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Ethics,
Culture & Musical Pleasure: Karen
Painter's Reception Studies
Associate Professor Karen Painter
specializes in musical thought,
aesthetics, and ideology from the late
18th-century through the 20th. She studied
piano, philosophy, and musicology at Yale,
and received her Ph.D. in 1996 from
Columbia with a dissertation on Mahler.
Painter has just begun a year-long
sabbatical that will give her time to
focus sharply on her newest book project:
the role of Mozart on 19th-century thought
and culture.
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If Painter's first book (Symphonic
Aspirations. German Music and Thought 1900-1945,
under revision for Harvard University Press) treads
the dark side of the cultural role of symphony, her
new work focuses on its lighter side: how did
Mozart's music teach the public how to listen to
music--to enjoy music but in ethical ways that
would improve the self and society? Where once
Painter plumbed concepts of heroism and will power
and how they evolved and were promolgated through
listening to German symphonies, she's now turned
her attention to the concept of pleasure, and how
Mozart's work helped shape bougeouis values in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries.
"I'm working in the overall area of music and
its public and reception study," says Painter. "I'm
investigating the role that Mozart, as a figure and
a composer, had in serious writings by theorists
and critics as well as in derivative sources like
popular biographies. For example, in the early 20th
century a lot of women wrote Mozart novels--there
were in fact quite a few women writing about music
at that time, although there were virtually no
female music critics."
Why Mozart? Painter believes that apart from
Beethoven, Mozart is the leading figure in the
development of a bougeouis musical culture. His
work--both the large-scale, multi-audience
symphonies and the smaller piano sonatas written
for private homes or salons--instilled a sense of
calm and at the same time, were experienced as the
logical working of the mind.
"I am attempting to find the interface between
musicology and the public without compromising the
level or nature of the scholarship," she explains.
This theme overarches the other projects slated for
sabbatical. Painter is overseeing the editing for
four volumes: Mahler and his World in connection
with the Bard Music Festival (forthcoming from
Princeton University Press, summer 2002), and three
volumes linked to a symposium series she directs at
the Ojai Music Festival in California. The first is
Border Crossings: Latin American Music in New
Contexts (in press, University of California
Press).
"Just as the flight from the Nazis brought many
German and Austrian composers to the United States
during the mid-20th century and led to a
flourishing in this country, many Latin American
composers have emigrated in recent decades,
continuing the tradition of rich cultural exhange
seen already with Copland. In my contribution to
the volume, I look at the dynamics of that cultural
exchange--how American listeners responded to music
from Latin America. The book includes two
fascinating chapters by Harvard graduate students
Jeannie Guerrero, who documented the reception of
Latin American music in the North American press,
and Ken Ueno, who conducted interviews of Latin
American composers."
The second Ojai volume, Late and Last Thoughts:
Music and Culture from Beethoven to the Present
(University of California Press, commissioned to
appear in spring 2003) deals with the myths and
constructs of late style as well as the idea of the
end of an epoch. Harvard graduate student Bettina
Varwig will document the emergence and evolution of
these concepts in musical thought during the 19th
century. The last volume is Pierre Boulez: The
Conductor, the Composer, and Music after 1945, and
will involve Harvard graduate student Christina
Linklater's reception study research on Boulez.
"As a historian of musical culture in its
broadest ramifications, I believe passionately in
the importance of music in our own world, not only
in the societies that have left such interesting
documentation of how music influenced culture and
politics. For this reason I feel committed to
following developments in contemporary music, and
as much as a scholar's life permits, participating
in the dissemination of music through lectures and
publications that also reach a broader
audience."
Painter smiles. "All, of course, alongside
enjoying music as a consumer."
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Lockwood
Honored After 21 Years at Harvard
Serving at the time as chair of the
Music Department, I had the great
privilege of welcoming Lewis Lockwood to
Harvard in the fall of 1980. Writing this
short and necessarily inadequate accolade
now, I gratefully recognize and
acknowledge that the twenty plus years of
his presence turned out to be a uniquely
prosperous time for our Department. As all
faculty, colleagues, and scores of
graduate and undergraduate students know,
Lewis took a very, very big part in it. We
can't thank him enough for this and will
forever be indebted to him.
