AMS

ASHGATE New Music Titles from

Ashgate Publishing… American
A Song for Europe Living Electronic Music
Popular Music and Politics
in the Eurovision Song Contest
Edited by Ivan Raykoff, The New School
and Robert Deam Tobin, Whitman College
ASHGATE POPULAR AND FOLK MUSIC SERIES
Simon Emmerson, De Montfort
University, Leicester, UK
“…a superb exploration of how
we perceive and understand today’s
technology-based music.”
Musicological
Society
July 2007. 216 pages. Pbk. 978-0-7546-5879-5 —Joel Chadabe, State University
of New York, Albany
July 2007. 214 pages. Pbk. 978-0-7546-5548-0
Gender in the Music Industry

Program & Abstracts

Rock, Discourse and Girl Power
Marion Leonard, University of Liverpool, UK The Memetics of Music
ASHGATE POPULAR AND FOLK MUSIC SERIES A Neo-Darwinian View of Musical
Aug 2007. 252 pages. Pbk. 978-0-7546-3862-9 Structure and Culture
Steven Jan, University of Huddersfield, UK Quebec City 2007
Music in Medieval Europe
Sept 2007. 294 pages. 978-0-7546-5594-7
1−4 November
Studies in Honour of Bryan Gillingham
Kate Bush and
Edited by Terence Bailey,
University of Western Ontario, and Hounds of Love Abstracts
Alma Santosuosso, Wilfrid Laurier University Ron Moy, Liverpool John Moores
“…a seminal addition to the literature on University, UK
medieval music…Highly recommended.” ASHGATE POPULAR AND FOLK MUSIC SERIES
—Choice “…a fascinating account of this artist’s
Jan 2007. 456 pages. 978-0-7546-5239-7 achievements…will undoubtedly be of use
to a wide range of scholars within the field
of popular music studies.”
The Music of The Other —Stan Hawkins, University of Oslo, Norway
New Challenges for Sept 2007. 158 pages. Pbk. 978-0-7546-5798-9
Ethnomusicology in a Global Age
Laurent Aubert, Ateliers d’Ethnomusicologie
and Museum of Ethnography, Switzerland The Musician’s Body
Translated by Carla Ribeiro, A Maintenance Manual
University of Sheffield, UK for Peak Performance
April 2007. 108 pages. Pbk. 978-0-7546-5343-1 Jaume Rosset i Llobet, Centre for
the Physiology of the Arts, Spain
and George Odam, Guildhall School
Olivier Messiaen: of Music and Drama, UK
Oiseaux exotiques “Musicians and music students of all ages
Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, will find in this book a mine of information
both at University of Sheffield, UK about how to get in shape and stay in shape.”
LANDMARKS IN MUSIC SINCE 1950 —Barry Ife, Guildhall School
“This beautifully written book is an original of Music and Drama, UK
and fascinating exploration of the surprising June 2007. 128 pages. Pbk. 978-0-7546-6210-5
alliance of music and nature by one of
the twentieth century’s most underrated
Quebec City 2007

composers.” The Monthly Mask of Vocal

—Andrew Shenton, Boston University, Music 1702—1711
author of Olivier Messiaen’s System of Signs A Facsimile Edition
July 2007. 140 pages. 978-0-7546-5630-2 Edited by Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson
June 2007. 496 pages. 978-0-7546-5793-4

2007 MARKS THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF ASHGATE PUBLISHING

For the past 40 years Ashgate has been a leading independent publisher proudly committed
to providing the library market with the finest academic scholarship. We looking foward
to serving the academic community for many years to come.

www.ashgate.com Come visit our booth in the book exhibit!

Contents

Thursday afternoon, 1 November

26 Bodies
28 Collecting French Polyphony
31 Hip Hop: Identity, Geography and Voice
35 International Conversations
39 Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera
41 Retrospection
43 Seventeenth-Century Italian Opera
45 Transmission of Chant Repertories

Thursday evening, 1 November

49 Hispanic Interest Group: Tradition and Liturgy in Mexican Sacred Music
50 Virtual Acoustics and the Recording of Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard Music
51 Wagner and Cinema

Friday morning, 2 November

52 American Avant-Garde
54 Church and Stage Music in the Eighteenth Century
57 Composers and the Painterly Eye
59 Music and Italian Poetry
63 Music and Theology
66 Music and the Textual Condition: Editorial Theory
and Practice in the Twenty-First Century
69 Re-imagining the Pastoral: Discourses of Loss and Remembrance
in Early Twentieth-Century English Music

Friday afternoon, 2 November

74 Time Suspended: Desirable Obscurity in Unmeasured Prelude Representation
75 The Americas: North and South
77 The Art of Dying
79 Female Patrons
81 It’s a Man’s World
83 Musicology and Its Institutions
85 Nineteenth-Century German Musical Culture
89 Respecting Authority
92 Twentieth-Century Politics

Friday evening, 2 November

 96 Critical Domains: Music Journalism, Reception
Studies and the Public, 1800-1920
97 Music and Politics in the Early Cold War: Recent
Approaches, Future Directions

Saturday morning, 3 November

98 Analyzing Jazz
101 Chanson Moderne
103 Medieval Compositional Process
106 Music and the Everyday
110 Music in Film
113 Music of Devotion
116 Stravinsky

Saturday afternoon, 3 November

119 From Scherzo to Son: Piano Music by Cuban
Women Composers, c. 1870 to the present
120 The American Musical
122 Gesture and Pantomime
124 Interwar
128 The Musical World of Jean Molinet, Burgundian Chronicler and Poet
131 Nineteenth-Century Exotic
133 Performers and Performance
135 Playing with Signs
138 Seventeenth-Century French Music

Saturday evening, 3 November

143 Early French Musical Modernism: Its Sources and Idioms
144 Musicology and Nation: A Canadian Perspective

Sunday morning, 4 November

145 Anonymous Editors
146 Copland and Schoenberg
150 Fifteenth-Century Italian Theory
151 Mahler
155 Making Meaning in French Baroque Opera
158 Posing the Question: Queer Performances and Popular Culture
160 Post-War Britain
163 Rock and Country Underground

166 Index of Participants

 Thursday afternoon, 1 November

BODIES
Maureen Carr, Pennsylvania State University, Chair

STRAVINSKY’S EXQUISITE CORPSES

Tamara Levitz
Graduate Center, CUNY
Stravinsky liked to think of his music as an “object.” He notoriously labeled it this way in his
article “Some Ideas about my Octuor [],” in which he defined musical objects as possess-
ing weight, occupying a place in space, and “based on objective elements which are sufficient
in themselves.” Stravinsky’s notions of musical objectivity permeate his ghostwritten Poetics of
Music () as well. Ever since, they have haunted musicologists invested in understanding the
aesthetic underpinnings of his elusive s neoclassicism.
In this paper, I examine how Stravinsky constructed his music as a sculptural object in order
to memorialize the dead in his  melodrama, Perséphone. I am interested in particular in
how he etched into musical stone (so to speak) Persephone’s death in Act II (“Perséphone aux
enfers,” rehearsal numbers –) and rebirth in Act III (“Perséphone renaissante,” rehearsal
numbers –). Gretchen Horlacher and other music theorists have repeatedly singled
out the former moment for its unique strata of ostinati and static temporal effect. I explore
how this musical construction relates to Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein’s performance of the
deceased Persephone in Kurt Jooss’s choreography at the premiere of Perséphone in April .
I interpret Rubinstein’s sleek, pale body in this scene in light of its contemporaneous repre-
sentation as a living corpse in the paintings of her one-time lover Romaine Brooks. Draped in
“colonial modern” fashions and surrounded by luxurious props, Rubinstein’s “corpse” trans-
formed on stage into a dislocated consumer product, becoming the epitome of a Benjaminian
“ruin” or a surreal document. My interpretation of Rubinstein’s body allows me to understand
how Stravinsky’s music functions as well at this moment as a “musical corpse,” defending
against bereavement like the female body as face in Magritte’s Le viol.
Yet Stravinsky adopts a different strategy for Persephone’s rebirth in Act III. Here, he molds
Persephone into the musical equivalent of a Hellenist statue, basing his musical vision on the
model of the “Enthroned Goddess” unveiled at the Pergamon museum in Berlin in . He
understands such archaic statues not in Winckelmann’s classicist sense of “noble simplicity,”
but rather according to a Nietzschean vitalist tradition that imbues them with energy and
movement. The deceased no longer appear as empty ruins or corpses, but rather haunt the liv-
ing present through their survival in the perfected, constructed forms of art.
My title appeals on purpose to the surrealist game of “exquisite corpse,” which consists of
writing down a word, or drawing a body part, and then passing it to the person next to you to
contribute, continuing the game until a randomly generated communal poem or image emerg-
es. At the end of Perséphone, Stravinsky brings together his two contrasting interpretations of
musical objects as testaments to the dead, evoking the violated corporeality of the surrealist
corpse. I end by suggesting how Stravinsky’s method reflects both his complicity with the sur-
realists, and the cultures of mourning associated with capitalist trends towards collecting and
fetishizing objects in s Europe.
Abstracts Thursday afternoon 

GARBO SINGS
Scott D. Paulin
Dartmouth College
“Garbo Talks,” proclaimed the advertisements for Anna Christie (), the much-antici-
pated vehicle for Greta Garbo’s transition into talking pictures; for Ninotchka (), her first
comedic venture, the tag-line was “Garbo Laughs.” Had she ever made a musical before her
early retirement, MGM surely would have also announced that “Garbo Sings.” Yet Garbo did
sing in the movies—in silent movies—and opera is what she sang. In her first Hollywood film,
The Torrent (), Garbo is introduced as a Spanish village girl, Leonora, struggling to put
her singing master’s lessons (“I tell you to sing from the diaphragm and you—you sing from
the tonsils!”) into practice. Leonora ultimately rises to the rank of operatic diva, and within
a year of this film’s release, Garbo’s own standing as a star had risen comparably. Along with
fame came mystique, and by the time Garbo made The Mysterious Lady (), her unheard
voice had become an object of seemingly unattainable desire, especially since Garbo would
continue exclusively to make silents well into the transitional period. Wielded ingenuously
in The Torrent, her singing voice thus soon acquired—in its still silent sounding—an unusual
potential for power over audiences allowed to see it, to imagine it, but never to hear it. Fur-
ther, as recent work by film scholar Melinda Szaloky has shown, Garbo’s screen presence and
acting style were often rhapsodized, in the s and beyond, in curiously musical terms; her
body was perceived as making visual music on the screen, and not only when her characters
were singing.
Central to this concern is The Mysterious Lady, an espionage drama in which Garbo plays
a Russian spy, Tania Fedorova, who seduces an Austrian captain (Conrad Nagel) for the sake
of military secrets, but ultimately chooses love over patriotic duty. Woven through the film
is a series of musical performances—she sings, he plays piano—referring back to their initial
meeting in an opera box. Scenes from Tosca were staged in that sequence—“Vissi d’arte” is
iconically represented, though never identified by name—and whenever Tania and Karl play
together, they return to the music of their first encounter. Complicating the expectations set
up by the film, however, is the musical cue sheet prepared for it by Ernst Luz, which speci-
fies for all of these scenes not the soprano aria, but “E lucevan le stelle”—the Act III tenor
aria. Masculinizing Garbo’s singing in this way may seem like merely a careless error, but
the choice makes sense musically (this aria functions better as a recurring theme than “Vissi
d’arte” would, and its romantic affect is also better suited to the film), and also as a response
to the uncanny impossibility of Garbo’s voice. An examination of Luz’s accompaniment aes-
thetics (expounded in Motion Picture Synchrony []), along with film exhibition practices
during the era of transition to sound, will further illuminate the ways in which silent films
made Garbo sing.
 Thursday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

COLLECTING FRENCH POLYPHONY

Andrew Kirkman, Rutgers University, Chair

OPEN BORDERS: FRANCE, BURGUNDY, AND REPERTORIAL

EXCHANGE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Jane Alden
Wesleyan University
Much of our knowledge of mid-fifteenth-century song depends on a group of five related
chansonniers once thought to have emanated from the Burgundian court. The realization
that a number of the featured composers—among them Ockeghem and Busnoys—were em-
ployed in royal institutions in the Loire Valley when these manuscripts were being copied,
along with evidence drawn from their style of decoration, has now conclusively established a
French provenance for the group. This repositioning has been extremely productive for schol-
ars, drawing attention to a vibrant musical culture in the environs of the French royal court.
Central to this culture is the church of Saint-Martin, Tours, where both Ockeghem and Bus-
noys served in the early s. Their concurrent presence in the Loire Valley has been used
to support a dating of these manuscripts, in which they are exceptionally well represented, to
the years after . However, certain aspects of the repertorial profiles of these chansonniers
suggest there is more to the story. In proposing a revised chronology of these manuscripts,
combined with a more historically and materially grounded approach to their contents, I will
argue that there was a significant exchange of repertory between the French and courts in the
late s and early s.
Relocating these chansonniers to the Loire Valley has led scholars to construct the category
of French songs at the expense of the musical culture of the Burgundian court. In fact, these
chansonniers contain music by as many composers of demonstrably Burgundian origin as
French—indeed, they are among the most important sources for the songs of the Burgundian
composers Hayne, Joye, and Morton. Furthermore, two of the chansonniers transmit a song
that incorporates the motto of Anthony, the so-called “Grand Bastard” of Burgundy, and an-
other includes a song attributed to Duke Charles the Bold himself. The notable presence here
of music by Burgundian composers makes apparent that, rather than representing the music
of discrete court cultures, these chansonniers stand as witnesses to the circulation of repertory
between the two courts. Songs, more easily than sacred music, could be transported across
geographical and political borders.
Seeing the manuscripts in this light opens up many avenues for future research. One of
the most significant possibilities to emerge is that more of Busnoys’s songs may date from his
time at the court of Burgundy than has recently been suggested. I will argue that the strong
representation of Busnoys in the Loire Valley Chansonniers attests to a continuation, during
his Burgundian years, of his professional contacts with former colleagues at Saint-Martin and
in French royal circles. Although this group of chansonniers originated in France, it does not
follow that they are exclusively French objects. Instead, they provide musical evidence of a
reciprocal cultural influence between the French and Burgundian courts. Had a Burgundian
chansonnier survived, it musical contents might not have been so very different from these
French sources.
Abstracts Thursday afternoon 

A MISSING PORTRAIT AND MATHIEU GASCONGNE’E

CANONIC MOTET ISTA EST SPECIOSA: NEW EVIDENCE FOR A
REINTERPRETATION OF THE ORIGINS OF MS PEPYS 1760
John T. Brobeck
University of Arizona
The canonic motet Ista est speciosa attributed to Mathieu Gascongne (fl. –) poses
special problems of interpretation both in terms of its musical realization and its codicologi-
cal significance. This composition, hitherto unpublished in modern edition, appears in only a
single early source, Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS . It occupies a prominent
position in the Pepys MS, on the back of the first, highly decorated folio containing music,
and right below a now missing portrait excised from the manuscript sometime after  that
an early cataloguer identified as the “Prince of Wales” at “the time of King Henry VII” (r.
–).
Although a wide variety of evidence argues strongly that this manuscript emanated from
French royal circles sometime between  and , the precise occasion of its bestowing
remains elusive. Virtually all of the motets and chansons found in Pepys  were composed
by musicians known to have served at the French royal courts of Louis XII (r. –) and
his queen Anne of Brittany (r. –) during the first two decades of the sixteenth century,
including such luminaries as Antoine de Févin, Johannes Prioris, and Jean Mouton. Numer-
ous aspects of the manuscript’s decoration also suggest a French provenance, including its
ermine tail continuation signs (associated with the duchy of Brittany) and the presence of red
shields used by the French military order of Saint Michael.
The date of compilation and the identity of the recipient are clouded, however, by certain
problematic aspects of the manuscript’s decoration (some of which has been painted over, sug-
gesting that the intended recipient may have changed during the manuscript’s preparation),
and the text of the motet Ista est speciosa, “She is most beautiful among the daughters of Jeru-
salem.” Given the motet’s placement directly below the missing portrait, it hardly seems likely
that the original painting depicted a male member of the English royal family. And given the
unique breadth and sonority of the motet, which proves to be a twelve-voiced canon in which
each successive voice enters one step higher at a remove of two breves and which has no paral-
lel elsewhere in the manuscript, it seems highly unlikely that the placement of this particular
work and text was mere happenstance.
Detailed analysis of the texts of the fifty-seven motets and secular works contained in Pepys
 suggests that the original portrait may have portrayed not Henry VIII, but rather Mary
Tudor of England (–), Henry’s younger sister and (briefly) the wife of King Louis
XII of France during the final three months of his life. This identification makes sense of the
remarkably homogeneous group of motets dedicated to the Virgin Mary, many of which em-
phasize her motherhood, and the inclusion of a chanson cycle by Févin about a young women
mal mariée to a much older spouse. If this analysis is correct, it would raise the probability
that the manuscript was originally intended in late  to serve as a royal wedding present.
 Thursday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

LE BRUNG’S SIX-VOICE SI VOUS N’AVEZ AULTRE DESIR:

A MUSICAL “RESPONSE” TO A POETIC PRACTICE
Vassiliki Koutsobina
University of Cincinnati
Jean Le Brung’s Si vous n’avez aultre desir curiously appears in Tylman Susato’s seventh book
of chansons [RISM ], a commemorative volume devoted to Josquin. With the exception
of three déplorations on the death of the composer and Le Brung’s six-voice setting, the print
contains exclusively five- and six-voice chansons attributed to Josquin, the leading composer
of this repertory in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Le Brung, a younger contempo-
rary of Josquin, is also one of the main early contributors to this genre, following Pierre de La
Rue and Jean Mouton.
In his edition, Susato designated Si vous n’avez as a “responce” and placed it immediately
after Josquin’s N’esse pas ung grant desplaisir. Despite this contemporary reference, no scholarly
effort has been made to identify any musical or poetic relationships between the two chan-
sons. In fact, Le Brung responded to Josquin’s N’esse pas not only on the level of prosody but
also on that of compositional strategy and musical detail. The negative, pessimistic tone of
N’esse pas is confronted with an affirmative, optimistic poem. By changing the order of the
model’s words, the response alters their semantic potential and reverses the tone of the origi-
nal setting’s content. Le Brung’s musical treatment not only closely follows the compositional
strategies employed by Josquin in N’esse pas but also reflects in musical terms the reversal of
tone effected in the poetic response. Le Brung’s compositional process sheds light on what a
contemporary composer read as important in Josquin’s setting and allows us, in turn, to inter-
pret Josquin’s chanson with greater depth and clarity.
The discursive practice of envoy and responce had enjoyed a long tradition in poetic circles
but the extent and nature of its application to music has not yet been fully explored. Cutler
Silliman’s preliminary study of Susato’s editions of families of chansons identified as responces
and réplicques (retorts) as well as Kristine Forney’s more recent investigation of the same sub-
ject reveal that Susato was a pioneer in promoting this kind of repertory as a publisher, and
enriching it, as a composer. For about a decade, from  to , his printing company
published seventy-eight such chansons, twenty-nine of which Susato composed himself. The
appearance of Si vous n’avez in a volume devoted to Josquin’s chansons takes on new meaning
with knowledge of Susato’s demonstrated interest in the practice of response.
Silliman and Forney identify the following typical characteristics among the compositions
of a family: same cleffing, time signature, and mode; the use of cantus firmus, paraphrase or
parody treatment; the expansion or reduction of texture; and motivic relationships prompted
by identical or similar textual phrases. My analysis goes beyond these interconnections to re-
veal Le Brung’s macroscopic conception of his response on the level of compositional process
and semantic interpretation of the poetry. Such analysis allows us to identify some of the sub-
tle and often concealed ways by which contemporary composers demonstrated their prowess
in addressing the poetic and musical challenges posed by the model settings.
Abstracts Thursday afternoon 

THE LAST CHANSONNIER: BRUSSELS,

BIBLIOTHÈQUE ROYALE MS 228
Honey Meconi
University of Rochester / Eastman School of Music
Margaret of Austria’s chansonnier Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS  has been the fo-
cus of much scholarly scrutiny, most notably by Martin Picker. The manuscript is beautifully
decorated and shows numerous marks of her ownership, including her portrait, arms, and
symbols such as illustrations of daisies (“marguerites” in French). It is a major collection of
early sixteenth-century chansons, motet-chansons, and song motets, and one of very few
secular collections from the important “Alamire” scriptorium. This paper deepens our un-
derstanding of this significant manuscript by situating it anew in two contexts: that of the
chansonnier as a specific type of manuscript, and that of Margaret’s own life.
The first portion of the paper traces the history of chansonniers by examining them as
cultural objects. The paper shows, first, the evolution of the chansonnier in terms of physical
structure, internal organization, and content, and second, the different functions that chan-
sonniers could serve over and above the obvious one of transmitting French or Occitan secular
music. The three main functions described are () reflecting and helping to transmit social val-
ues; () acting as the secular equivalent of Books of Hours, especially in the Renaissance; and
() serving as a rare opportunity for individual expression in the world of book ownership.
The paper then turns to Margaret of Austria and traces the book culture in which she lived,
drawing on material such as inventories of libraries that she knew and her own acquisition
procedures. Using evidence that includes close comparison with Margaret’s first chansonnier
(Brussels, Bibliothèque royale MS ) and aspects of her biography previously overlooked
by musicologists, the paper demonstrates still other ways—heretofore unnoticed—in which
Brussels BR  is even more closely bound with Margaret, and provides explanations as
well for aspects of presentation in the manuscript. Having laid out a detailed background for
Margaret as an almost uniquely knowledgeable individual in the world of contemporary book
ownership, the paper concludes by showing that Brussels BR  was in many respects “the
last chansonnier” before the world of music transmission and manuscript ownership changed
forever.

HIP HOP: IDENTITY, GEOGRAPHY AND VOICE

Mark Katz, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Chair

THE VOICE OF “NEW OTHERS”: POLISH HIP HOP AND POST-

SOCIALIST TRANSITION FROM A GRASS ROOT PERSPECTIVE
Renata Pasternak-Mazur
Rutgers University
While the instruction of Boethius—“Look to the highest of the heights of heaven”—was
followed in musicological inquiry since the beginnings of the discipline, the rock bottom of
musical genres has been less eagerly explored. The voice of the powerless and the poor tends
to pass virtually unheard. Polish hip hop, a musical genre that became the voice of the people
marginalized in the process of post-socialist transition, creates an opportunity to listen to
 Thursday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

“new others,” to include a grass root perspective into a conceptual scheme of post-socialist
reality. Such a perspective is practically unattainable by sociological and political studies that
reflect common knowledge of local intelligentsia and are preoccupied with issues deemed
most important from its point of view.
The beginnings of Polish hip hop in the late s coincide in time with the transition from
socialism to democracy and free market economy that began in . This paper will present
the changes in hip hop forms, functions, and formal and informal distribution, as well as in
its reception, focusing on the way in which they reflect rapidly changing socio-economical
situations. It will also examine how within the global musical genre the national space has
been created.
Vernacular rap, brought to public attention by main-stream media, functioned originally in
isolation from the hip hop culture, and was associated with fun rather than a serious theme.
On the example of cycles “Poczet królów polskich” (‘Gallery of Polish kings’) from a popular
TV show, I will demonstrate how a parody of rap served as a means of historical and cultural
transmission. I will argue that the first attempts to popularize hip hop were not very successful
due to the conflict between the optimism and enthusiasm of the first post-socialist years and
the hip hop theme. The fact that the genre initially attracted the communities that first experi-
enced socio-economical degradation in the effects of the transition reproduced and amplified
the derogatory stereotypes about the phenomenon and its public. Growing unemployment
and disappointment with capitalism coincide with increasing popularity of hip hop that since
 has dominated popular culture in Poland. I will present how within the last six years
it has evolved towards commercial hiphopolo, while the “authentic” hip hop has returned to
underground existence. Polish hip hop challenges the common belief that the rappers are not
encouraging any kind of positive representation. It also undermines sanctified common wis-
dom about the transition in Poland and other countries in the region.

HIGHWAYS AND HISTORY: RETHINKING THE

EARLY DAYS OF HIP HOP MUSIC
Caroline Polk O’Meara
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
In the Bronx, two miles north of Yankee Stadium, the Cross-Bronx Expressway arches over
the Major Deegan Expressway before plowing into northern Manhattan. Masterminded by
legendary urban planner Robert Moses, these two New York arteries cut through and across
the Bronx, ignoring the borough’s long-established neighborhoods and communities. Hip
hop was born one hot August night in , at a public-housing complex in the shadow of this
interchange. There, Clive Campbell—DJ Kool Herc—loudly premiered his record collection
of soul funk over his father’s powerful sound system. Herc’s music challenged the roar of the
expressways and in the process created the beginnings of hip hop music.
The story of early hip hop music is a story of the wounded late-modern city, and scholars
including Tricia Rose, Adam Krims, and Jeff Chang have all considered how hip hop’s origins
in the Bronx shaped its creation. Remembering the highways of the Bronx, and how they
shaped the creation and reception of this music, will help musicologists understand the musi-
cal innovations of early hip hop. I look more closely at the topography of the Bronx, and how
its fragmented places and spaces provided the structure of feeling that made hip hop possible
in the s. As a result, this essay participates in the larger scholarly project examining the
Abstracts Thursday afternoon 

role that the places of America play in the production of our society and culture. Through
historical and musical analysis, I reconsider the earliest days of hip hop music, the most in-
novative and popular American musical genre of the past thirty years. During hip hop’s first
decade, images of New York’s graffiti-covered subways dominated much of the genre’s critical
discourse. The elevated subways of the Bronx made the trains’ graffiti art widely visible, and
thus exposed the greater public to hip hop culture. But highways also cross the borough in
every direction, especially in the southern neighborhoods where hip hop first took root. In
contrast to the subways—which offer Bronx residents precious mobility despite their har-
rowing noise —the Bronx’s many highways throw constant noise and pollution into the air
without providing a service to the many residents who do not own cars. Early hip hop DJs
and their community’s experience of these highways influenced the creation of hip hop mu-
sic.
I will analyze surviving recordings of hip hop party jams from the mid-s and surviving
knowledge of the earliest (unrecorded) Kool Herc parties, calling attention to Herc’s use of the
“break”—the section of dance records where the rhythm section takes center stage. Hip hop
musicians credit Herc with discovering the appeal of the break. Herc extended these moments
for dancers by dropping the needle down and creating a series of potentially jarring skips
from one record to the next. Thus he transported dancers as fast as possible to the sections of
songs hip hop DJs have redefined as their expressive center. Robert Moses ignored the existing
neighborhoods of the Bronx; Herc disregarded the best-known and most identifiable parts of
the song in order to bring his audience right where he knew they wanted to go.

