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Christopher
Hasty: Temporality and
Rhythm
Christopher Hasty
writes on questions of musical rhythm and
temporality in a variety of repertories,
though he specializes in music of 20th
century; he is also an active composer.
Hasty's book, Meter as Rhythm, won the
1998 Wallace Berry Award from the Society
for Music Theory. He joined the Harvard
faculty in the fall of
2002.
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The
word rhythm--I mean it in a larger sense,
rhythm with a capital "R". Rhythm is one
of the only words we have to describe the
ongoingness of music. rhythm speaks of the
temporal and expressive--it's a reminder
that the actual course of our
attentiveness is crucial for our
construction of meaning."
--Christopher
Hasty
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"Music is often placed
in the shadow of language, especially in our
culture," says Christopher Hasty. "Because music
doesn't seem to have the cognitive grounding of
other arts, such as literature, musicians and
thinkers about music have often attempted to model
their work on the approaches of other disciplines.
What I'd like to do is to try to turn the tables to
look more positively at what seems problematic
about music--the fact that it's not so easily
arrested in concepts--as a way of thinking about
music theory that might be responsive to the
activities of performers, listeners, and students,
and that might offer some productive ways of
thinking about other, apparently more fixed sorts
of human experience--like painting or
literature."
The actual experience
of music and its temporality--music's procession
through time--is central to Hasty's work.
"A musical work is an ongoing
process, that changes through time, revealing parts
of itself that couldn't be known at inception.
"There can be reluctance to
broach questions of actual musical experience for
fear that they will lead to hopeless subjectivity
and irrationality--individuals experience different
things. But recognizing the efficacy of musical
communication doesn't have to lead us to imagine
that there is only a single meaning that we, in
various ways, imperfectly understand."
"Because music actually
emerges in ongoing activity, it can't be as easily
arrested or controlled as we've grown accustomed to
think. It's irreducible and hugely various. Which
gets me into philosophical questions. Once you
realize you can't control things, isolate things,
it normally presents a problem. In a technological
society like ours I don't think we like to live
with a lot of uncertainty. The notion that the
objects of our knowledge would be that much in flux
is daunting. I don't think that's bad. In
fact, it's possibly liberating, but it would
involve rethinking many of our categories for
knowing."
Hasty embraces a complex
understanding of the world that involves actual
experience, and focuses on "potential" rather than
fixed structures. He studies information gleaned
from philosophy and psychology, particularly
"process" philosophy and ecological
psychology.
"Most psychologists simply
isolate if it's possible to isolate some elementary
aspects of mind, then if enough can be studied,
they can be put back together to give us a picture
of the whole--but this is impossible because a key
component is missing: the temporal continuity that
from the beginning holds everything together and
creates meaning."
Hasty sees his work
dovetailing with that of colleague David Lewin:
"David's work is remarkable--he is both serious and
playful in the way he uses mathematics. He uses
theory as a way of discovering new possibilities,
acknowledging that music is creative--the work
becomes a theater for imagination and intellect. I
think I'm doing something similar to what Lewin's
doing, only from a more specifically psychological
and temporal point of view."
What can the study of music
in theory terms add to philosophical
questions?
"It can allow the creativity
of music to extend to other fields. What's needed
is not just cooperation but some vocabulary that
enables people to share knowledge, to contribute to
each other's knowledge. This includes asking new
questions and creating an environment in which they
can be asked. By acknowledging a variety of
experience we can also acknowledge the call for a
musicology that's more collaborative and open both
internally among the subdisciplines--history,
theory, ethnomusicology, composition,
performance--and externally."
Hasty is currently working on
his book, Repetition and Novelty, an attempt
to sketch out a temporal theory of music and
develop terminology and concepts to promote the
discussion of music as an activity that's
constantly changing and pluralistic.
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2002 Fromm
Commission Winners Announced
At its November meeting, the
Board of Directors of The Fromm Music Foundation at
Harvard University announced the names of the
twelve composers selected to receive 2002 Fromm
commissions. These composers were chosen from 150
applicants.
The composers who received
commissions are: Edward Campion (Berkeley, CA);
Jeffrey Cotton (Jersey City, NJ); Richard Festinger
(San Francisco, CA); Daniel Koontz (Port Jefferson,
NY); Keeril Makan (Berkeley, CA); Liviu Marinescu
(Northridge, CA); Jeff Myers (Rochester, NY); David
Rakowski (Maynard, MA); David Schober (Ann Arbor,
MI); Stephen Siegel (New York, NY); David Taddie
(Morgantown, WV); and Mischa Zupko (Bloomington,
IN).
These commissions represent
one of the principal ways that the Fromm Music
Foundation seeks to strengthen composition and to
bring contemporary concert music closer to the
public. In addition to the commissioning fee of
$10,000, a subsidy is available for the ensemble
performing the premiere of the commissioned work.