In retrospect, his long and
distinguished career as an active faculty
member is split almost exactly fifty-fifty
between Princeton and Harvard. However,
adding the years spent as a graduate
student "down there," Princeton clearly
has the edge. Yet wait a minute, Harvard
surely intends to topple that by a
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wide margin in holding on to him as an
emeritus. In typical fashion, Lewis will begin this
honorable academic status by publishing his eagerly
awaited Beethoven biography.Incidentally, the issue
of when and where one does his best work has in
recent months been hotly debated on this campus. In
Lewis's case there has been no question that he
simply did his best work both before and after
1980. We at Harvard are particularly proud to have
seen him research, write, and publish, among other
important studies, his Music in Renaissance Ferrara
and his Beethoven Essays; all this accompanied by a
steady stream of inspired teaching on a wide range
of topics in 15th, 16th, and 19th-century
music.
True, the bad news is that with the end of this
past semester Lewis retired from a distinguished
and active teaching career. The good news is that
he won't retire from music and scholarship and,
moreover, that he can't retire from the deep and
warm friendships that have developed here over more
than two decades. We will treasure the latter with
particular care.
Christoph Wolff
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Music
& the Aesthetics of Modernity
Conference Hosts 200
Two-hundred and
four scholars, students and members of the
press and public gathered for three days
of papers in Paine Hall November 9-11.
Coming from countries as far flung as
China and Germany, Korea and Switzerland,
scholars of music, art philosophy and
literature convened to look at how
modernity is defined in, and has defined,
our culture. Lewis Lockwood (Harvard
University) and Karol Berger (Stanford
University) co-directed the conference,
which was held in honor of James Edward
Ditson Professor of Music at Harvard,
Reinhold Brinkmann.
Papers addressed topics as far ranging as
the role of the CIA-backed Congress of
Cultural Freedom in defining modern music
(Anne Shreffler, "Ideologies of
Serialisms: Political Implications of
Modernist Music, 1945-1965") to what
musical effects contribute to our
perception of beauty (Scott Burnham, "On
the Beautiful in Mozart"). All told,
nineteen scholars from the United States
and Europe presented work.
Receptions and
gatherings bookended the conference papers
each day to enable attendees to talk
informally. Brinkmann was honored at a
dinner gathering at Loeb House while
Harvard graduate students hosted an
impromptu pizza-and-beer get-together for
graduate students from other schools.
Karol Berger and Anthony Newcomb are
co-editing the conference papers for
publication; a volume is planned for 2003.
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Oppens
Performs American Premiere of Berio Sonata
Pianist Ursula
Oppens performed a recital as part of the
conference. Oppens, known equally as an
interpreter of the established repertoire
and a champion of contemporary music,
performed both in this concert. On the
program was Beethoven's Fantasy, Opus 77
and Sonata in C Minor, Opus 111; three
pieces by Elliott Carter--Two Diversions,
Retrouvailles, and 90 plus; and the
American premiere of Luciano Berio's
Sonata, a piece commissioned by the Fromm
Foundation at Harvard and dedicated by the
composer to Brinkmann.
Of the Berio
Sonata, Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer
wrote, "It's an extraordinary
piece...[it] has drama, color, and
individuality, although it is an
individuality related to works of the
past, including Beethoven's Hammerklavier
Sonata and Le Gibet from Ravel's Gaspard
de la Nuit. The technical difficulties are
formidable...the preparation showed in
Oppens' astonishing control of detail and
her equally astonishing freedom and
abandon." Of the Beethoven that closed the
evening, Dyer was effusive: "She took no
shortcuts, left no prisoners; she realized
the jazzy, earthy force of some of the
early variations before taking us by the
hand and ushering us into heaven."
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2001
First Nights Course Commissions New Work
When Robert Levin took the stage during Thomas
F. Kelly's First Nights core class on December
13th, the audience was immediately thrust into the
role of premiere audiences throughout music
history. The piece, Joshua Fineberg's piano solo,
Veils, was brand new; the music, never heard by
anyone other than the composer and the pianist.
