AMS NEWSLETTER THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY CONSTITUENT MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES VOLUME XLVII, NUMBER 2 August 2017 ISSN 0402-012X AMS Rochester 2017 9–12 November www.ams-net.org/rochester We welcome you this November to the AMS Annual Meeting in Rochester, New York. Rochester is a special place: the confluence of the Erie Canal and the Genesee River cre- ated an industrial boom in the early-to-mid nineteenth century and still provides “gorges” views today. Home to both Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, Rochester was at the forefront of social justice in the United States more than a century ago, a point to be Visit Rochester Credit: celebrated in more than one offering during the Annual Meeting. The Eastman School of Music, one of the world’s top institutions for both music research and performance, will play an important part in many of the meet- ing’s activities, as the Preliminary Program Rochester at night (pp. 11–25) reveals. While the AMS and Eastman may well porary art. The Italian organ replica housed traditional daytime performances (p. 26), but engage you 24/7, there’s plenty to do around there is played every Sunday at 1 and 3 p.m. we also have arranged concerts in connection Rochester if you need a respite. The Univer- For edgier art, you may wish to visit the with the Eastman School of Music, the artis- sity of Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery has Rochester Contemporary Art Center (www. tic epicenter of our gathering. On Thursday an impressive collection that includes works rochestercontemporary.org). Ludomusicolo- night, Eastman’s contemporary ensemble by Rembrandt and Monet as well as contem- gists and others interested in games won’t Musica Nova will present works of Iannis Xe- want to miss the Strong Museum of Play nakis, György Ligeti, and Bernhard Gander. (www.museumofplay.org), a highly interac- On the following night, the Eastman Phil- In This Issue… tive, collections-based museum devoted to harmonia will offer a performance of Edward President’s Message ...............2 the history and exploration of play that hous- Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Brahms’s first Major Funding for Coral/RILM .....4 es the world’s largest and most comprehen- piano concerto. Both are free and open to the President’s Endowed Plenary Lecture 5 sive collection of historical materials related public. We have also scheduled a free interac- Women & Gender Endowed Lecture 5 to play. The Strong Museum is also home to tive demonstration with Eastman’s Balinese AMS Public Lectures............. 6 the International Center for the History of Gamelan Sanjiwani, entitled “Gambol on the ACLS McClary-Walser Fellowship .. 7 Electronic Games, the National Toy Hall of Gamelan.” Awards, Prizes, Honors ........... 8 Fame, the World Video Game Hall of Fame, In addition to the Eastman offerings, the By-laws Changes ............... 10 the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives AMS will be sponsoring two special musical Rochester Preliminary Program ..... 11 of Play, and the American Journal of Play. events during the annual meeting. First, we AMS Dance ...................20 If you are more inclined to open spaces, will witness the debut of Rochester’s new pe- Rochester Performances ..........26 the Genesee Gateway Park is nearby, and is riod orchestra Ensemble Perihipsous, which Rochester Program Selection ......26 part of the Riverway Trail. The city has 12,000 specializes in music from 1750 to 1850 and Committee News ...............27 acres of parkland, including areas near Lake draws its members from the Eastman com- Study Group News ..............31 Ontario (five miles north of central Roch- munity. The group’s founder and director is AMS San Antonio 2018 .......... 34 ester). The Finger Lakes, Iroquois National Michael Ruhling, professor of performing arts News Briefs ...................36 Wildlife Refuge, and Letchworth State Park in the College of Liberal Arts at the Rochester CFPs and Conferences ...........37 are within fifty miles. Institute of Technology and editor of Haydn: Grants, Awards, Fellowships .......38 Special performances. Not only do we have The Online Journal of the Haydn Society of 39 Obituaries .................... an exciting slate of musicians for the AMS’s continued on page President’s Message I hope everyone is enjoying summer, a time February 2015 AMS Newsletter, www.ams- at about 700–800 or more, and acceptance when academic life is often the envy of oth- net.org/newsletter/AMSNewsletter-2015–2. rates have plummeted accordingly, despite ers. I write to bring you up to date on some pdf, p. 19). Responses to the subquestion gradual expansions of the annual meeting. recent business of the Board of Directors as “Should the AMS meeting be changed to It’s clear that if we are to be the inclusive it concerns