factual material to show the strong link between the museum and its artifacts and the human past. The plot is a typical Sesame Street contrivance. Finding themselves locked in the Museum after hours, the characters will roam about and make discoveries. Oscar will come upon the Greco-Roman statues, read a placard giving their dates and an explanation of how they were "boken," and then declare them "the most beautiful trash I've ever seen." In another segment in the hall of armor, Maria will describe the his­ tory and use of armor to the chil­ dren in the cast. Each airing of the special will be followed by a short epilogue in which Big Bird or another favorite Everybody's feathered favorite, Big Bird, and his Sesame Street friends will introduce museums and the study of the past to young children. character encourages viewers to The 60-minute special will encourage viewers to explore their local museums. explore their local museums: "You can go in the morning or after school or weekends, and you don't have to spend the night. Here are CHILDREN'S MEDIA INITIATIVE some wonderful places to go...... " Information about local museums Interest on the part of broadcasters should be designed primarily for use audience of children and young peo­ and their special exhibits will then and producers in the NEH children's outside of schools and to reach a ple under eighteen and applicants be provided. media initiative has been intense. youth audience in broadcast hours should specify which age group they Using the enormous appeal of Following are some things prospec­ after school, on weekends, or during hope to reach. The NEH is also par­ Sesame Street to introduce the next tive applicants should know about family viewing times. ticularly interested in knowing an generation, at a very early age, to a the program: Applicants are urged to try to applicant's promotion plans for mak­ major humanities resource embod­ Grants are awarded for planning, carry young people's interest in the ing programs known and available ies the central idea that informs script writing and production of humanities beyond simply passive to a wide range of audiences. the children's media initiative. broadcast quality programs that viewing of the program itself. Such Endowment staff members will be Broadcasters, media people and hu­ meet technical standards for print material as bibliographies, glad to help by discussing ideas and manities scholars all agree it is an regional and national distribution. workbooks, discussion guides for application procedures by telephone, idea whose time is now. Projects must focus on one or more parents and youth leaders are 202/724-0318. Proposals will be fields of the humanities and include encouraged, as are forms of at- accepted at the special March 7 —Barbara Delman Wolfson humanities scholars as well as peo­ home participation, for example, deadline for children's media proj­ Ms. Wolfson, a mother of two, has been ple with experience in young peo­ call-ins. ects and at every regular media watching Sesame Street for twelve years. ple's media programming. Programs Programs should be directed to an program deadline thereafter. B.D.W. 21 Deadline in For projects Please note: Area code for all telephone numbers is 202. boldface beginning after

DIVISION OF EDUCATION PROGRAMS —Richard Ekman, Director 724-0351

Central Disciplines in Undergraduate Education Improving Introductory Courses— Lyn Maxwell White 724-0393 A p ril 1, 1983 October 1983 Promoting Excellence in a Field—Jo h n W alters 724-0393 April 1,1983 October 1983 Fostering Coherence Throughout an Institution— Blanche Prem o 724-0311 A p ril 1, 1983 October 1983

Humanities Instruction in Elementary and Secondary Schools Collaborative Projects—Francis Roberts 724-0373 June 15,1983 January 1984 Institutes for Teachers— C rale Hopkins 724-0373 June 15,1983 January 1984

Exemplary Projects in Undergraduate and Graduate Education Feasibility Grants—Jan ice Litw in 724-1978 April 1,1983 October 1983 Major Projects— Cynthia Wolloch 724-0311 Ju ly 1, 1983 January 1984 Nearest Humanities Programs for Nontraditional Learners— Gene Moss 724-0393 O cto b er 1, 1983 April 1984 Teaching Materials from Recent Research— Cynthia Wolloch 724-0311 June 1,1983 January 1984

Applicants who have followed the previous guidelines in writing or planning proposals should call a member of the Division staff Grant to determine which of the above categories is best suited to the proposed project. Application DIVISION OF GENERAL PROGRAMS— Steven Cahn, Director 724-0231 Humanities Projects in: Media— G eorge Farr 724-0231 Deadlines Children’s Media (and previously funded projects that must reach their M arch 7, 1983 October 1,1983 next phases by April 7) Regular Media Projects Ju ly 25, 1983 April 1, 1984 Museums and Historical Organizations—Jann G ilm ore, 724-0327 A p ril 25, 1983 January 1,1983 Special Projects— Leon Bram son 724-0261 Program Development (including Libraries) M arch 14, 1983 October 1,1983 YOUTH PROGRAMS— Carolynn Reid-Wallace 724-0396 Youth Grants M ay 2, 1983 January 1,1984 Youth Projects To be announced

DIVISION OF STATE PROGRAMS— Donald Gibson, Director 724-0286 Each state group establishes its own grant guidelines and application deadlines; therefore, interested applicants should contact the office in their state. A list of those state programs may be obtained from the Division of State Programs.

DIVISION OF FELLOWSHIPS AND SEMINARS— lames Blessing, Director 724-0238 FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMS— M aben H erring 724-0333 Fellowships for Independent Study and Research— D avid C od er 724-0333 June 1,1983 January 1, 1984 Fellowships for College Teachers— Maben Herring, 724-0333 Ju n e 1, 1983 January 1, 1984 Summer Stipends for 1984—Joseph Neville 724-0376 October 1,1983 Summer 1984 Fellowships in the Humanities for Journalists—Julian F. MacDonald 724-0376 M arch 1, 1983 Fall 1983 SEMINAR PROGRAMS Summer Seminars for College Teachers— Dorothy Wartenburg 724-0376 Participants: 1983 Seminars April 1,1983 Summer 1983 Directors: 1985 Seminars February 1, 1984 Summer 1985 Summer Seminars for Secondary School Teachers— Ronald Herzman 724-0376 Participants: 1984 Seminars February 1, 1984 Summer 1984 Directors: 1984 Seminars A p ril 1, 1983 Summer 1984 Centers for Advanced Study—Ju lian F. M acD o n ald 724-0376 February 1, 1984 Fall 1985