Among a number of other projects, the Fromm Music
Foundation sponsors the annual Fromm Contemporary
Music Series at Harvard and supports the Festival
of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood.
For more information about
the Fromm Foundation at Harvard, go to
www.music.fas.harvard.edu/fromm.html/
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Bach,
Shakespeare and the French Revolution:
Concert Pianist Zakrzewski Mixes Academics
and Touring
In December of last
year, Berenika Zakrzewski '04 was playing
Beethoven and Bach at St. Paul's Church
for an audience of firefighters and
rescuers working at the World Trade Center
site. To start her sophomore year, she
performed at President Summers'
inauguration. In November she played a
sold-out, all-Chopin solo recital as part
of the Rock Hotel International Pianofest,
sharing a series bill with Philip Glass,
Jean Yves Thibaudet and Earl Wild.
So why would a
student with an already burgeoning
performance career choose to spend her
college years at a music program known for
its academic rigor rather than a
conservatory?
"I'm a better
pianist since I decided to do this. A
fuller person. I enjoy writing and
debating and learning as much as I
possibly can. I enjoy the environment and
community I belong to here. It's less a
one-way street--I feel like a lot of
musicians aren't fully rounded. My
horizons are bigger here.
"And I'm not a music
nerd," Zakrzewski is quick to add. "I love
dancing. I love going out and listening to
music that's not classical. My friends are
not all musicians, and I like that. I had
friends come from Harvard and all the way
from L.A. to see my concert in New York,
and the reality is that they're coming to
hear a classical pianist. My role is
bringing classical music to people my
age."
Zakrzewski came to
Harvard after graduating from both
Juilliard and the Professional Children's
School in New York. She still practices
piano four to five hours a day and studies
piano performance as an independent study
with Professor Robert Levin. She's taking
a Shakespeare course, one on the French
Revolution, and an Orchestration and
Conducting class alongside her
requirements for the concentration in
music. Then, there's the traveling--about
one trip a month or every two months--to
perform. Right now she is preparing for a
tour of Mexico, and a concert where she
will premiere, with the winner of the
Maazel-Vilar Conductors Competition, a new
piano concerto by Korean composer, Chang
Min Park.
"I know this is an
important time in my career. I'm not going
to give up concerts that come my way. I
try to choose concerts that are high
profile."
The tricky balancing
act--performing, studying piano, reading
Shakespeare, having a social life--also
requires a mentor, whom
Zakrzewski instantly
identifies as Robert Levin.
"He's a source of
guidance to me. And not just piano; he's
also a source of psychological guidance.
You seek out people to help you focus. I
am lucky that he's here at
Harvard.
"I won't lie," she
confesses. "It's a lot of work. Everything
I do, I do very quickly. And I couldn't do
it [the traveling] without the
understanding of my professors; they make
a world of difference. I've had to
postpone exams and miss some lectures. But
essentially it comes down to showing
people you're responsible. They have to
understand you have high expectations of
yourself. And it's not for everybody--you
need a certain sort of persistent passion.
Playing piano is something I've never
thought about. It was there when I was
born. It will always be a part of
me."
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Derrick
Ashong: First in his Field at
Harvard
The arts are a way of communicating
all sorts of ideas. I'm looking at what
effect they have on history and in modern
times--in Brazil, Jamaica, Africa. I want
to use it all to understand what's
happening in the U.S. today.
--Derrick Ashong G-1
"Asafo drumming in
Ghana includes what are called
Atumpan--talking drums that are tuned to
produce tones that 'speak'," says Derrick
Ashong as he thrums out a beat with his
voice and fingers. "If you know the Twi
language you can hear the words of the
drum--'listen…listen…speak…speak.'
Asafo is a kind of military drumming, and
communication via drums was essential to
the military."
Ashong '97
(Afro-American Studies) did his senior
thesis on Ghana. After graduation he did
some acting and started a music production
company as well as his funk-rock-reggae
band, Soulfège, before deciding
that the best way to synthesize his
interests would be to go back to graduate
school. He's now the first joint
Music/Afro-American Studies Department
graduate student at Harvard, where he'll
study the political and social influences
of music on culture.
"Being the first is
a cool position to be in. What I'm doing
hasn't been done yet. There is some
ambiguity, but also opportunity to try
things, to craft a program. It allows me
to learn the things I need to learn, and
hopefully, I can provide a framework for
the students who will come next."
Ashong is looking at
several musical styles, such as Ghanaian
highlife, one of the most widespread
popular music forms in West Africa, and
Brazilian capoeira, a combination dance,
martial art, and strategy game that
developed as a form of resistance among
African slaves in Brazil.