"First Nights is a course in which we imagine
what it might have been like to be present at the
first performances of famous pieces from the past,"
says Professor Kelly. "What was it like when this
piece was new, when it had never been heard before?
By commissioning a new piece, the students actually
have the experience in their own time that they
have been studying from past times. And we also
make a contribution to the culture of our own
century."
Veils is admittedly difficult to play.
"My first sense was a sense of terror," Levin
told the students in a pre-performance question and
answer session. "It was the sense of being in the
totalitarian grip of something abstact: divide the
thing into 56 and play on the 23rd and 49th within
a half-second. If you've ever tried to count to 56
in a half-second you know it's difficult. But I was
conscious that this was poetry; it had to have
delight, depth. And after much work, I was able to
get the poetry out."
Levin cautioned students: "Don't listen to this
as an obstacle course and wonder how I got through.
Think, what a wonderful narrative!"
Fineberg drew on Tibetan bells as one of the
source materials of the work: "I think it's
important to find things I can never imagine. When
I saw Tibetans ringing cowbells over their heads, I
didn't think 'how can I reproduce that sound,' but
'how can I make that sound, then mix it into a
poetic journey.' It's one way to get out of the
limited palate of Western music."
It was the last meeting of First Nights. As
Kelly concluded his final lecture, he spoke about
the immediacy, the act, of music: "There is a
certain resonance in this building, this morning,
that is gone now. You had to be there. What I wish
for all of you, more than anything, is this: keep
music in your lives. Keep music in our
culture."
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Fromm
Foundation Winners Announced
The Board of Directors of The Fromm Music
Foundation at Harvard University announced the
names of the thirteen composers selected to receive
2001 Fromm commissions. These composers were chosen
from over two hundred applicants.
The composers who received commissions are:
Christopher Arrel (New York); Derek Bermel (New
York); Eric Chasalow (Massachusetts); David Crumb
(Oregon); C. Curtis-Smith (Michigan); Miguel
Chuaqui (Utah); Joshua Fineberg (Massachusetts);
Ellen Harrison (Ohio); Arthur Kreiger
(Connecticut); Chinchun Lee (Kansas); Carl Maultsby
(New York); Roger Reynolds (California); and Oscar
Strasnoy (France).
The Fromm's commitment to music as a living art
has taken it in several directions, all focused on
bringing about meaningful interaction among
composers, performers and audiences. These
commissions represent one of the principal ways
that the Fromm Music Foundation seeks to do this.
In addition to the commissioning fee of $10,000, a
subsidy is available for the ensemble performing
the premiere of the commissioned work. The Fromm
Music Foundation also sponsors the annual Fromm
Contemporary Music Series at Harvard and supports
the Festival of Contemporary Music at
Tanglewood.
Applications for commissions are reviewed
annually; the yearly deadline is June 1. Requests
for guidelines should be sent to The Fromm Music
Foundation at Harvard, Department of Music, Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA 02138 or click on
www.fas.harvard.edu/~musicdpt/fromm.html
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HGNM
Expands Collaborations,
Exchanges
Harvard Group for New Music
is bringing in different ensembles for
mini-residencies this spring as part of an
effort to expand activities and give the
group's concerts more variety. This effort
also includes continuing concert exchanges
with composers at Brandeis and starting a
concert exchange with Stanford.
The music of Brandeis and
Stanford composers will be included on the
April 20th HGNM Electroacoustic concert.
This concert will also feature a
multitrack performance of Stockhausen's
landmark piece, Gesang der Jungelinge, and
is made possible by a new kind of
collaboration between the Loeb Music
Library and HGNM. The Music Library
generously agreed to purchase the
multitrack tape which means that
musicologists and composers will now be
able to study the individual tracks of
Stockhausens' piece, as well as providing
for the possibility of future concert
performances. The April 28th Goldberg
Concert will feature the Non-Sequitur
Ensemble (flute, clarinet, piano,
percussion, violin, and cello). All
undergraduates are encouraged to submit
works.