DIVISION OF RESEARCH PROGRAMS— Harold Cannon, Director 724-0226 Intercultural Research— H aro ld Cannon 724-0226 February 15, 1984 July 1,1984 General Research Program—Jo h n W illiam s 724-0276 Basic Research February 1, 1984 January 1,1985 Regional Studies February 1,1984 January 1, 1985 Archaeological Projects—Cary M essinger 724-0276 February 1,1984 January 1,1985 Research Conferences— D avid W ise 724-0276 September 15,1983 April 1, 1984 Research Materials Program— Marjorie Berlincourt 724-0226 Research Tools and Reference Works— Peter Patrikis 724-1672 October 1,1983 July 1,1984 Editions— H elen Aguera 724-1672 O cto b e r 1, 1983 July 1, 1984 Publications— M argot Backas 724-1672 M ay 1, 1983 October 1,1983 Translations—Susan M ango 724-1672 Ju ly 1, 1983 April 1, 1984 Research Resources—Je ff Field 724-0341 June 1,1983 April 1,1984 Humanities, Science, and Technology— Eric luengst 724-0276 Joint NEH-NSF Program Individual Awards August 1, 1983 April 1,1984 Collaborative Projects August 1, 1983 April 1, 1984

OFFICE OF PLANNING AND POLICY ASSESSMENT— Armen Tashdinian, Director 724-0344 Planning and Assessment Studies— Stanley Turesky 724-0369 August 1, 1983 April 1, 1984

OFFICE OF CHALLENGE GRANTS— Thomas Kingston 724-0276 Ju n e 1, 1983 22 RECENT NEH GRANT AWARDS

Some of the grants in this list are offers, not final awards.

