AMS NEWSLETTER THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY CONSTITUENT MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES VOLUME XXXVI, NUMBER 2 August, ISSN 0402-012X The Society’s 2006 Annual Meeting AMS/SMT Los Angeles 2006 2–5 November www.ams-net.org/LosAngeles/ The American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory will hold their joint Annual Meeting – November at the Hyatt Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Located in Century City—the former location of the Twentieth Century Fox studio lot that was razed and redeveloped in the s—the Century Plaza is set on seven acres on the fash- ionable West side of Los Angeles. It is close to Beverly Hills, and provides easy access to all of West LA, including Westwood (home of UCLA), Brentwood, Santa Monica, and Ven- ice Beach. Hollywood and West Hollywood are Michele & Tom Grimm, copyright © Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau. only slightly farther away. Los Angeles, site of the Fall AMS meeting El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, to give it its full name, was founded by the order of King Carlos III of Spain in , a few years after the first Fran- OPUS Campaign reaches First Million ciscan missions were established among the The OPUS Campaign ended its second fis- These impressive accomplishments enabled a Tongva and Tataviam people. From its very cal year with a total balance, including both successful conclusion to the first third of the beginning, LA was intensely multicultural and donations and pledges, of just over $ mil- OPUS Campaign. multi-ethnic, its first citizens including people lion—$, of which came in over the The handsome Web site went live in April of European, Native American, and African past twelve months. Altogether there were , making it easy to assess new develop- donors, including sixty above the $, ments as they occur and convenient to donate continued on page level, twenty of whom contributed above the online. With its frequently updated messages $, level. to the membership and visual evocations of The OPUS Campaign Committee extends our Society’s work over its seventy-odd years, In This Issue… lasting thanks to all who gave for the first time the Web site invites your repeated visits— in the past year; to all who continued their preferably with credit card in hand: President’s message . pledge faithfully month by month; and espe- www.ams-net.org/opus Exectutive Director’s report . cially to those who stepped forward in the last Student members Ana Alonso-Minutti, Er- News from the AMS Board . month of the fiscal year to help OPUS make Awards, Prizes, Honors . ika Honisch, and Rob Pearson answered the significant achievements. The M. Elizabeth call to gather that constituency into a potent Committee Reports. C. Bartlet Fund attained its $ , goal, force in the campaign, to which end students Los Angeles Preliminary Program . thus allowing the fund to be permanently Conferences . attending the Annual Meeting in Los Ange- designated to support research in France; and les are invited to meet each other Thursday Grants and Fellowships . the Harold Powers World Travel Fund, sup- Calls for Papers, News Briefs . evening at the Student Reception. Plans for porting travel throughout the world for re- a soirée amicale et fiscale for all donors are AMS Quebec City . search on music, has been established, thanks Obituaries . to a very generous inaugural contribution. continued on page –– President’s Message Does musicology matter? A recent article by sion of knowledge, to the reading or listening of the Society. Our by-laws established stand- Alan Kozinn in the New York Times, “This public, and to the Society itself. At the annual ing committees, annual committees, Council is the Golden Age,” asserted that the classi- meeting of the American Council of Learned committees, and fellowship and award com- cal music scene is more vibrant than ever, but Societies, we were enjoined to make a pub- mittees. The retreat proposed Board flourishes in hitherto unforeseen ways: lic case for the importance of the humanities committees, established at the Columbus and not to be trapped in the terms set by the Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” observation meeting, to improve the functioning of the about relationships and sharks—that both attackers (“impractical”). Don Randel, in- Society. The retreat evaluated the work- must either move forward or die—also coming president of the Mellon Foundation, ings of the three C’s—Committees, Council, works for culture. In classical music, lots of quoted William Carlos Williams: “It is diffi- Chapters—and considered ways to stream- people really just want the dead shark. They cult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men line, expand, or coordinate