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Graduate Seminar Visits
Berlin
As part of his graduate seminar on Bach's B
Minor Mass, Professor Wolff led a group of ten
students on an excursion to Berlin, Dresden, and
Leipzig during the first week of November.
Highlights of this trip included visits to
libraries in Berlin and Dresden, and to the
Bach-Archiv in
Leipzig. At each of these institutions, students
were able to view and discuss important Bach
autographs, including the rarely seen autograph
score of the B Minor Mass. Students also visited
the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, the art galleries in
Dresden, and attended a private organ demonstration
at the Wenzelskirche in Naumburg. In Berlin, the
group joined Professor Brinkmann at the Staatsoper
to attend a performance of Franz Schreker's opera,
Der ferne Klang. Special thanks to Professor Wolff
for organizing and leading this trip.
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Senior faculty member
Kay Kaufman Shelemay was recently appointed
the G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music. The Watts
chair was endowed last year by David Watts '55 and
Beverly Watts.
Karen Painter was promoted to Associate
Professor of Music as of July 1st, 2001.
Associate Professor Jeff Nichols has
accepted the position of Associate Professor of
Music at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens
College/CUNY. The position begins this January,
when his tenure at Harvard concludes.
The Kosciuszko Foundation in New York recently
hosted a performance to honor Professor Emeritus
Donald Martino. Master pianist David Holzman
performed two of Martino's works: Pianissimo
and Fantasies and Impromtus.
Senior Lecturer and Harvard Choral Director
Jameson Marvin, together with Memorial
Church Choirmaster Murray F. Somerville and
Associate Conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe
Choruses Constance DeFotis, conducted the
Inaugural Choir at Lawrence Summers' October 12
installation ceremony. The choir, composed of 250
singers, was drawn from the Harvard-Radcliffe
Collegium Musicum, the Glee Club, the Radcliffe
Choral Society, the University Choir, and members
of the Kuumba Singers. The biggest challenge
working with a group this size? Scheduling
rehearsals.
Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Bernard
Rands has been commissioned to write two new
pieces of music: one for the 50th anniversary of
the Eastman Wind Ensemble to be premiered February
8, 2002, and the other for the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra and Chorus, to be premiered in May,
2003.
William Powell Professor of Music Christoph
Wolff received the Otto Kinkeldey Award for
this book Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned
Musician (W.W. Norton, 2000), at the annual
meeting of the American Musicological Society in
Atlanta. The award recognizes the most
distinguished book by a member of the society
published during the previous year.
Assistant Professor of Music Kurt
Stallmann's Ivan's Dance premiered at a
Composers in Red Sneakers Concert October 31st in
Cambridge. Kurt and his wife Shih-Hui Chen are also
the brand new parents of a daughter, Lia Chen
Stallmann, born December 22nd.|
Assistant Professor Richard Wolf and his
wife Amy Bard happily announce the birth of a son,
Oliver Isaac Wolf, November 23rd.
Assistant Professor of Music David Cohen's
article, "'The Imperfect Seeks Its Perfection':
Harmonic Progression, Directed Motion, and
Aristotelian Physics," has just appeared in the
latest issue of the Journal of the Society for
Music Theory, Music Theory Spectrum, Vol.
23, No. 2 (Fall, 2001). Earlier this year, another
article, "'The Gift of Nature': Musical Cognition
and Musical 'Instinct' in Rameau," appeared in a
collection of essays entitled Music Theory and
Natural Order, edited by Suzannah Clark and
Alexander Rehding, published by Cambridge
University Press (2001).
Fanny Peabody Professor of Music, emeritus,
Lewis Lockwood's book, Beethoven: The Music and
the Life, is in process of publication at W.W.
Norton, Inc., and will be out next fall. He's also
lecturing in 2001-02 at the University of Iowa, the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and the
University of Texas, Austin.
Assistant Professor of Music Joshua Fineberg
traveled to France to complete a recording of his
music for a CD to be released by Universal/Accord
Records in September 2002. Fineberg also had two
pieces performed by Speculum Musicae as part of the
October 2001 National Conference on Technology and
the Orchestra, a program of the American Composers
Orchestra.
