Mauro Calcagno: Intersections Music Building Other Practices and Systems
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Harvard University Department of MUSICn e w s l e t t e r Vol. 6, No. 1/Winter 2006 Mauro Calcagno: Intersections Music Building other practices and systems. I do value the North Yard relative autonomy of music and I love to study Harvard University it per se. But I’m also aware that music lives Cambridge, MA 02138 and exists in history—through specific social, political and cultural practices—and that it 617-495-2791 constantly interacts with other “systems,” such as verbal, visual and body languages. I think www.music.fas.harvard.edu that a humanistic approach to music, both in research and in teaching, ought to take into consideration all of these aspects.” By using this approach, for example, Cal- INSIDE cagno could begin to unravel a mystery left INSIDE unsolved for more than 300 years. Eliogabalo, 2 Faculty News composed in 1667 by Francesco Cavalli, was 23 Musical Feast Honors Wolff is basement office is so crammed with planned for the Carnival season of Theater SS 34 Elliot Forbes, at 88 Hbooks and music it renders an already narrow Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. But interestingly, window inconsequential. But from here, Mauro another opera also titled Eliogabalo, but by G. 44 The Silent City Premieres Calcagno spends much of his time looking back to A. Boretti, was performed instead. Why? Start- 5 Graduate Student News the 16th- and 17th-century Italy, to the very begin- ing with a brief mention of a “problem” with 6 Alumni News nings of opera. Using a wide range of disciplines and the Cavalli opera that Calcagno noticed in the 6 Seminar Seeks Friends a mix of traditional and new approaches, Calcagno’s libretto preface, he pieced together the argu- recent scholarly work has intrigued his colleagues. ment that the Cavalli opera had been censored. & Colleagues of Bernstein His most recent article, “Signifying Nothing: On the Cavalli’s Eliogabalo featured a flawed, unre- 7 Library News Aesthetics of Pure Voice in Early Venetian Opera,” pentant Roman emperor who met a fatal end. 7 Wolf in Iran was recently awarded the Alfred Einstein award Boretti’s Eliogabalo ended with the emperor 8 C.P.E. Bach Edition of the AMS. “In this country there is an effort to reformed and victorious. Calcagno argued that recognize work,” says Calcagno. “For a European the theater’s patrons—a powerful Venetian Underway like me it’s very moving.” family—were not likely to have patronized the 9 Undergraduate News: Calcagno, originally from Rome, is especially story of an unforgiven, corrupted tyrant. Stefan Jackiw pleased to receive an award named for a scholar he “People in the 17th century thought in 10 Composing at Harvard holds dear: “Alfred Einstein [cousin to Albert] was an metaphors and images,” explains Calcagno. immigrant too, although during much more difficult “They never said or wrote anything out straight. 11 Calendar times. In 1949 he wrote a three-volume monograph So you have to read between the lines. And 11 GMF Conference on the Italian madrigal which I remember buying politics and censorship often played a crucial 12 Donald Martino, at 74 in Rome in 1985 in Roger Session’s translation—a role.” bible for people like me who study that genre. Who The Cavalli opera, in fact, lay unperformed could predict I’d receive a prize named for the person until one year ago when it was premiered at who wrote one of my favorite books?” Theatre La Monnaie in Bruxelles. Calcagno Department Chair Calcagno’s groundbreaking article helps re- collaborated with conductor René Jacobs on Ingrid Monson define the interplay of words and music in early the performance. “My dream came true—I Director of Administration baroque Italian opera and cantata. By bringing had studied the score but never listened to it,” Nancy Shafman contemporaneous literature and philosophy to bear he exclaims. “The Cavalli opera sounded so on 17th-century scores, he found that the works gave much better than I thought. On paper, Italian Newsletter Editor up new meaning, and not just musical. Baroque opera doesn’t look as ‘thick’ as, say, a Lesley Bannatyne “I deal with intersections between music and Mozart or Wagner work—there are just a few [email protected] continued on p. 2 Faculty News A Musical Feast Honors Christoph Wolff: Calcagno, continued from p. 1 Scholar Celebrated with Four Days of Concerts and Scholarship music staves, no real orchestra. But when it The London Sinfonietta performed Fanny P. for what music should be. He evaluates a piece Faculty News continued from p. 2 Ken Gewertz, Harvard News Office [Excerpts] comes to life through a good performance Mason Professor Julian Anderson’s Book of on its own terms, pointing out strengths and the effect can be magical. Too bad that