"In capoeira there
is communication between the people
playing the music and the people
dancing/fighting. Capoeira Angola,
traditional capoeira, is really based on
the idea of cunning: the movements are
deceptive: slow, slow, then fast, quick,
surprising. It has interesting
implications when you think of the nature
of resistance. When you look at the
resurgence of Angola-style capoeira in the
last 20 years, to what degree are there
ties between that and the evolution of
black nationalism in Brazil?"
He sees being a
joint Afro-Am/Music graduate student as
the best of both worlds: "In the Afro-Am
department, we're all interdisciplinary,
so everyone's got a blend of interests
(Ashong was one of four joint candidates
accepted to the Ph.D. program, and the
only one in music). We all look at things
differently, so the discussion is great.
And in the music department, I have some
things to catch up on. Like working on my
Bach chorales.
"I'm interested in
music in the broadest sense, so this is a
real opportunity to learn. Having music be
a serious component of my education is
great. Another program wouldn't give me
that. Even in arranging harmonies for my
band, I'm now influenced by the way Bach
harmonizes things."
Derrick Ashong's
undergraduate thesis musical performance,
Songs We Can't Sing will be
produced at the National Theatre in Ghana
in collaboration with the University of
Ghana at Legon in July, 2003.
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Eileen
Southern, Professor Emerita, Dies at
82
Eileen Jackson
Southern, an authority on Renaissance and
African-American music and the first black
female professor to be given tenure at
Harvard, died October 13 in Port
Charlotte, Florida.
Southern taught at
Prairie View University in Texas, Southern
University, Brooklyn College, and York
College of the City University of New
York. She came to Harvard in 1974 as a
lecturer and became a full professor in
1976 with a dual appointment in
Afro-American Studies and music. From 1975
to 1979 she chaired the Department of
Afro-American Studies. She retired in
1987.
Among Southern's
publications are The Music of Black
Americans, A History (1970) which
discusses not only jazz, blues, and
spirituals, but the full gamut of musical
genres to which African Americans have
contributed over the past 450 years. In
1973, with her husband Joseph Southern,
she established Black Perspectives in
Music, the first musicological journal on
the study of black music.
Southern received
the 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award from
the society of American Music and the
Outstanding Contributor to Music Award
from the National Association of Negro
Musicians (1971), the Deems Taylor Award
from ASCAP (1973), and the distinguished
Achievement Award from the National Black
Music Caucus (1986). In 2001, she was
honored by President George W. Bush as a
National Humanities Medallist.
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Material ConneXion
in NYC
--Elliott Gyger
From November 15, 2002 to January 15,
2003, Material ConneXion in New York City
hosted a collaborative exhibition
involving students, faculty and staff from
Harvard's Graduate School of Design (GSD)
and the Harvard Music Department. The
exhibition, entitled
"Immaterial/Ultramaterial: Re-Sonance,"
was previously mounted in the Graduate
School of Design's main foyer space in May
2001. It explores the boundaries of
materiality, both by drawing out the
unsuspected possibilities of materials
treated in unconventional ways, and
through the architectural use of
non-material phenomena such as sound,
light and smell.
While the GSD component of the New York
exhibition is fundamentally a photographic
and material record of the earlier show,
the Music Department contribution has
evolved significantly. In the GSD foyer,
the three sound pieces were spatially
separated, and just a small part of a
complex interactive web surrounding the
spectator. By contrast, the nature of the
Material ConneXion gallery has thrown
sound into much sharper relief: while the
GSD photographs and samples are confined
mostly to one wall, it is the sonic
dimension which fills the space and
envelops the spectator. The sound pieces
are also in much greater proximity to one
another. Responding to these changed
circumstances has necessitated the
thorough reworking (or even reconception)
of each individual piece.
The resulting new constellation of
sound works is grouped together under the
title "Re-sonance."
Graduate students Helen Lee and Peter
Whincop have substantially elaborated
their work with homasote (a recycled paper
material used in building partitions) to
create "Tac-Tile," an interactive piece
which behaves after the manner of a living
thing, responding to stimuli in its
immediate environment (especially through
touch) and drawing on its "memory" of
prerecorded sounds, including some from
the GSD foyer
installation. Assistant Professor
Elliott Gyger's "through a glass lightly"
uses sounds created with aerogel (a glass
foam with remarkable insulating properties
which is 98% empty space) to create walls
and spaces of metallic and glassy sounds,
triggered by movement across light
barriers. HUSEAC Manager Ean White's
beautifully simple "Sublimation" explores
the boundary between solid material and
air by resonating a glass wall with
endlessly rising and falling tones,
allowing the space itself to sing.