EMINEM’S “MY NAME IS”: SIGNIFYIN(G)

WHITENESS, REARTICULATING RACE
Loren Y. Kajikawa
UCLA
Too often historians reduce the relationship between youth subculture and capitalism to a
binary struggle between authenticity and co-optation. Unfortunately, such frameworks miss
the complexity of contemporary cultural forms at ease with upsetting social conventions from
within dominant institutional apparatuses. Thomas Frank traces this paradox to the advertis-
ing industry’s embrace of the s’ counterculture. With the rise of “hip consumerism,” the
branding of everyday goods took up countercultural concerns about authenticity, becoming
an attempt to distinguish one’s products as cool (not square) and as liberating (not conform-
ist).
Commercial hip hop music is clearly indebted to this legacy and in many ways seems to
be today’s heir to the commodified counterculture of the s. The way in which rapper
Eminem burst into the public spotlight in  illustrates this point well. While his “homo-
phobic,” “misogynistic,” and “violent” lyrics drew fire from watchdog groups and concerned
citizens, they also cast upsetting “politically correct” social conventions as liberating, allowing
the recording industry to ride the controversy all the way to the bank. Not only was this par-
ticular intersection of commerce and culture good for business, it also coincided with broad
ideological shifts occurring within American society. The years of Eminem’s transformation
from an unknown underground rapper to a superstar are framed by a number of important
political projects, including anti-affirmative action campaigns, welfare reform, and the con-
solidation of the Republican political base.
 Thursday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

In this paper, I explore the intersection of culture, commerce, and ideology in hip hop
music to understand Eminem’s emergence as one of the most popular rap stars of . I
align myself with previous accounts that emphasize how Eminem’s mainstream acceptance de-
pended upon his successful parody of racially based authenticity, the way he self-consciously
emphasized his whiteness. I chart new ground, however, by explaining exactly how Eminem’s
music constructs “white identity” by drawing upon black cultural practices. To explain how
Eminem successfully signifies on hip hop conventions, I compare his mainstream debut, The
Slim Shady LP (), with his relatively unknown and commercially unsuccessful first album,
Infinite (). I pay particular attention to Eminem’s influential debut single, “My Name
Is,” which, ironically, samples black, gay musician Labi Siffre’s “I Got The Blues” (),
transforming it into a musical parody of whiteness. I also depart from much hagiography
on Eminem, which grants him unquestioned agency as an author and countercultural rebel.
Rather than simply transcending racial boundaries, Eminem has had to negotiate them in
ways that make sense to his audiences. Thus, this paper will situate Eminem’s project of reart-
iculating the meaning of whiteness in hip hop music alongside a number of other ideological
realignments in the late s, many of which pit questions of class against those of race in
the service of constructing new political and cultural authenticities.

LOSING YOUR VOICE: SPEECH AND SONG IN SAMPLE-BASED MUSIC

Joseph Auner
Tufts University
Using techniques developed in hip hop production and now proliferating in many different
styles, a wide range of music is being created based all or in part on digital samples. Although
any instrumental or natural sounds one can imagine have been used in loops and layers to
build up complex textures and beats, recorded speaking and singing voices have proven to be
of particular interest to producers such as DJ Shadow, Prefuse , Blockhead, Madlib, and
in the music of groups such as Boards of Canada and The Books. But why do vocal sounds
remain so attractive to these musicians who specifically choose to work independently of vo-
calists? Moreover, they often take considerable care to present the samples in such a way as to
highlight their artificiality and to make clear that we are hearing recorded sounds.
Through analyses of several tracks in the context of the characteristics of the hardware
and software used to create them, I will argue that vocal samples offer a particularly effec-
tive solution to the compositional challenges of composing in a style with limited melodic
and harmonic motion where contrasts in timbre and texture provide the main constructive
device. Recent writings on speech cognition show that even the most distorted and artificial
voices provoke a whole range of emotional and affective responses in listeners. Accordingly,
vocal samples offer both structural and expressive tools for creating large-scale form. And by
using voices drawn from old movies or other ironically distanced sources, or by distorting and
manipulating the voices, sometimes to an extreme degree, the producers are able to preserve
their authorship, the “composer’s voice,” and like ventriloquists speak to their listeners and
other musicians while remaining behind the scene. But in realizing the centuries-old dream
of the vox humana, of talking automata, of instruments that could speak or sing, the ability
to compose with the vast sonic, emotional, and semantic palette that samplers provide raises
a whole host of social and cultural issues. From Edison’s dream of recording as a means for
immortalizing speech, we now face a proliferation of voices that we can no longer assume to
Abstracts Thursday afternoon 

be issuing from bodies of flesh and blood. Even the control over our own voices is increasingly
tenuous, as shown by well-publicized lip-syncing mishaps, trials concerning vocal imperson-
ators, and new speech synthesis software. Sampled voices allow producers to play with gender,
race, history, and tradition, but the legal, ethical, and moral implications of this transforma-
tion into sound and data of something uniquely personal, individual, and human are only
starting to be understood.

INTERNATIONAL CONVERSATIONS
Gary Tomlinson, University of Pennsylvania, Chair

“MY COMPATRIOT THE SAVAGE”: MUSICAL ANACHRONISM

AND SOUND IN TOCQUEVILLE’S NEW WORLD
Ruth Rosenberg
Columbia University
While traveling in Michigan Territory in , a young Alexis de Tocqueville encountered
something most unexpected. Virtually stranded in the forest on their way to the remote out-
post of Saginaw, Tocqueville and his companion, Gustave de Beaumont, were relieved to see
an Indian canoe approach. The man inside, by all appearances an Indian, stopped to offer
them passage. Tocqueville later recalled, in his travel memoir, Quinze Jours au Désert (),
that he was stunned to hear the “savage” in the canoe speaking fluent French, in a Norman
accent, and singing an old French tune. When it was published, this anecdote greatly inter-
ested Parisian intellectuals who studied their country’s poésie populaire, as it indicated that a
poetic and musical French heritage endured in North America, even though the colony was
lost to Britain in .
Like other French visitors to American and Canadian territories in the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, Tocqueville found reminders of his native land in surprising places. His
encounter with the singing “bois-brûle,” (the term he used to describe people of mixed French
Canadian and Indian descent) was one among several dramatic moments in his travels with
Beaumont that forefronted the role of music and other aural phenomena in the apprehension
of the New World. Chateaubriand, who traveled to North America in , placed a similar
emphasis on music, also using it to describe the cultural incongruities of life in the wilds of
New York. In his Memoires d’Outre-Tombe () he described arriving at a remote cabin in
the woods only to find a small Frenchman, powdered and bewigged, playing a popular tune
on the violin and serving as dancing master for a group of Iroquois in traditional costume and
face paint. Somewhat bemused by his commitment to educating “savages” in the finer arts of
music and dance, Chateaubriand wryly dubbed this figure “the new Orpheus.”
At first glance these anecdotes seem to suggest a colonial trope commonly found in Euro-
pean travel writings, in which “savages” are demonstratively civilized by European arts and
language. However, the historical circumstances surrounding nineteenth-century French trav-
elers’ writings, in particular, their evident sensitivity to the problem of their nation’s “lost
empire” in North America, suggests a more nuanced interpretation. Anecdotes such as the
ones described here, I argue, link the fates of the dwindling Indian population and the fate
of French culture in the former colonies by invoking anachronistic musical practices. This
literature treats music and language as powerful vehicles for colonial cultural identification.
 Thursday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

Neither Tocqueville nor Chateaubriand was prepared to find such a large population of their
own countrymen in American and Canadian territories, speaking their language, singing their
songs, and living in villages that looked for all the world like la France profond. The echoes of
French music, song, and language were, for these keen observers, discomfiting reminders of a
French presence in North America that, while formerly highly visible, receded with American,
British, and Native American cultural mixing.

POOR BUTTERFLY: FROM PUCCINI OPERA TO JAZZ STANDARD

Larry Hamberlin
Middlebury College
Raymond Hubbell and John Golden’s “Poor Butterfly” () is one of the oldest songs to
remain in the standard repertoire of jazz singers and instrumentalists. From  to the pres-
ent, it has been recorded over three hundred times, not only by jazz artists but by performers
as varied as Fritz Kreisler and Frank Sinatra. Alone among jazz standards, however, its lyrics
present a synopsis of a European opera, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (). This paper ex-
plores the cultural context in which “Poor Butterfly” came to be written and suggests why it,
among very few pre- songs, was able to retain its place as a standard long after most of its
contemporary songs were forgotten.
Based on an American short story and a prior theatrical adaptation, Puccini’s Madama
Butterfly addressed, to a degree unmatched by any other European opera, American anxieties
over growing U.S. imperialism, personified in the domineering Lieutenant Pinkerton and his
submissive victim Cho-Cho-San. From the time of Butterfly’s Metropolitan premiere in ,
U.S. audiences absorbed Puccini’s opera into an ongoing series of revisions of the unsettling
original story, retellings that also include stage, film, and popular song versions and that ex-
tend to the last decade of the twentieth century (with Weezer’s  album Pinkerton).
Taking its place among these revisions, “Poor Butterfly” is remarkable for a number of rea-
sons. It was written for Tamaki Miura, the first Japanese soprano to have an operatic career
in the West, and who was scheduled to sing it in an extravagant musical revue, The Big Show,
which mixed opera, ballet, musical comedy, and circus acts. Unlike many other Butterfly
songs, which tend to focus on Pinkerton in an effort to soften his harsh personification of
cultural insensitivity, “Poor Butterfly” opts instead to focus on Cho-Cho-San at a key moment
in the narrative: the long vigil in which she awaits Pinkerton’s return. As such, it draws the
listener into her subjectivity more effectively than any related song.
Most importantly, the music of “Poor Butterfly” attempts to graft Puccini’s harmonic and
melodic language onto the conventions of Tin Pan Alley song. Unique among pre- songs,
it boasts a chorus in which most phrases end on unresolved dissonances, typically the upper
notes of extended harmonies (seventh and ninth chords). Although this treatment of disso-
nance is extremely rare in a song of this period, it would become quite common in the “golden
era” of popular song, circa  to . “Poor Butterfly” thus counters an untested com-
monplace of jazz history, which states that s jazz musicians adopted extended harmonies,
whole-tone scales, and other advanced harmonic practices from the French impressionists.
All these style attributes are also found in the operas of Puccini, which were far more widely
known in the U.S. early in the century. This paper concludes with a call for music historians to
consider the likelihood that these style traits may have entered popular music by way of Pucci-
ni, not Debussy or Ravel, and via commercial songwriters rather than jazz instrumentalists.
Abstracts Thursday afternoon 

FREE JAZZ AND THE FRENCH CRITIC

Eric Drott
University of Texas, Austin
Writing in Le Nouvel Observateur in January , jazz critic Philippe Koechlin remarked
that the French response to the free jazz movement coming out of the United States was
one that sought “to explain everything with [the phrases] ‘black power’ and ‘peace in Viet-
nam.’” However derisive its intent may have been, Koechlin’s comment nonetheless offers a
fairly accurate depiction of the French reception of free jazz from the mid-s through the
early s, when an influx of expatriate American improvisers into the country brought “la
nouvelle chose” widespread public and critical attention. Spurred by the writings of Amiri
Baraka, and interviews with Archie Shepp, Sonny Murray, Marion Brown and other musi-
cians, supporters and detractors of the movement soon arrived at the consensus that its music
constituted a transparent reflection of an essentially political enunciation.
Although the controversies surrounding the arrival of free jazz in France echoed equally
charged debates taking place in the United States, the particular position that jazz occupied
within the French cultural field by the mid-s—no longer treated as an exotic divertisse-
ment, but still marked as foreign—complicated debates concerning its aesthetic merit and
political significance. For a number of its adversaries, “la nouvelle chose” called into question
jazz’s claim to universality, a cornerstone of postwar attempts to secure a legitimate place for
the music within France. To some, free jazz was seen as coterminous with a specifically Afri-
can-American political consciousness; to others it represented the musical corollary of a black
nationalist ideology. In either case, the very principle that writers like Andre Hodeir had ad-
vanced after World War II to consecrate jazz was called into question—its ability to transcend
specificities of geography, culture, social position and race.
Yet the particularism seen to inhere in the cultural politics of free jazz presented no less a
challenge for its advocates than for its antagonists. Critics like Michel Le Bris, Yves Buin, Eric
Plaisance, Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli endeavored to broaden the music’s politi-
cal import (and thus its relevance to French listeners) without distorting its perceived message.
Responding to the experience of decolonization and the uprisings of , sympathetic crit-
ics adapted free jazz to fit their own ideological exigencies in a variety of ways: by drawing
parallels between African-American radicalism and French protest movements, by reading
free jazz as a local cultural expression of a worldwide anti-colonial struggle, or by contending
that the “revolt” that listeners located in free jazz was non-specific in character and therefore
not tied to any particular social context. In seeking points of contact between different sets
of social and cultural coordinates, these authors were thus compelled to balance their aspira-
tions to political solidarity on the one hand with the desire to recognize cultural difference
on the other.

AFRICAN MUSIC IN THE LATE WORKS OF GYÖRGY

LIGETI: AMBIGUITIES, RESONANCE, EFFECTS
Martin Scherzinger
Princeton University
Although György Ligeti consolidated his reputation as one of the more important young
composers in the Darmstadt circle with Apparitions (–) and Atmosphères (), his late
 Thursday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

works struck out in entirely new directions. For Ligeti, the early s marked a significant
turning point (“ein Wesentlicher Wendepunkt”) in compositional style and method. Today
Ligeti’s reputation rests on the solid achievement of the Études for piano (–) and the
three concertos, the Klavierkonzert (), the Violinkonzert (), and the Hamburgisches
Konzert (–), which when they appeared were at once recognized as setting a new stan-
dard for modern European composition.
Between  and his death in  Ligeti became deeply interested in African music. It
is the component of African polyphony (shifting downbeats, asymmetric melodies, staggered
canonic voices, inherent patterns, multimeters) above any other feature, that made possi-
ble the time-transcending “illusory musical space” (“illusorischen musikalischen Raum”) the
composer described in his late works. Drawing on modes of music-making found in music
ranging from the sanza music of Cameroon to the horn music of the Banda-Linda in Central
Africa (as described by ethnomusicologists Gerhard Kubik and Simha Arom, among others),
Ligeti in his late works created densely woven polyphonic textures that recapitulated the high
speed “rhythmic illusionism” associated with African musical forms.
In amadinda xylophone music of Uganda, for example, two or more players stand op-
posite one another and beat forth interlocking phrases (sometimes in octaves, sometimes in
single notes) of different lengths reaching speeds of two hundred to six hundred pulses per
minute. The interaction of parts creates an elusive “inherent” melodic line hovering at the
registral extremes of the musical texture. Ligeti simulates this African technique in many of
his late works. In his first Étude, for example, he achieves the amadinda-effect by way of a
wrist technique associated with salsa piano music in the context of a pulse-based continuum.
Furthermore, the asymmetrical distribution of accents and staggered canons draws on Arom’s
diagrammatic representations of Central African “contrametricity” in his book African Poly-
rhythm and African Polyphony. In one striking sketch, dated August , we even find an
overt attempt to impersonate the instrumental behavior of the Shona mbira on the piano.
In his various public statements and interviews Ligeti enthusiastically acknowledges the
influence of African and African-derived music on his compositional practice. Yet his descrip-
tions of the role of African music in his compositions are characteristically imprecise and
general. Through a close examination of Ligeti’s sketches (housed at the Paul Sacher Stiftung
in Switzerland), his relationships with various ethnomusicologists, and his own library of
books on African music, this paper demonstrates and comments upon the ways different
African musical genres, styles and forms became representative modus operandi in Ligeti’s
late works. The paper traces the African citations to specific source materials; describes the
original function and context of the music (even if they are not demonstrably known by the
composer); and, finally, assesses the ideological dimensions implicit in the way the African
materials are put to use in the context of a Western instrumentarium.
Abstracts Thursday afternoon 

NINETEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN OPERA

David Rosen, Cornell University, Chair

COMIC SIGHTS: STAGE DIRECTIONS IN

LUIGI RICCI’S IL NUOVO FIGARO
Francesco Izzo
University of Southampton
Scholars of nineteenth-century Italian opera have recently devoted substantial attention
to the visual elements of operatic performance. Studies have focused in particular on the dis-
posizioni sceniche (the staging manuals published by Ricordi beginning in the late s) and
on the relationship between music, body, and gesture. Stage directions in libretti and scores,
however, have been either neglected or regarded with some degree of scepticism. An oppor-
tunity to reassess the significance of stage directions on the early-nineteenth-century opera
stage comes from Luigi Ricci, the most prominent opera buffa composer during the s and
s. Going well beyond the concise indications provided by his librettists, Ricci filled many
of his autograph scores with exceptionally detailed clues on the placement, movements, facial
expressions, and interaction of his characters.
Concentrating on the stage directions in the autograph score of one of Ricci’s first buffa
hits, Il nuovo Figaro (), I explore the composer’s approach to visible action in the light of
contemporary opera conventions and criticism. The first part of my study focuses on recita-
tives, where Ricci’s effort is particularly evident in the abundant references to facial expression.
In extended passages of recitative, the elaborate onstage activity envisioned by Ricci also af-
fected the timing of musical performance, suggesting that priority was given to realistic acting,
which gave rhythmic and expressive variety to the delivery of the text. Then I turn to three
numbers (the Introduzione, a duet, and the Finale primo), in which some of Ricci’s stage
directions not only coordinate acting and musical events, but also bridge the separation be-
tween static and kinetic sections of the musico-dramatic structure. At a time when critics
complained about the lack of musical differentiation between serious and comic opera, Ricci’s
preoccupation with the visual also appears to compensate for the ostensible semantic abstrac-
tion of certain musical passages. Finally, I examine the connections between Ricci’s work and
studies of bodily gesture published in early-nineteenth-century Italy. The appearance in Ital-
ian translation of Johann Jakob Engel’s Ideen zu einer Mimik () and the publication of
Andrea de Jorio’s La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano () were pivotal
in establishing a new awareness of the meaning and expressive power of gesture and provide a
new context for the exploration of visible action in primo ottocento opera.
Ricci’s attempt to make his voice heard in an area usually under the domain of librettists
and stage directors foreshadows the issues of authority that became prominent during the
second half of the s. Beyond its obvious relevance for the study of acting and staging,
his work stimulates a reflection on possible applications of nineteenth-century practices to
modern performances, enriches the current debate on the significance of nineteenth-century
staging materials, and expands considerably our conceptions of the operatic text in early-nine-
teenth-century Italy.
 Thursday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

NEW LETTERS FROM SCRIBE TO VERDI AND THE “PROBLEM”

OF THE FIFTH ACT OF LES VÊPRES SICILIENNES
Andreas Giger
Louisiana State University
In , Andrew Porter published a collection of fourteen letters from Verdi to Scribe that
have fundamentally changed our understanding of Verdi’s role in crafting the libretto of Les
Vêpres siciliennes. While we originally thought that Verdi had more or less accepted Scribe’s
libretto without reservations, we now know that he influenced every aspect from dramaturgy
to versification. But so far, we have known only Verdi’s side of the correspondence, even if we
have assumed that Scribe’s side would eventually be found at the Verdi villa in Sant’Agata.
With regard to five letters, I can now confirm this assumption: they are indeed at Sant’Agata
and can be consulted in a microfilm copy at New York University’s American Institute for
Verdi Studies.
The five letters do not change our picture of a composer actively involved in crafting the
libretto, but they do change the picture of an ostensibly uncooperative librettist. And since
the letters reveal that Scribe did indeed fulfill Verdi’s wishes, we must now assume that the
libretto, including its ostensibly problematic aspects, reflects Verdi’s intentions. The fifth act,
for instance, which Scribe upon Verdi’s request revised repeatedly and which musicological
studies generally consider to be problematic, might in fact have pleased Verdi. Based on the
newly discovered and previously published letters, an analysis of the dramatic concept, re-
views of the Paris premiere, and an unknown letter Verdi wrote to the editor of L’Europe artiste
in defense of his good relations with Scribe, this paper will show that the ceremonial opening
of act V does indeed reflect a convincing concept.
The act begins with a chorus and two arias, all ceremonial in nature. The slow dramatic
pace does not—as Anselm Gerhard has claimed—constitute a problem but reflects a clear in-
tention: Verdi had Scribe remove any trace of ominous foreboding (clearly present in Scribe’s
original conception) and replace it by lighthearted numbers characterized by mechanical scan-
ning (often against prosodic accents), thus allowing for a acceleration of the dramatic pace
toward the tragic end. Not only does this concept duplicate a successful Italian precedent (the
second half of Act II of La traviata, where the ceremonial matador and gypsy choruses, via
a dramatic acceleration, lead to Alfredo’s insult of Violetta) but also a precedent in a French
grand opera (Act I of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots). One French critic praised precisely this
dramatic layout; others, including Paul Scudo (who normally was ill-inclined toward Verdi’s
operas) considered two of the three numbers of the ceremonial opening to be among the
opera’s best.
Abstracts Thursday afternoon 

RETROSPECTION
Arved Ashby, Ohio State University, Chair

SUBJECTIVITY AND SENTIMENTALITY IN THE

LATE WORKS OF RICHARD STRAUSS
Charles Youmans
Pennsylvania State University
Recent research on the philosophical dilemmas of the young Strauss has as yet unrecog-
nized implications for later periods of his output, particularly the so-called “Indian Summer,”
a phase marked by musical and extra-musical engagement with the composer’s early career.
In his final works Strauss returned not merely to long-abandoned genres but to the way sta-
tions of his road to maturity, in their original order: absolute genres (the Oboe Concerto,
the Second Horn Concerto, the Sonatinas), now handled with subtle freedoms reminiscent
of neoclassicism; programmatic orchestral music (Metamorphosen), drawing particularly on
musico-dramatic techniques typical of the first cycle of tone poems; and a Wagnerian operatic
idiom that uses Wagner’s own musical language to question the continued viability of Roman-
ticism (the so-called Vier letzte Lieder).
Strauss recapitulated his maturation process for reasons addressed elliptically in the late di-
ary entry now known as the “letzte Aufzeichnung.” Scholars have yet to answer the composer’s
final, emphatic complaint that his peculiar brand of musical autobiography had been misun-
derstood. The approach taken in recent work has been to characterize Strauss as a wearer of
masks, an artist fundamentally detached from his work. While consistent with the composer’s
well-known habits of ostentatious self-concealment, this reading creates a deeper misunder-
standing, with the implication that behind the mask lay a coherent, controlling subjective
presence. In works and in correspondence that have yet to be read in this context, Strauss ex-
plicitly denied the existence of what would later be known as the “centered self.” Thus, when
read as a response to his youthful crisis, the variety of Strauss’s autobiographical statements
tells a story both darker and more sincere than the one we have come to know; it speaks of
an unstable, fragmented conception of subjectivity, which Strauss was forced to accept as a
consequence of his critique of musical idealism.
The most direct statement of this personal philosophy came in the Metamorphosen, a dis-
turbingly honest work in which Strauss aligned his views of the self with those of Goethe
while juxtaposing the loss of the self, anticipation of his own death, and the decline of Ger-
man culture. But evidence of it can be found as well in the revival of concerto, lied, and
sonatina, where Strauss drew distinctions between ironic distance and modernist sentimental-
ity. As the eighty-five-year-old suggested, these insights provide a context for interpreting his
oeuvre as a whole, by clarifying the relationship between the work and its creator.
The critical reading offered here is grounded in research on unpublished diaries, correspon-
dence, and musical sketches held at the Richard-Strauss Archiv in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
 Thursday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

LIGETI AND THE LAMENT

David Metzer
University of British Columbia
Ligeti returned to the genre of the lament throughout his career. During the s, he
honed in on the genre, writing several works that feature movements cast as laments. The
movements build upon a gesture crucial to the age-old genre: the raising of a voice rich in
cultural associations of grief and mourning to begin a lamentation. The act of raising a voice
provides new insights into Ligeti’s laments, particularly how they function as laments and how
they participate in a larger turn in the s to more directly expressive idioms.
This paper concentrates on the Adagio from the Horn Trio (), the first work of that
decade to feature a lament. To begin his lament, Ligeti raises not one voice but three: a chro-
matic passacaglia, a pedal tone, and a melodic phrase that the composer called the “lamento
motif.” The voices stem from two different lament traditions, the passacaglia from Baroque
opera and the latter two from Eastern European idioms. An examination of materials in
the Paul Sacher Stiftung reveals how Ligeti constantly reworked the voices, especially the
passacaglia, to tighten the bonds with those repertoires. His annotations also make specific
connections to Eastern European styles, allowing us to go beyond the general affinities de-
scribed by scholars. Having raised the voices, the movement initially behaves like a traditional
lament, establishing tensions between expressive gestures and formal structures and initiating
a process of sonic transformation that culminates in a scene of “acoustic violence.” Ligeti’s la-
ment, however, reaches an outcome unthinkable in traditional idioms. Backed by clusters and
frantic rhythmic energy, the violence is never curtailed. It shatters the borrowed lament voices
and structures, fragments of which are strewn across the postlude. The voices are vanquished
by the expressive momentum that they unleash.
That momentum, though, becomes an expressive voice in itself for Ligeti, one crucial to a
larger turn in modernist composition during the s. In a significant shift that has received
little attention from scholars, Ligeti and other modernist composers, along with conserva-
tive neo-Romantic composers, forged more directly expressive idioms, yet another step away
from the abstract stance of modernist styles of previous decades. A lodestone of expression,
the lament offered such directness. By raising its voices, Ligeti could raise a new expressive
voice in the contemporary scene. He did not merely imitate these voices, as many neo-Ro-
mantic composers did with past styles; rather, he took them to violent extremes. In doing so,
his works, unlike those of the neo-Romantics, valorize modernist elements, the clusters and
manic rhythmic energy that come to the fore at the end of the Trio movement. The lament
provides those elements with a new expressive context, giving their intensity a role to play in
the emotional throes of sorrow and mourning. In turning to the ancient genre, Ligeti was
not alone. Many modernist composers during the s and s drew upon it and used it
in similar ways to achieve expressive immediacy, including Kurtág, Saariaho, Gubaidulina,
Schnittke, and Turnage.
Abstracts Thursday afternoon 