putting an end to the American Renaissance. Napoleonic Wars (1789-1815). RO relates to certain contemporary questions GM U. of Pittsburgh, PA; Roger T. Conant: regarding technological and economic change. Archaeology & Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN; Samuel $24,630 OR; $8,350 FM. To prepare visual and GN Sachs, II: $31,091. To implement two docu­ written curriculum materials on Polish history Y a le U ., New Haven, CT; Burke Marshall: Anthropology mentary exhibitions and produce an interpre­ and culture, by revising "The Polish Phoenix," $45,000. To develop a script for a 3-hour docu­ tive brochure in conjunction with a major a multi-media program, for classroom use and mentary about the creation of the U.S. Consti­ Center for Southwestern Folklore, S a n ta Fe, retrospective exploring Grant Wood's rela­ by writing a sixty-page teacher's guide. EH tution and Bill of Rights, covering the NM; Bruce E. Lane: $25,000. To develop a tionship to American Regionalism in the U. of Wisconsin, Madison; Joseph W. Elder: Philadelphia Convention of 1787 and other script for a 30-minute documentary on ethnic 1 9 3 0 s. GM $241,110. To produce two 40-minute docu­ state ratifying conventions, with illustrations identity and modernization as it affects a N Y U ; Guenter Kopcke: $57,000. To conduct mentary films with accompanying study of specific changes or uses of the Constitution Totonac Indian boy and his family in East Cen­ research on Aegean art of the 3rd to 1st millen­ guides on South Asian women for use in in later years. GN tral Mexico. GN nia B.C. The researchers will study artifacts Women's Studies programs. One film depicts Institute for the Study of Human Issues, P hila­ from three areas of Aegean culture—Crete, Hindu marriage practices; the second pre­ delphia, PA; Loretta K. Fowler: $90,000. To the Cyclades, and the Greek mainland— serves the rituals and testimony of the "deva- Interdisciplinary conduct a study of age-graded societies among linking aesthetic analysis to historical and dasis" of Puri. EH the Plains Indians. Anthropologists using eth­ anthropological evidence from the region. RO nographic and ethnohistorical research SUNY at Albany, NY; Patricia K. Ross: methods will focus on age-group dynamics in $26,366. To conduct a meeting of noted Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, these societies. RO humanities scholars and experts on dance on History—U.S. PA; Hollister K. Jameson: $150,000. To imple­ Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR; Leo- April 21-24 to present seminars and film ment a permanent interpretive exhibit revolv­ noor S. Ingraham; $85,360. To conduct a four- screenings of ethnographic, historic, and con­ ing around processes of paleontology in part series of public programs on the temporary materials of the religious, political, American Federation of Arts, NYC; Samuel H. historical context. GM archaeology and ethnology of Pacific Northw­ social and aesthetic aspects of black dance. GP McElfresh: $14,000. To plan a series of pro­ African American Museums Association, est Indians and the scientific aspects of the T u fts U ., Medford, MA; Anne H. Van Buren: grams which will examine aspects of American Washington, DC; Joy F. Austin: $50,000. To Lewis and Clark Expedition. GL $69,000. To conduct research toward a chro­ life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as implement a series of regional interpretation Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul; Orrin nology of French and Burgundian historical reflected in early cinema. GP skills workshops on the theme: "Idea & Visuali­ C. Shane, III: $15,000. To plan a traveling exhi­ costume, to be used as a method of dating Essex Institute, Salem, MA; Caroline D. Pres­ zation: The Need for Balance" to be held in bition and related programs using objects fourteenth- and fifteenth-century works of ton: $77,850. To process manuscript collec­ Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. GM loaned from the Harvard Peabody Museum's northern European art. RO tions on the maritime history of Essex County, Afro-American Historical & Cultural collection which will illustrate the "Maya- Massachusetts, 1650-1890, through supple­ M useu m , Philadelphia, PA; Teri Y. Doke: Toltec" city of Chichen Itza and its Sacred Well mental funding for professional salaries. RC $10,000. To implement a self-study employing as a study of Mayan history and culture. GM ETV Endowment of South Carolina, S p a rta n ­ a consulting team of academic humanists and SUNY at Albany, NY; Gary H. Gossen: History—Non-U.S. burg; Robin C. Maw: $300,000 OR; $200,000 museum professionals who will help the $75,000. To conduct an ethnographic and eth­ FM. To produce a 4-hour dramatization about Museum clarify its purpose, choose new inter­ nohistorical study of the emigrant Chamula the initial contacts between English settlers pretive themes, develop its collections and Tzotzil Indians of Chiapas, Mexico. Anthro­ Arizona State U., Tempe; Noel J. Stowe: and Native Americans at Roanoke, North create new programs. GM pologists will investigate the cultural persis­ $25,000. To implement two mini-courses and C aro lin a. GN American Assn. for State and Local History, tence of the Chamula culture, documenting its four regular courses that prepare history grad­ Kentucky Department for Libraries & Nashville, TN; George R. Adams: $71,120. To adaptation to new settings. RO uate students for careers in business. EB A rch ives, Frankfort; Richard N. Belding: implement two seminars for staff of historical T u fts U ., Medford, MA; Miriam S. Balmuth: Association of Black Women Historians, $13,166. To plan a series of public programs on agencies and museums on the interpretation of $10,000 FM. To implement an international Columbia, MD; Rosalyn M. Terborg-Penn: selected aspects of Kentucky history. GL history to be conducted over a six-and-a-half- colloquium on Sardinian archaeology for the $10,000. To conduct a three-day symposium Old Sturbridge Village, M A; Alberta P. Sebolt: day period. GM prupose of evaluating discoveries of the last examining research on women of African de­ $25,000. To plan interpretive programs that Five Colleges, Inc., Amherst, MA; Margaret L. decade and the island's relation to other seafar­ scent from pan-African and pan-American will explore how the Constitution was under­ Switten: $147,752. To conduct a six-week ing cultures and tranders of the Mediterra­ perspectives and drawing on specialists in stood in the New England of the first two gen­ institute for forty teachers of medieval studies n ean . RD Black Studies, Women's Studies, and African erations after the Founders. GM to develop interdisciplinary richness and depth U . of Florida, Gainesville; H. Russell Bernard: Diaspora Studies. RD Southern Regional Council, Atlanta, GA; in the single-teacher classroom, and to produce $24,663. To aid collaboration of an American Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC; Randall Williams: $107,180. To write five 30- and distribute a resource book. EH anthropologist and an Otomi Indian from John F. Andrews: $181,000 OR; $50,000 FM. minute scripts and three 60-minute scripts for Gibbes Art Gallery, Charleston, SC; Martha Mexico who are writing together an ethno­ To establish a center for the study of British a series of regional radio programs about the R. Severens: $14,863. To implement an inter­ graphy of Otomi life. The results are being Political Thought between 1550 and 1800, history of the Civil Rights Movement in the pretive installation of the Gallery's miniature published in English, Otomi and Spanish. RO creating a program of seminars, conferences, Deep South. GN portrait collection by placing the works in a U. Of Pittsburgh, PA; Hugo G. Nutini: colloquia and publication projects involving T u fts U ., Medford, MA; Douglas L. Jones: historical context focusing on daily life in $80,000. To conduct an ethnographic study of resident and visiting scholars. RO $51,000. To research the social and legal his­ Charleston from 1705 to the early 20th the structural development, ideology and Found, for the Study of Resistance Move­ tory of poverty in New England, 1630-1830. A cen tu ry . GM expressive culture of the Mexican aristrocracy. m en ts, NYC; Aviva H. Kemprer: $30,000. To research team plans to use statistical data, case Indiana U., Bloomington; Patrick O'Meara: Two anthropologists will analyze the ideologi­ develop a treatment for a 90-minute documen­ studies and the interpretation of laws, sermons $150,589. To implement an exhibition on cal structure of Mexican social stratification, tary on the Jewish resistance movement in the and public documents to determine the origins Somali art and culture focusing on the rela­ focusing on the elites. RO Vilna ghetto during the Nazi occupation. GN of poverty in early America and the evolution tionships between material culture and the V O IC E S , A Sub-Office of Fresno Free Col. Harvard U., Cambridge, MA; Adam B. Ulam: of poverty law. RO rich oral traditions which dominate all aspects Fnd., Pasadena, CA; Everett C. Frost: $47,550. $87,000. To conduct historical research on the U. for Man, Inc., Manhattan, KS; Julia T. of everyday life. GM To produce a series of four 1-hour radio pro­ role of the intelligentsia in Soviet society, par­ Coates: $14,972. To study existing historical Jewish Museum, NYC; Norman L. Kleeblatt: grams presenting and interpreting episodes ticularly during the Khrushchev era (l953- materials on the settlements of the Great $15,000. To plan a traveling interpretive exhi­ from the mythologies of the Cahuilla and Chu- 1 9 6 4 ). RO Plains to plan for research on oral traditions to bition about the Dreyfus Affair in 19th- mash Indians of southern California, and of Indiana U., Bloomington; Ilhan Basgoz: supplement the existing materials and to century France, adopting historical, literary the Nahuatl-speaking (Aztec) peoples of pre- $10,000 FM. To conduct an international con­ design a series of public programs utilizing the and artistic perspectives. GM Columbian Mexico. GN ference on Turkic studies, dealing not only materials and the research. GP Lacy Associates, Los Angeles, CA; Madison D. with Turkey but also with Turkish populations U. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Richard R. Lacy, Jr.: $15,000. To plan a 2-hour television in Soviet Central Asia, Iran, Chinese Turki- Beeman: $100,000 OR; $90,000 FM. To imple­ program dramatizing the story of Ota Benga, a Arts—History stan, Iraq, and eastern Europe. RD ment the first three years of a ten-year colla­ Batwa Pygmy who was brought by anthropol­ Princeton U., NJ; Denis C. Twitchett: borative research project by the Philadelphia ogist S.P. Verner to the U.S. to be exhibited at & Criticism $101,000 OR; $100,000 FM. To conduct Center for Early American Studies on the the St. Louis World's Fair. GN research and cover editorial expenses for industrialization process in Philadelphia and Ohio State U. Research Foundation, C o lu m ­ Bauhaus Group, 246 West End Avenue, NYC; volumes 5 and 6 of the "Cambridge History of the Delaware Valley from 1750 to 1850. RS bus; Mark P. Morford: $114,790. To conduct a Judith Pearlman: $500,000 OR; $100,000 FM. China," covering the Sung and Yuan periods U. of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg; six-week summer institute on the teaching of To produce a two-and-a-half-hour dramatic (907-1367 AD). RO David J. Bodenhamer: $9,858. To conduct a classical civilizations for twenty faculty in two- film on the development-of the Bauhaus School Renaissance Film Project, Emerville, CA; meeting of legal scholars examining the legal and four-year colleges. Participants will pre­ and a concluding 30-minute documentary on Theodore K. Rabb: $40,000. To prepare ten history of the South, emphasizing the regional pare curricular materials concentrating on "The Bauhaus in America." GN one-hour scripts and to begifi preparing character of southern legal history, partly as a four subjects: women, religion, Roman law, Black Filmmakers Foundation, NYC; William accompanying materials for the classroom. EH counter-balance to the New England focus of and sport. EH D. Jackson: $48,000. To develop a script for a Robertson Center for the Arts and Sciences, much of this history. RD Organization of American States, W ash ing - 1-hour film for television recounting the evo­ Binghamton, NY; Ross McGuire: $100,238. To Wayne State College, NE; Jack L. Midderdorf: ton, DC; Jose Gomez-Sicre: $73,000. To imple­ lution of the black processional music from implement a major exhibition on the history of $9,794. To plan a series of public programs on ment an interpretive reinstallation of the 14th-century West Africa, through European immigration and the growth of ethnic com­ selected aspects of Nebraska's history adapted museum's permanent collection of modern adaptations, to the United States. GN munities in Binghamton, New York—a from the NEH award, "The Great Plains Expe­ Latin American art to emphasize the region's Brooklyn Museum, NY; Dianne H. Pilgrim: medium-sized urban industrial area. GM rie n c e ." GL $15,000. To plan an exhibition which will U. of Hartford, CT; Roger N. Buckley: WGBH Educational Foundation, Boston, MA; explore the profound impact the machine had $52,000. To conduct historical research on the Peter S. McGhee: $15,000. To plan television on this country in the 1920s and 30s, a period issues of war and slavery in the Caribbean programs designed to evaluate how the U.S. when artists looked to the future, effectively during the era of the French Revolutionary and Constitution has fulfilled its mission and 23 complex cultural, historical and socio­ WGBH Educational Foundation, Boston, MA; economic bases, and determine what portion of Ann Peck: $15,000. To plan a series of televi­ the collection could be available for sharing. Language & sion programs on philosophy, dealing with the CM Literature consequences of philosophical questions in Our Lady of Elms College, Chicopee, MA; Linguistics daily life, history, and society, and employing a Thomas F. Moriarty: $71,577. To implement a number of leading scholars and citizens. GN new core curriculum required of all students Auburn U., AL; Richard L. Graves: $45,000 C U N Y Queens College, Flushing, NY; Gaye which integrates traditional materials of W est­ FM. To implement a program of teacher in- Tuchman: $40,000. To conduct historical and ern civilization with contemporary materials service work in writing at three sites in Ala­ sociological research on the opportunities and and concerns. EB bam a. ES difficulties encountered by Victorian women Religion Reed College, Portland, OR; Ottomar Benedict College, Columbia, SC; Willease S. writers in England. RO Rudolph: $63,387. To conduct faculty work­ Sanders: $119,700. To implement a require­ Jean Mudge Productions, Chicago, IL; Jean shops and library acquisitions designed to ment for student writing across the college McClure Mudge: $26,782. To develop scripts Hartford Seminary Foundation, CT; Yvonne extend the two-year interdisciplinary W estern curriculum by means of faculty workshops, for two (one 60-minute and one 30-minute) Y. Haddad: $97,469. To conduct a comparative civilization sequence to three years to intro­ release of English department faculty documentary films about Edgar Allan Poe. GN study of five mosques or Islamic Centers in the duce materials not presently covered, and to members to work with colleagues in other Mississippi State U.; Robert L. Phillips: United States. Sociologists will investigate the enlarge the faculty group prepared to teach the fields, and related activities. EB $59,000. To research the literature of the role that religion plays in American Muslim courses. EB Bryn Mawr College, PA; Julia H. Gaisser: American South. Over forty literary scholars life. R O State Historical Society of Wisconsin, M adi­ $55,000. To prepare and distribute eighteen will contribute to a comprehensive history of Temple U./ Philadelphia, PA; John A. Hos­ son; H.S. Stromquist: $64,401. To develop lexical and grammatical commentaries on clas­ Southern literature. RO tetler: $90,000. To conduct an ethnographic instructional tapes from a series of interpretive sical and medieval Latin texts for intermediate- New York Center for Visual History, N Y C ; study comparing the culture of contemporary skills workshops for local historical societies level students. EH Lawrence Pitkethly: $306,210. To produce one religious wilderness communities with those and museums which will then have statewide Catholic U. of America, W ash in g to n , D C ; Jean 60-minute documentary film on Walt Whit­ with long-standing traditions. RO distribution. CM D. Moss: $25,000. To conduct a conference for man and write two additional scripts for docu­ Suquamish Tribal Cultural Center, WA; college teachers of English composition to mentaries on Emily Dickinson and Hart Crane Carey T. Caldwell: $10,000. To plan self study review strategies for applying classical rhetoric as part of a series on American poets. GN Social Science which will allow the Suquamish Tribal Cultur­ to the teaching of writing, and to publish the Stanford U., CA; Harumi Befu: $55,000. To al Center to undertake a comprehensive evalu­ lectures and teaching materials afterwards. EH analyze the popular "bunkaron" publications in ation of its goals for public programs. CM Center for New American Media, N ew Japan. A cultural anthropologist will study T u fts U ., Medford, MA; Norman Daniels: Orleans, LA; Louis L. Alvarez: $36,580. To how Japanese intellectuals portray the Japa­ Institute for the Study of Human Issues, P h ila­ $75,000. To conduct research by a team of develop a script for a 90-minute documentary nese culture, society and national character in delphia, PA; Karen Kerner: $56,000. To con­ philosophers, economists, and geriatricians on exploring various aspects of regional English in writing for the general public. RO duct an ethnographic study of the Glasgow the problem of the just distribution of limited America and its relationship to U.S. social and Tucson Public Library, AZ; Jere Stephan: policeman's role in society. RO resources to various age groups. RO cultural values. GN $199,320. To develop materials and programs Pennsbury Society, Morrisville, PA; Nancy D. T u fts U ., Medford, MA; Jesper Rosenmeier: Hampton Institute, VA; Beatrice S. Clark: for approximately 35 public libraries for use in Kolb: $15,000. To plan to document the life­ $148,956. To expand undergraduate teaching $60,344. To implement Phase III: The Infusion exploring the cultural and historical develop­ style of the people living and working at Penns­ of American Studies at Tufts University. Sch­ of Afro-French/Hispanic Cultural Elements ment of the Southwest in literature. GP bury Manor. CM olars of literature and history will work with into Language Courses. EH U. of California, Santa Cruz; Murray Baum- faculty members from fine arts, social science, Illinois State U., Normal; Janice W. Neuleib: garten: $6,287. To conduct a conference of and engineering to plan and teach new courses. $56,256. To integrate secondary and post­ American and European scholars and writers Capital letters following each grant show the division and EB secondary writing courses through collabora­ in order to examine the role of the fantastic in the program through which the grant was made. U. of New England, Biddeford, ME; Spencer tive teaching. EH the works of Dickens from the perspectives of Lavan: $15,000. To conduct a Medical Human­ Lehigh U., Bethlehem, PA; Barbara H. Trais- structuralism, narratology, and more tradi­ Education Programs ities Program for Osteopathic Students. EB ter: $125,070. To conduct faculty workshops, tional literary criticism. RD EB Central Disciplines in Undergraduate U. of Vermont, Burlington; Ildiko Hefferran: administrative efforts, and off-campus consul­ E d ucation $11,303. To plan a cross-cultural examination tants designed to make more effective the EH E xemplary Projects, Nontraditional of the social and educational concepts embod­ requirement of student writing in all humani­ Programs, and Teaching Materials ied in folk toys in Vermont and Mississippi. CL ties courses and in some non-humanities Philosophy ES Humanities Instruction in Elementary Women of Summer Project, Tenafly, NJ; Rita instruction. EB and Secondary Schools R. Heller: $26,628. To develop a script for a SUNY at Albany, NY; Wolfgang W. Moel- Planning And Policy Assessment 60-minute documentary on the history of the leken: $120,000. To conduct linguistic research Community College Humanities Association, O P Planning and Assessment Studies Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women on the Pennsylvania German dialect, exploring Cranford, NJ; Tziporah F.S. Kasachkoff: General Programs Workers, 1929-1938, examining, in particular, how a language isolated from its homeland is $104,432. To implement a four-week institute AP Program Development the philosophy of the school's curriculum, and maintained and how it is affected by the sur­ on nursing ethics for two- and four-year col­ A Y Youthgrants how its graduates fare in their later careers. rounding language. RO lege faculty in philosophy and nursing and to A Z Youth Projects GN U. of Wisconsin, Madison; Keith N. Schoville: develop appropriate curricular materials for G L Libraries Humanities Projects Y ale U ., New Haven, CT; Nancy F. Cott: $150,000. To implement an exhibition on the nursing students. EH G M Museums and Historical Organizations $172,791. To develop 11 new courses focusing origins and history of writing from primitive Florida State U., Tallahassee; Alan R. Mabe: Humanities Projects specifically on women and the revision of nine communications to the alphabet by presenta­ $12,931. To conduct a dissemination confer­ G N Media Humanities Projects standard courses to include issues of gender tion of over 100 original artifacts representing ence based on the 1980 NEH-sponsored Insti­ Research Programs and incorporate new scholarship on women. and describing graphic communications from tute on Continental and Analytic Philosophy AV Humanities, Science and Technology New courses will be offered by departments ca. 6000 BC to the 4th century AD. GM to be held in conjunction with the Pacific m eet­ R C Research Resources and cross-listed with Women's Studies. EB ing of the APA in March, 1983. EH R D Research Conferences Y ale U ., New Haven, CT; Howard R. Lamar: U . of M arylan d, College Park; Robert K. Fullin- RE Editions $50,000. To implement a project which con­ wider; $42,000. To research the concept of RI Intercultural Research sists of an exhibit of Northwest Coast Native equality of opportunity and its use in American RL Translations art, a display of related archival documents; a law and policy, using philosophical literature R O Basic Research catalogue; and a public outreach program of and methods to analyze various conceptions of RP Publications lectures and tours. This exhibit will investigate equality of opportunity. RO RS State, Local and Regional Studies developments in Native art that result from R T Research Tools cultural contact. CM R V Conservation and Preservation