our annual meetings. enable more participation?” were strongly Society that we need to be, we simply have Much of the focus in recent board meet- positive. By contrast, three specific propos- to open the gate more widely by making ings has been on issues of inclusivity and als—expand to include Thursday morning; shorter papers part of the solution. Happi- diversity, as we continually ask ourselves add concurrent sessions; shorten session ly, the increase in the number of concurrent how the Society can be more welcoming of length to two hours and shorten presenta- sessions brings our acceptance percentage 20 new ideas and different voices. The Annual tions to minutes plus Q & A for a total up to nearly 40% for 2017, but that is just a 30 Meeting is the place where such change of minutes—each yielded much weaker one-time and partial fix for a longer-range seems most attainable and necessary. Yet approval. Perhaps one can chalk the dis- problem. An optimal mix of paper lengths, our acceptance numbers of late would crepancy up to human nature, inasmuch formats, and concurrent sessions is some- suggest otherwise. Despite having added as the principle of change is evidently more thing we will be working to achieve over concurrent sessions in recent years, our ac- attractive than what it takes to effect it. But the coming years. ceptance numbers for papers and sessions it nevertheless suggests that there will be no Further changes in 2018 will likely in- have hovered in the 25–30 percent range. uniform agreement about future changes Complaints about rejections run rampant to ameliorate a problematic situation, and clude a shift toward more session-based among the membership, understandably so serves as a caution that growing pains are initiatives, in keeping with trends that are as such numbers seem incompatible with inevitable no matter what route we take. already being set by our membership, even our goal of making the meeting a rich mo- In response to these various conundrums as we continue to retain a distinct place for saic of activity for people who share a seri- and facts, and in the spirit of turning a individual paper submissions. The benefit ous commitment to music research. challenge into an opportunity, the board should be the capacity to present more new In a first effort to remedy the problem, decided at its April 2017 meeting that it was work by more of our constituency with a we have begun looking at some of our sib- vital to roll up our sleeves and begin the consequent widening of perspectives. ling societies. Measured against five ACLS The board will continue to discuss these societies of comparable size that responded issues and explore solutions at its fall 2017 to our recent request for data about annual we simply have to open meetings, and will also make the annual meetings, the AMS turns out to have a low- the gate more widely meeting the focus of a board retreat in er acceptance rate than any of the others, spring 2018. There is much to be done in and most societies have acceptance rates hard work of initiating change. Thus, at the order to reach stable solutions. We will con- that are much higher than ours. upcoming 2017 Annual Meeting in Roches- tinue working with the Society for Music Two other facts gleaned from this infor- ter, the Society will host eleven concurrent Theory on how best to coordinate at our bi- mal survey are equally striking. One, other sessions rather than the nine that have been annual joint meetings. We will be thinking societies surveyed hold many more con- customary recently. We were fortunate that about the evaluation process for submis- current sessions than AMS does, ranging the flexible set-up of the Rochester venue sions and what can be done to improve it. from a third again as many at the low end allowed for this increase. We will be working with venues to explore to almost nine times as many at the high The board is currently discussing ways to ways to open up space. And broadly speak- end. The numbers can’t be parsed in sim- experiment with shortening at least some ing, we will continue to gather data on oth- ple terms because each society has its own papers at the 2018 joint meeting with the er societies, collect feedback, and consider mix of different formats. (Indeed, remark- Society for Music Theory, albeit with joint a variety of ways to make the meeting as ably, most have many more seminar-type AMS/SMT panels retaining the 30-minute intellectually stimulating, cohesive, dialogi- sessions than the AMS does and organize paper with 15-minute Q and A format. Lest cal, varied, and rewarding as possible. Ulti- meetings predominantly around submitted shorter papers strike some as a relinquish- mately, our goal is that changes be driven sessions.) Two, none of the sibling societies ing of ideals, let me add another fact to we surveyed had a paper length longer than the set of realities that we face.