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Gershwin to Gillespie: Portraits in American Music SAM member and noted musicologist The Bulletin Olivia Mattis has curated a salute to 20th- century American music called Gershwin OF THE S OCIETY FOR A MERIC A N M U S IC to Gillespie: Portraits in American Music, which recently ended a three-month exhi- FOUNDED IN HONOR OF O S C A R G . T. S ONNECK bition at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and is now avail- Vol. XXXI, No. 3 Fall 2005 able for touring. This exhibition offers glimpses into the lives and personalities of the greatest American musicians and com- Standpoint: posers, as captured by some of America’s What Happened to the Nineteenth Century? most influential photographers, includ- ing Ansel Adams and Annie Leibovitz. — Katherine K. Preston The College of William & Mary Among those depicted in the 50 featured photographs are George Gershwin, Dizzy Editor’s Note: This issue of the Bulletin inaugurates a new feature, “Standpoint,” which will appear every Gillespie, Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, Fall. Standpoint is an opinion essay that will, it is hoped, provoke discussion, reflection, and even some John Philip Sousa, Billie Holiday, John controversy. The Winter issue will feature “Counterpoint,” an essay or group of short responses to the Coltrane, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and previous Standpoint essay. If you would like to write a Counterpoint for the next issue, please e-mail Sandra Graham <[email protected]> by 1 Dec. (note early deadline, so that the Standpoint author Aretha Franklin. has time to respond). And if you are interested in writing a future Standpoint, or have an idea for a topic, "Individually, these images present please let me know. My hope is that this series will engender a discussion that we can continue at annual us with portraits of determination, ide- meetings and among ourselves, and that will broaden our understanding of what we do – collectively and alism, and a strong sense of self. As a individually. – Sandra Graham, Bulletin Editor group, these images give us a wonderful cross-section of American musical life," Americanist musicologists who have ing. That same year, at the Sonneck says Mattis, who also organized a music been active scholars and teachers for the Society’s meeting in Tallahassee, Florida, festival surrounding the exhibit. "These last several decades have had the rather there were paper sessions and panels on extraordinary experience of seeing the a wide range of American-music topics, field of musicology transform itself. including jazz, 19th-century band music, Many of us who are now mid-career music education, 18th-century musical scholars entered the field in the mid- and theatre, music in the South, the shape- late 1980s; we encountered a discipline note tradition, Broadway shows, and that was both Eurocentric and focused American opera. There were also numer- almost exclusively on “art” music of ear- ous sessions and papers devoted to art lier periods. (The study of “pop” music music of the 20th century; in between the was acceptable for scholarly discourse paper sessions the conferees could attend only if the music under consideration was eight different concerts of new music (the popular in, say, the 15th century.) That meeting was held in conjunction with the the discipline has changed is indisput- Florida State University Festival of New able; that the scholars involved with the Music). The conference was a celebra- Sonneck Society (now the Society for tion of both the wonderful diversity of American Music) have helped to lead the American music history and the delicious way is also unmistakable. variety of 20th-century musical styles. Programs from scholarly confer- The diversity of scholarship was an affir- ences from 20 years ago confirm this mation of one of the raisons d’être for the contention. The 1985 AMS meeting in Society: As many of us heard in the SAM GEORGE GERSHWIN Vancouver, BC, for example, featured History panel at the conference in Eugene, some 25 sessions, with one lonely session Oregon, last spring, the Sonneck Society Photo by Edward Steichen, American devoted to music of the 20th century and was founded in part because very little (b. Luxembourg, 1879-1973) 1927 another orphan panel titled “American Gelatin silver print scholarship of this “ilk” was welcome at Bequest of Edward Steichen by Direction of Joanna Popular Music and Jazz”; the latter – the the AMS. T. Steichen only nod toward “popular” music – was scheduled, of course, for Sunday morn- continued on page 42 continued on page 58 Standpoint: continued from page 41 tury topics. From my vantage point (as a include jazz, hip hop, film music, rock, scholar of 19th-century American music), gender and ethnic studies, and the works we Americanists are the victims of our of such composers as Bernstein, Ives, Young