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN OPERA

Ellen Rosand, Yale University, Chair

OF PATRONS AND VENETIAN THEATERS: THE

COLONNAS’ PATRONAGE OF SINGERS AND THE
STORY OF THE WANDERING ALCASTA
Valeria De Lucca
Princeton University
As studies of the “business” of Venetian opera in the second half of the seventeenth century
continue to develop, the role that patrons played in shaping the world of opera and in creat-
ing a trait d’union between “courtly” patronage and “commercial” opera business has become
increasingly evident, to the point of questioning the validity of the widespread categories of
“private,” “courtly,” “commercial,” and “public” artistic enterprises. An opportunity to deepen
our understanding of this aspect of seventeenth-century operatic culture comes from an inves-
tigation of the activities of the Roman Prince Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna and of his wife Maria
Mancini, two of the most active patrons of music in Rome and Venice during the mid to late
s. Based on a re-examination of the “Faustini papers” and on an array of primary sources
presented here for the first time (including private correspondence, avvisi di Roma, avvisi di
Venezia, and family records from the Colonna Archive), I explore the Colonnas’ involvement
in, and contribution to, the development of Venetian opera and the circulation of musical
materials, libretti, and singers between Rome and Venice.
The first part of the paper presents an overview of the Colonnas’ patronage of opera in Ven-
ice during the years –. Over the course of three seasons, the couple protected some
of the most celebrated singers of the time, including Antonia and Nicola Coresi, Giovanni
Antonio Cavagna, and Vincenza Giulia Masotti. In addition, they functioned as liaisons be-
tween singers, other patrons, and the impresario of the Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Marco
Faustini. They influenced Faustini’s decisions concerning not only matters of recruiting and
casting, but also the repertoire to be performed. The remarkable number of six operas dedi-
cated to them during those years is indicative of their profound involvement with the world
of Venetian opera.
In the second part of the paper I turn to the fundamental role of the Colonnas as interme-
diaries between the operatic worlds of Rome and Venice, which I probe through a discussion
of Alcasta. A newly discovered letter shows that in  Colonna had commissioned a musical
setting of this libretto by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni from Antonio Cesti, which was prob-
ably destined to be given at the Teatro Grimani in Venice. But primary evidence suggests that
Cesti never in fact set Alcasta, and due to an intricate set of circumstances the opera, with mu-
sic by Bernardo Pasquini, premiered at Rome’s Teatro Tordinona in . Controlled by the
Colonnas, and coveted to the end by the Chigi family in Rome and the Grimanis in Venice,
Alcasta exemplifies the complexity of the exchanges between Roman patrons and the operatic
Venetian world, and indicates that this interaction played a crucial role in the development of
mid-seventeenth-century opera.
This study of the Colonnas’ activities paves a new way towards a deeper knowledge of the
Venetian operatic world beyond the boundaries of the Serenissima, and helps to understand
more fully its mechanisms, its circulation, and its success.
 Thursday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

PRACTICE AND PATRONAGE MAKE PERFECT: LAUNCHING AN

OPERATIC CAREER IN LATE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ITALY
Colleen Reardon
University of California, Irvine
The Sienese castrato Giovanni Battista Tamburini (c. –after ) was Cardinal Frances-
co Maria de’ Medici’s lifelong project. Francesco Maria must have heard Tamburini’s potential
when the singer entered the Siena Cathedral choir in . He might have arranged for the
operation that left Tamburini a contralto castrato, and he probably engineered Tamburini’s
operatic début in Florence in . In , the Cardinal sent the castrato off to study voice,
first in Rome, and then in Parma, under the tutelage of the composer Bernardo Sabadini.
Newly discovered letters from the period – offer the unusual opportunity to observe
how this training unfolded from three points of view: student, teacher, and patron.
Tamburini’s missives offer a gold mine of gossip on the personalities, artistic and otherwise,
of famous singers of the day and on operatic productions in Piacenza, Parma, and other Italian
cities outside Venice and Rome. His frequent correspondence also allows for a reconstruction
of the musical instruction he was given and of the practical advice he received on how to con-
duct an artistic career, sometimes coming in the form of orders from the cardinal and his allies
and sometimes in the form of opinions offered by his teacher or by fellow singers. Through
Tamburini’s eyes, we see first-hand the rough-and-tumble industry of recruiting performers
for operas and learn of the informal network of friendships and business dealings that con-
nected him to other well-known operatic stars, both male and female. Sabadini’s letters to the
cardinal, on the other hand, furnish an assessment of Tamburini’s abilities and his needs as a
singer and highlight the teacher’s worries about the personal and health problems that the cas-
trato experienced during his three-and-a-half year apprenticeship in Parma. In one instance,
Sabadini reveals a conflict of interest that might have led him to put his own career above
the best interests of his student, had not the cardinal intervened. Finally, Cardinal Francesco
Maria de’ Medici is represented second-hand by the issues addressed in both Tamburini’s
and Sabadini’s letters and first-hand by his own tersely written replies to Sabadini. Francesco
Maria’s role in promoting opera has hitherto been overshadowed by that of his nephew and
near-contemporary Prince Ferdinando, but through these letters we gain a better understand-
ing of his taste and judgment. They demonstrate that he was dedicated first and foremost to
developing Tamburini’s talents as a singer, and they reveal the methods, sometimes diplomatic
and sometimes brutally direct, that he deployed to make sure that Tamburini was receiving
the best education possible.
Abstracts Thursday afternoon 

TRANSMISSION OF CHANT REPERTORIES

Marica Tacconi, Pennsylvania State University, Chair

THE CAROLINGIAN LITURGICAL REFORMS: HOW SACRAMENTARIES

MAY CHANGE OUR UNDERSTANDING OF CHANT “TRANSMISSION”
Daniel J. DiCenso
Magdalene College, University of Cambridge
Even before the publication of Hesbert’s Antiphonale Missarum sextuplex in , scholars
had recognized similarities among the earliest sources of chant for the Mass. These “antiphon-
ers,” which date from the late eighth century, exhibit a degree of concordance with regard
to the texts of the chants they contain and the arrangement of the liturgical calendar, but
they do not contain musical notation and therefore offer no information about the degree of
concordance that may have existed among the melodies themselves. Musicologists have, of
course, famously disagreed about how the similarities among the early antiphoners should be
understood, but almost all have agreed that the level of concordance lends credibility to the
Carolingian claim to have established an authoritative version of the chant across the empire
as part of a larger effort to “Romanize” the liturgy. This paper will attempt to show just the
opposite—that the early antiphoners do not offer evidence for the kind of liturgical reforms
that they have been traditionally thought to support.
The earliest sources of Mass chants were not freestanding books of chant. In fact, a major-
ity of the extant eighth- and ninth-century antiphoners belong to codices that contain other
contemporaneous liturgical materials, including complete or nearly complete sacramentaries
(books of prayers for the Mass). To date, the relationship between the earliest antiphoners and
the sacramentaries with which they were copied and/or bound has not received the kind of
attention it deserves. By examining these early sacramentaries and antiphoners in context and
by considering how they may have worked together in the practice of a Mass, a very different
story emerges about the Carolingian liturgical reforms, the degree of Romanization sought,
desired, and achieved, and how the “transmission” of chant fit in with the larger project of
liturgical reform (if such a project really existed).
Demonstrating that antiphoners and sacramentaries from the same codices (including
those from Rheinau, Mont Blandin, Corbie, and Senlis, among others) put forward entirely
different pictures of the Carolingian reforms, this paper will ask whether conceptualizing the
musical aspects of these reforms as “transmission” does not obscure an apparent flourishing
of varied Mass practices (musical and otherwise) throughout the Carolingian era and in the
years that follow. In fact, a comparative study of the early antiphoners and sacramentaries sug-
gests that the limited consistency found among the antiphoners alone—a sign that has often
been read as definitive evidence of authoritative uniformity sought and achieved—cannot be
understood as the only or most important consequence of what were diverse and specific re-
forms of separate parts of the liturgy. Though it is admittedly an attractive narrative, mistaking
limited consistency for uniformity and, in turn, uniformity for “transmission” emerges, here,
as a misrepresentation of a complex and multifaceted process that may not have been oriented
toward, and certainly did not achieve, authoritative uniformity in the Carolingian liturgy.
 Thursday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

ORIGINAL HYMNOGRAPHIC PRODUCTION IN KIEVAN

RUSSIA, TEXT, MUSIC AND PERFORMANCE
Gregory Myers
Port Moody, British Columbia
For the Eastern Slavs, the eleventh to thirteenth centuries was an intense period of cultural
and nascent intellectual foment. Unfortunately, precious few manuscripts have survived to
bear witness to the remarkable musical life of Russia at this time. Those that do tell us that
the medieval Russian church maintained compliance in her liturgical texts and customs with
those of Byzantium. But perhaps more importantly, they stand as monuments to the measure
of general and specifically musical literacy of that receiving culture, and attest to the different
layers of cultural and intellectual developmental processes.
Byzantine sources obviously provided models, not to mention the point of departure, for
all Slavic hymnographic production of this period, both for texts and melodies, and certainly
for the entire manuscript tradition. Yet not all Slavic hymns can be found in the Byzantine
liturgical canon. We may cite as a specific example the Mode III hymn to the first Russian
martyrs Sts. Boris and Gleb, a contrafactum based on the same type of hymn for Christ-
mas, composed in a florid style and written with a complex musical notation. Unfortunately,
neither chant can be read since no Byzantine setting in a corresponding musical style nor
transcribable musical notation survives to which it can be compared.
All told, examples of original early Slavic hymnody with a musical setting in a readable
notation are rare. Furthermore, to find an illustration on which we can cast light on the actual
compositional process in a text’s transformation into a musical number is indeed cause to cel-
ebrate! Fortunately, such pieces do exist: one such number is a chant for the  November Feast
of the Archangel Michael and the Incorporeal Host.
The presence of one hymn of apparently original literary and musical creation raises the
question of the survival of others. Fortunately, another example, also with no corollary in the
Greek tradition, can be found on the first folios of a twelfth-century source kept in Moscow’s
State Historical Museum—a processional hymn for the Transfiguration ( August). The fol-
lowing is a discussion of this hymn and its place in the liturgical canon of the early medieval
Russian church. It offers suggestions as to its musical performance and reconstruction.

TRANSMISSION AND MANIPULATION OF CHANT REPERTORIES:

THE MASSES FOR THE HOLY CROSS IN MEDIEVAL ITALY
Luisa Nardini
University of Texas, Austin
Italian liturgical manuscripts copied between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries
preserve archaic liturgical and musical features that attest to the complex cultural interrela-
tionships among different regions of Europe. Excellent case-studies for the understanding of
the cultural matrices of Italian liturgical sources are the masses for the feasts of the Holy Cross
(Invention,  May, and Exaltation,  September).
While in the majority of chant manuscripts the feasts of the Holy Cross adapted standard
Gregorian texts and melodies from the Thursday and Tuesday in Holy week, a group of books
copied in the modern regions of Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, and Campania contain chants
that do not belong to the international repertory. Rather, these chants are derived from the
Abstracts Thursday afternoon 

southwestern French region of Aquitaine, where the services for the Holy Cross were as-
tonishingly rich and included an entire newly composed Mass Proper set embellished with
sequences, tropes, and prosulas.
When transmitted to Italy these chants were reworked in various ways: they were either
reassembled in a different order (especially the offertory verses) or expanded through the com-
position of new pieces, each manuscript presenting its own unique combination of materials.
Clerics from northern Italy composed new introits and offertory verses, while those from the
south added new alleluias with prosulas. The newly composed melodies echo modal assess-
ments and stylistic elements of the archaic Italian dialects of chant (Ambrosian, Beneventan,
and Old-Roman) and occasionally contain references to some texts and melodies of possible
Byzantine and Gallican origins. The chants imported from southern France, on the other
hand, were stylistically accommodated to the local musical taste.
Considered as a whole these masses are the extraordinary witnesses of the kind of work
that medieval musicians and liturgists had to accomplish in order to provide chants for new
liturgical feasts. Chant of different origins were assembled and reworked in various ways and
juxtaposed to newly composed melodies.
Studies by Cattaneo, Hesbert, Leclercq, and, more recently, van Tongeren, have investigated
the question of the origin of the feasts of the Holy Cross and analyzed their presence in sev-
enth- and eight-century lectionaries and sacramentaries and other early liturgical documents.
My paper reconstructs the reception of the Aquitanian masses in the Italian manuscripts
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The collation of liturgical books, in fact, reveals that
churches from both the north and the south of Italy derived their imported material directly
from Aquitaine, since there are no apparent signs of reciprocal influence. Ultimately, the
analysis of local compositions offers a privileged perspective on issues of oral and written
transmissions of chants and offers valuable elements to discuss the diffusion of the cult of the
Cross in medieval Italy.

ANTIPHONS FROM THE OFFICES FOR HUBERT AND ROCH

Jennifer Bain
Dalhousie University
Since Andrew Hughes wrote in  that few scholars “have ever considered the largest of
all repertories of monophonic music, plainsongs written from the tenth to sixteenth century
for the Offices,” a repertory that he estimates contains some , melodies, several schol-
ars have contributed studies and editions of offices for particular saints. Continuing in that
tradition and taking advantage of a local and recent rediscovery, this paper will focus on five
rare antiphons for Saints Hubert and Roch found in the Salzinnes Antiphonal, a beautifully
illuminated sixteenth-century chant manuscript housed in Halifax, Canada. Donated by the
Archdiocese in Halifax in the s to the Patrick Power Library at St. Mary’s University, the
Antiphonal is thought to have been brought to Halifax in the nineteenth century by William
Walsh, the first Bishop of Halifax. Although the artwork, the provenance and the construc-
tion of the manuscript (created at Salzinnes, a Cistercian convent in Namur at that time in
the diocese of Liège), have been studied intensively (Dietz ), the music has not been ex-
amined by modern musicologists until now.
Musically the manuscript offers a fascinating window on Cistercian liturgical practice. In
the Prologue to the revised Cistercian Antiphoner from , Bernard of Clairvaux declares
 Thursday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

that textually and musically the new Antiphoner is “beyond reproach.” He stipulates that it
should be adopted by all Cistercian monasteries (and therefore convents as well), and that the
General Chapter and all the Abbots “prohibit change whatsoever to be made by anyone and
in any way.” But how faithfully did Cistercians follow Bernard’s dictates? Initial musical com-
parisons of the Sanctorale within the Salzinnes Antiphonal with a twelfth-century Cistercian
antiphonal from the Abbey of Morimondo (F-Pn n.a.lat.  and F-Pn n.a.lat. ) in the
diocese of Milan reveals a remarkable level of consistency considering the four hundred years
and the geographical distance that separate the two. What stands out in the Salzinnes Sanc-
torale and distinguishes it from Morimondo is the presence of five rare antiphons. Covering
the winter feasts only, the Salzinnes Antiphonal includes five antiphons dedicated to the local
Saint Hubert (first Bishop of Liège) and Saint Roch (venerated widely for healing those with
the Plague), whose feast days lie outside the temporal span of the manuscript.
 Thursday evening, 1 November

HISPANIC INTEREST GROUP: TRADITION AND

LITURGY IN MEXICAN SACRED MUSIC
Ana R. Alonso-Minutti, University of California, Davis, Chair
Joseph Sargent, Stanford University
Jesus Ramos-Kittrell, Tulane University
Alejandro L. Madrid, University of Illinois at Chicago
This panel, comprised of scholars who have done research both in Mexico and Spain, treats
issues pertaining to Mexican religious music, from late sixteenth to late twentieth century, its
assimilation of Eurocentric styles, the politics around it, as well as the re-evaluation of historio-
graphical approaches to modernity and tradition. We hope to promote knowledge of religious
Mexican music, to address the challenges of the repertory, and, most importantly, to provide a
space for dialogue among scholars interested in this field.
Hispanic composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries produced a no-
ticeably high proportion of Magnificats relative to mass settings. In “Franco’s Magnificats as
Agents of Genre Diversification,” Joseph Sargent argues that the Magnificats of Hernando
Franco—the most significant composer of late sixteenth-century Mexico—represent an im-
pulse toward “genre diversification,” aimed at expanding the polyphonic repertoire at Mexico
City Cathedral. In an era when traditional ideas about the relative importance of sacred forms
faced increasing scrutiny, Franco embodies an approach found throughout Mexico of priv-
ileging less “prestigious” genres in order to enrich the repertoire of emerging ecclesiastical
organizations.
In “The Politics of Ritual: Considering Baroque Catholicism in Liturgical Practices at the
Cathedral of Mexico,” Jesus Ramos-Kittrell focuses on the Feast of Corpus Christi to analyze
the impact of political and economic factors on the observance of ritual performance in New
Spain, in which music was a central element. Recent archival research shows that scarce funds
call into question the notion of ritual pomposity during religious feasts of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Ramos-Kittrell argues that the supposed splendor of the liturgy does not stand up to an
earnest appraisal of historical fact, and prompts scholars to re-evaluate upheld notions of excess
and exuberance characteristic of baroque religious culture in New Spain.
In “Modernism as Tradition in Julián Carrillo’s Misa en cuartos de tono” Alejandro L. Madrid
combines stylistic analysis with a study of the aesthetic and cultural circumstances surround-
ing Carrillo’s Misa en cuartos de tono () in an attempt to show how the development of the
composer’s mature microtonal music is a synthetic response to the contradictory aesthetic ideas
that informed his writings about music, tradition, and modernism throughout his life. Since
the interpretative dichotomy modernism/tradition collapses when trying to make sense of this
composition, Madrid proposes that the work shows how modernism becomes tradition, thus
coming to terms with one of Carrillo’s life-long compositional dilemmas.
In “Memory and the Assimilation of Tradition in Mario Lavista’s Missa Brevis ad Consolatio-
nis Dominam Nostram,” Ana R. Alonso-Minutti explores how Mario Lavista’s understanding
of certain aspects—whether musical or aesthetic—from his musical “ancestors” gives him a
way to remember. This memory is present throughout his religious music, culminating with
his Missa Brevis (). By using certain musical traits common in medieval and renaissance
music, Lavista not only consolidates his own musical language, but also places himself as part
of a particular tradition of composers who have approached the Latin mass as a genre shaped
by a spiritual affinity with medieval liturgy.
 Thursday evening AMS Quebec City 

VIRTUAL ACOUSTICS AND THE RECORDING OF

JOSEPH HAYDN’S KEYBOARD MUSIC
Tom Beghin, Martha de Francisco, Wieslaw Woszczyk
with Erin Helyard, Doyuen Ko, Ryan Miller, Jeremy Tusz
Schulich School of Music, McGill University
Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds
Québecois de la recherche sur la société et la culture, and executed at McGill’s Centre for
Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, a project to record Haydn’s com-
plete solo keyboard music is nearing completion. The result of an interdisciplinary effort,
these recordings combine new applications of sound recording and production with new
insights in musicology and historical performance, while creating a product that is artistically
and commercially attractive.
The traditional model of one-keyboard-fits-all—either the generic “fortepiano” or the
modern-day Steinway—is replaced by an array of seven instruments relevant for Haydn, from
a s clavichord to a  English grand piano. Three of these—a Viennese harpsichord
with an idiomatic “short octave,” a Tafelklavier, and a fortepiano with an early-Viennese Stoss-
mechanik—were especially built for this project, two of them as world premieres.
During trips abroad we measured the acoustic impulse responses of a variety of historical
rooms and set forth to recreate these in the recording studio. Thus, among others, the mag-
nificent Ceremonial Room in Esterháza, a private room from Haydn’s Eisenstadt home, a
Prunkraum from the Albertina in Vienna, or the Oxford Holywell Music Room became “vir-
tual rooms” for the performance and recording of Haydn’s keyboard music.
The performer, seated at the instrument, is surrounded by a “dome” of twenty-four loud-
speakers. These re-transmit the captured performance quasi-instantaneously, through a digital
processing system based on convolution and wave field synthesis. The performer interacts live
with the recreated acoustics and keeps control over his interpretation, which is recorded in
multifold channels (surround), so as to convey the sound-enveloped ambience in the richest
possible way.
This new paradigm of recording raises an array of questions, which for musicologists are
not altogether new but which in their “virtual” manifestation become more pressing. Have
acoustics remained underappreciated in our assessments of musical style and performance?
Can modern recording techniques provide ways to reveal alternative contexts for “historical
listening”? Are we ready to expand our stereophonic expectations of recorded sound and ex-
plore fuller, more integrated sonic images of instrument and room? How far can or should
the recording engineer go in mixing “direct” and “diffuse” sounds, the first largely defined
by instrument, the second by room, with significant overlap between the two? Assisted by
advanced computer techniques, can the recording engineer convincingly reconstruct the im-
pression of a performance in a space different to the one of recording? Can the use of this kind
of technology advance musicological and artistic discovery?
Featuring audio-visual materials, this presentation aims to bring a lively account of several
important aspects of the project: the selection of historical rooms, the process of sampling
their acoustics, decisions made in the recording studio, post-recording decisions yet to be
taken before a commercial release. The Pièce de résistance will be the construction of a number
of virtual rooms in the conference room itself and, in them, the staging of live performances
on three different keyboard instruments.
Abstracts Thursday evening 

WAGNER AND CINEMA

Jeongwon Joe, University of Cincinnati, Organizer
Sander L. Gilman, Emory University, Moderator
James Buhler, University of Texas at Austin
John Deathridge, King’s College London
Thomas Grey, Stanford University
David Neumeyer, University of Texas at Austin
William H. Rosar, Journal of Film Music
Marc A. Weiner, Indiana University
“If Wagner had lived a century later, his home would not have been Bayreuth but Beverly
Hills,” stated Martin van Amorogen in Wagner: A Case History. Although most often cited,
Gesamtkunstwerk and leitmotif are too simplistic to support Amorogen’s view. More sophis-
ticated examples of Wagner’s cinematic imagination can be found at detailed levels of his
music-dramas, such as his demand for the “mimomaniac” correspondence between music
and bodily gestures, which anticipated “Mickey-Mousing” in film. Filmmakers’ century-long
fascination with the composer has amplified Wagner’s aura in cinema. As early as , Carl
Froelich produced a silent film, Richard Wagner, which is known to be the first composer
biopic. In soundtrack, too, Wagner’s resonance has been conspicuous in both original film
scoring and compilation scores. Also indicative of Wagner’s kinship with cinema is Bayreuth’s
invitation of film directors to stage production, including Patrice Chéreau, Werner Herzog,
and Lars von Trier. Furthermore, such celebrated blockbuster films as Peter Jackson’s The Lord
of the Rings series have stimulated popular attention to Wagnerian ambience in cinema. Given
these historical manifestations of the mutual attraction between Bayreuth and movie theaters,
Theodor Adorno’s dictum, “the birth of film out of the spirit of [Wagner’s] music,” has proven
to be more than an ideologically-biased diagnosis.
The panel intends to initiate a dialog about Wagnerism in cinema among film music schol-
ars and Wagner specialists in musicology and Germanic studies. By reconsidering existing
theories and introducing new interdisciplinary issues and methodologies, the panelists will
enrich and extend the burgeoning scholarship on Wagner and cinema. Moderated by Sander
Gilman, the panel will begin with Jeongwon Joe’s introduction to the current state of the
scholarship on Wagner and cinema, which will be followed by six presentations. The first two
panelists will consider musical issues. David Neumeyer will trace Wagner’s influence on Max
Steiner’s film scoring, based on Steiner’s hitherto unknown sketches, which contain his com-
ments on specific passages in relation to Wagner’s opera. Drawing on Rudolf Otto’s theory
of the “numinous” in the phenomenology of religion, William Rosar will demonstrate how
Hollywood film composers of the s modeled their musical depiction of the extraterrestrial
on Wagner’s music-drama in science fiction films. Marc Weiner and Thomas Grey will address
cultural issues Wagner stimulates in two Oscar-winning Hollywood films. Grey will consider
Wagner’s shadowy presence as well as absence in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings in light
of Harold Bloom’s theory of the “anxiety of influence.” Reading Ridley Scott’s Gladiator in
the political context of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, Weiner will discuss how
musical quotes from Wagner function in a larger set of references to modern German history
in the film. James Buhler will reconsider the dominant scholarship on silent film, which has
discounted its debt to Wagner, and propose an alternative perspective from which Wagnerian
aesthetics can be re-contextualized in silent film. The panelists’ presentations will conclude
with John Deathridge’s skeptical claim on behalf of Wagner’s anti-cinematic imagination,
questioning the composer’s apotheosized status in the genealogy of cinema.
 Friday morning, 2 November

AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE
Robert Fink, UCLA, Chair

ON DEFEATING THEATER : ART, OBJECTHOOD

AND THE MUSIC OF FLUXUS
Kelsey Cowger
UCLA
In , the art critic Michael Fried penned a piece for Artforum entitled “Art and Object-
hood” which was designed as both a spirited defense of artistic modernism and a rallying cry
against minimalist and conceptual art. In it, he darkly predicted the onset of an intellectual
and aesthetic battle between what he termed “the authentic art of our time” and “other work
. . . of the sensibility or mode of being that I have characterized as corrupted or perverted
by theatre.” Forty years later, Fried’s essay still resonates with a visceral anxiety, augured by
the idea that the generic borders between visual artworks, music and performance acts were
both more fluid than readily assumed and highly contested by artists working in a variety of
media. The artistic and cultural climate of the s and s proved to be fertile ground for
this blurring of artistic formal boundaries. As an example, musicologists frequently look to
John Cage’s early musical/theatrical experimental works (in particular, the  “happening”
at Black Mountain College, Black Mountain Piece). More infrequently addressed in musico-
logical circles, however, are the works of the loosely comprised group of artists called Fluxus,
where these experiments in the intersections of art, music and performance were, if anything,
more pronounced. At various points in the movement’s height, Fluxus artists fed hay to a
piano, released butterflies into the audience, obsessively poured water from one vessel into
another, and spectacularly destroyed a number of instruments.
Because of their self-conscious “meaninglessness” and their complex relationship to their
own object-status, Fluxus pieces tend to be tremendously resistant to conventional her-
meneutic interpretive strategies. Works by Fluxus artists were frequently highly visual and
performance-oriented, extending Cage’s formulation of the inherent musicality of sound into
the realm of the unheard and the conceptual; many Fluxus pieces have no sonic content at
all (or, as in the case of the butterfly in the audience, sonic content that is imperceptible
to humans.) Nevertheless, what makes these pieces particularly interesting to musicologists
is that many Fluxus composers adamantly insisted upon their pieces’ status as specifically
musical objects, often describing their work with Romantic concert hall rhetoric. At Fluxus
concerts, the audience was sometimes greeted by formal programs listing pieces, many of
which bore opus numbers and formal titles, in (frequently ignored) concert order. Any frag-
mentary tangible records of their works were generally described as “scores,” the long evenings
of event-pieces were “concerts,” and the end result of their work (no matter how visual or
theoretical) was “music.” Following the lead of Fluxus impresario George Maciunas, many
Fluxus artists also were quick to describe themselves as composers of specific works, an idea
inherently complicated by the fact that performance and spectatorship were often crucial
parts of the compositional act (in the manner of Eco’s “open work”). This paper will further
explore the complex issues of art, genre, objecthood and musical ontology that these Fluxus
Abstracts Friday morning 

works provoke, using LaMonte Young’s Compositions 1960 and works by George Brecht, Ben
Patterson and Annea Lockwood as a lens.