Quincy Jones Professor of African American
Ingrid Monson recently presented a
colloquium on the W.E.B. DuBois Series:
"Improvisation as a Musical and Social Process:
Some Thoughts on the 1950s and 1960s," at Harvard's
Barker Center.
Dwight D. Robinson Professor of Humanities
Robert Levin, together with his wife Ya-Fei
Chuang recently performed as part of the
Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra's USA Goodwill Tour
Benefit Concert. Proceeds from the concert helped
underwrite the HRO's upcoming ten-day intinerary of
benefit, outreach and memorial concerts in New York
and Washington, D.C.. Levin and Chuang performed
the Poulenc two piano concerto.
Albany Records recently released a CD of Walter
Piston's Symphony No. 3 and three pieces by
Senior Lecturer on Music, James Yannatos.
Performed by the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra,
Gramophone says of Yannatos' Concerto for String
Quartet, "this is attractive, wonderfully
effective music, with a buoyant lyricism that shoud
find it widespread advocacy." Another Albany
Records CD is in production of Yannatos' Fifth
Symphony; also on that disc, Charles Fussell's
Fifth Symphony and Yehudi Wyner's
Prologue and Narrative. The release date is
summer, 2002.
Fanny P. Mason Professor of Music Mario
Davidovsky's Synchronisms No. 9 was on
the program for this year's Merrill Recital at John
Knowles Paine Concert Hall. Of the piece, Boston
Globe critic Richard Buell writes, "The
Davidovsky...was virtual showbiz, a big tour de
force in which the kind of fun that was had with
the violin-plus-computer setup seemed not all that
far off from the modern symphony orchestra." Rolf
Schulte performed.
Harvard College Professor of Music Thomas F.
Kelly was recently interviewed for the BBC's
Sounds Welsh, a series of music
documentaries on Welsh-based musicians. The
interview is part of a program on conductor Grant
Llewellyn, concentrating on his performances of
The Messiah at Symphony Hall in December.
Kelly treats the Messiah in his book
First Nights: Five Performance Premieres,
and Llewellyn and the Handel and Haydn Society have
been guests in Kelly's First Nights
class.
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Staff
News
Communications Coordinator Lesley
Bannatyne's second book, A Halloween
How-To, (geared for adults) was released by
Pelican Publishing in August.
Staff Assistant Beth Canterbury made her
debut with Boston Bel Canto Opera as Tebaldo in
Verdi's Don Carlo. This fall she sang Haydn,
Mozart, Charpantier, and Handel opera and
oratorio.
Kaye Denny joins us as co-manager of the
front office. Kaye has worked with many non-profit
arts organizations including the Fleet Bank
Celebrity Series.
Assistant to the Chair Mary Gerbi
recently performed in Boston Secession's Blood
is Thicker Than Water: Family Portraits in
Music.
Jean Moncrieff has been named the new
Director of Events. Jean previously worked with the
Boston Cecilia. She has an M.F.A. in Music from
Mills College with a focus on film and video
technology.
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Alumni
News
Elliott Carter A.B. '30, A.M. '32
received one of four GSAS Centennial medals given
at a ceremony last June at the Harvard faculty
club. The medal is awarded for "contributions to
society as they have emerged from one's graduate
education at Harvard." It was inaugurated in 1989,
on the 100th anniversary of the Graduate
School.
Jack Behrens Ph.D. '73 has been appointed
director of academic studies at the Glenn Gould
Professional School of the Royal Conservatory of
Music (Toronto), following his retirement as dean
of the music faculty at the University of Western
Ontario.
Evelyn Shu-Ching Chen A.B. '90 and
Brinton Averil Smith announce the birth of a
daughter, Calista Ro-Jei Smith, on July 13 in
Dallas/Ft. Worth. Evelyn played the Chopin Piano
Concert No. 1 with the Oakland Symphony Orchestra
last January, and solo recitals on the Steinway
Artists Series in Scottsdale, Arizona, in North
Dallas and at the University of North Texas. With
her cellist husband, she's played at the Dallas
Museum of Art, at Texas Christian University, and
in many chamber music concerts.
