AMS Newsletter August 2015

AMS NEWSLETTER THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY CONSTITUENT MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES VOLUME XLV, NUMBER 2 August 2015 ISSN 0402-012X Louisville: City of Surprises AMS Louisville 2015 12–15 November www.ams-net.org/louisville Looee-ville, Louis-ville, Loo-a-ville, Loo-ih- vuhl, Loo-ih-vul . it’s a city of seemingly many names. But to the locals, it’s simply Loo-uh-vul; and one imagines that Louis XVI, after whom the city was named, would probably turn in his grave if he heard it. So would Michelangelo, if he saw the stupen- dous homage to him outside the 21c Museum Hotel, one of the top boutique hotels in the world and only a short walk from Galt House (venue of the AMS meeting). Drenched in mock Cellinian splendor (and somehow always free of avian donations despite its being The Belle of Louisville on the Ohio River permanently placed outside), it’s truly a sight see in this city by the river (the red glass gems- House is Fourth Street Live!, a focal point for to behold. encrusted limousine by the hotel entrance, so nighttime entertainment (and the location But 21c’s always captivating art exhibition, dressed up as to be inspired by the interior for our Friday night dance: see p. 18). For the whether indoors or outdoors, is only one of of a pomegranate, is another eye-catcher). more adventurous, there’s the Urban Bour- the many things that a visitor would want to As huge as the homage to Michelangelo is, it bon Trail that leads to the many scattered dis- pales beside the baseball bat that stands taller tilleries (such as Maker’s Mark and Jim Beam) In This Issue… than the five-story Slugger Museum on which for which Kentucky is known. it leans, a stone’s throw away from 21c. Simi- Happily, Krzysztof Penderecki and Kaija President’s Message .............. 2 larly impressive is the collection at the Frazier Saariaho will be in town while the AMS President-Elect Martha Feldman ... 4 History Museum (General Custer’s ivory- meeting is taking place. Here for the New AMS Public Lectures............. 4 handled Colt pistols, Geronimo’s supposed Music Festival of the University of Louisville’s President’s Endowed Plenary Lecture 5 bow, etc.), located just across the street from School of Music which, this year, celebrates What I Do in Musicology ......... 6 that doozy of a baseball bat (which, inciden- the thirtieth anniversary of its Grawemeyer Public Musicology Conference ..... 6 tally, is a steroids-gone-awry version of a 34- Award in Composition, they will be holding Awards, Prizes, Honors ........... 7 inch Slugger bat owned by Babe Ruth). separate composition seminars at the School. Grants, Fellowships ..............10 To be sure, one can name many more inter- These are open to all without charge. Pen- Recent Board Actions ............ 11 esting things to see and do in this derby city: derecki’s seminar is slated for Wednesday, 11 News Briefs ................... 11 an Ohio River steamboat cruise on board the November, and Saariaho’s two days later. The ACLS Annual Meeting 2015 .......12 Belle of Louisville, which turns one hundred Louisville Orchestra, which has a history of Grove Music Advisory Panel .......12 this year; a visit to Churchill Downs, home championing contemporary music, performs Louisville Preliminary Program .....13 of the Kentucky Derby, and so on. But down- a free concert at the School 12 November as Louisville Performances ..........25 town Louisville, charming in its own way, is part of the Festival (which runs 10–14 Novem- Louisville Program Selection .......25 essentially a mix of the old and the new, with ber). A bonus: visitors to the School can take Committee News ...............26 tall modern buildings standing not far from a short walk to the steps of Grawemeyer Hall Study Group News ..............28 smaller ones built when cast iron facades were to see the very first cast of Rodin’s unfathom- AMS Vancouver 2016 ............ 31 in fashion. It’s also a city for foodies, with able Thinker, recently cleaned of weather wear CFPs, Conferences ..............33 many fine restaurants downtown and even Obituaries ....................34 more in the suburbs. A short walk from Galt continued on page President’s Message: Performing Musicology There have been many calls recently to teach turn into memorization exercises that drain teaching is needed. Why? “Partly because it’s by doing, to show the research process rather all sense of discovery out of the process. My the only way for a student to get past being a than merely recite results. It is difficult to revelatory moment came when I introduced passive consumer and critic and to become a open a copy of The Chronicle without finding my students in an Early Music class to a creator, someone who reads other historians at least one article along these lines. Take, for musicological text that, in contrast to more in the light of having tried to