UPCOMING RESEARCH CONFERENCES

Myth, Symbols and Folklore: Expand­ rence/School of Music, University ing the Analysis of Organizations/ of Wisconsin, Madison/April 8- University of California, Los 10/contact Alexander Silbiger Angeles/March 10- 12/Contact (608) 263-1900 Michael O. Jones (213) 825-4242 Aging and the Imagination: Perspectives More than half of all Relocation and Redress: The Japanese- from Literature and Psychology/Cen­ American Experience/ University of ter for 2 0 th Century Studies, Humanities subscribers Utah, Salt Lake City/March 10- University of Wisconsin, Milwau­ 12/ contact Sandra C. Taylor or kee/April 20-22/contact Kathleen have received an NEH grant. Dean May (801) 581-6121 Woodward or Carol Tennessen Medicine in the Old South: A Symposi­ (414) 963-4141 For complete survey results u m /C en ter for the Study of International Brahms Conference/ Southern Culture, University of School of Music, University of see Page 21 Mississippi/March 17-19/contact Washington/May 5-8/contact Ann J. Abadie (601) 232-5993 George Bozarth (206) 543-9876 A Working Seminar on Gnoticism and or Elizabeth Auman, Music Div­ Early Christianity/Southwest Mis­ ision, Library of Congress (20 2 ) souri State University/March 29- 287-5504 April 1/contact Charles W. Medieval Gardens Symposium/Dum- Hedrick or Robert Hodgson (417) barton Oaks, Washington, 836-5514 DC/May 20-2 2 /contact Elizabeth Frescobaldi Quattrocentennial Confe­ B. MacDougall (202) 342-3280 NEH FY 1983 BUDGET