Ashgate Press released Elgar's Oratorios: The
Creation of an Epic Narrative by Charles McGuire
Ph.D. '98. The book, comprised of material from
his thesis along with a generous amount of new
material and some new analyses, uses narrative
theory to analyze the structure of the oratorios.
McGuire has also given papers at AMS and at the
Conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain
on Temperance Music and Choirs, and has been
invited to speak at a conference at the University
of Surrey called "New Directions in Elgar
Research."
Aaron Einbond A.B. '00 went to England
last year on a British Marshall Scholarship. He
completed his M.Phil degree at Cambridge, studying
with Robin Holloway, and is now at the Royal
College of Music in London studying with Julian
Anderson. In the last year he has had works
performed by the organist Kevin Bowyer at King's
College Chapel (as part of the Cambridge Summer
Music Festival) and by Ensemble De Ereprijs in the
Netherlands (as part of the 7th Annual Young
Composers' Meeting) led by Louis Andriessen.
Ed Gollin Ph.D. '00 delivered a paper
entitled "On Riemann's Theories of Dissonance as a
Resource for Analysis" at the Symposium on
Neo-Riemannian Theory at the University of Buffalo.
In November, he delivered "Transformational Spaces
and Metaphorical Journeys in Some Schubert Lieder"
at the Annual meeting of the Society for Music
Theory.
Jonathan Holland Ph.D. '01 premiered his
chamber opera, Naomi in the Living Room by
Orchestra 2001 at the Lang Performing Arts Center
at Swarthmore College. Holland has also been
selected to be Composer-in-Residence with the South
Bend Symphony Orchestra in March 2003 through Music
Alive, an offshoot of the New York-based Meet the
Composer program.
Lansing McCloskey Ph.D. '01 graduated in
November with the completion of his thesis
composition, Requiem, ver.2.001x.
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Graduate
Student News
Polishing Firewood (solo cello and
ensemble), by Elliott Gyger, was premiered
by the New York New Music Ensemble in November. His
Hebrew, Latin, Greek (vocal soloists, choir, organ
and double bass), is being written for the Seraphim
Singers and scheduled for performance in February
2002.
Baritone Richard Giarusso and pianist
Benjamin Steege performed Robert Schumann's
Liederkreis, Op. 39 in a concert at the Holden
Chapel December 8th.
Arni Ingolfsson gave a paper titled
"'This Music Belongs to Us': Scandinavian Music and
'Nordic' Ideology in the Third Reich" as part of
the Music Department's Friday Lunch Talk series. He
will also give the paper at the New England Chapter
meeting of the American Musicological Society in
Boston in March. Arni won a fellowship from the
Icelandic Graduate Research Fund for his
dissertation work on Icelandic
tvísöngur tradition, and in January
2001 he lectured on the continental sources of
Icelandic folk polyphony at the Iceland Academy of
the Arts in Reykjavik, Iceland.
April James sang the role of "the Spirit"
in the Harvard Early Music Society's production of
Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. She also
performed her own reconstructions of the 18th
century dance The Matelot in a December Longy Early
Dance Ensemble concert, and will be presenting a
paper entitled Matelottes and Sailors at the
Society of Dance History Scholars conference in
Philadelphia this coming June.
Lei Liang was guest artist at the Center
for International Education and the School of Music
at Baylor University this past October where a
concert of his composition performed by the faculty
members and students. His harpsichord solo work
Some Empty Thoughts of a Person from Edo and
Garden Eight (for any solo instrument) has
been released on CD by Opal Records.
Richard Whalley used his Paine
Scholarship to attend the Centre Acanthes in
Avignon, France to take part in an advanced
composition course. His new piece, Shimmering,
Stillness, Silence, was performed there.
Whalley's Elegy (1999) was performed in the
Gaudeamus Music Week, Amsterdam; and his The Joy
of Melody (1996) was recorded on a CD by
Ensemble Eleven of Manchester, England.