them. Our Board pine for the days when Bernstein, Reiner, die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is committees focus on the Annual Meeting, on Szell and Toscanini stood on the podium, found there.” career development issues (which we exam- with Heifetz fiddling, Horowitz at the piano The AMS at Bowdoin College. Fortu- ined at length), on communication within the and Callas and Tebaldi locked in a perpetual nately, there are leaders in higher education Society and as the “public face of musicology,” diva war. Most of all they want their reper- who recognize the importance of the humani- and on keeping committees well-stocked. I tory dials set between and . ties and of musicology in particular. One is am deeply grateful to the hard-working chairs You can send those people your condolences. President Barry Mills of Bowdoin College, and their members on all of our committees. who has welcomed the AMS to its new home. In conjunction with Council Secretary An- For the rest of us, the shark is still moving. (Perhaps the shark metaphor is less appropri- drew Dell’Antonio, we are exploring ways to We’re getting our revivals of Machaut and ate here, but I consider this moving forward.) increase communication and collaboration Rameau along with vigorous reconsiderations Last May, when Bob Judd and I had lunch with the Council, an advisory body so crucial of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Mahler and with him at lovely Cleaveland House, he to the Board that its secretary participates in a varied gallery of contemporary composers. was eloquent in declaring the AMS an asset We may be hearing much of this in small, hi- all Board meetings. It meets with the president to his campus, now in the midst of an arts tech halls instead of cavernous temples of the at the Annual Meeting and as of , those initiative. Immediate tangible benefits for the arts or finding it online instead of in shops minutes form part of the Board’s agenda. Key Society, in addition to welcoming and well- or on the radio. But it’s all there, constantly aspects of the Society and our musicological renewing itself. You just have to grab onto equipped quarters, will be high-quality tech lives in general take place in the chapters, the dorsal fin. support for the AMS Web site, increased sup- most of which hold at least two big meetings port staff for the office, and a high campus per year and send officers and representatives Letters did not pour in after this article ap- profile. The communication and outreach to the Annual Meeting and to Council. Jim peared, and the few that did were more pessi- aspects of our mission are likely to flourish in Briscoe is bringing welcome energy to the mistic; one said, simply, that appearances are Brunswick, Maine. That Bowdoin musicolo- Chapter Activities Committee, which has a deceiving because classical music doesn’t mat- gists Mary Hunter and James McCalla have new name and Board-approved mandate. ter any more. This struck me as a problem- long been deeply involved with the AMS is OPUS . Discussion of the OPUS Campaign atic but resonant assertion. I am privileged a matter for rejoicing too. (Indeed, I owe Jim with D. Kern Holomon took up a large part to teach at a university that still requires its belated thanks for his noble service as chair of of the retreat (see the OPUS report, p. ). I undergraduates to acquire listening literacy in the Performance Committee last year, culmi- am deeply grateful to Kern and to Anne Wal- classical music, so I can watch the develop- nating in the brilliant musical events at the ters Robertson, campaign co-chairs, who have ment of a community of interest in a non- Annual Meeting in Washington.) The AMS thrown themselves into the job with extraor- self-selected population. I’ve also noticed, in will be well placed as an exemplar of a tangi- dinary commitment. And I continue to be conversations with friends, colleagues, and ble commitment. I thank President Mills for awed at the generosity of our members and graduate students, that the scholarly direc- his compelling vision for Bowdoin and for his other donors. tions in which people are heading seem mo- wisdom in recognizing the value of the AMS Seventy-fifth Anniversary. We have been tivated by passion rather than duty, that we’re to his institution. in conversation with Council, with the Com- working not on What Needs Doing, but on Board Retreat . The near-midpoint of the mittee on the History of the Society, with the what we love. In some cases, that means put- OPUS Campaign afforded the Board a good chapter officers, and with the OPUS chairs ting oneself in the picture; I think the current opportunity for reflection on the state of the about ways to celebrate the Society’s seventy- popularity of reception studies reflects our Society.