AMS NEWSLETTER THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY CONSTITUENT MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES VOLUME XXXV, NUMBER 2 August, ISSN 0402-012X The Society’s 2005 Annual Meeting AMS Washington – October www.ams-net.org/DC/ The American Musicological Society will con- vene – October at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Located near Du- pont Circle at the edge of Rock Creek Park, the Omni Shoreham offers all the amenities of a first-class hotel, and a short walk to the Woodley Park Metro stop will give conference participants easy access to restaurants, shops, clubs, and theaters via Metrorail, the city’s un- derground transportation system. Washington offers many art museums, including the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Freer, the Hirshhorn, and the Corcoran. A walk along the Mall offers a spectacular view of historical buildings such as the U.S. Capitol and the Smithsonian. (Al- Washington, D.C.: The U.S. Capitol at night though national buildings are generally open, it is often best to contact one’s senators or rep- resentatives, whose staff can arrange special continued on page AMS OPUS Takes Off! AMS’s capital campaign––OPUS (Opening direction of his second chapter. Sarah Ey- Paths to Unlimited Scholarship)––is gather- erly (a Ph.D. candidate at the University of In This Issue… ing momentum. Since the beginning of the California, Davis) discovered primary sources campaign some individuals have given in a Moravian community in Herrnhut that President’s message . or pledged a total of over $,. We are illuminate the role of improvisation in an Executive Director’s Report . already beginning to see tangible benefits of eighteenth-century literate culture. Awards, Prizes, and Honors. this extraordinary generosity. Janet Levy Fund: This year marks the first Grants and Fellowships . Eugene K. Wolf Fund: The Eugene K. competition for grants for AMS members Washington Preliminary Program . Wolf Fund, now in its second year, has now who are independent scholars funded by the Committee Reports. sponsored four graduate students to conduct Janet Levy Fund. These grants support travel Forthcoming Conferences . dissertation research in Europe. One of last and research activities. The next deadline is Calls for Papers . year’s recipients, Gregory Bloch (a Ph.D. can- January (see the AMS website for de- News Briefs . didate at the University of California, Berke- tails). Los Angeles . ley), found materials in Paris about early vo- Lenore Coral Fund: The AMS received a Obituaries . cal physiology quite different from what he generous bequest from the late Lenore Coral, President-elect Charles Atkinson . was expecting that completely changed the continued on page –– President’s Message During the past few months, while locked form of the time. American popular mu- most people associate with study or work.” in a Darwinian struggle with the papers I’d sic is the cultural event of our time” (Adam The same goes for scholarship, and combin- incautiously agreed to give this year, the last Gopnick); “Part of telling your own story is ing scholarship with deep study of any music months of my department chairmanship, and developing your own ‘sound.’ An Afrological in whatever period or culture may not imme- the first few months of my presidency (I say notion of an improviser’s ‘sound’ may be seen diately find its way to that mysterious “listen- Darwinian because there was clearly no intel- as analogous to the Eurological notion of a ing public” or even just the musically curious. ligent design in the way everything has come compositional ‘style’” (George E. Lewis); “No The idea of “musicological literacy” is not one together), I have been musing about the topic claim of universality can survive situation in that people normally connect with the many of communication. One of the mandates of intellectual history” (Richard Taruskin). My other kinds of musical literacies that enable the OPUS campaign and of the AMS in gen- list goes on, as I’m sure your individual aha! conversation within (and sometimes across) eral these days is to communicate both inter- passages do, and I engage in private dialogues cultures to take place, for example, literacy in nally, with our members, and externally, with with these communications from the page. listening, reading, performing, and improvis- “the public,” with a goal of putting musicolo- Written words communicate, but who ing, each with multiple codes and languages gy “out there.” Indeed, the Board Committee is reading them? Many musicologists ac- of expression; in writing about musics and on Communications just held its first-ever re- tively participate in what I think of as the musicologies, Philip Bohlman notes the “en- treat in Philadelphia in May, under the expert Four Conversations: () with the Performing croachment of plurals into the disciplining of guidance of chair Cristle Collins Judd (see World, both inside the academy (in schools music.” If the salutary musical pluralism that her report elsewhere in this issue), to ponder of music and conservatories) and outside is part of everyday life makes it easier for read- goals, means, and audiences. While the desire (professional performers and critics); () with ers, listeners, and players not to choose the art and need to communicate are, of course, es- other parts of the Music-Scholarly World; () and writing seen as difficult, how do we en- sential human characteristics, it has yet to be with the Humanistic World, primarily other courage a pluralist musicological literacy that shown that communicating about musicol- academic disciplines; and () with the Public navigates these shoals? ogy is a Cartesian certainty. World, in the press, in events connected to The salutary effects of the OPUS cam- As AMS members, we share, regardless of concerts, as cultural critics, as educators more paign can be shown to stem both from the our professional circumstances, a desire and broadly. (Connect the dots to the Four Tem- “Opening Paths” part—the new initiatives need to communicate our thoughts and re- peraments.) It’s just as hard to figure out who underway and the generous donations already search and involvement with our subjects, “the public” is and how to reach it now as it pledged—as well as the “Unlimited Scholar- whether orally to students and colleagues was in the eighteenth century, when Leopold ship” part—the possibilities to expand and or through the written word to our readers, make plural what we do and what we love. whoever they may be. When I noted with How do we best encourage There have been so many recent books and surprise to my colleague Joe Dubiel that peo- a pluralist musicological literacy? essays examining, problematizing, and chid- ple are sometimes better than their work, he ing our discipline that it is a relief to stop for responded “What you’re saying is: writing is Mozart admonished his son that in his audi- a moment and recognize that expansion is a hard.” Meditating on the power of writing, I ence there were “a hundred know-nothings valuable goal in itself, and that the “banal plu- remembered Kenneth Levy’s advice to me as for every ten true connoisseurs,” odds that ralism” referred to by Philip Gossett in a prob- a graduate student to read Bertrand Russell’s seem strikingly favorable today. But Leopold ing yet soothing presidential message during A History of Western Philosophy as a model, as was talking only of concert audiences, not the the conflicted s appears to be a revivifying well as his trying to curb my youthful excite- whole realm of readers, listeners, and active or pluralism today, pace those who seek to claim ment over Bukofzer’s celebrated Caput Mass passive participants in many kinds of music the stage as the next paradigm-shifter. Such article with its mystery-story unfolding by at all levels in our vastly broadened possible laudable initiatives as the new awards, travel suggesting that I look at the “strong, spare areas of musical activity. In his Music: A Very grants, and the Janet Levy Fund for Indepen- writing style of Oliver Strunk.” Short Introduction, Nicholas Cook writes that dent Scholars will aid in this expansion. Thus, I’ve been thinking about words “modern communications and sound repro- One of our most important sources for that have stuck in my mind over the years: duction technology have made musical plu- tracking the field in all its plural majesty is “Expression is a word that tends to corrupt ralism part of everyday life.” RILM, and thanks to a generous bequest thought” (Charles Rosen); “Haydn was by in- Musicological discourse is not infrequent- from the late Lenore Coral to support the bib- stinct Baroque, by conviction Classical” (H. ly seen as dauntingly “technical,” even within liographic work of the U.S. RILM office, the C. Robbins Landon); “Medieval theological the academy by humanists in other fields who AMS Board has voted to rename its RILM literature was replete with learned disquisi- are also trying to reach the public. It some- Fund in her honor and memory. Contribu- tions upon the physical similarities of the times has the same difficulty that art music tions to the Lenore Coral Fund to support host and more quotidian pâtisseries” (Michael itself does in connecting broadly—even if RILM will be considered part of the OPUS Long); “It is in Bach’s Courante [of the D-Ma- it’s not about art music. As Julian Johnson campaign. jor Partita] that French platonic order suffers declares in Who Needs Classical Music?, “No In a short time we will be together in most in the encounter with surging Italianate amount of marketing strategies, outreach pro- Washington, exploring the riches of the field desire” (Susan McClary); “In every period, grams, and grants for ‘new audiences’ can get and the city (the latter is mere wishful think- every century, there is one art form .