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Undergraduate
News
Lembit Beecher '02 received an Office for
the Arts Kahn Grant for the establishment of a
standing ensemble focused and dedicated to
performing contemporary "classical-art" music.
The New York Youth Symphony commissioned and
will be performing a new orchestral work by
Anthony Cheung '03 on February 24, 2002 in
Carnegie Hall. The piece, entitled Serendipitous
Scenes, will be conducted by Mischa
Santora.
The Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston is
premiering Chris Trapani's piece History
by Moonlight, a trio for violin, clarinet, and
piano, on May 18th, 2002.
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Library
Notes
The Eda Kuhn Loeb Music
Library has enjoyed tremendous support from its
friends over the years, which has enabled the
Library to continue building its excellent
collections. A few recent examples
include:
• Kashmiri
Minstrelsy, a manuscript of folk-song
transcriptions made by a British officer
stationed in Kashmir in the late 19th
century.
• Several rare
first and early editions of Mozart works,
notably a copy of the 1st edition, 4th issue of
the vocal score for Entführung aus dem
Serail (Schott, 1785 or 1786), and a 1st
edition, 1st issue of the violin sonata K. 481
(Hoffmeister, 1786).
• A copy of the
Schalk edition of Bruckner's 5th Symphony with
performance annotations by Franz
Schalk.
• Historical
broadcast recordings produced by the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and
Chicago Symphony Orchestras, some 70 hours of
live performance by major conductors and
soloists of performances not previously
available.
Our aim is to continue
developing the Library's strengths in classical
music of the 17th-21st centuries, in Asian and
Middle Eastern musics, and, now, in jazz and
American vernacular repertories.
Florence Lynch, our
cataloger of 42 years, has contributed more than
most of us ever will to creating a detailed and
accurate catalog of our holdings. Florence retired
in September and the Library was fortunate to
recruit Candice Feldt, an experienced and
accomplished music cataloger, to take her place.
Kerry Masteller and
Chuck Gabriel joined the Circulation Desk
this Fall. Together with Andy Wilson, they
are responsible for circulation and reserve
services and providing basic
information.
This fall we added a
Reference Desk in the Aldrich Room and four
high-end computers to enhance public access to
music resources online. Electronic resources are a
special interest of Connie Mayer, our
reference librarian, who is happy to help with
research assistance to all of the Library's
collections.
In the Isham Memorial
Library, Sarah Adams and Doug
Freundlich have launched a collaborative
program working with the Editorial Board of the new
C.P.E. Bach edition that will result in the
addition of many new microfilms of primary sources
for the composer to the Library's collections.
A critical part of the
Library's work is preservation of audio recordings.
With a state-of-the-art facility and engineer in
place, the Loeb Library is poised to lead the
University's efforts to preserve its audio
collections as soon as studio capacity and staffing
can be expanded. This is a critical service for the
entire institution as we confront degrading
recordings of unique recordings of 20th century
performances, of unique performances of major
Indian classical artists, and of poetry readings by
such luminaries as T.S. Eliot.
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Wolff Receives
Commanders' Cross
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The President of the Federal Republic
of Germany, Dr. Johannes Rau, awarded Christoph
Wolff the Commander's Cross of the Order of
Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany at a
ceremony held on November 15th in conjunction
with the German President's Harvard visit. The
award recognized Professor Wolff's contributions
to transatlantic scholarship and his role in the
recent rediscovery and restitution of the famous
musical archive of the Berlin Sing-Akademie in
Kiev, Ukraine.*
Instituted in 1951, the Order of Merit is the
only honor that may be awarded in all fields of
endeavor, and is the highest tribute the Federal
Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for
services to the nation. The Order of Merit is
awarded for achievements in the political,
economic, social or intellectual realm and for
all kinds of outstanding services to the nation
in the field of social, charitable or
philanthropic work.
*Extensive consultations and negotiations
between the Ukrainian and German governments
conducted since January 2001 resulted in the
restitution of the musical archive of the Berlin
Sing-Akademie. On December 1, 2001 the collection
was returned to its home city. It is now placed on
deposit at the Music Division of the Berlin
Staatsbibliothek.
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