do what they example, “Is ‘Design Thinking’ the New Lib- traditional textbooks, openly engaged with do.” In other words, just as one can move be- eral Arts,” by Peter N. Miller (The Chronicle gaps and dissent within our knowledge base. yond being a passive listener by understand- Review, 3 April 2015). In describing design The students’ reaction stunned me: why, they ing something about the kinds of choices thinking, Miller offers a series of “easy-to- asked, weren’t such readings regularly made Schubert faced, one also can engage with the grasp principles,” such as “Show Don’t Tell,” the basis of music courses; in fact, they pre- work of a scholar by following the research “Embrace Experimentation,” and “Bias To- viously had thought that musicology was path to the results and seeing how informa- ward Action.” Although Miller’s article per- “done.” Think about that—musicology as tion is gleaned and decisions made. tains to a graduate program in the School of I can’t think of any aspect of musicology Engineering at Stanford, it also resonates with that couldn’t be made intrinsically interest- musicology. Given that music is a perform- Musicology isn’t obscure, ing to students or a wider public through the ing art, the idea of “performing musicology” esoteric, or “done” “performance” of its process. Cultural studies doesn’t seem like much of a stretch. I did a (context), meaning and interpretation (semi- Google search to see if this phrase is in com- otics), connoisseurship (analysis and aesthet- mon use and found only two significant ex- done, finished, over, nothing more to learn. ics) seem obvious choices for this kind of 2011 amples: a Study Day in co-sponsored by It had never occurred to me that by teaching exploration. But what about, say, rastrology? the Royal Musical Association, City Univer- the “history” of music (when this happened, I actually have seen audiences intrigued to sity, and the Guildhall School of Music and when that composer lived, how this piece is learn how music paper was prepared for and Drama on the “fusion of musicology and organized, what that composition means—all by composers, how and what information performance,” along with many references to integral to a strong foundation in musicol- is embedded in the layout of the paper, and performing the song “Musicology” by Prince! ogy) we risk imparting an absence of explo- what different kinds of rastrals look like. (For There is also the book Performing Ethnomusi- ration and discovery in the research that we some, an immediate and nostalgic connection cology, edited by Ted Solis, which focuses on love. can be made to the old chalk rastrals used in teaching world music performing ensembles. In the Schubert example, which explores many elementary schools years ago—when All of these instances of “performing musicol- compositional options within a specific his- music was a regular part of the curriculum.) ogy” emphasize some aspect of music perfor- torical period, the idea of performing mu- Rastrology, like source studies more broadly mance. In this essay, I would like to repurpose sicology, or opening up the compositional and archival research, represents a form of the phrase from the sole purview of music process, seems natural enough, but what of musicological-historical detective work. Far performance and redefine “performing musi- other activities a musicologist undertakes? from being esoteric and difficult, it reso- cology” as performing the processes of musi- The range of topics and research methods in nates with great fiction by Umberto Eco and cological research. our field is very broad. The books supported The Woman in White, Of course, as musicologists, we have a natu- by the AMS that have been published so far in Charles Dickens. In by ral advantage in terms of “showing” rather 2015 (see the front page of the AMS web site) Wilkie Collins, the resolution hinges on dis- than “telling,” since we study a performing provide a glimpse: Beethoven, Schumann, entangling falsified and original documentary art. Rather than merely explaining the struc- and Wagner; the castrato; the late medieval evidence (birth certificate, marriage contract, ture of a deceptive cadence or chromatic de- motet; music during the Cold War; tuk mu- confinement papers). Some sense of this nar- flection, for example, we play examples to sic in Barbados; Johanna Beyer; and French rative excitement belongs in the research sto- give the harmonic motion its aural manifesta- pop music. How might such historical re- ries we tell. tion. But we can go further. In a class on the search be “performed”? In a thoughtful article The repeated calls for showing rather than history of the art song or Romantic music, we by Anthony Grafton and James Grossman, telling pertain as much or more to musicol- can take Schubert’s “Ständchen” and not only “Habits of Mind” (The American Scholar, ogy as any field.

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