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"On an interior wall, behind a bench
made of foam, I placed two mass drivers
equally spaced along the length of the
bench...a recording of automobile traffic
was played, using the wall as a
transducer, such that the primary mode of
audition took place through bone
conduction while the listener was
seated....with the use of bone conduction,
whereby sound seems to inhabit one's body,
my intent was to conflate sensations of
personal and public acoustic spaces."
--Ean White, of his installation at the
GSD last spring
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HUSEAC hosts
Matmos
Learning from Performers (a program of
the Office for the Arts) presented a
series of Sound Art Workshops by MATMOS at
HUSEAC as part of their residency at
Harvard, November 18-22.
Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt, aka
MATMOS, conducted workshops on the history
of electronic music and sound art, in
particular "musique concrete" and
contemporary sampling practices. Students
created an original collaborative work
over the course of the three workshops and
took away a burned CDR of a new piece that
uses their sounds.
Known for their association with
singer/composer Bjrk (they opened for her
"Vespertine" tour last year), MATMOS has
recorded several CDs for the Matador
label. For more information, go to
http//www.brainwashed.com/matmos/
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State-of-the-Art
Mixing Studio Available to
Composers
--Joshua Fineberg
Last Year Kurt Stallmann and the HUSEAC
studio technical manager Ean White set up
a state-of-the-art 5.1 surround-sound
mixing facility in the Room 33 studio
based on a Pro-tools work station. In an
effort to increase the profile of the
studio we have been inviting outside
composers with recording projects that
need this still-rare type of studio to
come work at Harvard during periods that
will not interfere with student activities
(our first priority). The outside
composers pay for any technical support
they need and we supply the studio for
free. This policy has now born first
fruit.
Tristan Murail mixed and edited the
music for a new surround-sound DVD which
has been released on Universal Music
France and just received the first ever
Grand Prix du DVD from France's Academie
Charles Cross (sort of the French
Grammies), and the stereo CD version was
awarded a "Choc de la Musique" (the
highest possible rating) from "Le Monde de
la Musique" and given a special mention
for technical excellence. Tod Machover has
also done some work on the Boston Modern
Orchestra Project recordings of his
Hyperstring trilogy for an upcoming CD and
possible future DVD.
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Harvard
Appoints Two to Music Department
Faculty
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An international faculty
search for two senior professorial positions has
concluded with the acceptances of Carol Oja and
Anne Shreffler.
Carol J. Oja was Professor of
Music and American Studies at the College of
William and Mary. Her research focuses on composers
in early 20th-century America. Oja's book,
Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s
(Oxford University Press, 2000), won the Lowens
Book Award from the Society for American Music and
an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Book Award. She is currently
president-elect of the Society for American Music.
"I look forward to joining
one of the most distinguished musicology programs
in the country," says Oja. "By capitalizing on the
intersection of subdisciplines within the
Department of Music, ties with the History of
American Civilization and African American Studies,
and the abundance of resources in its libraries,
Harvard is positioned to forge a multi-disciplinary
approach to the study of American music--one of
unprecedented breadth and diversity."
Anne C. Shreffler most
recently held the position of Professor of Music at
Universitat Basel. Her book, Webern and the
Lyric Impulse came out from Oxford University
Press in 1994. Shreffler is no stranger to Harvard:
"After I finished my studies at New England
Conservatory, I crossed the river and joined the
Harvard Music Department as a graduate student. I'm
looking forward to rejoining the Department, only
this time I'll have to cross the ocean. In my new
position I hope to pursue--in teaching and
research--projects in music and politics,
relationships between European and American music,
the historiography of 20th-century music, and
opera."
Says Christoph Wolff of the
appointments: "Anne and Carol will add
unprecedented strength to our musicology program.
Anne, a renowned expert of the Second Viennese
School, and Carol, a distinguished scholar of
American musical culture, will bring into focus the
study of 20th-century music, its 19th-century
background, and of the contemporaneous scene as
well. Moreover, Anne will provide our Department
with an important link to the premier repository of
20th-century musical sources at the Sacher
Foundation in Basel. Carol, on the other hand, will
establish close ties with Harvard's
interdisciplinary History of American Civilization
program. I am excited about the refreshing
perspectives the two will bring to our
community."
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Faculty
News
Brinkmann
Retires
As the applause echoed in Paine
Hall, Professor Brinkmann looked out on
his "Symphonic Century" students for
the last time. Brinkmann, James Edward
Ditson Professor of Music, retired from
teaching in January. He joined the
Harvard faculty in 1985.
As
a finale, he played Peter Schickele's
The Unbegun Symphony and bade students
in both German and in English , "Glide
into the new year with a good
start."
And
you, too, Professor.