A MAP OF (MIS)HEARING: STEVE REICH’S DIFFERENT TRAINS

Amy Wlodarski
Dickinson College
In , Steve Reich composed Different Trains, a musical composition inspired by Reich’s
childhood memories of riding American trains during the war and his realization that Euro-
pean Jews had traveled “different trains” bound to concentration camps. Reich endeavored to
“make a piece that would accurately reflect the whole situation” by digitally sampling excerpts
from three recorded Holocaust testimonies in order to construct a “documentary and musi-
cal reality.” Because the work contains no visual elements, Reich noted that the documentary
takes place in “the theater of the [audience’s] mind,” where they imagine the interplay between
its sonic and linguistic elements.
Reich’s reliance on archival sources became the aesthetic basis upon which evaluations of
Different Trains rested. When the work premiered, Allan Kozinn immediately heralded it as
“Reich’s most affecting, emotional work” and lauded the composer’s ability to use “interview
snippets . . . [not only] as the basis of his melodic and rhythmic material, but also to con-
vey information about time, place, and mood.” The capstone of such acclaim was Richard
Taruskin’s  assertion that “[Trains] went the full distance and earned Reich his place” as
classical music’s “sturdy bridge to the twenty-first century.” Taruskin also commended Reich
for composing “the only adequate musical response—one of the few adequate artistic respons-
es in any medium—to the Holocaust.”
In the years since, scholars have evaluated Trains in terms of Reich’s Jewish heritage, its use
of mimetic train sounds, its psycho-acoustic effect on perceptions of motion and time, and its
evolution from Reich’s earlier tape experiments. Few, however, have considered how Reich, as
the work’s director of his self-titled “musical documentary,” constructed his Holocaust narra-
tive from the three discrete survivor testimonies of Rachella, Paul, and Rachel.
This paper reconsiders Reich’s editorial decisions in light of the complete testimonial record-
ings, housed at Yale University and the New York Public Library. Despite Reich’s insistence
that he chose his excerpts for “purely musical” reasons, the archival sources suggest that ex-
tra-musical factors, including shared textual metaphors and contextual parallels between the
individual testimonies, may also have guided Reich’s compositional decisions. I also reveal two
instances in which Reich misheard the survivors and transcribed their texts incorrectly. These
“mishearings,” which have stood uncorrected in the libretto for nearly twenty years, bear
significantly upon the work’s memorial imagery and final emotional impact. Moreover, the
uncovering of such apparent errors raises important questions about the perceived authority
(and objectivity) of musical documentaries, our trusting confidence in Reich as a composer-
curator, and the problematic and constructed nature of Holocaust memories in general.
 Friday morning AMS Quebec City 

CHURCH AND STAGE MUSIC IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Michael Marissen, Swarthmore College, Chair

DA PONTE’S AND MARTÍN Y SOLER’S LA SCUOLA DE’ MARITATI

OR LA CAPRICCIOSA CORRETTA: AN IDEOLOGICAL SEQUEL
TO LA SCOLA DEGLI AMANTI OR COSÌ FAN TUTTE
Pierpaolo Polzonetti
University of Notre Dame
La scuola de’ maritati (“The School for Spouses”), created in  for the King’s Theatre
in London by Da Ponte and Martín y Soler, presents significant points of intersection with
Da Ponte’s previous schooling opera buffa set by Mozart, La scola degli amanti (“The School
for Lovers”), or Così fan tutte. Both dramatize infidelity as a way to represent, within the
safe boundaries of domesticity, centrifugal forces unsettling the bonds of the primeval social
nucleus: the couple. La scuola de’ maritati presents a Goldonian reverse-world plot of a domi-
neering and libertine wife called Ciprigna (a modern Venus, as the name suggests), upsetting
domestic harmony. In the opening Sinfonia, the immediate introduction of the storm music
that appears later in the opera has the effect of tearing down the imaginary walls of the do-
mestic indoor space, evoking in the listeners’ minds the perils of a stormy open landscape.
This use of Sturm-und-Drang topoi in the opera alerts the audience that the domestic setting
stands for a much broader social system.
The representation of female subversion is also derived from Goldoni’s domestic comedies
and reverse-world libretti, invariably ending with the taming of the subversive woman and
the re-establishment of the patriarchal order. Unlike prerevolutionary Goldonian comedies
or even Così fan tutte, however, La scuola de’ maritati displays an unusual amount of physical
violence (for example, Ciprigna threatens her husband with a gun). In addition, La scuola de’
maritati ends with an ambiguous finale restoring the upright hierarchy, but staging the taming
of the shrew in the context of an oriental masquerade for which Martín uses Janissary music.
Considering the western cultural archetype—still powerful today—that the East (especially
the Middle East) is identified with tyranny and barbarity, and the West with progress and de-
mocracy, the question is, what does the Orient stand for in this finale? A larger question that
this paper addresses is the significance of the representation of family and sexual politics dur-
ing the revolutionary era. In Così fan tutte Da Ponte and Mozart ridicule Kornman’s Mesmeric
group, which in the s maintained that the woman’s role in harmonious society should
be confined to the domestic sphere. In the early s, especially after Marat’s assassination
by Madame Corday, ancien-régime tyranny was often identified with allegedly corrupted aris-
tocratic women, leading to their violent silencing during the Terror. Considering Da Ponte’s
documented anti-Jacobin position, his characterization of the tyrannical female protagonist in
La scuola de’ maritati needs to be interpreted in the context of the complex game of reflections
and appropriations of progressive French culture in English antirevolutionary literature. The
result is a seemingly conventional, but in fact splendidly multilayered work, filled with meta-
phors and symbols typical of London’s theatrical productions during the years of the French
Revolution. The comparison with the first school of lovers, Così fan tutte, shows the impact of
the fin-de-siècle ideology on the world of opera and helps to clarify the political significance
of both Mozart’s and Martín’s contributions to Da Ponte’s “school.”
Abstracts Friday morning 

PERFORMING GLUCK’S ALCESTE IN BOLOGNA, 1778

Margaret Butler
University of Florida
The  Viennese premiere of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s groundbreaking Alceste in-
spired several Italian productions of the work, one of which occurred at Bologna’s Teatro
Comunale in . A previously unexplored exemplar of the libretto printed for the Bolog-
nese production that bears extensive manuscript annotations provides valuable evidence for
the creation of the performance. Such a source offers a rare glimpse into operatic performance
practice in the eighteenth century, about which little is known. Moreover, while the hege-
mony of solo singers is usually cited as one of the essential deterrents to eighteenth-century
operatic reform, this source and its context emphasizes the importance of the choreographer’s
commitment to a reform opera’s success.
The exemplar’s unusual assembly indicates that it was created specifically for use in produc-
tion. Its annotations give the duration of portions of the work: the overture, certain scenes,
scene and costume changes, and passages involving spectacular elements ranging from light-
ning strikes to entrances and exits of live horses. Especially important in the absence of a score
for the Bolognese production, the markings indicating the durations of scenes suggest specific
tempi. The annotations present a detailed image of the staging, reporting the use of onstage
instruments, exact numbers of supernumeraries, the movement of choristers and dancers to
and from specific parts of the stage, and other aspects of production. At times the indications
contradict the printed stage directions, which results in the increase of the dramatic impact of
certain scenes. At other times they enhance such directions, intensifying the effect of specific
innovative elements.
The annotations likely stem from the Bolognese stage director, Antonio Montefani, who
corresponded at length with Alceste’s librettist, Ranieri de’ Calzabigi. Comparison of their
letters with the annotations reveals a dispute with the choreographer for the Bolognese pro-
duction, Giuseppe Canziani, and its resolution in a compromise that influenced the form and
visual effect of one the opera’s most striking scenes. The annotations reinforce the image of
Alceste as visually compelling theater, central to which was complex staging entailing a high
degree of coordination—a challenge for eighteenth-century theaters. The Bolognese response
to this logistical challenge provides a context for better understanding Gluck’s masterpiece
and its performance.

ANTI-JUDAISM AND THE LUTHERAN CANTATA: THE CANTATAS

FOR JUDICA SUNDAY OF GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN
Jeanne Swack
University of Wisconsin
Bach’s St. John Passion has been the focal point for the discussion of anti-Judaism in the
sacred music of the late-Baroque Lutheran church. But aside from a discussion of Bach’s can-
tata “Schauet doch und sehet,” BWV , by Michael Marissen, little attention has been paid
to the cantata repertoire of the time, which was part of the weekly experience of the congre-
gation, meant to dramatize the weekly Gospel reading. This paper focuses on the cantatas of
Telemann for Judica Sunday, with its particularly anti-Jewish Gospel reading (John :–),
which inspired cantata librettists to amplify on the theme of the Jews’ rejection of Christ in
 Friday morning AMS Quebec City 

particularly vivid and stereotypical ways. Bach himself has no surviving cantata for this Sun-
day because of the tempus clausum in effect at his places of employment, so that this Sunday
has been virtually ignored in discussions of anti-Judaism in late-Baroque Lutheran music.
I center my discussion on Telemann’s cantata “Der Kern verdämmter Sünder,” with a li-
bretto by the Hamburg pastor Heinrich Tobias Schubart, which demonizes the Jews as “Hell’s
children,” “the offspring of Satan,” “perfidious,” “cunning,” “evil,” and “bloodthirsty.” I also
bring into the discussion the viciously anti-Jewish sermons for this Sunday by the Hamburg
clergy, particularly Erdmann Neumeister, the developer and chief librettist of the “madri-
galian” cantata libretto, the first such Lutheran texts to actually be termed “cantatas.” These
sermons worked in tandem with the cantatas to reinforce anti-Jewish feelings in the Hamburg
populace, which led to a riot against the Jews in August, , and for which Neumeister was
held partly responsible.
Thus, the Gospel reading for Judica, which itself strongly demonizes the Jews for rejecting
Christ, was amplified through the sermon, the cantata librettist, and the composer’s setting
of the work, underscoring the anti-Jewish sentiments of the Gospel reading through musical
means.

HAYDN’S COPY OF THE B MINOR MASS AND

MOZART’S MASS IN C MINOR
Ulrich Leisinger
Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum
From the early s on Bach’s B Minor Mass was easily accessible for connoisseurs in
Vienna. Copies are documented in sales catalogues (Johann Traeg ) and private collec-
tions (Joseph Haydn). The early history of the B Minor Mass remained entirely in the dark,
however, since the oldest known copy (D-B, Mus. ms. Bach P ) stems from the time around
.
The copy from Joseph Haydn’s music library plays a crucial role in the reception history
of the mass in Vienna. After the composer’s death the manuscript became part of the Ester-
házy collection and was long believed to have been lost. It survived World War II hidden in a
chimney of Eisenstadt castle and has never since been studied by Bach scholars. It comes as a
great surprise that this copy is among the earliest sources for the mass: the manuscript origi-
nated in Berlin and can securely be dated to the time around ; it is closely related to the
copy in the Amalienbibliothek and thus to an early and authorized transmission (via C. P. E.
Bach and Kirnberger). It shall be shown that the manuscript is very likely to have belonged
to the Austrian Ambassador to the Prussian Court Gottfried van Swieten before it came into
Haydn’s hands.
It is commonly known that van Swieten, who settled in Vienna in , initiated Mozart
to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and in the light of the statement “that he gave me all
the works of Handel and Sebastian Bach to take home with me” (Mozart’s letter to his sister,
 April ) we must conclude that Mozart was able to study in detail Bach’s mass, a work
of unprecedented scope and complexity, shortly before he started working on his Mass in C
Minor K. .
The discovery of the Eisenstadt score therefore provides an entirely new basis for exploring
the astonishing similarities between two of the most demanding mass compositions of the
eighteenth century. These go far beyond the use of a five-part “chorus” with two sopranos for
Abstracts Friday morning 

the Kyrie and an eight-part double chorus for the Osanna. Bachian (and Handelian) traits
can also be observed, for example, in Mozart’s Duetto “Domine Deus,” and the “Jesu Christe”
chorus with the subsequent “Cum Sancto Spiritu” fugue. The most striking example is argu-
ably Mozart’s “Qui tollis,” which seems to have been derived from Bach’s “Crucifixus.”
Reports by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Maximilian Stadler about Mozart’s indebted-
ness to Handel (and Bach) make it obvious that allusions to Baroque masters in his operas and
church music were regarded as deliberate stylistic choices by the composer. The C Minor Mass
owed its existence to a vow in connection with Mozart’s marriage, and the choice of Baroque
models for this composition has at least partly been triggered by Constance’s musical taste,
who according to her future husband “didn’t want to hear anything but Handel and Bach.”

COMPOSERS AND THE PAINTERLY EYE

Richard Leppert, University of Minnesota, Chair

WAGNER AND THE STYLE MAKART

Thomas Grey
Stanford University
In May  Cosima and Richard Wagner noticed an article in the Augsburger allgemei-
ne Zeitung by the influential critic Karl Gutzkow, who, to their indignation, “is not above
comparing Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and a picture by
Makart!” It may have been the comparison with Flaubert that most vexed and perplexed
them; in any case, associations of Wagner’s music dramas with the paintings of Austrian artist
Hans Makart (–) became increasingly common over the remainder of the century.
For critics of a later generation like Thomas Mann and Theodor Adorno the “Makart style”
remained emblematic of an increasingly questionable side of Wagner’s appeal: an aesthetic of
overstuffed, eclectic historicism that smacked of “the vulgar and the downright parvenu” (in
Mann’s words), “that taste for the opulent, for satins, luxury, riches, and bourgeois ostenta-
tion “ that, in Wagner’s case, is not only a personal trait but “reaches deep down into his
intellectual and artistic being.” Makart’s Viennese atelier—no less than his sumptuous history
paintings, “bacchanals,” society portraits, and multi-media design-projects (notably a lavish
 historical pageant celebrating the Hapsburg monarchy)—defined a visual and a “life”
style, alike, for the early fin-de-siècle. The style is recognizable in the salon at villa Wahnfried
just as in Joukowsky’s set designs for the first Parsifal and, arguably, in much of Wagner’s
music. Like most artists of the era, Makart occasionally depicted Wagnerian motifs, but his
affinity with the composer was recognized as something more fundamental. The Plague in
Florence (–), an early critical success, is a visual meditation on the erotics of death in the
manner of Tristan und Isolde and the Decadents, while his Renaissance history paintings and
the  Vienna Festzug stage national history as a collective aesthetic experience in the man-
ner of Die Meistersinger. A ubiquitous theme in comparisons of artist and composer is the role
of color—visual, harmonic, and timbral—raised to a quasi-autonomous force that dominates
composition and “idea.”
Nowadays Hans Makart scarcely merits an entry in most surveys of art history. This paper
investigates the cultural and technical sources of his appeal in the later nineteenth century and
traces the comparison of Makart’s and Wagner’s styles as a critical topos. The disappearance of
 Friday morning AMS Quebec City 

Makart and his “style” from modern critical consciousness, I argue, mirrors a cultural suppres-
sion of features central to Wagner’s irresistible fascination for his contemporaries. Modernist
and post-modernist production styles, with their privileging of the conceptual over the sen-
sual “content” of the dramas, are one obvious factor. Without necessarily arguing for a revival
of historical stage design, I do argue for the value of recuperating a sense of the visual aesthetic
of the style Makart that earlier audiences identified as a defining trait of Wagner’s music.

“ALLYING NECESSITY WITH UNPREDICTABILITY”: MORTON

FELDMAN’S EARLY MUSIC AND IDEOLOGIES OF ABSTRACTION
Ryan W. Dohoney
Columbia University
Reviewing a Composer’s Forum concert in , Harold Schonberg wrote of Morton Feld-
man, “there is a close parallel between Mr. Feldman’s work and that of the pure expressionists
and non-objectivists in the extreme left wing of modern art . . . He does not really notate his
music: he graphs it, and the performer is free to select the pitch.”
Schonberg’s commentary is an early example of Feldman’s association with “the pure
expressionists and non-objectivists,” those who would by decade’s end become the abstract-ex-
pressionists. This paper examines the early processes of Feldman’s reception and identification
with abstract-expressionism through an analysis of the kinesthetics of his graphically notated
music and its precedence in the physicality of Jackson Pollock’s painting. I also situate both
Feldman and Pollock’s performances within a larger cultural framework in which masculine
labor and alienation were sites of American anxiety.
Morton Feldman’s involvement with Pollock began in  with his score for Hans Na-
muth’s film of the painter working. This film, instrumental in producing an emerging Pollock
mythology, represents him as a frenetic, almost primitive, masculine creative force. Feldman
responded in kind with a “musical choreography”that jabs, leaps, and pulses along with Pol-
lock, mapping sound onto gesture. Pollock’s voiceover descriptions, juxtaposed with Feldman’s
music, describe him existing “in the painting” and wanting “to express [his] feelings instead of
illustrate them.” This language of emotional spontaneity and metaphysical absorption codes
his bodily practice as the music becomes its audible signifier.
With Intersection 2, completed two months after the film score, Feldman adapted an un-
derstanding of Pollock’s physicality to his graphically notated compositions. Whereas the
Projections and early Intersections from – are pointilistic soundscapes for ensembles,
Intersections 2–4 redirect attention to a soloist’s body. Each score, now a more rigid grid,
demands histrionic displays from a performer engaged in an immediate, almost violent, pro-
duction of sound. In these pieces, Feldman imagined, through a reconfigured relationship
between performer and score, a musical body analogous to Pollock’s artistic body.
The critical reception drew further connections between the two. Art critic Frank O’Hara
described them in nearly identical terms. For O’Hara, Pollock’s painting lurched toward the
sublime while Feldman’s music found “the metaphysical place where work can occur.” O’Hara
also valued their physical dimensions of their work that depended upon self-knowledge, free-
dom, spontaneity, and improvisation.
These terms and aesthetic values were hardly culturally neutral and were part of a discourse
surrounding the crisis of masculinity in the early years of the Cold War brought about by the
post-war reintegration of American men into the Fordist economic system. Cultural critics
Abstracts Friday morning 

of the s such as C. Wright Mills argued for a reconciliation of the mind and body of
the American man through alternative models of labor. Heard in the context of this crisis
of work, Feldman and Pollock’s spontaneous bodies-in-action, with an attendant rhetoric of
self-expression through abstraction, become resistant performances attempting to undo the
alienation of the Cold War consensus.

MUSIC AND ITALIAN POETRY

Jonathan Glixon, University of Kentucky, Chair

POETRY AND THE POLYPHONIC MANIERA IN LATE QUATTROCENTO

FLORENCE: A PRE-HISTORY OF THE MADRIGAL
Blake Wilson
Dickinson College
A recently completed study of the Florentine cantasi come sources (poetic anthologies with
rubrics indicating titles of songs to which individual devotional poems were sung) provides an
unprecedented panorama of music that was known and sung throughout Florentine society
about  to . It is now possible to chart by the decade shifting tastes in sung poetry. It is
most surprising to learn that in the late s, just as the relatively large number of surviving
Florentine chansonniers began to be copied and collected in Florence, the cantasi come sources
record a decided shift away from foreign texts and contrapuntal settings in favor of the more
domestic forms of Italian poetry and music as singing models.
This paper will explore the implications of this apparently contradictory evidence, which
challenges assumptions about both the culturally dominant role of northern secular polyph-
ony in Italian cities, and the passive and technically inferior nature of Italian polyphony
during the late fifteenth century. From the perspective of the Florentine cantasi come sources,
the dominance of the chansonnier repertoire was relatively short-lived and circumscribed,
and only one of many (including giustiniane, Neapolitan strambotti and barzellette, carnival
songs, frottole, and madrigals) that entered a diverse Florentine singing environment that
included churches, confraternities, patrician brigate, domestic settings, public festivals and
piazzas, and humanist circles interested in vernacular poetry. Indeed, one has to wonder if it
was just this kind of heterogeneous civic mix that fostered the most progressive approaches to
singing Italian poetry, for it is here (particularly in the carnival song and strambotto) that criti-
cal components and pre-conditions of the the early Florentine madrigal first can be found. I
will expand upon Pirrotta’s comments on the strambotto (revealed in the cantasi come sources
as a newly-arrived genre of sung poetry around ), and argue for its importance in Flor-
ence as a catalyst for musical settings of more serious Italian poetry, for the move from setting
multi-strophic poetry to more individualized musical settings of single poetry stanzas, and for
the importation of the expressive singing of the strambottisti (among other Florentine improv-
visatori) into the medium of written polyphony. This picture of a dynamic and autonomous
Italian musical culture relatively less subject to northern musical influence is filled out by the
recently discovered letters of a Florentine which reveal that in the late s the flow of north-
ern music into the city was matched by the flow of Italian polyphonic songs being mailed out
of Florence to France.
 Friday morning AMS Quebec City 

TEXT AND SHARED LARGE-SCALE DESIGN IN

TWO MADRIGALS BY WILLAERT
Timothy McKinney
Baylor University
The historical significance of Adrian Willaert’s Musica nova collection is unquestioned,
particularly in regard to its influence on subsequent composers and on the theoretical writ-
ings of Willaert’s disciples Zarlino and Vicentino. Willaert’s legendary attention to text-music
relationships has been studied extensively, yet surprisingly little analytical work has been done
on large-scale musical design in his works. It has gone unremarked that two of the madri-
gals, “L’aura mia sacra” and “I vidi in terra angelici costumi,” share the same essential design,
encompassing six shared attributes: () the F tonal type; () tonal stability in the prima parte
followed by tonal fluctuation in the seconda parte, both in terms of cadence tones and ac-
cidental inflections; () very similar cadential schemes, including an unexpected half cadence
on A ending the prima parte; () a fifth-cycle of major sonorities from A to E-flat at the begin-
ning of the seconda parte; () an eventual return of modal regularity and tonal stability; and
() predominant emphasis on major harmonic sonorities yet with significant shifts to minor
sonorities to highlight aspects of the poems (representing “hard” concepts with major sonori-
ties and “soft” ones with minor, as discussed by Zarlino and Vicentino). In both madrigals
these shared attributes project Willaert’s musical reading of the meaning of the poems despite
the fact that these meanings share few overt similarities. The paper discusses each attribute in
detail; a sampling from each madrigal follows here.
In “L’aura mia sacra” Petrarch dreams of speaking with the late Laura; in his vision she
can respond only by weeping. Willaert’s shattering of diatonic stability through the fifth cy-
cle opening the seconda parte accompanies the description of Laura’s silence and weeping;
through tonal distortion he graphically depicts the distance between Petrarch and Laura in
the separate planes of existence they now inhabit and her inability to speak. In “I vidi in
terra” a similarly telling manipulation of tonal focus follows on the heels of the fifth-cycle; at
a reference to weeping which makes a concert sweeter than any on earth, Willaert changes the
essential quality of the mode by introducing the unprecedented remote tone A-flat within an
F sonority, thus introducing “sweetness” (A-flat and the minor quality) “greater than may be
heard in the world” (represented by the overall F tonal type).
The paper provides an important contribution by recasting our understanding of how Re-
naissance composers might have read a poetic text and the sort of precompositional large-scale
tonal planning in which they might have engaged to project their reading. The shared basic
tonal design in these two madrigals provides a unique opportunity to observe how Willaert
goes beyond the localized musical reactions to individual words or phrases commonly thought
to be the norm for Renaissance compositional practice, and how he uses manipulations of
tonal stability and harmonic or modal quality to underscore a meaning that must be read
into the words or to emphasize a certain critical moment or moments as the text unfolds and
thereby shape the overall expressive structure of its musical setting.
Abstracts Friday morning 

LUTHERANS MEET THE MADRIGAL: MARTIN RINCKART’S

TRIUMPHI DI DOROTHEA (LEIPZIG, 1619)
Susan Lewis Hammond
University of Victoria
As an activity that brings a foreign work to a native market, translation is perhaps the most
active and intense form of artistic reception. The vogue for madrigals in translation has largely
been studied as an English phenomenon. Far less attention has been paid to German-speaking
lands, where the reception of the Italian madrigal offers a valuable case study for examining
the intersections of musical fashion and religious doctrine in the early seventeenth century.
A new canon of works emerged in the music presses as German poets and editors neutralized
the themes of pastoral love that typified Italian madrigals of the late sixteenth century and
replaced them with texts that conformed to Lutheran ideals of music and theology. Georg
Körber, Valentin Haussmann, Martin Rinckart, Petrus Neander, and Ambrosius Profe formed
a new breed of poet-editors charged with adapting the madrigal and canzonetta for use in
Lutheran churches and schools.
This paper examines the Lutheran appropriation of the Italian madrigal as charted in
Martin Rinckart’s Triumphi di Dorothea: Laus Musicae . . . Das ist, Geistliches, Musicalisches
Triumph Kräntzlein (Leipzig, ). The collection is based on the famous Il trionfo di Dori,
an anthology of twenty-nine six-part Italian madrigals which first appeared at the Venetian
presses of Angelo Gardano in . The volume went through ten editions in Italy and abroad,
including three with German texts. Rinckart’s Triumphi di Dorothea departs from its Italian
and German precedents by replacing texts of pastoral love with ones that champion the power
of music, a central tenet of Lutheran theology. Rinckart’s editorial selection of images, lyrics,
and packaging remained deeply indebted to Luther’s theology of music. Rinckart created a
web of references across the paratextual space of the title, title page, prefaces, running heads,
and headlines. He interwove quotations from the Bible, ancient Greek philosophers, early
church fathers, and reformers. Together, they present a coherent message of praise for music
and its causes. This message is echoed in the song texts. Settings – are unified by their calls
to praise God with voices and instruments, while the second half of the anthology focuses
on music’s effects. The texts are united by the refrain “Unsere Kunst bleibt ewig” [Our art re-
mains eternal], a powerful sentiment that reinforces the importance of Rinckart’s enterprise.
Rinckart thoroughly engaged with his musical and textual models, selecting elements that
fit his Lutheran worldview and ignoring those that did not. His approach to editorship and
translation recalls Peter Burke’s concept of bricolage, whereby “receivers” of a foreign cultural
influence select relevant, attractive, and useful elements from their surroundings and assimi-
late them with indigenous traditions they already possess. By critically engaging with foreign
models, Rinckart created something new and meaningful to his own culture.
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THE INTERRELATIONSHIP OF MUSIC AND