On December 30 President Reagan indicating the amounts allocated, is FELLOWSHIPS AND SEMINARS The Research Materials pro­ signed into law the appropriation presented below. The $2,675,000 allocated to each grams, which grant funds for the bill containing the NEH appropria­ of the NEH programs providing development of reference works and tions for fiscal year 1983. His signa­ EDUCATION PROGRAMS year-long fellowships—Fellowships other materials needed by ture completed a process launched The NEH Education programs for Independent Study and scholars—Research Tools in the Spring of 1981 when the have undergone significant revision. R esearch and College Teacher ($2,400,000), Editions ($1,900,000), Endowment chairman, staff, and Beginning in 1983 they will empha­ Fellowships—will permit about 127 and Translations ($1,000,000)—will National Council on the Humanities size support of efforts to improve awards in each program. make about thirty to thirty-five began initial planning for the FY instruction in the central humani­ In the programs aiding summer grants each. 1983 budget. (And soon after this ties disciplines, particularly history, study, the Endowment plans to In the Research Resources area, article appears, NEH staff will begin English and foreign languages—and grant about 240 Summer Stipends grants for Organization and the planning for the FY I 985 offer support for a wide variety of ($650,000); to support eighty Improvement Projects ($3,300,000) budget.) programs directed to accomplishing Summer Seminars for College will be made to forty-five to fifty The total appropriated for the this goal. T eachers ($4,655,000), in order to research libraries, archives, and year—$130,060,000—is 35 percent The revised program for H um ani­ serve 960 college faculty; and to aid other collections while support will over the agency's request of $96 ties Instruction in Elementary and forty Summer Seminars for Secon­ continue for the U.S. Newspaper million and just slightly below the Secondary Education ($4,790,000) dary School Teachers ($2,250,000), Project. Conservation and Preserva­ previous year's appropriation. The plans to make about sixty awards allowing 600 secondary school tion funds ($400,000) will further funds allocated to regular program for summer institutes for teachers teachers to participate in these five or six training and model pro­ grants remain the same as last year and a variety of collaborative proj­ opportunities for study. jects needed to help arrest the phys­ ($90,432,000). ects between colleges and universi­ Approximately forty-five post­ ical deterioration of materials used Major features of the FY 1983 ties, on the one hand, and elemen­ doctoral fellowships will be provided in humanities research. About budget include: tary or secondary schools, on the to humanities scholars through the seventy-five Publications grants other. ($400,000) are expected to be made • support for a wide range of program which supports C en ters A new program, Exemplary Proj­ to help defray costs of publishing education, scholarly research, and for Advanced Study ($500,000). ects, Nontraditional Programs, and the results of important research. projects for broad audiences; Teaching Materials ($4,790,000), • reorganization of NEH Educa­ RESEARCH PROGRAMS which replaces the Higher Educa­ tion Programs to focus on exem­ In the category of General GENERAL PROGRAMS tion/Regional and National pro­ plary projects in the core disciplines Research, Basic Research Endowment programs supporting gram, will support up to forty proj­ of the humanities; ($2,955,000) and Regional Studies greater understanding and apprecia­ ects designed to improve humanities • expansion of the program, ($750,000) will allow about sixty tion of the humanities by the gen­ programs throughout higher educa­ initiated last year, offering and twenty awards respectively for eral public have been consolidated in tion, including teacher institutes, secondary-school teachers oppor­ collaborative projects in archaeology the new Division of General development of model curricula, tunity to participate in special and other humanities disciplines. Programs. The guidelines of the exemplary collaborative projects summer seminars directed by dis­ The Intercultural Research program programs in 1983 emphasize sup­ between cultural institutions and tinguished humanities scholars; ($2,200,000) will continue to aid port for projects which focus on one higher education institutions, and • conducting of a special initiative American scholars working overseas or more specific humanities disci­ translation of recent scholarship for children's radio and television under the auspices of American plines, with particular encourage­ into teaching materials. programs; scholarly organizations, while the ment for proposals drawing on • encouragement of humanities Another new program, C entral Humanities, Sciences, and Technol­ fields heretofore under-represented projects relating to the Bicentennial Disciplines in Undergraduate Edu­ ogy program ($850,000) will main­ in the programs' grants: classics, of the Constitution of the United cation ($4,721,000), which replaces tain its joint support with the philosophy, jurisprudence, and States; and the Consultant, Pilot, and Imple­ National Science Foundation for col­ linguistics. • resumption of new grant- mentation Grants programs, will aid laborative projects involving scien­ Humanities Projects in Media making in the Challenge Grant pro­ eighty-five to ninety individual col­ tists and humanities scholars. The ($8,447,000) will support about gram and increased "Treasury" leges and universities in improving Research Conferences program ninety projects for the planning, (matching) funds to stimulate pri­ their introductory courses, in strength­ ($400,000) expects to support forty scripting, or production of films and vate sector support for the ening single fields, and in develop­ to fifty scholarly conferences radio and television programs. humanities. ing a more coherent as well as designed to assess the status of Proposals for children's media pro­ A summary of the Endowment's strengthened undergraduate research and develop new grams are especially encouraged plans for the individual programs, program. initiatives. again this year. (Continued on page 26)