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Professor
Emeriti Elliot Forbes, and
ProfessorsThomas F. Kelly and Christoph
Wolff spoke at a symposium in honor of the
Centenary of G. Wallace Woodworth (formerly James
Edward Ditson Professor of Music and Conductor of
the Glee Club and Choral Society) in Paine Hall on
November 16th. Forbes spoke on A Dynamic Life in
Music; Kelly on Teaching Old Music at the New
Harvard; and Wolff on What Do the Bach B Minor Mass
and the Mozart Requiem Have in Common? Scholar and
Performer in Dialogue.
Morton B.
Knafel Professor Thomas F. Kelly was a
Resident in Music at the American Academy in Rome
for the spring of 2002, while he was on what he
claims is a well-earned sabbatical leave. He
continued working on two book projects--an edition
of the medieval ordinal of the abbey of
Montecassino, and a volume on opera premieres. He
also had a bit of a busman's holiday, lecturing in
Rome and teaching at the Università "G.
d'Annunzio" of Chieti-Pescara, the International
Master Class at the Abbey of Fontevraud, and the
Centre d'Études supérieures de
civilization médiévale at the
University of Poitiers.
Professor
Emeritus Lewis Lockwood's book Beethoven:
The Music and the Life (New York: W.W. Norton
& Co., Inc, 2003) was released on the
composer's (and author's) birthday, December 16th.
He also has two other recent publications: the
critical edition of Josquin's "Missa Hercules Dux
Ferrarie" for the New Josquin Edition (in Vol. 11
of the New Josquin Edition); and 2) Lockwood's
facsimile edition, with commentary entitled, "A
Ferrarese Chansonnier: Roma, Biblioteca Casanatense
MS 2856" (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana,
2002).
Quincy Jones
Professor of African-American Music Ingrid
Monson moderated A Conversation with Joanne
Brackeen, one of the most original and innovative
artists in modern jazz and Kayden visiting Artist
at Harvard, sponsored by OFA.
In March 03,
the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra will give several
performances of Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of
Music Bernard Rands' Tre Canzoni Senza
Parole. Coinciding with these, Rands will have a
mini residency at the Cincinnati College
Conservatory where his Canti D'Amor and other of
his chamber works will be performed. Also in March
the Chicago Symphony Singers, conducted by Sir
Andrew Davis, will perform the world premiere of My
Child in the CSO's Music Now concert series. In
April, Rands' opera Belladonna will be produced by
the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center.
Commissioned for the 50th anniversary of the Aspen
International Festival, the opera was premiered
there in the summer of 1999. A large-scale
(40-minute) work, Apokryphos for soprano solo,
chorus and orchestra, commissioned by the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra, will receive its premiere
performances by the CSO chorus and orchestra on May
8, 9 &11 with Angela Denoke (soprano) and
Daniel Barenboim (conductor).
The Memorial
Church announces a gift of $1.5 million from Ann
and Graham Gund for the endowment in perpetuity of
the post of University Organist and Choirmaster.
This position, first held by John Knowles Paine, is
currently held by Dr. Murray F. Somerville,
who thus becomes the first Gund University Organist
and Choirmaster.
The
University Choir announces the world-wide release
of its first CD on the English ASV label, a program
of music by Harvard composers Amy Beach and Randall
Thompson, recorded in June 2001 in London's
historic Temple Church. BBC Music Magazine awarded
the disc four stars; further reviews have appeared
in Fanfare Magazine, The Gramophone, and the
Journal of the Association of Anglican
Musicians.
Daniel
Stepner, Preceptor and Handel and Haydn
Concertmaster, traveled to Leipzig, Germany, in
late June to serve as a judge in the International
Bach Competition. He spent the summer with the
Aston Magna Festival, a period-instrument concert
series in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, for
which he serves as Artistic Director.
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Wolff
Named University Professor
Christoph Wolff
is a scholar of enormous learning and
insight who has greatly expanded our
knowledge and appreciation of the music of
the 17th and 18th
centuries.
--University
President Lawrence H. Summers
Music historian
Christoph Wolff has been named to the
Adams University Professorship, the
University's highest professorial
appointment. Established in 1981 through a
gift of Charles F. Adams '32, and intended
for "individuals of distinction ...
working on the frontiers of knowledge, and
in such a way as to cross the conventional
boundaries of the specialties," Wolff was
cited for a body of work that has become,
according to FAS Dean William C. Kirby,
"essential reading in the
field."
Kirby also commended
Professor Wolff, who joined the Harvard
faculty in 1976, as "a great citizen of
Harvard," citing his tenures as chair of
the Music Department, acting director of
the University Library, and dean of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: "His
generosity of spirit, expansive intellect,
and extraordinary productivity have marked
all of his endeavors."
Christoph Wolff has
written or edited 20 books and more than
150 articles, studies, and musical
editions on music from the 15th to the
20th centuries. He received the
ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Bach:
Essays on His Life and Music (1991);
his Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned
Musician (2000) was a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize and won the Otto Kinkeldey
Award of the American Musicological
Society.