scholars just embarking on own success. We have helped to open up Copland, and Gershwin. So, you might musicological careers back in the mid- the discipline to the study of a wide range ask, what is the problem with this? 1980s could see clearly the direction that of musical styles, genres, and topics, but Put simply, we have egregiously musicology should take. And although we in the process seem to have lost our col- neglected the foundation of the intellec- were far from sanguine that the change lective interest in history – or, at least, tual edifice we are constructing as a dis- would occur, it is clear – from the vantage in history before the 20th century. The cipline – and we do so to our intellectual point of 2005 – that it has. In the program Society of American Music is in danger peril. One of our goals as musicologists is of the November 2005 AMS conference of becoming – to use a moniker recently to comprehend the music that surrounds in Washington, DC, almost one third of invented by Wayne Shirley – the Society us. In order to do so, however, we need the sessions are devoted to music of the for Recent Music. to have a firm understanding of our musi- 20th century, including three on “popular” The paucity of pre-20th-century cal and cultural history. And we do not music (the 20th-century kind). There are papers at SAM conferences is not the yet possess this understanding. There are also two American sessions, as well as result of a conspiracy by program com- huge gaps in our basic knowledge of 19th- occasional Americanist papers in non- mittees to marginalize such scholarship. century American musical life. Worse, American sessions (meaning that the pre- Rather, it is a reflection of a troubling many scholars – especially younger ones sentation of American music scholarship reality: Fewer and fewer young scholars – are not even aware that the lacunae is no longer completely ghettoized). The are choosing to undertake research in the exist, and as a result unchallenged mis- SAM Eugene conference program like- 18th or 19th centuries. I make a point to conceptions have crept into our collective wise illustrates the incredible broadening meet and speak with graduate students “knowledge” of the American cultural of our discipline’s boundaries: It included at SAM conferences, and many of them past. The longer the misconceptions are sessions on American art-music compos- are thinking hard about dissertation top- unchallenged, the harder they will be to ers (Earle Brown, Charles Ives, Pauline ics. Rarely do I encounter a student who dislodge, for scholars build on the work Oliveros, Leonard Bernstein, John Cage), is considering a 19th-century topic. This of their predecessors, and any errors that musical instruments, politics, ethnic assessment is confirmed by a perusal may have crept into a piece of scholarship and gender studies, jazz, modern music, of dissertation topics listed in Doctoral will be replicated by subsequent schol- media studies, hip hop, rock, experimen- Dissertations in Musicology On Line (on ars, unless the errors are corrected. And tal music, film music, and musical theatre. the AMS webpage). Nineteenth-century if fewer and fewer historians are doing The subject of musicology has expanded topics seem to have peaked in the 1970s research in the 19th century, how can we to a remarkable degree. (before my time!), declined gradually correct the mistakes and fill in the gaps? But this expansion seems to have in the 1980s and 1990s, and all but dis- Allow me to suggest a few topics come at a price. For the vast majority of appeared in the first years of the new that are ripe for scholarly research. There the papers accepted for presentation at century. The number of 20th-century dis- are very few solid studies of the major recent SAM conferences share one char- sertation topics increased dramatically in 19th-century American composers. acteristic: The music, to an overwhelming the 1970s, declined slightly in the 1980s, There are biographies of Gottschalk and extent, is from the 20th century. A quick and grew again through the 1990s and into Chadwick, but the most recent biographies perusal of conference programs from the early 2000s. The current “hot” topics of Anthony Heinrich and William Henry the last five years suggests a general decline in pre-20th-century scholarship: At Charleston (2000) there were two sessions on 18th-century music, two on The Bulletin of the Society for American Music the 19th, and one combining the two; in The Bulletin is published in the Winter (January), Spring (May), and Summer (September) by Lexington (2002) there were one 18th- the Society for American Music. Copyright 2005 by the Society for American Music, ISSN century and two 19th-century sessions, as 0196-7967. well as several additional topical papers; Tempe (2003) featured one 18th-century Editorial Board and three 19th-century sessions as well Editor.