1982

Chronology of the NEH FY 1983 Budget

Congressional review

House/Senate/conference action

Presidential review/approval

25 Humanities Projects in Museums Program Development given to projects illuminating the and Historical Organizations ($6,103,000) will provide support pattern of financial support availa­ ($6,912,000) will aid approximately for experimental and other projects ble to humanities activities. NEH APPROPRIATION REQUEST ninety projects involving interpre­ which fall outside other NEH pro­ FOR FY 1984 tive exhibitions and other activities grams, particularly those bringing CHALLENGE GRANTS ($16,864,000) In the FY 1984 Federal govern­ which use material objects to exem­ the results of humanities scholar­ The Challenge appropriation, ment budget forwarded to the Con­ plify various aspects of human ship to the general public. A special designed to encourage long-range gress last month, President Reagan culture. priority in 1983 is the encourage­ financial planning and expanded has proposed appropriations totaling The third area of the division, ment of projects relating to the bases of support, will enable the $112,200,000 for the Endowment: Special Projects, includes three con­ Bicentennial of the Constitution of Endowment to provide second I $72,840,000 for regular program tinuing programs: the United States. third-year support for eighty insti­ funds, $16,500,000 for Challenge Humanities Projects in Libraries tutions with approved multi-year Grants, $10,570,000 for Treasury ($2,650,000) will provide twenty to STATE PROGRAMS ($20,329,000) Challenge plans and to offer new Funds (for matching of private gifts twenty-five grants to further the Funds will be provided to the Challenge Grants (totaling about $8 in support of projects recommended development of public and other state humanities councils in the fifty million) to approximately eighty- by the National Council on the libraries' resources for humanities states, District of Columbia, Puerto five humanities institutions. With Humanities), and $12,290,000 for programming; Rico, and U.S. Territories for required matching of at least three NEH administrative expenses. Hear­ Youth Programs ($1,000,000) will regranting to as many as 3,500 proj­ non-Federal dollars for every NEH ings on the NEH appropriation provide approximately twenty ects which link humanities scholar­ dollar, the combination of new and request will be held in the spring by "Youth Grants" to young persons ship to the interests of the general continuing 1983 grants will help the House and Senate Appropria­ conducting their own research, edu­ public in the state. generate over $50.5 million from tions Subcommittees on the Interior cation, or community-oriented hu­ private sources. and Related Agencies, whose manities projects, while fifteen to PLANNING AND ASSESSMENT respective chairmen are Sidney twenty grants will be made in the STU D IES ($730,000) TREASURY FUNDS ($11,064,000) Yates (Illinois) and James McClure "Youth Projects" category to aid Fifteen to twenty awards will be Matching grants requiring a one- (Idaho). scholars working with both humani­ made to support the collection, to-one match from the private sec­ —Armen Tashdinian ties and non-humanities organiza­ analysis, and dissemination of tor will be offered to help further Mr. Tashdinian is the director of the NEH tions in conducting exemplary out- information about resources, prob­ 276 projects recommended by the Office of Planning and Policy Assessment. of-school activities for children and lems, and trends in selected sectors National Council on the Humanities teenagers; and of the humanities. Priority is being for NEH support. Notes and News Editor's Notes

NEH Moves to New Digs observation platform, second only With an essay on aesthetics by essay on musicology by Howard (Nonarchaeological) to that of the Washington Monu­ Arthur Danto, Page 1, we begin Mayer Brown (page 5), a debate on ment in height, accessible by a glass what wags at NEH have referred to original instruments by two profes­ The NEH will move its offices to the elevator. The clock has been re­ as our "song and dance number." sors of music and musicology who Old Post Office Building at 1100 stored so that its four lighted faces Tracing the history of philosophy's hold opposite views (page 14), as Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., can be read from a distance. relationship to art from Plato's well as a variety of articles about (20506) in March or April. The tower will acquire a set of commentary on the Greek sculptors NEH-supported projects having to All new phone numbers will be bells, manufactured by the same to John Cage and Andy Warhol, do with dance, music and theater — published at a later date; the new firm that made London's Big Ben, Mr. Danto shows the way "that the are proper subjects for inclusion in general information number is that were England's Bicentennial philosophy of art has deep ques­ the humanities. 202/786-0438. gift to the United States. tions to consider, questions of Professor Brown tells us that The Old Post Office, which has representation and reality, of struc­ "the development of music as a been on the National Register of ture, truth, and meaning." He humanistic discipline has taken Historic Places since 1973, has had believes that the "distinction place in America entirely within my a checkered past and an endangered between art and philosophy own lifetime." For even though future. Completed in 1899 to becomes as problematic as the dis­ there is a "vast literature from the accommodate the U.S. Post Office tinction between reality and art." time of the ancient Greeks to the Department and the city post So we hardly need argue that the present day that attempts in one office, it was abandoned by both by contents of this Humanities — an way or another to explain the 1934 and inhabited variously there­ theory of music...they were not after by pieces of different federal interested at all or only peripherally agencies. The General Services interested in music as an art, in the Administration has had plans since sound of music, as it were." 1928 to remove, not rehabilitate, it. The stereotypical musician — But now the old Romanesque whether composer, conductor, per­ structure, an anomaly in the neo- former or musicologist — has often Athenian neighborhood, is taking had difficulty convincing others center stage in the effort to revital­ that music is an intellectual as well ize and beautify the Pennsylvania as an artistic enterprise. (Mr. Avenue corridor. Its three-year, Brown notes that musicology was $20 million-dollar renovation, snorted at by such a renowned partly funded by the National figure as Harvard's President Eliot.) Endowment for the Arts, which But such articles as the one describ­ will live there along with the ing the painstaking efforts involved Humanities Endowment, has been in reconstructing and assembling compared to the renaissance of the works of Giuseppe Verdi and Boston's Faneuil Hall. The Old Post Jean-Baptiste Lully for critical edi­ Office has been similarly rede­ tions demonstrate anew what signed as a "mixed use" building rigorous scholarship is required. that will house restaurants and Page 6. shops along with the federal offices As Mr. Danto says, "the degree beneath its massive, vaulted to which the appreciation (and skylight. study) of art becomes a matter of Its most dramatic external fea­ applied philosophy can hardly be ture, a clocktower that rises 315 overestimated." feet above the street, will have an —Judith Chayes Neiman 26 Positive numbers: Subscriber Survey Results