POETRY IN EARLY BAROQUE ITALY: THE CASE OF
MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI IL GIOVANE
Janie Cole
Villa I Tatti, Harvard University
Michelangelo Buonarroti il Giovane (–), a renowned Florentine poet and great
nephew of the illustrious artist, is best known in musicological literature for his Medici theat-
rical spectacles in collaboration with numerous court composers, including Francesca Caccini
and Jacopo Peri. However, Buonarroti’s extraordinary literary productivity not only led to his
contributions to the Florentine innovations in music-theatre, which culminated in the birth
of opera, but also found expression in an extensive collection of unpublished lyric poetry. This
significant corpus contains over one thousand poems in five manuscript volumes, many of
which were conceived not only to be read, but also to be set to music.
In the context of the early Italian secular monody by Giulio Caccini and his Florentine
colleagues, this paper analyzes a selection of Buonarroti’s hitherto unknown poetry to explore
the interrelationship of music and poetry and the problematic notion of genre in poesia per
musica. My attributions of over twenty new texts by Buonarroti in musical settings printed in
contemporary volumes of monodies and madrigals prove that he not only collaborated with
the Florentine musicians Francesca Caccini, Marco da Gagliano and Jacopo Peri (as shown
by previous musicological research), but also with other Italian composers including Piero
Benedetti, Giovan Domenico Montella, Antonio Brunelli, Amante Franzoni, and Girolamo
Frescobaldi. This suggests a radical reevaluation of Buonarroti’s standing as one of the lead-
ing Seicento poets producing verses for the early monodists and exponents of the new style
of music in Italy.
In addition, where musical sources are lost, I have identified through marginalia notes and
poetic structures numerous poems that were in fact set to music, offering as well indications
about critical aspects of musical style, the compositional order of text and music, and even
their relation to sung balli and dance rhythms.
Finally, I explore the musical diffusion of Buonarroti’s poetry and the processes of literary
and musical circulation, whether through a network of musical contacts, or by the recycling
and reelaboration of poetic texts for different performative contexts. An analysis of Buonar-
roti’s processes of revision in the manuscript sources in relation to their musical settings, for
example, reveals that very different texts were often reworked and set to the same music, re-
vealing the poetry’s contextual flexibility, regardless of genre or performance context (whether
used as part of a theatrical entertainment, a sung religious pageant or a sacra rappresentazione
at a Florentine confraternity, or published in a songbook). I conclude by suggesting that mu-
sic may not always have been a signifier, because very different ideas, images, and emotions
in the texts were sometimes being expressed through the same music. Therefore there may
be a weaker relationship between poetry and music than is often claimed by musicologists
working on this period. There may be few, if any, profound major differences (whether in
style, content, or genre) between lyric poetry and so-called poesia per musica during the early
seventeenth century.
Abstracts Friday morning 

MUSIC AND THEOLOGY

Lorenzo Candelaria, University of Texas, Austin, Chair

HILDEGARD’S ORDO VIRTUTUM: THEOLOGICAL

MEANINGS AND THE PROBLEM OF AUDIENCE
Margot Fassler
Yale University
The Ordo Virtutum by Hildegard of Bingen is a milestone in the history of Western music,
the first sung morality play, and indeed the earliest of all such plays in this tradition. Although
its opening references the ordo prophetarum, and the basic structure of the work shows that
Hildegard knew Prudentius’ Psychomachia, the play takes directions that distance it from these
and its other models, leaving major questions about the position of it in Hildegard’s oeuvre
and about its intended audience. It is, indeed, something quite new. In this paper, I situate
the play within Hildegard’s cosmology as first developed in her treatise Scivias. I then com-
pare Hildegard’s two versions of the play, one constituting part of the final chapter of Scivias,
Book III, and the other the fully neumed version in the so-called Riesencodex, Wiesbaden,
Hessische Landesbibliothek, Ms . Scholars dealing with the relationship between the two
renditions have tried to understand which of them came first, as one is considerably shorter
than the other. Based on my positioning of the play within its theological context, I argue
that the works are rather two versions of the same thing, and that each was deliberately crafted
for a specific purpose. One was made to appeal to the broader audience for which Hildegard
penned her treatise Scivias, and serves the design of the treatise as a whole in crucial ways. The
other is quite different in tone and purpose and was composed for the cloister, especially for
her own nuns at the Disibodenberg, and suited the ceremonial use of music there. These views
of the two versions and of their differing purposes lead to a concluding discussion of the vexed
question of whether or not her music was liturgical or was created, as many believe, primarily
for private devotion, study, and instruction.

GLIMMERS OF JOY AMIDST SORROW: THE THEOLOGY

OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS IN LAON, MS 263
Robert Lagueux
Columbia College Chicago
Laon, Bibliothèque municipale MS  is a well-known source from the late twelfth cen-
tury that contains music and liturgical dramas for the feasts of the Christmas Octave, those
days following Christmas on which the various clerical orders celebrated their offices. The
manuscript is associated with the cathedral of Laon and its celebrated school, a center of
learning best known for its scholars’ work on the standardized collection of interlinear and
marginal commentary on the Bible, the Glossa ordinaria. Despite its importance, the source
has received surprisingly little attention; although David Hughes’s  article on the music
for the Feast of St. Stephen inventoried and transcribed a small portion of its contents, little
else has been scrutinized. This paper explores the music and liturgy for the Feast of Holy Inno-
cents ( December), focusing on a prosula, Laude piissima, a unique liturgical item provided
by Laon  in place of the Alleluia.
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Although the feast occurs during the festive Christmastide season, Innocents is a peniten-
tial feast during which liturgical expressions of joy, among them the Alleluia, were suppressed.
The theological justification for this practice changed over the course of several centuries. By
the mid-twelfth century, the Alleluia was thought to be omitted to express sorrow over the In-
nocents’ souls’ descent to hell. An earlier view, however, suggested that the suppression of joy
instead acknowledged the grief of the Innocents’ mothers. Anselm of Laon, the famed school
master and exegete whose presence in Laon in the early twelfth century had drawn thousands
of scholars to the city, was among the few theologians still espousing a version of the earlier
justification; in contrast with the dire view of his contemporaries, he suggested that joy was
appropriate on the feast of the Innocents, but that, out of respect for the mothers, it should
be constrained.
This paper will examine how the distinctive Anselmian view subtly informs the Laon litur-
gy for Innocents. Laude piissima, provided in the manuscript in lieu of the Alleluia, appears to
be an unremarkable prosula that sets a new text to the music of an Alleluia from the Common
of Martyrs. Because the new text aligns its vowel sounds with those of the original word, as
was common in the composition of prosulas, however, clerics would find themselves singing a
hidden Alleluia, a brief, concealed cry of joy amidst an otherwise somber ceremony. This same
theological belief informs the unexpected inclusion of the joyful Christmas trope Laetemur
gaudiis at Matins, as well as the dialogue of the Ordo Stellae, the drama provided in Laon 
for performance on the feast.
Laude piissima accompanies Iudicabunt innocentes, a prosula previously known from only
one other source, an antiphoner from Saint-Denis, the community thought to have authored
it. Laon , however, provides evidence that the Laon community had a unique impetus to
reflect in its Innocents liturgy an antiquated theological view once promulgated by the city’s
most famous schoolmaster, thus suggesting that Iudicabunt innocentes was in fact composed at
Laon and later transmitted to Saint-Denis.

‘QUI POST ME VENIT, ANTE ME FACTUS EST’: JOHN THE

BAPTIST AND THE THEOLOGICAL SYMBOLISM OF IMITATIVE
COUNTERPOINT IN FIFTEENTH- AND SIXTEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC
Michael Anderson
University of Chicago
Recent scholarship has made important contributions in the pursuit of theological symbol-
ism in musical technique in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century composition. This paper
will illustrate a methodology that has important ramifications in the realm of music for the
saints, as it is shown that some composers expressly connected the subject of John the Baptist
with the craft of imitative counterpoint. The motivation for associating St. John with imita-
tive technique is a simple premise. John was Christ’s Precursor, but in many ways was treated
similarly to Christ in the gospels. What better way to illustrate the parity between the Baptist
and Christ yet at a temporal distance, than to engage in imitative counterpoint? John and
Jesus thus assume the “dux” and “comes” of canonic technique. The leader/follower roles
played by John and Jesus were not merely implicit in Scripture, but actually proclaimed by
the Baptist himself in the profound theological paradox: “The one who is to come after me
ranks ahead of me, because he was before me” (John :). Whereas not all pieces for St. John
deliberately use imitative counterpoint, nor do all pieces that engage in some form of imitative
Abstracts Friday morning 

technique have something to do with the Baptist, still the instances where such correspon-
dences do occur are compelling and merit close analysis.
The fundamental analogy first captures our attention in an anonymous fifteenth-century
motet from Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS J.II.. The symbolic relationship between John
the Baptist and canonic technique then transverses the conventional divide between “Me-
dieval” and “Renaissance” as it appears in the sixteenth century: the essence of John : is
no longer left for the analyst to unearth, and instead becomes overt via several canonic in-
scriptions found in Vatican manuscripts. These “Johannine” inscriptions confirm the posited
relationship—suspected in the fifteenth-century music—between the Baptist and the art of
canon. It will be shown that, among the pithy and clever rubrics that recall the words of the
Baptist, variations of John : also begin to apply to the practice of canon in these manu-
scripts, as even more emblematic techniques emerge in connection with the saint. The link
between the saint and imitative composition was evidently so strong that such papal compos-
ers as Costanza Festa and scribes like Johannes Parvus employed Johannine inscriptions in
works whose subject was no longer John the Baptist. The working out of theology in music,
which heretofore has been demonstrated in compositions for Christ and the Virgin Mary,
can now be shown in works for John the Baptist and presents an opportunity to consider
other music-theological relationships in the sizable amount of music for similar saint-figures
of Christendom.

IUBILARE UEL IUBILUM: CONSERVATIVE POLYPHONIC

CONTINUITIES UNDER HENRY VIII’S REFORMATION
Dana T. Marsh
Queen’s College, University of Oxford
Under Henry VIII, sweeping reforms in the English church were imposed on an immense
and pervasive scale. From its most widely visible beginnings—the dissolution of the religious
houses—Henry’s ecclesiastical Reformation transformed the face of the national church for-
ever. All subsequent upheavals, regardless of guiding religious partisanship, were implemented
on the bases of the administrative groundwork begun during his reign.
The evidence of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s views on ritual polyphony has figured
centrally within musicological narratives of the Henrician Reformation and beyond. That
emphasis once stimulated a line of historiography suggesting that musical reform in the Eng-
lish church began in the late s. More recently, scholarly consensus largely posits that
there were no changes in polyphonic style while Henry lived. While both positions remain
conjectural and subject to further scrutiny, virtually no evidence has been presented to offer a
coherent rationale explaining the prevailing conservative musical continuities of the late s
through the end of the reign.
This paper provides for the first time insights into conservative influences on church music
under Henry VIII. It introduces two figures into the musical narrative of the period: Ste-
phen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Richard Sampson, Dean of Henry VIII’s Chapel
Royal, and Bishop of Chichester (later of Lichfield and Coventry). Particular attention will
be directed towards Richard Sampson. Considerable amounts of hitherto neglected evidence,
including autograph letters (), printed commentaries on the psalms (), and Sampson’s
“short explanations” of St Paul [I Cor. ] (), provide a reliable witness to the conservative
position on church music and ritual up to the end of Henry’s reign.
 Friday morning AMS Quebec City 

Of special interest is Sampson’s commentary on Psalm , in the literary tradition of St

Augustine, with its definitive encouragement of musical “jubilation.” The term itself has
stimulated considerable discussion in the musicological literature, owing particularly to
continental characterizations of English performance practice—the most notable example
coming from the introduction to Johannes Tinctoris’ Proportionale Musices (c. ). Richard
Sampson’s exegetical treatment of “iubilare,” along with his involvement in the formulation
of the one piece of Henrician legislation addressing musical practice in the church, shows
the rhetoric of musical “jubilation” to be an integral part of conservative orthodoxy as late
as . Positive evidence connects Sampson directly with A Book of Ceremonies to be Used in
the Church of England, which, in an early draft (London, Lambeth Palace Library MS ),
prescribes musical “jubilation” in the traditions of both Saints Augustine and Thomas Aqui-
nas. A manuscript version containing the same passage (London, British Library, Cotton MS
Cleopatra E.v) verifies subsequent censorship and alteration coming from evangelicals.
During a time of escalating religious polarization, the extant writings of conservative
bishops, set against the printed invectives of radical evangelicals, shed further light on our
understanding of shifting attitudes toward music in the Henrician church.

MUSIC AND THE TEXTUAL CONDITION: EDITORIAL THEORY

AND PRACTICE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Helen Greenwald, New England Conservatory, Chair

EMANCIPATING MUSIC
Ronald Broude
Broude Brothers Limited
The attitude of musicology towards textual criticism as it is practiced in the verbal disci-
plines is best described as ambivalent. On the one hand, musicological editors have derived
from the verbal disciplines their aims, their procedures, and their terminology. On the other
hand, textual criticism has never gained a substantial following among musicologists. Several
reasons have been suggested for this state of affairs, but perhaps the most likely is that all too
often textual criticism as practiced in the verbal disciplines simply does not work in music. As
practiced in the verbal disciplines, textual criticism is really concerned with only one sort of
text—the text meant to be read by its audience silently, directly off the page. The assumption
that this model can be applied to music, with a bit of tweaking, has led us to treat the texts of
musical works as if the were the texts of prose fiction or expository prose.
In fact, musical texts differ from the texts of a genre such as the novel in several important
respects: musical texts contemplate sounds that must actually be made, musical texts depend
upon atextual traditions, and musical texts can accommodate performance indications with-
out compromising the integrity of the compositions they represent.
Like the text of a novel, the text of a musical work consists of symbols representing sounds,
but with music these symbols must actually be realized in performance. Musical texts there-
fore contain not only symbols that represent content (pitch and value) but also symbols that
indicate the manner of delivery (such symbols include dynamics, tempi, articulation). Even
so, however, the available musical symbols provide only an approximation of the sounds they
represent.
Abstracts Friday morning 

To be rendered in performance, musical symbols must be supplemented by oral/aural tradi-

tions. These traditions are both general (what kind of sound should a violin make—and not
make?) and specific (e.g., holding a particular high note in an opera aria). Thus, a musical
work moves through time in two parallel traditions, a textual tradition, which we can trace in
documents, and an atextual tradition, which, when lost, must be reconstructed by historians
of performance practice.
Sometimes, however, elements of atextual traditions are incorporated into texts. Readers
do not normally re-write novels, but performers often alter musical texts. Thus, musical texts
contain both elements that are constitutive or work-defining and elements that are contin-
gent, i.e., that can vary from performance to performance without compromising the identity
of the piece. This means that W. W. Greg’s distinction between substantive and accidental
variance is insufficient for describing variance in musical texts. We must add at least a third
level of variance—performance variance—and in tracing the transmission of a work, we must
learn to distinguish those cases in which performance variance is separative from those in
which it is not.
Freeing music from the model of the silent-reading text can do much to help us understand
how musical texts do—and do not—function.

THE THEATRE GUILD PORGY AND BESS AS PRODUCTION TEXT

Wayne Shirley
Library of Congress
George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess has three versions, each of which has claims to serve as
the basis of a critical edition. There is Gershwin’s autograph full score, which is reflected in the
published vocal score. There is the version performed by the Theatre Guild in –, which
differs from the autograph in the reduction of the number of winds and in a number of cuts
and interpolations. And there is the – version in which (among other changes) spoken
dialogue has been substituted for recitative passages.
The autograph represents Gershwin’s “intentions” (in the sense of what the composer would
ideally like to have heard performed). The Theatre Guild production represents what we may
think of, in McGann’s sense, as a “socialized” text—a text incorporating the alterations ac-
cruing in the practical process of getting the work produced—including the cuts necessary to
have the audience on its way home by :. The – version, which opened in New York,
went on tour, and then returned to New York, was the version by which Porgy and Bess was
for many years best known.
In a  JAMS article, Charles Hamm makes an impassioned plea for the – Theatre
Guild production as the definitive shape of Porgy and Bess. It is this version that the  re-
cording by the Nashville Symphony under John Mauceri brings to aural, if not visual, life.
Rouben Mamoulian, who directed the Theatre Guild Porgy and Bess, was a strong director,
who had directed the straight-play Porgy for the Guild in . He was not only influential
in suggesting the cuts of the Theatre Guild version of Porgy and Bess; he also covered what
remained with a mass of spoken lines, reassignment of lines, revisions of details of the action,
and stage effects. In one spot—the “occupational humoresque” that opens the final scene—he
essentially replaced Gershwin’s score with a pattern of sound effects that had proved effective
in Porgy-the-play.
 Friday morning AMS Quebec City 

A producer planning to present Porgy and Bess in its Theatre Guild shape must decide
which of Mamoulian’s revisions are part of the essential new shape of the opera and which rep-
resent details of the first production. Some of Mamoulian’s changes are essential adjustments
required by the cuts; others have become traditional (Bess’s final appearance, prepared to go
off with Sporting Life, is not in the libretto or score). But others are disorienting. The constant
chatter of added spoken lines puts a burden on singers who have learned their parts from the
published vocal score—and may well annoy opera-goers who want to hear the music. And
some of the changes seem to be the result of problems with the particular production.
At issue is the question of the text of a dramatic work. How much weight should we give
to the composer’s intentions—even if they were never realized—and how much to the details
of a single—even if authorized and defining—production?

TRANSMITTING PERFORMANCE PRACTICE

Stanley Boorman
New York University
When in  Giordano Passetto left Venice to assume the position of choir master at the
Cathedral of Padua he was assuming the responsibility for building up the choir and the
repertoire of a cathedral that was regionally important yet, compared to Venice, somewhat
provincial. In Venice, Passetto, who had been associated with Castellanus, Petrucci’s “house
editor,” had been ideally situated to gain familiarity with the considerable body of music
passing through one of the musical centers of Europe. To help him meet his commitments
in Padua, Passetto prepared a large manuscript of liturgical music and motets (IPC A); the
repertoire of this manuscript drew upon Passetto’s broad range of contacts in Venice and in
other Italian musical centers.
Collation of the texts in Passetto’s manuscript with other redactions of the same pieces—
not necessarily his exemplars—reveals that there are consistent patterns of change. Passetto
“edited” pieces as he entered them into his manuscript in such a way as to render the notation
and presentation of these pieces accessible to the members of his new choir; his motive seems
to have been to facilitate a consistent approach to performing style. These redactions therefore
represent a record of the performing tradition in the Padua Cathedral under Passetto. The pat-
tern of changes and the purposes they served are the subject of this paper.
Traditional textual criticism has been concerned with the reconstitution of “authoritative”
texts of works—texts that can be associated with composers’ intentions. In the case of Passet-
to’s manuscript, however, we can see ways in which sources that are not reliable indicators of
composers’ intentions can nevertheless be valuable in other ways. The changes Passetto intro-
duced showed us how he—and, presumably, other choir directors similarly situated—adapted
their sources to meet the needs of their particular musical circumstances.

PUCCINI AND THE ECLECTIC EDITION

Philip Gossett
University of Chicago
Several contributions to textual considerations of Italian opera have argued against the use
of autograph manuscripts as copy texts for certain works written between  and  (the
late operas of Verdi have been addressed by David Lawton and James Hepokoski, those of
Abstracts Friday morning 

Puccini by Roger Parker and Gabriele Dotto). Some studies have suggested taking as copy
texts printed full scores; at least one voice has flailed against the “fetishization” of the auto-
graph, without providing prospective editors any guidance. Yet Ricordi’s efforts to produce a
“critical edition” of the operas of Puccini, which began in the early s, has yet to yield a
single published full score.
It is certainly true that autograph manuscripts cannot be adopted acritically as copy texts in
this period. There are also many earlier cases in which other readings must be accommodated,
either according to Jerome McGann’s theories of the “socialized” text or through the presence
of what appear to be authorial revisions not reflected in the copy text (examples from La forza
del destino will be offered). On the other hand, anyone who has seriously looked at printed full
scores of Italian operas from the period between  and  can recognize immediately that
these scores have even less standing to serve as copy texts for a critical edition.
In this paper, I will examine the sources for the opening of Acts I and II of Puccini’s Ma-
dama Butterfly, explaining why neither the autograph manuscript nor the printed editions can
be treated as single copy texts, in the classical W. W. Greg model. In the case of the opening
of Act I, the decision in the printed score to replace Puccini’s expressive slurs in his autograph
manuscript with bowing marks, a decision that has a certain logic, did not lead the anony-
mous editors of Casa Ricordi to draw necessary conclusions about parallel parts: as a result,
the printed edition is incoherent. In the case of the opening of Act II, those who prepared the
printed score failed to understand the composer’s notation and missed a significant melodic
detail, one which has never made its way into the opera house. Puccini, however, beset by a
myriad of details (not to mention the fundamental decision to divide his original two-act op-
era into three acts), does not seem to have protested (or perhaps even noticed).
Textual scholars in literary studies, such as David Greetham, have written extensively about
situations of this kind, where editorial techniques must be developed and rules established
that do not depend on the assumption of the model of a single copy text. They normally refer
to the resulting editions as “eclectic texts.” This approach is the norm in much scholarly edit-
ing in literary studies today. If we are ever going to have better texts of operas such as Otello,
Falstaff, La Bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly, all of which badly need such intervention,
we must develop criteria for eclectic texts along these lines.

RE-IMAGINING THE PASTORAL: DISCOURSES OF LOSS AND

REMEMBRANCE IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY ENGLISH MUSIC
Byron Adams, University of California, Riverside, Chair

‘IT’S NOT LAMBKINS FRISKING AT ALL’: ENGLISH

PASTORAL MUSIC AND POSTWAR ARCADIA
Eric Saylor
Drake University
Writing in , Ralph Vaughan Williams claimed that the subject of his Pastoral Symphony
() was “not really Lambkins frisking at all as most people take for granted,” but was
inspired instead by his wartime service in northern France. His assertion challenged conven-
tional assumptions about English pastoral music; namely, that such music failed to engage
with modern thinking and experiences, and provided little more than sentimental escapism
 Friday morning AMS Quebec City 

for listeners. In reality, Vaughan Williams’s musical evocation of pastoral tropes was only one
of its many manifestations found in English art during and after the Great War. In The Great
War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell demonstrated the pervasiveness of pastoral allusion and
imagery in writings by British soldiers serving on the western front. In many cases, these writ-
ings helped their authors mitigate the twisted landscape surrounding them, or were posited
as a utopian alternative to the destruction they witnessed in the field. Additionally, as Erwin
Panofsky has shown, the grim appropriation of pastoral images via the memento mori had a
distinguished place in English literature and art since at least the eighteenth century. Even in
paradise, Panofsky argues, death was always present, a truism that would have resonated with
British soldiers slogging through the mire of rural France, a land recently as green and pleas-
ant as their own.
In the s and ’s, pastoral imagery and symbols were frequently associated with themes
of wartime remembrance and elegy, as demonstrated in works by Vaughan Williams (Pastoral
Symphony), Edward Elgar (A Voice in the Desert), and Arthur Bliss (Pastoral: Lie Strewn the
White Flocks), among others. This paper will argue that in pastoral works of this type, the
bucolic visions glimpsed are not Arcadian safe havens, but reminders of what Arcadia was for
those swept up in modernity’s tide. That is, by evoking images so clearly at odds with the ur-
ban, industrial society in which its creators lived (not to mention the war-torn landscapes so
many of them witnessed), such music mourns the loss of a potentially utopian future as much
as it evokes an idealized past. At the same time, however, pastoral music of this era often in-
verts the memento mori; rather than suggesting that death can never be banished from Arcadia,
the largely consonant and tonally-centric harmonies, gently flowing rhythms, and folk-like
melodies used in these works imply that Arcadia may still be realized even in the presence of
death. Pastoral works thus take on a cathartic role for composers and audiences alike, and
suggest an aesthetic approach for pastoralism that is visionary rather than escapist. Moreover,
such an aesthetic connects to similar treatment of the pastoral in English poetry and painting
from this time, reflecting and reinforcing its importance among English artists as a means of
engaging with postwar modernity.

LANDSCAPE AND DISTANCE: MODERNISM, VAUGHAN

WILLIAMS, AND THE SYMPHONIC PASTORAL
Daniel Grimley
University of Nottingham
Vaughan Williams’s Pastoral Symphony () is one of the most ambivalent and multi-
layered works in early twentieth-century English music. Its reception history points in two
directions: on the one hand, it has been heard as emblematic of an idealized English identity,
whose ruralist associations have often reflected problematic ideological assumptions about
national character and musical style. On the other hand, the work’s close associations with
the First World War, supported by the composer’s own comments about the symphony’s
compositional origins in the vision of a “Corot-esque landscape” observed while serving as an
ambulanceman on the Western Front, aligns it with a broader tradition of English creative
responses to images of conflict, loss and mourning.
This paper suggests that these two readings need not necessarily be mutually exclusive.
Rather, they underpin a complex dialogue within the work between progressivist and conser-
vative impulses, whose musical implications contribute significantly to the work’s symphonic
Abstracts Friday morning 

argument and which in turn demand further critical interrogation. Close reading, this pa-
per will claim, illustrates how these tendencies reflect a deep structural and stylistic tension
within the work, and that the symphony can be best understood, in spite of the emphasis on
Englishness prevalent in its critical reception, as a product of a broader European modern-
ist practice. Vaughan Williams’s treatment of modality, in the first movement in particular,
suggests a strong parallel with Sibelius’s large-scale musical structures (in particular the first
movement of his Sixth Symphony, ). Indeed, the rotational shape of the opening move-
ment of Vaughan Williams’s Pastoral corresponds with one of the sonata deformation schemes
first identified by James Hepokoski in the work of early modernist figures such as Strauss and
Sibelius. The implication that the symphony represents an exclusively English musical voice
is, at the very least, contestable.
But Vaughan Williams’s symphony operates at a further level, by questioning the nature
and status of the pastoral within a modernist aesthetic practice. The work’s evocations of
landscape, far from simply reinforcing the nostalgic rustic idyll associated with the “cow-
pat” school, offer a more austere and solitary vision of human relationships with nature. The
work’s allusions to the pastoral tradition of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, as Byron Adams
and others have noted, gains a particular poignancy in the years immediately after the war,
when Bunyan’s book was widely read by serving officers. As with Vaughan Williams’s other
contemporary Bunyan project, the one-act chamber opera The Shepherds of the Delectable
Mountains, however, the sense of salvation offered by the symphony is unstable and contin-
gent. If, like the opera, the symphony can be read as an allegory about passing life and the
journey towards death, the musical path trodden by the work is a turbulent and restless one.
But even as the closing pages appear to dissolve, or liquidate, the music’s sense of subjectivity,
the work reaffirms both the genre of the symphony and the pastoral as meaningful modes of
musical discourse.