--excerpted from the
Harvard Gazette,
10/30/02
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Marvin
Celebrates 25th Year
Senior
Lecturer Jameson Marvin will mark his 25th year as
Director of Choral Activities at Harvard University
on Friday, March 7, with a performance of
Beethoven's Missa Solemnis performed by the
Orchestra of Emmanuel, and the Harvard Glee Club,
Choral Society, and Collegium at Sanders Theatre.
The following
Saturday, Marvin will conduct choral alumni/ae in
favorite repertoire of the past 25 years and HGC,
RCS, HRCM alumni/ae in a Holden Sing of Brahms' Ein
deutsches Requiem. Rev. Peter J. Gomes will be the
featured speaker at a festive banquet at Eliot
House that evening.
Says Marvin,
"There could have been no more an enriching
experience for me than teaching Harvard
undergraduates. To have had the opportunity for a
quarter of a century to touch the lives of six
generations of Harvard students, the finest
assemblage of undergraduates in the country, has
been an honor, a joy, a privilege, an inspiration,
and literally an experience of a
lifetime."
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Library
News
Opera
Scores Catalogued
Music catalogers Andrea
Cawelti and Candice Feldt have made a fine start on
processing the Ruth Neils and John M. Ward
Collection of Opera Scores. The richness of 19th
century French repertoire in this collection was
clear from the beginning, but some other intriguing
concentrations have become apparent during
cataloguing. Frequently, the French repertoire
includes several variants of the same editions,
which provide fascinating glimpses into the
influence on printed scores of first staged
productions. A large number of compositions by
women composers throughout three centuries will be
of great interest to scholars. Unusual scores
published under the Soviet and Nazi eras also
comprise a fascinating subset of the
collection.
Scores of particular note
include:
a score of Debussy's
Pelléas et Mélisande, annotated by
the publisher with a different vocal line for
Pelléas apparently composed by Debussy
himself and unknown at the present time;
a stage manager's score of
Wagner's Siegfried, annotated with complete set and
staging directions from which one might faithfully
recreate a pre-World War I German production from
Dortmund;
a presentation score of
Flotow's Alessandro Stradella inscribed to and
including a letter to his beloved niece, which is
only one example of the many scores with some of
their histories intact;
a wide selection of Verdi
scores, several of which have not been found in
Hopkinton;
and several pairs of
manuscript or corrected proofs with their final
published versions.
Anyone interested in perusing
the portion of the collection catalogued can search
in HOLLIS, using the words "neils ward opera
collection" in an author search.
Backstage
at the Met
Robert J.
Dennis is Curator of Recordings Collections at the
Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, where he's worked for
28 years. On February 15th, he'll appear for the
second time as a panelist on the ChevronTexaco
Opera Quiz, the intermission feature of the
legendary Metropolitan Opera live radio broadcasts.
The Opera Quiz takes place in front of an audience
of 500 operagoers with questions mailed in by radio
listeners.
Robert J.
Dennis is Curator of Recordings Collections at the
Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, where he's worked for
28 years. On February 15th, he'll appear for the
second time as a panelist on the ChevronTexaco
Opera Quiz, the intermission feature of the
legendary Metropolitan Opera live radio broadcasts.
The Opera Quiz takes place in front of an audience
of 500 operagoers with questions mailed in by radio
listeners.
"I'm not a
casual concertgoer," says Dennis, as he tries to
sort through his passion for music to explain what
opera means to him. "The first time I attended an
opera--I was twelve--I thought, 'this is the best
place to be,' and I still think so! What's amazing
about the Met broadcasts is that, after so many
years of listening to them, they invited me to
participate."
Dennis was
tapped for his debut panel along with Placido
Domingo's assistant Michelle Krisel and professor
emeritus of classics at St. Michael's College,
Father Owen Lee.
"You can't
prepare for it," he says. "The audience pours out
of the opera house into a smaller rehearsal hall.
It's scary; they can ask anything, and it's going
out live. When that red light goes on, you're being
heard throughout Europe, South America, and Asia;
there are no retakes, no lifelines."
It's not
likely Dennis would come up short on material. He
has graduate degrees in Musicology and Library
Science, and frequently gives talks on music
performance, such as his recent Friday Lunch Talk
in the Harvard Music Department on Mussorgsky's
Boris Godunov, or last March's talk on Carmen for
friends and donors of the Harvard College
Library.
He owns "an
obscene number" of opera recordings, and keeps a
record of the casts of every live performance he's
seen.
"I started
keeping records when I was in college and moving
around. I was afraid I might lose the programs I'd
collected. That's how I've come to know the number
of operas I've seen and how many times I've seen
each one."