Hours in Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, in weaknesses without trying to ‘correct’ anything. [This past September] Harvard reverber- credited Wolff with providing the historical 2006, will receive an honorary degree (D.Phil.) Cavalli didn’t have a chance to see it!” December. Conducted by Oliver Knussen, the If you attend a recital of the young musicians ated with some of the greatest music ever and artistic insights that help him attempt from York University, England. Calcagno’s current book project, From work was inspired by medieval art. TheGuard - that make up his studio, it’s striking the range composed, performed by some of its finest such risk-taking. Gardiner Cowles Associate Professor Madrigal to Opera: Voice and Subjectivity ian reported on the performance: “There aren't interpreters. “When you improvise, things can go Alex Rehding is returning to his German in the Musical Reception of Petrarch’s Po- many pieces of recent music that fill one with “The Century of Bach and Mozart: Per- terribly wrong, or they can go terribly right. roots by spending his sabbatical year in Berlin etry (1530-1640), places him again at an irresistible joy, but Julian Anderson’s Book of spectives on Historiography, Composition, We depend on people like Wolff to help us. as a Humboldt Foundation Fellow where he is intersection: this time, that of words and Hours is one of them.” A German premiere will Theory, and Performance,” [was] a four-day It’s their scholarship and insight that helps working on his book project on “monumental music. take place in July, 2006, where the Ensemble event that combined scholarly papers with a to define performance.” music.” He gave a keynote address at the Ger- “We always think music followed lit- Modern will perform Book of Hours at the pair of superb musical concerts. The event The event kicked off with a concert on man Society of Music Theory meeting in Ham- erature, but in late Renaissance and early International Society for Contemporary Music honored Christoph Wolff, the Adams Uni- the evening of September 22 in Paine Hall, burg, Germany, as well as colloquia at Berlin’s Baroque Italy the exchange was two ways. in Stuttgart. versity Professor and Curator of the Isham featuring the Harvard Baroque Chamber Humboldt and Free Universities. Most recently, Many great artists were often employees of Associate Professor Mauro Calcagno’s Memorial Library. Orchestra, Robert Mealy, director. The or- Rehding was promoted to senior Professor of the same patrons—for example, Tasso and article on the aesthetics of voice in seventeenth- One of the world’s leading Bach and chestra performed an all-Bach program with Music at Harvard. Luzzaschi in Ferrara, Rubens and Monte- century music, published in the Journal of Mozart scholars, Wolff has not only writ- harpsichordists Ton Koopman, Tini Mathot, Associate Professor Hans Tutschku’s Die verdi in Mantua. So it was natural to have Musicology, received the Einstein Award from ten extensively about these composers, but and Levin. The concert followed the some- Süsse unserer traurigen Kindheit was first per- a dialogue among the arts. Poets such as the American Musicological Society (see story, Fanny Mason Research Professor Lewis Lockwood has made important discoveries of lost or what unusual plan of adding a harpsichord formed on October 21 and had five more very Guarini and Marino began writing poems p. 1). (right) with Suhnne Ahn (PhD, 1997) and Professor unknown Bach manuscripts. with each new piece. The second concert successful performances at the Forum Neues Leon Plantinga (of Yale) at the AMS in Washington, that resembled music, where the sound of “This is something the Music De- Musiktheater of the Staatoper in Stuttgart. D.C., October 2005. took place September 24 in Sanders Theatre poetry was more important than meaning. partment has done several times in the with the Orchestra of the Handel and Haydn v Words became nothing, they became music. in styles you’ll hear.” past—honoring a colleague by organizing Society, Christopher Hogwood, conductor. And music, like science, became a way to At the AMS meeting in Washington D.C., a conference that focuses on their area of The soloists were pianists Levin and his wife, understand the world. In my book I tell the in October 2005, the first Lewis Lockwood interest,” said Thomas Kelly, Morton B. Ya-Fei Chuang, and Dominique Labelle, story of the gradual rise of music’s power Award was given to Marc Perlman of Brown Knafel Professor of Music. “In this case, the soprano. This was an all-Mozart concert, throughout a century, up to a point when University for his book Unplayed Melodies: Ja- President’s Office has helped to sponsor the featuring the Symphony in B-flat, the Piano a character in Monteverdi’s Orfeo is named vanese Gamelan and the Genesis of Music Theory.