BAX AND THE “CELTIC NORTH” AS A CRITIQUE

OF ENGLISH PASTORALISM
Aidan Thomson
Queen’s University, Belfast
Sibelius’s pre-eminence among contemporary continental composers in inter-war Britain
has long been recognized, to the extent that, among his most enthusiastic British advocates,
such as Constant Lambert and Cecil Gray, he became almost naturalized as a British composer.
The interest in Sibelius can be attributed to many factors, but perhaps the most important was
the image of the composer expressed by J. Cuthbert Hadden as one “wrestling with Nature
in her savage moods.” It should come as no surprise that this particular image proved attrac-
tive to listeners in a country some of whose leading composers were embracing pastoralism,
both musically (through the use or adaptation of folk material) and, implicitly, ideologically.
But it is striking that the composers perhaps most influenced by Sibelius came from outside
the English pastoralist school as it is conventionally understood. The differentiation between
“English” and “British” here is significant, for Sibelius’s British admirers included several com-
posers associated with the Celtic twilight movement. Foremost among these was Bax, whom
Sibelius would later describe as “my son in music,” and whose critical reputation reached
its zenith in Britain around the same time as Sibelius’s did. Bax’s Sibelianism was essentially
an interwar phenomenon, and reflects a rejection on his part of the excessively ornamental
 Friday morning AMS Quebec City 

style of his pre-war Celtic-inspired tone poems. But the distinction between Celticism and
Sibelianism was by no means absolute. Of Winter Legends (), Bax wrote that “any con-
crete ideas that may be in it of place or things are of the North—northern Ireland, northern
Scotland, northern Europe—in fact, the Celtic North”: an indication, perhaps, that he saw
“northerliness” less in national than in aesthetic terms. If so, it is reasonable to assume that
Bax’s comments about Winter Legends also apply to several other Sibelian works written in the
early s, notably the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, and the tone poem The Tale the Pine-
Trees Knew.
This paper argues that central to the aesthetics of “northerliness” is a conception of “Nature”
that is very different from that found in s English pastoralism, particularly in Vaughan
Williams. Most obviously Vaughan Williams’s music is commonly held to evoke the coun-
tryside of southern England, in many ways the antipode of the forests and seascapes of Bax’s
(and Sibelius’s) “Celtic North.” But, in addition, Vaughan Williams’s pastoralism possesses a
social dimension—expressed through his adaptation of folk material, and directed to utopian
ends—that is singularly lacking in Bax. Vaughan Williams might therefore be said to reflect
the modernist view that nature was capable of human control; Bax, perhaps reflecting similar
sentiments in contemporary Irish literature, seems to suggest that a more appropriate response
to nature is pantheistic submission. Thus, we might view Bax’s work as a critique of English
musical pastoralism. By presenting “Nature” in an alternative light, it serves to deconstruct
the Edenic metaphors of social progress that underpin so much of Vaughan Williams’s music.
Moreover, it suggests that “pastoralism” in this period should be conceived not as a homoge-
neous entity, but in dialectical terms.

MODERN MARITIME PASTORAL: WAVE DEFORMATIONS

IN THE MUSIC OF FRANK BRIDGE
Stephen Downes
University of Surrey
As recent research has highlighted, an essential compositional strategy within the interroga-
tion of the legacy of romanticism in the “early modern” period was the deformation of recently
reified musical structures and processes. We can extend this notion to consider deformations
of wave forms, a paradigmatic feature of romantic music, one tied to that aesthetic’s preoc-
cupations with teleology, apotheosis and the sublime. With form heard as a consequence of
processes of becoming, organicism and dynamism, “developmental waves” became for many
theorists of romantic form an essential metaphor and structural principle. Deformations of
the “normative” wave represent a vital part of the modernist questioning of heroic formal
paradigms, processes of intensification and apotheosis, and the Romantic sublime, as cultural
anxieties were manifested in the resistance or counterforce to degeneration and stagnation, or,
by contrast, in the obsession with decay and dissolution in the aesthetics of decadence.
In the context of the art of a maritime country, wave deformations can be further inter-
preted as part of an interrogation of the function and character of the pastoral. As such, the
various types of pastoralism as discussed in literary theory (sentimental pastoralism, complex
pastoralism and anti-pastoralism) can be invoked not merely by musical topic, pictorialism
or certain harmonic/melodic features (e.g., modalism) but also through symbolic structur-
al/formal process. In English early twentieth-century music one can compare, for example,
Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony (), where the waves of the scherzo formed by the
Abstracts Friday morning 

hero’s vessel lead to a finale in which the transcendental goal of the voyage ultimately sounds
curiously ambiguous, and Delius’s Sea Drift (–) which drowns in sensuality and lament,
despair and longing in the decline of the wave climax. Bridge’s engagement with both French
and Austro-German modernisms and their differing explorations of wave deformations is
especially complex and powerful. In The Sea (–), sensuousness and virtuosic tone paint-
ing operate in thematic contours cast in wave shapes which function within larger structural
and expressive determinants, especially the notion of a “crowning wave.” Here the pastoral
tone is affirmative, even redemptive. In the transitional miniatures for piano The Hour Glass
(–), especially “The Midnight Tide,” the pastoral tone and wave form are transfigured
in a manner comparable with the contemporary, and more radical, Piano Sonata, which is an
elegy to the lost pastoral based upon a sustained conflict between remnant wave form, block
construction, and palindrome. In There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook (), a musical ex-
pression of Ophelia’s watery death, the wave form, the principal vehicle for the dynamism and
optimism of romantic maritime pastoralism, is negated. Bridge’s engagement with the wave
form and its pastoral significations is thus a vital aspect of his modern musical project.
 Friday afternoon, 2 November

TIME SUSPENDED: DESIRABLE OBSCURITY IN

UNMEASURED PRELUDE REPRESENTATION
Vivian S. Montgomery, Harpsichord
University of Cincinnati

This lecture-recital, incorporating harpsichord performance and visual projection, address-

es the aesthetic context for one of the most obscure French baroque forms, the prélude non
mesuré. The experience of listening to preludes of Louis Couperin and comparable works by
later clavecinistes can be both transporting and confusing. Similar experience can be found in
viewing the landscape painting of such seventeenth-century French artists as Claude Lorraine
and Nicholas Poussin, each capturing aspects of the indefinite quality evoked by the free pre-
lude’s notation and performance. In widening the cultural lens through which we regard the
prelude, a deeper sense of the timeless sensibilities embodied by its inconclusiveness surfaces.
Louis Couperin’s style of preluding was nourished by Froberger, an interchange causing
elements of the italianate Toccata to take form in, and be visually liberated by, Couperin’s
rhythm-less notation. In the decades following, quirky (and often ineffectual) innovations in
unmeasured notation developed in an effort to “clarify” this style of composition/performance
whose insular mysteries had started to gather attention outside of France. Composers and
scribes whose work it was to deliver, through publication, a decipherable representation to
an increasingly far-flung market attempted to preserve the essence of Couperin’s unmeasured
aesthetic through detailed and prescriptive notation. Scholarship surrounding unmeasured
preludes of the French clavecinistes, spanning the period from about  to about , tends
to map the genre’s evolution in terms of this notational change. The spirit of Louis Couperin’s
fully undifferentiated notation, emblematic of an intimate milieu and an aesthetic of seem-
ingly deliberate obscurity, was, I contend, weakened in the course of the seventeenth century
in a movement toward notational clarification. By playing works that show the spectrum
of notational representation, I will offer an aural and visual overview of how interpretation
changes as fully undifferentiated notation is compromised or removed altogether.
Elision is essential to the original prelude’s avoidance of conclusiveness as a dictating force,
and it is this element that is irredeemably altered under the force of elaborately detailed nota-
tional devices. Drawing a parallel to seventeenth-century French landscape painting provides
a useful dimension for understanding the type of elision described here. In many paintings of
Claude Lorraine (–), distinctions between such natural elements as light, water, and
clouds are obscured. Similar overlapping qualities in depicting nature and horizon are found
in the last paintings of Nicholas Poussin (d. ), violating a distaste for the undetermined,
a rejection of undisciplined or soft matter, that permeated the artist’s milieu. These paintings
blur the viewer’s vision in much the same way that Louis Couperin’s preludes blur the lines
between harmonies, phrases, and figures. The resulting effect in both the aural and visual
products is a release from time as defined by predictable endings and beginnings.
Abstracts Friday afternoon 

P R O G R A M

Louis Couperin (–): Prelude (F Major)

MS Bauyn. II f.  r. / MS Parville, p. 

Johann-Jakob Froberger (–): Plainte faite a Londres pour passer

la Melancholie, laquelle se jour lentement avec discretion (Suite XXX, )

Froberger: Toccata V da sonarsi alla Levatione

Book I, 

L. Couperin: Prelude a l’imitation de M. Froberger (A minor)

MS Bauyn, II f.  r. / MS Parville, p.

Jean Henry d’Anglebert (–): Prelude (D minor)

MS Res. ter, f  v.,  / Pieces de Clavecin, , p. 

THE AMERICAS: NORTH AND SOUTH

John Koegel, California State University, Fullerton, Chair

CARNIVAL, RELIGION, AND AFOXÉS: MUSICAL

MIXTURE IN THE CARNIVAL OF SALVADOR
Heidy K. Ximenes
Campbellsville University
The carnival of Salvador, Brazil, has many peculiarities. It is a multifaceted celebration that
aggregates different styles and forms of celebration. In normal sense, carnival is acknowledged
to be a profane celebration associated with merrymaking, social enjoyment, dancing, drink-
ing, and other behavioral attitudes not otherwise tolerated. However, the afoxés have proven
to be an exception to this rule.
The afoxés are carnival parading groups that use candomblé, an animist religion inherited
by African slaves, as the main source of inspiration. They bring to the parades a spiritual and
more elevated sentiment in which carnival is used to transmit the ideals of peace and respect,
tied to admiration for a number of African and African-Brazilian divinities. The frenetic ex-
citement often experienced during carnival is not evident with the afoxés, which instead have
the tradition of solemnly walking in the streets while moving their arms and feet to the dances
of their divinities. The music, being its most important factor, takes all its elements, such as
instruments, rhythms, texts, and dances, from candomblé. Based on a culture inherited by
African descendants the afoxés brought a new musical perspective to the carnival environment
of Salvador.
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The adepts of candomblé suffered many years of persecution in Brazil, as the religion was
considered by Catholic authorities to be influenced by the devil. For this reason, candomblé
ceremonies only happened in secluded places, where the police would not have access. Car-
nival groups associated with candomblé were even prohibited from participating in carnival
celebrations for much of the twentieth century. The afoxés, developed in the early s, were
an important factor in changing this situation. They were responsible for bringing out to
the streets a culture that, because of persecution, was not known by the general population.
Through the afoxés, the tradition, the music, and the concepts of candomblé were made public
and gradually came to be admired in the city.
This paper will analyze the participation of afoxés in the carnival of Salvador and explain
how the music of afoxés, with its sacred tradition, interacts with the other, more boisterous
and profane groups that take part in the celebration. Afoxés, such as the Filhos de Ghandy,
parade today in groups of as many as three to five thousand participants, and their rich musi-
cal and cultural backgrounds have had a tremendous impact on the carnival celebration of
Salvador, famously recognized as the largest in the world today.

LA QUERELLE DU NIGOG: RUDHYAR’S EARLY

INFLUENCE IN MONTREAL
Michelle Hakanson
University of Oregon
Developing a cultural identity distinct from that of Europe was one of the defining features
of art in the twentieth century in both Canada and the United States. Prior to World War I,
American musicians felt compelled to study in Europe in order to be taken seriously at home.
Patrons modeled their salons and tastes in line with the great centers of Europe. After the
war, with Europe in ruins, North Americans were at a threshold. Could they begin looking to
themselves for leadership in the arts?
In , a dynamic group of citizens in Montreal founded a monthly magazine devoted to
taking seriously the course the arts would take. The magazine, dubbed Le Nigog, became an
important forum for the exchange of ideas and the impetus for a polemic that sowed the seeds
for the development of a distinctly Canadian musical sound. Ironically, a young Frenchman
fresh from Paris, Daniel Chennevière, using the assumed name of “Rudhyar,” provided much
of the grist for the ideas being milled at the time in its pages.
Rudhyar published a series of provocative articles in the newspaper Le Canada that, accord-
ing to the editors of that paper, were widely read and vociferously discussed—not least by the
founders of Nigog. In his articles, Rudhyar appeals to Canadian nationalism, technology, and
the importance that the contributions of women will assume in developing the arts rebuild-
ing society after the war.
This paper seeks to establish the importance of Le Nigog in the development of Canadian
musical identity. It highlights the polemic developing in Montreal between the elite modern-
ists and those favoring a more accessible approach drawing from folk and native traditions as
recorded in Le Nigog and discussed in other periodicals of the day. It also adds a chapter to the
influence of the young Rudhyar, who, befriended and urged on by two well-known pianists
and teachers from Montreal, Alfred Laliberté and Djane Lavoie Herz, offered a third way that
both factions found impossible to ignore.
Abstracts Friday afternoon 

Rudhyar’s presence in the experimental music community is gradually being reinstated.

This look at his early ideas and influence shows him to be much more of a firebrand and
polemicist than is generally acknowledged in current literature that describes him in more
mystic and ethereal terms. The young Rudhyar saw himself as an agent of change. Having
been spared military conscription due to ill health, his survivor guilt caused him to identity
himself with destructive forces that necessitated change and rebuilding. The story of la querelle
du Nigog gives valuable insight into this man’s determination to have the arts help shape a new
society out of the ravages of war.

THE ART OF DYING

Mark Davenport, Regis University, Denver, Chair

THE VIOL CONSORT AND THE PERFORMANCE OF

MELANCHOLY IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
Loren Ludwig
University of Virginia
The preoccupation of poetry, philosophy, medicine, and the arts, melancholy was the signa-
ture condition of early modern England. Timothy Bright’s A Treatise of Melancholie () and
Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy () exemplify a genre of writing on a subject
that was variously understood as a mood or a malady, an affect or a medical condition. The
ontology of melancholy was debated in the context of contested religious doctrine and an on-
going preoccupation with the nature of selfhood and subjectivity. Texts as diverse as Spenser’s
The Faerie Queen () and John Dowland’s Lachrimae or Seaven Teares (), a collection of
compositions for viol consort, attest to the ubiquity of melancholy as affective cultural terrain
in the English literary and musical arts. The untimely death of Henry, Prince of Wales, in 
would result in a flood of literary and musical works dedicated to the dead prince that further
valorized melancholy as the most noble of affects.
The lion’s share of modern work on melancholy in early modern England has focused
on the written word (particularly Shakespeare) and has traced the Italian literary and philo-
sophical influences on English expressions of the condition. While English music scholarship
has established melancholy as a defining characteristic of Elizabethan music (particularly as
exemplified by work on Dowland), only recently has the field begun to look more closely at
the numerous intersections between music and melancholy in early modern English culture.
Penelope Gouk and Linda Austern, for example, have placed melancholy at the center of a
seventeenth-century discourse on music’s medicinal power. This paper examines melancholy
not as an influence on musical style, nor as a medical condition alleviated by music, but rather
as a uniquely English mode of social performance. The context of the social performance of
melancholy that I examine is the viol consort, the most popular form of amateur chamber
music among the English aristocracy.
Consort music was performed one to a part and a high premium was placed on the in-
teractions between the polyphonic voices. The activity of playing consort music was at once
social and musical, as the harmony created by the numerous individual parts was understood
to model the ideal behavior of individuals in noble society. The wealth of works for voices
and viols commemorating the death of Prince Henry, such as Robert Ramsey’s Dialogues of
 Friday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

Sorrow (), as well as the many viol consort works whose generic titles belie their intensely
melancholic character (such as most In Nomine settings), invite inquiry into the connections
between the repertory and this favored English affect. I argue that playing consort music
was understood as an activity that allowed, through the carefully stylized social and musical
interactions choreographed by the polyphony, the expression and cultivation of melancholy
among its noble participants. Further, I investigate how musical representations of melan-
choly in consort music offer an image of collectivity that challenges the conventional literary
reading of Elizabethan melancholy as a highly solitary affect.

“LEARNING FROM LAZARUS: LUTHERANISM AND

THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ARS MORIENDI”
Janette Tilley
Lehman College / CUNY
In its twelve short verses, the Biblical parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke :–
) vividly depicts the antithesis between wealth and poverty and its spiritual implications.
Touching on issues of continuing social and religious concern, including avarice, sickness,
charity, faith, and death, a moralizing story is constructed. The Rich Man, the story relates,
is condemned to the torments of hell, while the poor and sickly Lazarus reaps the reward of
heavenly bliss. But what, exactly, was the Rich Man’s sin that condemns him to an eternity of
hellish torment? Why exactly is Lazarus rewarded with a place at Abraham’s bosom?
Perhaps it was this very moral ambiguity that made this story attractive to theologians,
writers, and composers of early modern Germany. The pericope served as the central scriptur-
al selection for the first Sunday after Pentecost, and was therefore the subject of innumerable
sermons, many of which were printed in annual collections for study and reflection. It was
also treated poetically for the stage, and musically for liturgical and possibly concert perfor-
mance. In these presentations, Luke’s text is often embellished with passages of dialogue for
new characters, moralizing commentary, and in some cases entirely new scenes. It was this
story that German composers seem most comfortable experimenting with in longer dramatic
forms; Heinrich Schütz’s setting has been called the first German oratorio for its sectionalized
structure, and the term Actus musicus, an enigmatic genre perhaps related to the oratorio, ap-
pears most often in association with the story in the second half of the seventeenth century.
In musical settings, composers interpolate new poetic material to a higher degree than any
other scriptural story aside from the Passion. Additions to the story range from simple funeral
songs for Lazarus, to elaborate contrapuntal drinking songs for the Rich Man and his five
brothers.
We would expect the meaning imposed on the Rich Man and Lazarus story in musical
settings to be in line with local theology and exegesis. What is striking about the surviving
musical interpretations, however, is how much they appear to diverge from common theo-
logical explications. Onto the story of poverty, wealth, mercy, and the fate of the soul are
welded other topoi of Lutheran theology, including vanitas, penitence, and the art of dying
(Sterbekunst or ars moriendi) which effectively reinterpret the story in a direction not typically
undertaken by writers of sermons and devotional volumes.
This paper will demonstrate how troping on the Rich Man and Lazarus story in musical
settings lends the narrative greater moral and eschatological emphasis than contemporary so-
cializing plays and sermons. While sermons, taking their cue from Luther, tend to emphasize
Abstracts Friday afternoon 

the virtue of mercy through almsgiving and care for the poor, musical settings more often in-
struct the listener to reject the vanities of the physical world and prepare the soul for eternity.
By establishing Lazarus as a model Lutheran, ready and accepting of death, composers model
the practice of Sterbekunst, instructing the listener not only on how to live, but how to die.

FEMALE PATRONS
Kelley Harness, University of Minnesota, Chair

THE CHAPEL MUSICIANS OF LOUIS XII AND ANNE DE BRETAGNE AT

BLOIS: NEW DOCUMENTS, NEW SINGERS, AND A PRIORIS PROBLEM
Ted Dumitrescu
Universiteit Utrecht
Research into the musical establishments of the French royal court is often severely ham-
pered by a lack of basic documentation. For the entire reign of Louis XII (–), not a
single list of royal chapel personnel survives; information on the specific membership and
activity of the chapel, therefore, has been derived largely from external sources such as ben-
efice supplications in the Vatican archives. One such source which has remained unexplored
until now is provided by the Archives Départementales du Loir-et-Cher in Blois, the city
which served as the most frequent home to the peripatetic royal households in the first two
decades of the sixteenth century. Study of the surviving notarial and ecclesiastical records of
the institutions which shaped the peculiar urban landscape of Blois reveals significant musical
connections, illuminating the complex relations between city and court. Hitherto unknown
archival records shed new light on the career activities of such leading composers as Prioris,
Mouton, Hylaire, Longueval, Févin, and De Orto, as well as numerous other musicians con-
nected to the French royal court and local institutions. Beyond information on patterns of
patronage and the acquisition of benefices by royal musicians, the documents offer evidence
of the integration of court singers and composers into the civic fabric of Blois, and empha-
size the importance of a largely-forgotten foundation: the collegiate church of Saint-Sauveur,
entirely destroyed in the wake of the French Revolution, but once a locus of frequent royal
patronage much like Saint-Martin of Tours in the previous century.
Particularly affected by the new documentation is the biography of the celebrated compos-
er and chapelmaster “Prioris,” who turns out to have maintained especially close connections
to Blois. Prioris’s residence in the city preceded even his assumption of duties as master of
the royal chapel, a fact explained by his previous employment: not as a member of Charles
VIII’s chapel, but as chapelmaster to Louis, duke of Orléans, who would become king Louis
XII only upon the accidental death of Charles VIII in . Along with the explanation of
Prioris’s “fast-track” promotion to head of France’s leading musical institution, the Blois re-
cords hold another surprise: the chapelmaster Prioris’s Christian name was not Johannes, but
Denis (Dionisius). This unambiguous information, provided by several independent sourc-
es, calls for a re-examination of the scant currently known documentation of the musician’s
life. In fact, no known archival document names a musician “Johannes Prioris”; the sole
source of the first name is the version of the Missa de angelis transmitted in two closely-related
Habsburg-Burgundian court sources. Were there two contemporaneous musicians named
Prioris, one a singer and royal chapelmaster and the other a composer who has completely
 Friday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

escaped identification in archival sources? Is the name “Johannes” simply the result of scribal
error? Investigation of the transmission patterns and compositional styles of the works as-
cribed to Prioris will offer preliminary conclusions concerning the difficulties raised by the
new documents.