As of right
now, it's nearly 1400. Which is all the more
amazing, seeing as Dennis has always lived in
Boston and there's not much operatic activity in
the city. He feeds himself with trips to New York
several times a year and takes vacations to opera
festivals, such as his 2002 trip to Sante
Fe.
A voluminous
knowledge of music performance certainly
contributes to what Dennis brings to the Music
Library and its collections, but he sees it as a
symbiosis: "My knowledge has built up the
collection but the collection has built up my
knowledge. It's a mutually beneficial
arrangement!"
Staff
News
Staff Assistant Beth
Canterbury sang the role of Gretel in Opera by
the Bay Company's production of the Humperdink
classic.
Assistant to the Chair
Mary Gerbi is in her second year of singing
with The Boston Secession. She has also performed
programs including works by Anton Févin and
Heinrich Schütz with the Dudley Consort at
Harvard.
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Alumni
News
Charles Dodsley Walker (G '47) at 82, is
still very active as a choral conductor in New York
and organist and choirmaster in Southport,
Connecticut. He recently conducted the 50th
Anniversary Concert of the Canterbury Choral
Society's performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony
at Carnegie Hall in November.
Sterling Beckwith (A.M. '55) recently
sang the role of Salieri in a touring production of
Rimsky-Korsakov's 1899 opera Mozart and Salieri,
using his own new English version and with the
composer's later cuts restored. Beckwith also
appeared as Giove in Cavalli's La Calisto, was
featured soloist in a festival of Shostakovich
chamber vocal works, and in June 2002, performed
the Shakespeare songs of Gerald Finzi in Sanders
Theater with Richard Sogg '52 as pianist. He
continues to work with graduate musicology students
at the University of Toronto and at York
University, where he is Professor Emeritus of Music
and Humanities.
Mary Greer (Ph. D. '96) founded a Bach
cantata series in collaboration with the Orchestra
of St. Luke's in New York in March 2001, and now
organizes and conducts it. She is also the 2002-03
Christopher Hogwood Research Fellow at the Handel
and Haydn Society of Boston.
Mark Risinger (Ph. D. '96) now resides in
Manhattan and sings full-time, having signed with
Herbert Barrett Management. Risinger sang in
productions of Otello with Baltimore Opera, Les
Contes d'Hoffmann with Connecticut Opera, and in
Mahler's Symphony no. 8 with the Eugene Symphony.
He made his Carnegie Hall debut in June 2002, in a
concert of Haydn and Schubert masses. This season
he began a contract at New York City Opera, making
his debut in Salome in October. In January, he will
sing Frere Laurent in Romeo et Juliette with Fort
Worth Opera.
After serving double-duty for five years at the
Peabody Institute both as musicology faculty at the
Conservatory and as Director of Student Affairs at
the Preparatory, Suhnn Ahn (Ph.D. '97) has
taken a position as the Dean of Harnwell College
House at the University of Pennsylvania. She
recently moved from Baltimore to Philadelphia to
assume her administrative responsibilities but will
remain a member of the musicology faculty at
Peabody for the 2002-2003 year.
Raul Romero (Ph.D. '98) is currently
Executive Director of the Center for Andean
Ethnomusicology (Catholic University of Peru) and
head and professor of the M.A. program in
Anthropology, San Marcos University, also in Peru.
He edited and compiled the "Traditional Music of
Peru" CD series for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
and published Debating the Past: Music, Memory and
Identity in the Andes (Oxford University Press,
2001).
Jennifer Baker-Kotilaine (Ph.D. '99) is
happy to announce the birth of Anna Katarina, born
13 August. She joins brother Henrik Johannes who is
now 4. Jennifer is now Assistant Dean for Faculty
Development in FAS at Harvard and teaches music at
both the Extension and Summer Schools.
Noël Bisson (Ph. D. '99) has
accepted an appointment as Assistant Dean of the
College at Colgate University.
David Horne (Ph.D. '99) has recently been
appointed Composer in Association with the Royal
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
North River Music presented Like Juicy Peaches,
works by Stefan Hakenberg (Ph.D. '01) at
Renee Weiler Concert Hall in New York City January
16th. The concert included current music department
graduate student Andrew Talle, (cello) and GSAS
alumnus Jocelyn Clark (Korean zither kayagum); one
of the pieces performed was commissioned by
Harvard's Asia Center.
Patricia Tang (Ph.D. '01), together with
M.I.T. Artists-in-Residence Lamine Toure, gave a
Harvard Humanities Center lecture, Rhythmic
Transformations, as part of the Ethnomusicology
Seminar in November.
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Graduate
Student News
IGraduate students and department staff members
Aaron Allen, Mary Gerbi, Richard Giarusso,
Natalie Kirschstein, Christina Linklater, Kiri
Miller, Matthew Peattie, Jesse Rodin, Petra
Safarova, Bettina Varwig, and Nick Vines all
took part in a performance of the Dudley Choir and
Consort on December 7 in Adolphus Busch Hall.