The highlights of the Humanities of study useful shows that this Which features of Humanities do you Does the design encourage you to read the subscriber survey taken in comprehensive printout of the ordinarily read? articles and other features? November and tabulated in Endowment's grant-making results Articles about topics in the yes: 54.7% December are shown at right. is worth doing. humanities We had no room to print the fact We were told by mail-order pun­ Always or sometimes: 99% What kind of publication does H um ani­ that about one-third of our sub­ dits when we planned the survey Articles about Endowment-sup­ ties most resemble? scribers have been readers for three not to expect a return of more than ported projects Magazine, Newsletter or News­ years and that 68 percent of all 10 percent. When 44 percent of you Always or sometimes: 98.6% paper: 63.7% subscribers pass their copies along took the time and trouble to reply, Articles about the application and to as many as three additional exceeding our most hopeful expec­ grant-making process How interesting do you find Humanities? people (32 percent share it with tations four times over, we were, Always or sometimes: 92.6% Usually or always interesting: 78.4% four or more). to put it mildly, delighted. Thank Endowment notes and news Many of you passed along sug­ you. JCN Always or sometimes: 96.1% Do you find the extensive list of NEH grant gestions for features you would like Grant application deadlines awards useful? to add as well as improvements you Approximately how much time do you spend Always or sometimes: 88.3% Always or sometimes: 96.4% would like to see. The computer with each issue? Dustjackets (843 answered) could not cope with these hand­ 30 minutes or more: 85.5% Always or sometimes: 89.8% What is your occupation? written comments but you can be One hour or more: 31.1% Lists of grants awards Professor: 37.2% sure we will be paying close atten­ Always or sometimes: 96.4% Academic Administrator: 19.5% tion to them in the months to Do you ever make photocopies of articles in About the author Development Officer: 9.6% come. Humanities for other people? Always or sometimes: 95.0% Museum Professional: 4.8% One of the most interesting and Yes: 53.8% Editor's notes Librarian: 4.8% significant figures was that 53 Always or sometimes: 95.2% Other: 23.5% percent of all subscribers have Do other people ordinarily read your copy of received an NEH grant. We would Humanities? Would you like to see a section in H um an­ Have you ever applied for an Endowment like to believe that a careful reading Yes: 74.2% ities that presents different perspectives on grant? of Humanities over time has helped current issues in the humanities and Ameri­ Yes: 63.8% to demystify the Endowment by If yes, approximately how many? can intellectual life? featuring exemplary grants as well Up to three: 68% Yes: 87.5% Have you ever received an Endowment as articles about the various NEH Four or more: 32% grant? programs. Do you find the tabloid format of H um an­ Yes: 53.0% Similarly, the fact that 93.4 per­ Do you save back issues? ities convenient? cent find the lengthy listing of Yes: 84.7% Yes: 80.7% grant awards by discipline or field

27 About the authors . . .

ARTHUR C. DANTO is the John­ HOWARD MAYER BROWN is MALCOLM BILSON is well known SAMUEL BARON is a flutist, con­ sonian Professor of Philosophy at Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished as one of the leading proponents of ductor, professor and chamber Columbia University and serves as Service Professor of Music at the the fortepiano in this country and in music player. He is a professor of Chairman of the Department of Phi­ University of Chicago. Educated at Europe. For the past twelve years he music at the State University of losophy there. A Fellow of the Harvard, he has published books has been performing on Philip Belt New York, Stony Brook, as well as a American Academy of Arts and and articles on various aspects of replicas of Viennese fortepianos of teacher of flute at the Julliard Science, Mr. Danto is the recipient music in the Renaissance, including the late eighteenth century, appear­ School in New York. Professor of two Fulbright Fellowships and Music in the French Secular Theater, ing in solo and chamber music per­ Baron was a founding member of two Fellowships from the American 1400-1550, Instrumental Music Printed formances throughout the United the New York Woodwind Quintet Council of Learned Societies. This Before 1600, Embellishing Sixteenth Cen­ States, Canada, and Europe. During and the flute soloist of the Bach year, on sabbatical leave, he is writ­ tury Music, and Music in the Renaissance. the summer of 1982 he performed Aria Group. In 1980 he became the ing a book on the concept of repre­ His two-volume edition of an an- at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in musical director of the Bach Aria sentation. He is also enjoying his thlogy of fifteenth-century French France and at the Esterhazy castle in Group and its Summer Institute at second Guggenheim Fellowship. chansons, A Florentine Chansonnier from Hungary for the Haydn year celebra­ Stony Brook. His recordings include The author of eight books in philos­ the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent will tion. His recordings for Nonesuch much contemporary music for flute ophy, he has written his most soon be published by the University records may be partly responsible (CRI, Nonesuch, and Desto labels) recent work specifically about art: of Chicago Press. Professor Brown for the current outpouring of inter­ and chamber music with the New The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: is a past president of the American est in the fortepiano. Professor Bil- York Woodwind Quintet and other A Philosophy of Art, Harvard Univer­ Musicological Society and he cur­ son is music director of a concert groups. He will appear this summer sity Press, 1981, which was awarded rently serves as vice-president of series entitled "O n Original Instru­ at many music festivals across the the Lionel Trilling Book Prize. Pro­ the International Musicological ments," at New York City's Merkin country including the New College fessor Danto's wife, Barbara West- Society. He is currently engaged in Concert Hall. A professor of piano Music Festival, the Norfolk Festival, man, is an artist whose drawings studying what fourteenth-century at Cornell, he divides his time and Victoria International Festival regularly appear in the New Yorker. art can tell us about the musical between teaching, holding seminars in British Columbia, as well as the Page 1. practices of that period. His exten­ and workshops on the fortepiano, third annual Bach Aria Festival and sive knowledge of music, history and pursuing his concert and record­ Institute at Stony Brook. Mr. Baron and art history informs his article ing career. He takes the opposite argues that the medium is definitely on musicology. Page 5. position from Mr. Baron in their not the message in his dialogue with dialogue, Page 14. Mr. Bilson on Page 14.

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