“NOW I COME TO YOU, LADIES, AFTER SO MUCH

TIME”: CLEOPATRA, MARIA D’ARAGONA, AND AN
INTERMEDIO FOR THE DUCHESS OF ALBA
Nina Treadwell
University of California, Santa Cruz
During March  Maria d’Aragona, the Marchioness of Vasto, sponsored a set of four
intermedi to honor the Duchess of Alba, the wife of the outgoing viceroy of Naples. The in-
termedi were performed between the acts of Alessandro Piccolomini’s comedy Alessandro. The
centerpiece of the entertainment was the intermedio entitled “Queen Cleopatra on her ship”
which was the most elaborate of the intermedi both visually and musically. In light of the mu-
sic’s recitational quality and its relationship to improvised traditions, scholars have discussed
the music that Cleopatra sung, which survives in a Neapolitan anthology of  collected by
the composer and organist Rocco Rodio. However, the music has only been discussed in rela-
tion to the two corrupt stanzas of ottava rima included in Rodio’s publication, which obscure
the meaning that emerged in the context of the  performance sponsored by the marchio-
ness. Cleopatra sang ten stanzas that were addressed to the ladies of the audience, and to the
Duchess of Alba in particular. As host and sponsor of the entertainment, Maria d’Aragona ap-
pears to have had considerable sway over the production as a whole. Having chosen to remain
a widow for over twenty years, Maria was free from the constraints of patriarchal matrimony
that might have compromised her artistic authority; she was also not in the position of female
monarch who needed to emphasize the virtue of chastity in musico-theatrical entertainment
in order to legitimize her rule. In Naples she moved in humanist circles, particularly those sur-
rounding Giulia Gonzaga, who nicknamed her “la draga” (the dragon) because of the power
she exercised over those around her. This paper explores Maria d’Aragona’s role in the 
production, particularly in relation to a seemingly unusual choice of character for an interme-
dio: the historical figure of Cleopatra. Drawing on sources that informed perceptions of the
Egyptian Queen during the early- to mid-cinquecento, it is shown that within a performance
context governed by a strong-willed female patron, the often pejoratively depicted Cleopatra
was cast as a positive source of identification for the numerous noblewomen in the audience
to whom she addressed her recitation. The connection among women along gender lines that
the intermedio fostered was enhanced by the involvement of a number of Maria’s female rela-
tives in the cast, as well as the inclusion of a female vocalist of considerable renowned: the
Neapolitan singer Eufemia Jozola who was cast as Cleopatra. The stanzas that Jozola sang
engaged with the complex yet malleable figure of Cleopatra in a way that carefully negotiated
received notions of Cleopatra in relation to issues of power, sexuality, and political ambition.
While Cleopatra later became a relatively well-known figure on the operatic stage, particularly
in the late-eighteenth century, this early example of the Egyptian Queen in a musico-theatri-
cal entertainment provides a rare glimpse of the character’s portrayal under the sponsorship
of a female patron.
Abstracts Friday afternoon 

IT’S A MAN’S WORLD

Susan C. Cook, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chair

OLGIVANNA LLOYD WRIGHT: THE MUSIC OF TALIESIN

Maxine Fawcett-Yeske
Nebraska Wesleyan University
Olgivanna Lloyd Wright (c. –) not only sparked a renaissance in the career of her
husband, America’s most innovative architect of the twentieth century, but possessed a cre-
ative spirit of her own that flourished in the books she authored and the music she composed.
To date, however, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright is either scarcely known or largely defined by her
marriage to Frank Lloyd Wright, while her music (over forty works ranging from intimate
chamber music to large-scale dance dramas) is all but silent, the manuscripts placed in storage
at the time of her death.
Utilizing primary sources, this paper chronicles the life of Olga Ivanovna (“Olgivanna”)
Lazovich Hinzenberg Lloyd Wright and contextualizes it within the social, cultural, and ar-
tistic sensibilities of the time. The daughter of a Montenegrin army general (her mother) and
the chief justice of the Montenegrin Supreme Court (her father), and the granddaughter of
Duke Marco Milianov, the patriot credited with preserving Montenegro’s independence from
Turkish rule, Olgivanna came from strong stock, a grounding that shaped her independent
spirit and informed the feminist narrative that characterized her life.
At the age of nine, Olgivanna went to Russia for formal education. Her worldview was
broadened by her studies with Greco-Armenian mystic and philosopher, Georgi Gurdjieff.
Fleeing Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution along with Gurdjieff and his other
followers, Olgivanna helped to reestablish The Institute of the Harmonious Development of
Man near Fontainebleau-Avon south of Paris. From Gurdjieff’s curriculum, Olgivanna devel-
oped as a dancer, musician, educator, and philosopher in her own right.
As the third wife of Frank Lloyd Wright, Olgivanna was often at the heart of controversy,
from the scandalous beginning of the couple’s relationship to the financial instability that con-
tinually beleaguered their existence. When the stock market crash of  curtailed most of
Mr. Wright’s works in progress and limited new commissions, Olgivanna conceived the idea
for a school of architecture, one where pupils learned as apprentices, living with the Wrights at
Taliesin in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona. In the context of the Frank Lloyd Wright
School of Architecture, Olgivanna’s music found both voice and purpose.
Olgivanna explained that she and her husband “always endeavored to give [the apprentices]
a cultural basis for growth.” “We integrate architecture, poetry, painting, sculpture, music,
dance, and speech.” (The Shining Brow: , ) To that end, all apprentices participated in the
arts. Olgivanna composed music tailored to the talent and instrumentation available among
them. After her husband’s death in , she assumed full responsibility for the school and
architectural firm, while her music poured forth page after page. Annual festivals of music and
dance continued at Taliesin West from the late s to the early s, featuring the appren-
tices, the Wrights’ daughter Iovanna, and members of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra.
Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano (, rev. ) and the dance drama Time Upon Time
(), together illustrating Wright’s highly eclectic musical style, are discussed in this paper
(audio and video recordings are included).
 Friday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

THE DOUBLE EXILE OF KATHI MEYER-BAER

David Josephson
Brown University
Kathi Meyer-Baer holds a place unique in the annals of musical scholarship, and does
so twice over. She was the first woman to hold the Ph.D. in musicology. She earned it with
course work and a dissertation at Berlin University, but received it from Leipzig in , ap-
parently because the Ordinarius at Berlin refused to grant the degree to a woman. Unable as
a woman and a Jew to hold a university post in Weimar, Germany, she worked instead as a
music critic and adult education teacher, and as manager of the Paul Hirsch Library in Frank-
furt, the finest private musical collection in interwar Europe.
Meyer-Baer’s positions as critic and teacher ended with the advent of the Nazi government,
and her work at the Hirsch Library ended when Hirsch fled to England in . Two years
later she left with her family for France, where she refocused her bibliographic scholarship on
the Paris libraries. Following her husband’s internment as an enemy alien when war broke out,
she suspended her work in an effort to free him. With the success of that effort in winter ,
the family sailed for the United States. They spent their early days in Philadelphia, where they
relied on the friendship of Henry and Sophie Drinker, one that would later curdle, before
moving to New York. Meyer-Baer found work first at G. Schirmer, then at the New York Pub-
lic Library, where her tenure was unsuccessful. Thereafter, her attempts to find an academic
position came to naught, in part for the same reasons the doors had been closed in Germany.
Her one brief affiliation with a university would be as a consultant at Duke in  to assess
its small music collection and recommend steps to develop it into a serious library.
The issues that dogged Meyer-Baer’s American years went beyond gender and religion.
One problem was that as an émigré determined to assimilate fully into the life of her adopted
homeland, she insisted on writing in English despite her failure to make the language fully her
own. Another was that this proud and brilliant woman neither minced words nor conformed
to standards of deferent female behavior expected in the academy.
An active member of the American musicological community and prolific independent
scholar, Meyer-Baer published books and essays of audacious scope on music aesthetics,
bibliography, history, iconography, patronage, and philosophy. Since she had no academic
affiliation and therefore no students to carry on her work, however, her name disappeared
even before her death thirty years ago. Recently it has reappeared as American and European
scholars engage anew with the leading strands of her work in aesthetics and iconography. A
rich documentary record allows us to undertake an overdue evaluation.

GENDER AND THE NEW THING: THE CASE

OF THE JAZZ COMPOSERS GUILD
Benjamin Piekut
Columbia University
The Jazz Composers Guild was formed in the fall of  by composer and trumpeter Bill
Dixon. One of the earliest attempts at self-determination by jazz musicians, the organiza-
tion also included Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, Paul and Carla Bley,
John Tchicai, Michael Mantler, Alan Silva, Burton Greene, and Jon Winter. Reacting against
the exploitative working conditions of the major clubs and record companies, the young
Abstracts Friday afternoon 

musicians in the Guild withdrew their labor from the market with the aim of fundamentally
restructuring the field of musical production, creating their own audience by self-producing
about forty concerts on the Upper West Side and the West Village. Caught as it was in the
space between the entertainment economy of mainstream jazz and the racially policed bor-
ders of both established and experimental institutions of high culture, the Guild struggled to
maintain cohesion before ultimately folding in a storm of infighting after only six months.
Because it was one of the first formalizations of the jazz avant-garde, or “New Thing,” the
Guild offers a rich case study of how the emerging discourse of black experimentalism took
shape in New York City. In this paper, I am particularly interested in charting the field of gen-
der on which the organization came into being. Carla Bley’s inclusion in the group, the result
of considerable argument, raises several questions—Was she respected? Resented? Desired?
Treated differently? In negotiating the treacherous terrain of “women-in-jazz,” Bley chal-
lenged or upheld several tropes of gender discourse, among them the “exceptional woman,”
the male artist-genius, and—through her marriages to Paul Bley and Mantler—the respect-
able white wife. Paying close attention to gender in this context affords the opportunity not
only to notice the specificities of one woman’s experience of alternative forums of jazz life,
but also to follow how gender framed the discourse of the New Thing itself, men and women,
insiders and outsiders alike. Drawing on my own interviews with several members of the
Guild and music criticism of this period, I argue that gender discourse provided a set of values
and a vocabulary through which competing interests in the jazz avant-garde could interact.
Scholars have noted the discourse of masculinity embedded in the bebop cutting contest,
and this celebration of strength and domination continued in s jazz. Race has been a key
category for analyzing the conflicts in this underground milieu, but gender discourse was an
important modality through which racial ideology was expressed, particularly in the jazz criti-
cism of such Black Arts writers as LeRoi Jones, A. B. Spellman, and Larry Neal. A rhetoric of
masculinity, particularly the black virility of black nationalist ideology, played no small role in
the reception of this music, a point I elucidate through an examination of the rivalry between
Dixon and Jones, who competed in their roles as spokesmen and leaders of the underground
movement at this time.

MUSICOLOGY AND ITS INSTITUTIONS

Robert Judd, American Musicological Society, Chair

MUSICAL CHAIRS: THE CONSTRUCTION OF “MUSIC” IN

NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH UNIVERSITIES
Rosemary Golding
Royal Holloway, University of London
In , John Reid’s bequest of a substantial sum to the University of Edinburgh for the
foundation of a resident professorship in the “Theory of Music” baffled his Trustees. How was
music to be studied, and to fit in with the scientific academic environment of the university?
How was it to be shaped in order to conform to the social class of students, for many of whom
serious musical study was downright inappropriate? How would academic music conflict with
or support professional needs? What kind of “professor” was to be appointed to achieve such
institutional and social assimilation?
 Friday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

Similar problems faced those concerned with music at Oxford and Cambridge in the later
nineteenth century. There, professors of music had played little formal part in university life
since their posts—which amounted to examining composition-based degrees for non-resident
students—were founded in the seventeenth century. While composition was extra-mural,
musical activity among students remained amateur and extra-curricular. Accordingly, even in
Oxbridge fundamental questions had to be asked about what a music professor was for, what
he might do. The professionally-oriented musicianship cultivated by continental conserva-
toires or the Royal Academy of Music offered no suitable model: indeed it sat uneasily with
both the liberal tenor of education at Oxbridge, and the scientific and philosophical training
offered in Scotland.
Using documents associated with the applications to professorships at Edinburgh and Cam-
bridge during the period –, this paper reveals how the academic subject of music was
defined and developed in British universities during the nineteenth century. As part of a bid
to assimilate musical study to university ideals and to render it appropriate for systematised
teaching and examination, “scientific” approaches were proposed for the study of history and
analysis, acoustics, and composition. Evidence from applicants’ letters and from their portfo-
lios of testimonials suggests various ideas about whether music was a science or an art, a liberal
or vocational subject, and whether sacred or secular genres were more suitable for study.
As studies of nineteenth-century Britain have shown, the social status of the professional
musician was, at best, ambiguous: hardly suited to the elite English institutions or the serious
professional aspirations of many Edinburgh students. Aspects of general education, religion
and character were as important as musical qualifications for establishing a place for music in
academia; the documentation surrounding elections in both institutions is rich in social com-
mentary. Conflicts in interest, which arise from the concept of music as amateur diversion,
profession, academic subject and religious practice were set to pervade debate over the form
of musical study.
In a continually critical and developing discipline, the issues that arise from a study of
the concerns of early “musicologists” within the academic environment remain challenging.
It is clear that early British ideas of musicology were not constructed according to abstract
paradigms, but that they operated instead in line with narrow and institutionalized ideas of
what was appropriate for a specific class of students, for the academic environment and for
professional interest.

AMERICAN MUSICOLOGY AT THE CROSSROADS, CONTEMPORARY

MUSIC IN THE CROSSHAIRS: THE IDEOLOGICAL BATTLE
AT G. SCHIRMER, INC. AT THE END OF WORLD WAR II
Steve Swayne
Dartmouth College
In the spring of , two major changes occurred in the offices of music publisher G.
Schrimer, Inc. One was that, after helping the firm part-time the previous year, thirty-four-
year-old William Schuman left his teaching post at Sarah Lawrence College to begin work
full-time as the Director of Publications at Schirmer. The other was that Paul Henry Lang,
forty-three-year-old professor of musicology at Columbia University, became the editor of The
Musical Quarterly, Schirmer’s house organ “devoted to the scholarly study of the art of music”
(Editorial, April ).
Abstracts Friday afternoon 

Lang’s first article for the Quarterly—“Musical Scholarship at the Crossroads” (July )—
laid out the challenges facing American musicology as he saw them. Too many new American
scholars had “minds [that] are crammed full of minutiae of learning, of technical knowledge,
but artistic feeling and creative inspiration cannot be imparted by a school that considered the
great works of art so many objects for the conscientious study of the abstract canons of art.” In
his essay, Lang argued for a balance between empiricism and “what we might call intellectual
lyricism,” a proper understanding of the humanistic aspects of music.
However much he may have agreed with Lang, Schuman saw a different challenge for the
Quarterly: how to retain its pedigree while making it both more readable and more contem-
porary. Schuman fielded “comments . . . not only from composers and performing artists
but from teachers and intelligent laymen. The tenor of opinion is that the magazine does not
make interesting reading.” Not only did Schuman want to enliven the writing. He wanted
Lang to do more about following the present day: “[F]rankly, Paul, in your writings I fail to
see that you have established yourself in any way as a champion of contemporary music and,
after all, it is only in your capacity as author that you can be known to the music world at
large” (both from an August ,  letter to Lang).
Both men struggled to navigate the musical world of letters after the demise of Modern Mu-
sic () and the birth of JAMS (), journals both men discussed and admired. In addition
to their published writings from this period, their private correspondence from the summer of
 to the time of Schuman’s departure from Schirmer in September  shows them fight-
ing over the future of scholarship, the role of the critic, and the importance of contemporary
music in America. The aftershocks of their debate are felt not only in the “inauguration [in
the Quarterly of ] a new department under the heading of Current Chronicle” (April )
but also in Lang’s decision to become a critic at the New York Herald Tribune (–) and
Schuman’s leadership in launching The Juilliard Review (–). Their personal friendship
and professional relationship, in other words, helped to shape American musicology at a criti-
cal juncture in its history. In my paper, I explore their interactions and the consequences those
interactions had, then and now.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN MUSICAL CULTURE

Roe-Min Kok, McGill University, Chair

THE LITERARY AND MUSICAL RHETORIC

OF APOSTROPHE IN WINTERREISE
Rufus Hallmark
Rutgers University
In Winterreise the poet Wilhelm Müller frequently used apostrophe, the rhetorical device
of addressing absent, abstract or non-human listeners—such as the frozen stream—and in
his songs Schubert responded to the poet’s use of this evocative figure of speech. The musical
features observed and discussed in this paper, some of Schubert’s most characteristic musical
devices, have not heretofore been linked to the poet’s use of this literary conceit.
Eighteenth-century definitions of apostrophe (e.g., Gottsched) drew on classical authors
such as Quintillian. Modern literary critics have dealt only glancingly with apostrophe, with
a few notable exceptions (e.g., Culler ). Two monographs on the apostrophic gesture
 Friday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

(Braun ) and the apostrophic moment (Walter ) approach apostrophe more as an en-
compassing mode of poetic discourse than as the traditional rhetorical figure examined here.
Cone () and Stein/Spillman () explore the persona speaking in a poem, but less who
or what is being addressed. Studies of Müller (e.g., Cottrell , Marshall , Baumann
) ignore the poet’s use of apostrophe. The most extensive discussions of Schubert’s Winter-
reise (Feil  and Youens ) do not discuss literary or musical apostrophe as such.
In Winterreise seventeen of the twenty-four poems/songs use apostrophe. In eight of these
the wanderer addresses non-human objects—his tears, the snow, a frozen stream, the town
he’s leaving, a crow, bellowing hounds, a cemetery, a meteorological phenomenon. In three
of the poems/songs the wanderer speaks to himself, or to his heart as surrogate. In three oth-
ers rhetorical address is implied—to the beloved’s family, the winter-hardened meadow, a
signpost. In one song, famously, the apostrophe is reversed and the wanderer is addressed by
the linden tree. In two songs the wanderer apostrophizes people—the sleeping beloved and
the oblivious hurdy-gurdy player. In Die schöne Müllerin there is only a single apostrophized
object—the brook. The very multiplicity of addressees in Winterreise may have numbed our
perception of the phenomenon.
In nearly every instance, Schubert’s music changes when apostrophe occurs. The key chang-
es from minor to major, or the reverse, or the vocal line changes from a lyrical melody to a
declamatory line including repeated pitches. Textural contrasts may join modal and melodic
ones. A particularly pure example occurs in “Gefror’ne Tränen.” When the wanderer turns
from describing his tears to addressing a question to them, Schubert reduces the texture to a
unison and the voice to a confined, low range. Apostrophe is often characterized as an intensi-
fier, and this stark musical contrast unquestionably adds weight to the rhetorical figure. This
paper argues that Schubert not only recognized but responded to Müller’s use of apostrophe,
and that it—as much as the verse’s affective content—triggered the musical changes. That
is, the poet’s/persona’s vocative voice rather than his descriptive one was a primary stimulus
eliciting the composer’s musical response. By isolating apostrophe and bringing it to the fore-
ground, we may add to the richness of our discourse about Schubert and the Lied.

FANNY AND WILHELM HENSEL’S DAS JAHR

Susan Boynton and Daniel Harkett
Columbia University and Rhode Island School of Design
Since coming to public attention for the first time through performance, recording, and
publication nearly twenty years ago, Fanny Hensel’s piano cycle Das Jahr has become some-
thing of a litmus test for the programmatic interpretation of instrumental music. Musicologists
have read the work as various forms of musical autobiography, ranging from the starkly literal
(as a diary of the Hensel family’s trip to Italy in –) to the lightly allegorical (as a reflec-
tion of Fanny’s experience as a Jewish convert to Lutheranism). The publication in  of
the revised fair copy illustrated by Wilhelm Hensel (purchased by the Staatsbibliothek zu
Berlin in ), which apparently represents the final state of the work from the composer’s
own hand, has only intensified the search for the ever-elusive signification of Das Jahr. In this
copy, created in , each month/movement is prefaced by an evocative epigram (lovingly
stenciled and inserted on a separate sheet); each begins with a pen-and-ink illustration fully
integrated into the structure of the score. Texts, image, and music coexist in complex relation-
ships, displacing the locus of meaning from the score itself to the performative character of
Abstracts Friday afternoon 

the illustrated manuscript. The manifold questions raised by the convergence of these comple-
mentary elements demand a new assessment of the revised Das Jahr as both sounding object
and visual artifact.
This paper combines the perspectives of an art historian and a musicologist to approach the
fair copy of Das Jahr in the context of the collaboration between Fanny and Wilhelm Hensel
that lasted throughout their marriage, and began even before their engagement. Upon his re-
turn from Italy in ,Wilhelm presented Fanny with a diminutive heart-shaped blank book
for Christmas. After they married in , the couple filled the “Herz-Album” with Fanny’s
musical sketches of her compositions in alternation with Wilhelm’s visual sketches of their life
together, some quite literal and others rather fanciful. While the “Herz-Album” is a highly
artful scrapbook, the Hensels’ reminiscences took a more structured form in the “Reise-Al-
bum,” an illustrated manuscript of songs and piano pieces filled with explicit allusions to the
Italian sojourn.
The illustrated fair copy of Das Jahr differs significantly from these other albums in that
it rarely alludes to specific places or events, and presents itself unambiguously as a coherent
cycle. But like the other illustrated manuscripts, Das Jahr is linked through its musical and
visual precedents to the improvisatory creative collaborations that made up the fabric of the
Hensels’ social life. Artistic conversations and performative exchanges among the members of
their circle are evoked not only in Fanny’s diaries and correspondence, but also in their ves-
tiges among the Hensels’ collections of drawings. The remarkably close relationship between
music and image in the illustrated fair copy of Das Jahr, present on every level of structure,
emerged from evenings of simultaneous musical and visual creation at the French Academy in
Rome (the Villa Medici), where Wilhelm and the other artists sketched alongside Fanny and
the other musicians as they performed.

WAGNER’S TRISTAN FACTORY

John Deathridge
King’s College London
Only six months separated the completion of the manuscript score of Tristan und Isolde
and the publication of the full score by Breitkopf & Härtel in January , easily the fastest
turn-around for any of Wagner’s major works. Even taking into account the publication of
Meyerbeer’s grand operas in their full orchestration, no publisher had undertaken to engrave
such a complex and lengthy score before. (The scores of Wagner’s earlier works had only been
lithographed.) This paper takes a close look at the methods of, and the possible reasons for, the
speedy physical production of the orchestral and vocal scores of Tristan. The conveyor-belt-
like process that Wagner introduced meant that he had to provide the publisher’s engraver
with portions of the score well before he had finished composing it. This in turn meant,
among other things, that he was obliged to correct the proofs of one act while still creating,
often with difficulty, the music of the next. And from the start, as soon as the proofs of one
section were finished, copy was sent to the conductor Hans von Bülow, who arranged his
famous vocal score of Tristan almost literally as Wagner was inventing the music, remaining,
like him, equally in the dark about how the whole thing would turn out.
Even accounting for the pressing circumstances that accompany the composition of many
operas, the rigorous rationalization and sense of open-ended forward movement in the
composition of Tristan seem to contradict the work’s stubborn subjectivity and its almost
 Friday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

flamboyant aura of erotic excess, not to mention the carefully thought-out symphonic forms
leading to emphatic closure that some have seen in it. But the strong pressures on Wagner and
his publishers to get Tristan quickly into the public realm had everything to do with its nature.
I intend to trace the urgent investment in Tristan by its producers as a flagship of the New
German movement. And I shall also attempt to interpret Wagner’s eagerness to make it public
as quickly as possible—in the process alienating close friends like Franz Liszt—as a way of
controlling a private emotional space that was beginning to function at dangerous levels. With
no performance in sight, the deadline was an internal one, and to judge by various documents
hardly less prone to anxiety. Wagner wrote to Mathilde Wesendonck half-jokingly while com-
posing the third act that the music would have to be banned as a danger to public health. It
was possibly the other way around. The race against time into the public realm was Wagner’s
way of keeping his sanity with a work for which he needed an audience of total strangers in
whom he would find it easier to confide than those closer to him—a neutral receptacle for his
secrets that have kept posterity in thrall ever since.

THE MISSING HISTORY OF ABSOLUTE MUSIC

Sanna Pederson
University of Oklahoma
In his influential book The Idea of Absolute Music, Carl Dahlhaus claimed there was “a
comprehensive concept of ‘absolute’ music which reveals the latent unity of musical aesthet-
ics in the nineteenth century.” However, a history of the term absolute music, as opposed to
the concept, leads in different directions that disrupt that latent unity. In this paper, I will
re-investigate some of the ground covered in Dahlhaus’s book and arrive at different results. I
find that using the term absolute music to generalize about aesthetic positions taken since the
middle of the nineteenth century is unhelpful, confusing and misleading.
I begin by showing that it is a myth that Hanslick championed the term. This has been
recognized in recent years by Klaus Kropfinger, Thomas Grey, and Mark Evan Bonds, but its
full implications have not yet been explored. I trace the term emerging as a positive concept
associated with Hanslick only around , which is when it started being used to designate
the opposite of program music.
The absolute music/program music controversy started to wane around . The prob-
lem of meaning in music was becoming too fraught to be solved by merely providing a verbal
explanation. Instead, under modern conditions, it was recognized that accessibility and mean-
ingfulness were both threatened and threatening. Only around , responding to the fear
that art music faced the twin perils of both an overly rational, intellectual approach on the one
side and by mass commodification on the other, did the concept of “the Absolute” start being
invoked in order to point to a metaphysical significance of music that went beyond rational
explanation and every day life.
Although “the Absolute” does appear with some regularity around this time, a metaphysi-
cal “absolute music” is found primarily in the writings of August Halm and Ernst Kurth.
These theorists developed esoteric theories centered on Bruckner’s music as the most perfect
embodiment of a transcendent music. Although he did not acknowledge it, Dahlhaus’s ac-
count of the “idea of absolute music” as the key aesthetic concept of the nineteenth century
relies heavily on the twentieth-century writings of Halm and Kurth. This is because it was
only then that the term was used in combination with the concept. The theories of Halm
Abstracts Friday afternoon 

and Kurth, with their focus on Bruckner, are not compatible with a supposed latent aesthetic
unity going back to Hanslick. The fact that Hanslick vehemently rejected Bruckner’s music
and that Bruckner allied himself with program music require some very convoluted reasoning
to arrive at Dahlhaus’s latent unity in this area.
To conclude, I hypothesize as to why Dahlhaus needed to construct a unified idea of abso-
lute music, drawing on discussions by James Hepokoski and Anne Schreffler concerning the
development of Dahlhaus’s thought in context of his position as a professor of music in West
Berlin, engaged in ideological battle against Marxist musicology.

RESPECTING AUTHORITY
David E. Cohen, Columbia University, Chair

HORACE OR AL-MUBASHSHIR IBN FATIK?: THE SURPRISING

SOURCE OF FOLQUET DE MARSEILLE’S “UGLY PAINTING” IMAGE
Nancy Washer
SUNY College, Brockport
The troubadour Folquet de Marseille (fl. –) was greatly respected during the later
Middle Ages—he became bishop of Toulouse; Dante placed him in the Heaven of Venus
(Paradiso ); his songs were widely distributed in medieval codices; later writers quoted his
songs as authoritative pronouncements on the ethos of fin’amor and praised his poetic skill.
Nicolà Zingarelli () and other modern scholars show that Folquet himself quoted a wide
variety of earlier authors, drawing from classical florilegia, complete classical works, and other
troubadours’ songs. Yet the source of one quotation in “Sitot me sui” (P.C. , ) has resisted
identification. Here the protagonist addresses Love: “For in the same way as one values an
ugly painting more / from far away than one does as he sees it up close, / I valued you more
when I was unfamiliar with you.” Zingarelli proposed Horace’s Ars poetica as the source: “A
poem is like a picture: one strikes your fancy more, the nearer you stand; another the far-
ther away.” But the comparison does not seem apt: Horace was writing about two paintings,
Folquet about one, viewed from two distances. That the two images are different is confirmed
by Geoffrey of Vinsauf ’s use of both in his Documentum de modo et arte dictandi e versificandi
(c. ). I have identified what I believe must be the actual source, one less chronologically
distant.
Jean de Meun in the Roman de la rose (c. ) attributes an image like the one Folquet
uses to Ptolemy, implying the Almagest as its source. The image appears not in the Almagest
itself, but in Gerard of Cremona’s introduction to his translation of the Almagest (), which
includes Ptolemy’s biography and a collection of sayings attributed to him. Gerard credits the
Mukhtar al-hikam wa-mahasin al-kalim by the eleventh-century Syrian scholar al-Mubashshir
ibn Fatik as his source. As no other translation of al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik’s work into any
European language had been made by the early s when Folquet wrote his song, Gerard’s
introduction is the most likely source for this image.
Gerard’s translation of the Almagest brought Ptolemy’s work into medieval Europe and,
along with his other Latin translations from Arabic of ancient Greek and Arabic scientific
works, initiated a blossoming of intellectual activity. The Mukhtar al-hikam itself became
popular through its late thirteenth-century Latin translation, Liber philosophorum, which was
 Friday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

later translated into French, then from French into Occitan and English. Thus, Folquet’s
acquaintance with the Almagest not only situates him in the intellectual avant-garde of the late
twelfth century, but is also one of the earliest witnesses to both the Almagest’s and Mukhtar
al-hikam’s dissemination in western Europe.