Heinrich Schuetz's Musikalische Exequien headed the
program, along with motets by Schuetz, Brahms, and
Walter Lambe, and portions of the Mass in G minor
by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
This summer at Dozza, Italy, Myke
Cuthbert presented a paper titled, "Some
Observations Concerning the Paduan Fragment 'Pad A'
as Part of the Manuscript Context of Bologna Q
15."
Peter Gilbert's compositions were heard
at the Bowling Green State University New Music
& Art Festival and the Third Practice Festival
at the University of Richmond this past fall, and
are slated for the "Synthese 2003" Festival in
Bourges, France this summer. He has been granted a
three-week residency at the IMEB Electronicacoustic
music studios in Bourges. Gilbert recently won
prizes in two European competitions, and as a
result his work, Rituals, will be included on a
forthcoming CD from the Russolo Foundation
(Italy).
Aaron Girard read a paper entitled "Alto
Parts and Alto Voices in Sacred Harp Singing" at
the 2002 national conference of the Society of
Ethnomusicology in Estes Park, Colorado. In
February he will appear at a conference at Wesleyan
University celebrating the 40th anniversary of its
program in world music.
Zoe Lang conducted three pieces for the
Dudley House Orchestra: Brahms' Tragic Overture;
Samuel Barber's Media's Meditation and Dance of
Vengeance; and Shumann's Third Symphony. Lang will
conduct in a joint concert with Richard Giarusso's
Dudley House Choir this April.
Lei Liang gave lectures at Peking
University, Hangzhou Normal College and Shangdong
Academy of Arts this past June.
Kiri Miller gave two papers on the
Columbian Exposition; one for the American
Musicological Society and one for the Society of
Ethnomusicologists.
Matthew Peattie produced Ensemble 1521 in
An Advent Project: Gregorian Communions from Advent
to Epiphany, a short concert of Gregorian Chant and
Notre Dame polyphony at Pforzheimer House in
December.
Jesse Rodin performed in a concert by
Capella Alamire, directed by Peter Urquhart, of
Josquin's Missa Faysant regretz; chansons by
Agricola performed on lutes and viols, in which the
group sang the mass from a full-size facsimile of a
16th century choirbook.
Jon Wild spent part of the summer as
composer-in-residence for the Hilliard Ensemble's
summer 2002 program held at Schloss Engers in the
Rheinland. His new work The Cloud of Unknowing was
premiered there, and his older piece Wreath of
Stone, premiered at Harvard in 2001, continues to
receive regular performances by the Hilliard
Ensemble as part of their touring program.
This season, Ken Ueno's music will be
performed in over 50 different venues including
Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, and, at the Norfolk
Music Festival where he will be guest composer.
Recent commissions include those for the Hopkins
Center at Dartmouth College, the World Saxophone
Congress, and the Auros Group for New Music. An
upcoming documentary on the Hilliard Ensemble for
German TV station ZDF/Arte, Wenn Engel singen. Das
Hilliard Ensemble, will feature their performance
of Ken's Shiroi Ishi.
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Undergraduate
News
Miki-Sophia Cloud '04 won an Office
for the Arts Lipson grant for a series of concerts
that will explore one of the books of Bach's
Well-Tempered Clavier. Rather than performing the
pieces on the keyboard, they will be performed with
different idiomatic instrumentation. Other OFA
grant winners are Jeffrey Grossman '04, who
won a Kahn Grant for a Holden Choir performance of
Beethoven's Missa Solemnis; and Carson
Cooman '04, winner of a Kahn Grant to support a
night of four short operas composed by
undergraduates. Cooman will have over 100 known
performances of his compositions this concert
season. Recently completed commissions include a
series of compositions involving saxophone for Paul
Wehage and Musik Fabrik, a large-scale work for
viola and organ for the Mason Trust and Marisa
Green, and an orchestral work for the Slovak Radio
Symphony.
Untitled by Alexander Ness '04, was
premiered by the Ying String Quartet in a December
5th Blodgett Chamber Music Series concert in Paine
Hall. Ness won the 2002 Blodgett Composition
Competition with this tightly crafted short work.
It was so much fun, Philip Ying announced during
the concert, that the quartet played it twice. Says
Ness: "It is a short piece, but longer than
anything I had composed previously, and more
carefully proportioned. It is dedicated to four
teachers who opened my ears: William Wellborn and
Richard Festinger, my piano and composition
teachers from San Francisco; Douglas Buys, my
current piano teacher; and Bernard Rands." Ness is
a junior music concentrator in Eliot House,
currently studying with Rands.
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