NEW TEXTS AND CONTEXTS FOR TWELFTH-

CENTURY MUSIC THEORY
Andrew Hicks
Univeristy of Toronto
“Where are the writers on music west of the Rhine?” This is the question Lawrence Gushee
posed upwards of thirty years ago as he surveyed eleventh- and twelfth-century music-theo-
retical writings. As far as the “technical” tradition is concerned, the story is a familiar one.
Following an eleventh-century flurry of activity in South-German monasteries, music-theo-
retical discourse seems to exhibit a decisive change in register. The broad mathematical and
cosmological concerns that had bound music to the quadrivium seem to have been sup-
planted by a much narrower and more practical focus on the rapidly developing polyphonic
practices. Comprehensive and substantive musical treatises either were not written or have
not survived. But this apparent dearth of twelfth-century “writers on music” does not re-
flect the evidence of surviving texts; rather, it is a product of modern disciplinary divisions
and musicological expectations. Musical discourse belongs as much, if not more, to the rich
cosmological and philosophical traditions of the twelfth century. And although Gushee and
other scholars have noted the importance of music among, for instance, the Chartrian mas-
ters, much more remains to be said. Philosophical and cosmological commentaries comprise
a distinct and influential music-theoretical tradition—one that speaks not only to twelfth-
century musical learning, but to the application of that learning in the quest for philosophy
and, ultimately, theology.
This study will outline this theoretical tradition and re-assess the aim and scope of
twelfth-century music theory by introducing unedited texts into the discussion: a Florentine
commentary on Martianus’s De nuptiis (Florence, Bibl. Naz., Conv. soppr. J.., ff. r–
v); a fragmentary Vatican commentary on Boethius’s Consolatio philosophiae (Vat. lat. ,
r–r); and a partial commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (Paris, BN, lat. , ff. r–v).
These unedited commentaries will be situated with respect to recently edited commentaries
by Bernard of Chartres, William of Conches, and Bernard Silvestris. All of these authors were
keenly interested in the “musical bonds” that held the world in balance—the macrocosmic
harmonies that ensured cosmological perfection and the microcosmic harmonies that gov-
erned the moral and physical equilibrium of the body. The language of music theory not
only allowed the cosmologists to conceptualize the fabric of the universe, it also provided
a hermeneutic tool for interpreting the Antique and late-Antique texts that offered detailed
theories of the world’s construction. If writers on chant and polyphony had little patience
with Boethius’s “out-dated” musical textbook, then, conversely, the cosmologists, who were
more fascinated by music’s hermeneutic possibilities, paid little heed to the practical concerns
of chant and other musical genres. Instead, the cosmologists fabricated a remarkably synthetic
theoretical tradition, grounded in the De institutione musica but enriched and embellished
by Plato’s Timaeus, Boethius’s Consolatio philosophiae, and the works of Calcidius, Macrobius
and Martianus.
Abstracts Friday afternoon 

NEW FINDINGS RESPECTING THE NATURE AND ORIGINS

OF THE NOTRE DAME MODAL POLYPHONY
Fred Flindell
Berlin, Germany
It has been well over a hundred years since the “discovery” of the so-called Notre Dame
polyphony, certainly a decisive moment in the recovery of medieval music. Soon after this
disclosure scholars began avidly to read the scholastic writings that were concerned with the
puzzling quadratic notation they found everywhere in the sources. Coupled with this effort, a
keen search for all the relevant modal manuscripts ensued, culminating in Friedrich Ludwig’s
publication in  of an extraordinary catalogue raisonné. Thanks to this pioneering work,
consisting of an ordering, cross-reference and evaluation of the vast corpus of manuscript ma-
terial, much of the music of this period became available in modern transcription. Heinrich
Husmann, William Waite, Hans Tischler, Yvonne Rokseth and Gordon Anderson undertook
the task of making critical editions of this music.
Nevertheless, it behooves us to recall the many vexing problems encountered in decipher-
ing modal notation. The abstruse language of the theoretical tracts revealed, to be sure, much
pertinent and elementary information. But both Wilhelm Meyer and Ludwig lamented that
the music theorists “teach us little about [the music itself ].” One reason for this was that many
key and informative passages in the theoretical tracts were so recondite that they proved to
be serious obstacles in reaching a common understanding of the music’s rhythm. Also there
seemed to be no mention of the origins of the modal system of composition. Theodore Karp
discussed at length (in his edition of the St. Martial and Calixtine Polyphony) the signal im-
portance of finding a solution to this problem. A real break through in solving this perplexing
question seemed to be well-nigh impossible.
Recent strides, however, in a relatively new discipline concerned primarily with the history
of rhetoric have made possible a preliminary understanding of the enigmatic scholastic terms
(and reasoning!) found ubiquitously in the theoretical tracts. In recent years it has become
increasingly clear that the musica theoretica of the thirteenth century made extensive use of
various classical rhetorical terms to explain the modal system. One scholar has traced Leonin’s
ingenious utilization of rhetoric’s elocutionary figures in composing a polyphony set in one
of the poetic (and rhetorical) modes of antiquity. Justification for this approach to compos-
ing in the Middle Ages was based upon St. Augustine’s tacit admission of the employment of
eloquence in Christian preaching.

REFRAIN CITATION AND GENEALOGIES OF

AUTHORITY IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ARRAS
Jennifer Saltzstein
University of Oklahoma
The thirteenth-century Northern French city of Arras has long been known as an urban
center with a robust economy and burgeoning middle class. This bourgeois capital proved to
be a fertile region for song production, where active patronage and the guild-like institution of
poets called the confrèrie des jongleurs et des bourgeois elevated the social status of minstrels and
poets, fostering a culture of authorial self-consciousness, emulation, and competition among
trouvères. Famous for competitive poetic debate-poems called jeux-partis, Arras possessed a
 Friday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

distinctive poetic culture and a tightly-knit poetic community. Contrafacta and modeling
are both common in the songs of the arrageois trouvères: these procedures allowed poets
to respond directly to the songs of their contemporaries in the region by borrowing and
transforming poetic structures. By far, however, the most common form of borrowing in
thirteenth-century music and poetry was refrain citation. Within this culture of poetic inter-
action, it is perhaps not surprising that Nico H. J. van den Boogaard discovered a cache of
refrains common to a group of romances and songs that could all be localized in Arras. The
discovery importantly contradicts the notion that refrains were popularly known and rec-
ognizable throughout the French literary tradition: Boogaard’s findings suggest that refrain
citation was sometimes insular and local.
Might refrain citation have been another vehicle for poetic emulation and competition in
Arras? This paper will explore the ways in which the trouvères of Arras may have used the re-
frain as a means of situating themselves within an authorial tradition. Building on Boogaard’s
findings, I will show that there are additional networks of refrains connected specifically to
arrageois trouvère song. For example, we find the refrain “Ma loial pensée tient mon cuer
joli” used in chansons avec refrains by two prominent arrageois trouvères who were contem-
poraries: Perrin d’Angecourt and Gillebert de Berneville. Exploring this and other similar
refrain networks demonstrates that refrain citation could allow poets to invite comparisons
between their compositions and those of other local trouvères. Nowhere is this authorial self-
consciousness more evident than in the works of Adam de la Halle, the first composer for
whom an opera omnia survives. Refrain citation was often central to the ways in which Adam
articulated his authorial presence. I will focus on Adam’s little-studied motets, offering a read-
ing of De ma dame vient/Diex! Comment porroie/Omnes, a motet that cites three refrains, all
attested in other sources. The motet may contain an early example of auto-citation: it is likely
that Adam drew the refrain “Diex, comment porroie sans cheli durer qui me tient en joie?”
from his own rondeau of the same title. Through Adam and the trouvères of Arras, I will show
how refrain citation allowed trouvères to communicate with one another and to articulate
their place within their poetic community, providing new insights into medieval notions of
authorship and authorial consciousness and their articulation in music.

TWENTIETH-CENTURY POLITICS
Danielle Fosler-Lussier, Ohio State University, Chair

ALBAN BERG’S “PROPAGANDA” PIECES:

QUESTIONS OF GENRE AND MEANING
Margaret Notley
University of North Texas
Berg was working on Lulu when Hitler seized power in . His first response was to rel-
ish the prospect of challenging the Nazi regime by premiering the opera in Berlin, but by
January  he realized that Lulu was not likely to be staged in Germany. In May he devised
an alternative plan of arranging two concert works from it, “the larger naturally offering an
image of the opera’s spirit, the smaller more a propaganda selection.” Berg later wrote that
he would first finish the “propaganda suite,” which became the Symphonic Pieces from “Lulu.”
He never completed its planned counterpart, which he called with equal irony the “warning
Abstracts Friday afternoon 

symphony,” an apt epithet given the surrealism and moral ambiguity of the opera’s plot: let
the viewer beware.
This paper takes up recent musicological work on arrangements and applies to new ends
the insights it offers. While the general context for the genesis of the Symphonic Pieces—above
all, Berg’s financial straits—has long been known, little attention has been paid to their status
as an arrangement, to the different effects made in the arrangement and the opera by more
or less the same music, and thus to the tacit guidelines he followed in executing the arrange-
ment. Stated in the simplest terms, Berg set out to purify the image of the opera. Aided by
the journalistic efforts of his student Willi Reich, he sought in brief to create a concert work
that: ) could be performed even in Hitler’s Germany; and ) would drum up interest in per-
formances of the entire opera outside of Germany. Although Berg did not live to complete
the opera, he succeeded in the first goal. At one point, Reich asserted that we experience the
Symphonic Pieces not as operatic excerpts but rather as “pure, absolute music.” And, indeed,
Berg’s arrangement conceals the strangeness and questionable morality of the operatic origi-
nal; it could be performed.

ERNST VON DOHNÁNYI AND THE “KODÁLY QUESTION”

James A. Grymes
University of North Carolina, Charlotte
In recent years, Zoltán and Emma Kodály have been criticized for having failed to defend
Ernst von Dohnányi when Dohnányi was falsely accused of being a war criminal in the years
following World War II. In extreme cases, Zoltán Kodály has even been blamed for having in-
tentionally turned his back on his old friend Dohnányi—who after World War I had resigned
from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music to protest the political persecution of Kodály—to ini-
tiate, and later to preserve, a monopoly on Hungarian music. In a fictional account envisioned
by Dohnányi biographer Bálint Vázsonyi, Kodály’s wife was to be blamed. Vázsonyi imagined
Emma Kodály looking across the breakfast table one morning in late  and saying to her
husband, “Bartók is dead; Dohnányi is gone. Now it’s your turn.” This suspicion has contin-
ued to tarnish Zoltán and Emma Kodály’s reputations, primarily because of the paucity of
sources that demonstrate their involvement in Dohnányi’s defense.
There is evidence that Zoltán Kodály wrote a letter in Dohnányi’s support in February
, but this document is missing. The little information that is available has been limited
to the often overlooked memoirs of those who knew the Kodálys. István Kapitánffy, who was
the Secretary General of the Liszt Academy, has documented that when the Budapest press
declared Dohnányi to be a war criminal, it was Zoltán Kodály who led a delegation to the
Hungarian Minister of Justice that resulted in a  December  decree clearing Dohnányi’s
name. As Kapitánffy later wrote, “At the Ministry, Professor Kodály reported . . . that to his
knowledge in the hardest times Dohnányi had signed dozens of documents that had saved the
lives of teachers and students who had needed his help.” Lajos Vargyas, who was a member
of the Liszt Academy vetting committee, recalled that when he shared his suspicions about
Dohnányi with the Kodálys, he was sternly reprimanded by Emma Kodály: “My husband ran
his legs off to remove Dohnányi from the list of war criminals, and now you talk that way
about him?”
Additionally, some documents that were recently discovered in Dohnányi’s legacy dem-
onstrate the ongoing support he received from the Kodálys. In , a new Hungarian
 Friday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

government added Dohnányi’s name to the country’s list of war criminals, and Dohnányi’s
supporters in Budapest once again came to his defense. After the case was officially dropped
on  July , the first to inform Dohnányi was Zoltán Kodály, who in a postscript to a 
August  letter from Emma Kodály to Mrs. Dohnányi wrote, “I have just obtained writ-
ten proof from the Ministry of Justice that they have dropped their investigation of Ernst von
Dohnányi.”
This paper will examine the recollections of contemporaries of the Kodálys as well as un-
published letters and other documents that have recently been discovered in Dohnányi’s
estate. This new examination will present evidence that Zoltán and Emma Kodály were in-
deed actively involved in Dohnányi’s defense, providing a long overdue answer to the “Kodály
question.”

HERMANN SCHERCHEN, ELIAS CANETTI, AND

THE STRASSBURG ARBEITSTAGUNG, 1933
Dennis Hutchison
University of Northern Iowa
The conductor Hermann Scherchen left Germany soon after Hitler took power; although
Scherchen was not a Jew, his identification with modern music and especially his activities
with worker choruses made him a potential enemy of the Third Reich. In the course of his
exile, Scherchen organized six Arbeitstagungen or workshops in order to present significant
examples of modern music. The workshops symbolized artistic freedom, cosmopolitan eclec-
ticism, and musical autonomy, all values in opposition to the cultural policies of National
Socialism.
The first workshop took place in Strassburg during the summer of . It featured two
conducting seminars and fourteen concerts of recent music. These concerts represented nearly
every European nation and included works by Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Krenek, Schul-
hoff, Hartmann, and Milhaud. As a part of the seminars, Scherchen presented his aesthetic
justification for the workshop. In a move reminiscent of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenologi-
cal epoché, he argued that one must “bracket out” the worldly connections to musical tones.
While the Nazis used music for propaganda means, Scherchen extolled music “in itself ” as a
means of spiritual and political regeneration.
One observer at the workshop was the writer and sociologist Elias Canetti. Although Canet-
ti found much to criticize in Scherchen, he wrote, “In that month in Strasbourg he managed
to assemble a kind of Europe consisting entirely of musicians engaged in new experiments,
a courageous, confident Europe, for what would have been the point of experiments if they
didn’t reckon with a future?” Building on Canetti’s observations and using archival materials
from the Akademie der Künste, Berlin and the Conservatoire de Musique, Strasbourg, this
paper reconstructs the events of Scherchen’s first Arbeitstagung and illuminates the politiciza-
tion of musical culture in the summer of .
Abstracts Friday afternoon 

LIGETI AND THE HUNGARIAN MUSICIANS’ UNION

Rachel Beckles Willson
Royal Holloway, University of London
The late György Ligeti appears as a brilliantly virtuosic figure in twentieth-century music
history, thanks to his innovative compositions but also to his engaging lectures and interviews.
Yet his shining reputation developed on the basis of the work he accomplished in Western
Europe, indeed his earlier compositions written in Rumania and Hungary were barely known
for over two decades after he emigrated in . Today they are available but are a somewhat
frustrating presence, for we know very little about the communist regime controlling the
Hungarian musical sphere in which many of them were written, and Ligeti’s interaction with
the same. His own later recollections are selective and one-sided testimonies. Thus not only
are Ligeti’s early works currently without a historical context, but we have scant resources for
gaining an insight into the composer’s character as it developed in his youth.
My paper contributes to filling the gap by discussing meetings held at the Hungarian Musi-
cians’ Union between  and , the minutes of which are now housed at the Hungarian
National Archive in Budapest. These minutes provide an insight into discussions that were
standard practice throughout the Soviet bloc, so their significance patently extends well be-
yond Hungary. All musicians were obliged to join the union and participate; their discussions
addressed all manner of concerns related to the administration of music, including commis-
sioning, concert programming, and the development of institutions. Here I focus on minutes
of listening sessions, occasions when union members heard and discussed new compositions,
and voted them on or off the public concert platform. Ligeti was often present, sometimes in
order to present his own work, sometimes in order to speak for that of his friends.
In the paper I put forward three broad points about the nature of the meetings and their
function in the Soviet musical sphere. First, they were discursive “performances” in which mu-
sicians enacted a partially ritualized discussion that embodied collaborative working practice,
offered advice to composers, and also made judgments about the quality of new works. Sec-
ond, the discussions sometimes evolved erratically, enabling completely unrelated hostilities
to be played out, so that a conversation about a new work was actually a game of point-scoring
between rival factions. Third, despite both these factors and even though in certain cases the
outcome of voting was not followed through in final programming, it is clear that composers
could sometimes benefit from the auditing practice: their work was performed and then dis-
cussed by professionals who attempted to address musical, rather than political, questions.
While exploring these points I interweave the contributions of Ligeti, demonstrating both
the ways his music was received (and comparing it to his later recollections of these events),
and also the manner in which he argued through his own views. As I reveal, the adroit rhetori-
cal skill he displayed in maturity was well-developed even in his early professional years.
 Friday evening, 2 November

CRITICAL DOMAINS: MUSIC JOURNALISM, RECEPTION

STUDIES AND THE PUBLIC, 1800-1920
Dana Gooley (Brown University), Organizer
Celia Applegate (University of Rochester)
Katharine Ellis (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Benjamin Walton (University of Cambridge)
Alexandra Wilson (Oxford Brookes University)
The quantity of music scholarship focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and
on issues of reception and historical context, has made journalistic sources more central to
musicology than ever before. As these sources and their indices become increasingly available
in digital and online forms, they are likely to become still more indispensable and pervasive.
A potential disadvantage of the digital revolution is that scholars will treat articles, reviews
and essays simply as sources of information, forgetting or ignoring the extent to which these
writings were embedded in particular journalistic contexts, commercial enterprises, or ideo-
logical battles.
This panel reflects on the strengths and limitations of periodical sources for historical writ-
ing on music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While plenty of attention has
been paid to the opinions of individual critics and writers, we often lack the perspective to
measure their authority or sphere of influence. To what extent did music critics and journal-
ists articulate a distinctly professional, elite framework of opinion, and to what extent did
they reflect the responses and listening habits of a broader public? How might we measure
the influence of a particular critic, and how might the medium—newspaper, music journal,
pamphlet, literary magazine—affect the dissemination of his (or rarely, her) views? What do
we assume about how deeply or seriously audiences read music journalism, and how might we
discover more about them? How did music criticism, theater criticism, literary criticism and
art criticism overlap or influence one another? If we focus on provocative, eloquent, or idio-
syncratic writers such as Schumann, Berlioz, and Wagner, versus more ordinary, workmanlike
ones, might we risk replicating some of the tensions between “aesthetic hierarchy” and “his-
tory” that the discipline of musicology has recently faced?
Pursuing these questions, we aim to illuminate better the relationships among musicians,
writers, and audiences, both within the public sphere and, perhaps, in other settings that
do not quite meet its criteria, such as private correspondence, salon conversation, or state
memoranda. Recent studies by this evening’s panelists and others have drawn attention to
the ideological, national, and aesthetic agendas of pioneering music periodicals, thus treating
music criticism as an institution in its own right with definable cultural roles and agencies.
Future work on listening, audience experiences, and hermeneutic interpretation all stand to
gain from reflecting on music criticism as it grew in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Abstracts Friday evening 

MUSIC AND POLITICS IN THE EARLY COLD WAR:

RECENT APPROACHES, FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Peter J. Schmelz (Washington University in St. Louis), Chair
Phil Ford (Indiana University)
Tamara Levitz (Graduate Center, CUNY)
Laura Silverberg (Columbia University)
Leslie Sprout (Drew University)
Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Ohio State University, respondent)
The present panel will be the first public discussion sponsored by the AMS Cold War and
Music Study Group. The study group was formed in  to begin exploring more system-
atically the issues and debates encompassing the study of music, culture, society, and politics
in the Cold War. Its goal, and one of the fundamental aims of this panel, is to trace in more
detail the central, complicated, and still underappreciated roles that music played in the on-
going conflict. The past several years have witnessed a revived interest in the politics and
culture of the Cold War. With the help of newly released documents and a sense of renewed
purpose after /, many scholars are, as critic Carlin Romano has noted, taking aim at “Cold
War Conventional Wisdom.” Much of this reassessment predictably has been spearheaded by
historians and political scientists, many of whom still remain suspicious of investigating art
and the Cold War. Nonetheless, an increasing number of musicologists are now focusing on
the roles of culture--and specifically music--during the period. This panel will take the pulse
of current Cold War musicological and cultural studies while also discussing fruitful avenues
for future scholarship, ranging from archival to interpretative, by focusing on specific case
studies.
The panel will focus on the early stages of the Cold War (roughly –) and it will
feature five scholars assigned to represent major geopolitical areas: Phil Ford will take Ameri-
can popular culture as his topic, specifically exotica pop and the global imagination; Tamara
Levitz will consider the effects of the Cold War in Caribbean—and specifically Cuban and
Haitian—music; Peter Schmelz will discuss the representation of the atomic bomb in Alfred
Schnittke’s  oratorio Nagasaki and its reflection of post-Stalin Cold War culture in the
USSR; Laura Silverberg will address the interactions between socialist realism, nationalism,
and the reception of Western modernism in East Germany and Eastern Europe; and Leslie
Sprout will explore the impact of lingering trauma from the Second World War on music in
postwar France. As this selection of scholars and topics shows, the Cold War and Music study
group is interested in expanding and complicating the traditional binary view (US/USSR) of
the post- world, while also exploring a variety of musical styles and genres, both “popular”
and “art” (and the many hybrids in between). Each of the panelists will present a thesis that
encapsulates or critiques a specific aspect of recent thought on the Cold War. They will frame
the musical with the political and balance musicological concerns with other interdisciplin-
ary perspectives, including work by historians, political scientists, and ethnomusicologists.
Issues of patronage, style, signification, and audience also will be considered. The panel will
highlight recent directions in the scholarship of Cold War music, while interjecting musico-
logical perspectives into broader academic debates about the Cold War, thereby countering
the conventional wisdom that art and music somehow remained separate from the fraught
and pervasive politics of the day.
 Saturday morning, 3 November

ANALYZING JAZZ
Tammy Kernodle, Miami University, Chair

STRAYHORN’S LORCIAN ENCOUNTER

Lisa Barg
McGill University
In the fall of , Billy Strayhorn composed four pieces for an Off-Broadway production
of Federico García Lorca’s surrealist play The Love of Don Perlimplin for Belisa in Their Garden,
subtitled An Erotic Lace-Paper Valentine in Four Scenes. Mounted by the vanguardist Artists’
Theater collective in November of that year, the one-act play was staged with an all-black cast
and played to full houses for three performances at the Amato Theater in Greenwich Village.
Strayhorn’s involvement with the Lorca production occurred at a crucial moment in his post-
war career: the period from  to  when Strayhorn left the Ellington fold and set out
to establish his own professional identity. Strayhorn’s quest to separate from his long-time
collaborator first led to Paris, where he spent a year with his then partner, the pianist Aaron
Bridgers. When Strayhorn returned to New York in , he sought out alliances with a largely
black gay artistic community. He regularly attended salon gatherings in the home of Frank
and Dorcas Neal, where he came into contact with many young black gay writers, painters
and choreographers.
The Artists’ Theater was founded the late s by Herbert Machiz, a close friend of Stray-
horn’s, with the financial backing of influential art dealer John Bernard Myers. Working
closely with Machiz, Strayhorn, by all accounts, conceived of the Perlimplin production as a
vehicle to address issues of black gay identity. While previous commentators have considered
the music Strayhorn composed for this project, the connections between the production’s
various translations (linguistic, racial, musical) of Lorca’s tragic-comedy and black or queer
themes remain unexplored. I will present several contexts that can illuminate such connec-
tions, ones that, by extension, invite a queer hearing of Strayhorn’s musical contributions.
These include the choice of play and playwright, themes enacted in the text itself, and, most
importantly, the transformative role of Strayhorn’s setting of three lyrics in the play.
One of these pieces, the song “Wounded Love,” is a lament to frustrated desire sung by the
protagonist Don Perlimplin following his comically failed wedding night and foreshadowing
his suicide at the end of the play. With its queer thematic of erotic impossibility and alien-
ation, this song—and its subsequent instrumental version arranged as a ballad for Johnny
Hodges—strongly evokes both in style and affect earlier Strayhorn ballads such as “Lush
Life,” “Day Dream,” and “Something to Live For.” At the same time, the specific performa-
tive context of “Wounded Love” gestures towards a larger field of theatrical representations of
homosexual themes in McCarthyite America such as those found in contemporaneous plays
by Tennessee Williams and Robert Anderson. By contrast, the song “Love, Love” explores a
playful (queer) theatrical terrain through its use of irony, stylization and masking. Beyond
their expressive and dramatic functions in the play, both songs, I will argue, link Strayhorn’s
Lorcian encounter both to the rich transatlantic history of black queer artistic production
Abstracts Saturday morning 

and, more generally, to the reception of García Lorca by African American modernist writers
and artists.

MULTIPHRENIA: RACE, MENTAL HEALTH,

AND THE ANALYSIS OF JAZZ
Scott DeVeaux
University of Virginia
The term “multiphrenia” was coined about fifteen years ago by the psychologist Kenneth
Gergen to describe a state of extraordinary mental multiplicity. It was designed to counter
“schizophrenia,” a mental illness associated with hallucinations, delusions, and disassociated
behavior. Medical terms are diagnostic, and therefore useful; but they also serve to limit and
control. Jazz musicians know this. From the beginning (Buddy Bolden) into the modern age
(Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker), important jazz artists have been classified as schizophrenic
and placed under close supervision. There is a racial angle to this. Evaluation of schizophrenia
is done entirely by interview, and according to the Washington Post, black people are five times
more likely than whites to be diagnosed as schizophrenic. To evaluate Parker as a “hostile and
evasive personality” (to cite his psychiatric records) probably confirms the folk wisdom: “if
someone really is out to get you, paranoia’s just smart thinkin’.”
In this paper, I pull the multiphrenic Charlie Parker from this web, highlighting the many
creative facets of his remarkable, complicated personality. I propose to use multiphrenia as
a model for understanding improvised jazz. In so doing, I challenge certain assumptions of
music analysis, which typically penetrates beneath the changing surfaces of a musical moment
to its inner organic unity. Analysis is reductive, transforming the complex into the simple and
coherent; and it is persuasive, attempting to show that music contains a greater depth and
coherence than one might commonly assume. In a way, it proves the music’s mental health.
Jazz in particular needs such evidence: many people—even some of its adherents—view it as
shallow and insubstantial, a music that “fakes” its way in the world. I will consider writing by
James Lincoln Collier, a jazz critic whose assessments of the music correspond in many ways
with an accusation of schizophrenia. My multiphrenic analysis of Parker, focusing on his 
performance of “Out of Nowhere,” offers an alternative. Rather than a unified whole, my
analysis concentrates on the brilliantly complex juggling of musical personalities that defines
a Parker performance.

“SOUNDS MIDDLE CLASS”: SMOOTH JAZZ

AND THE BLACK MIDDLE CLASS
Charles Carson
University of Pennsylvania
Between the mid- and late-’s, record producer Creed Taylor began experimenting with
mixing elements of post-bop jazz with contemporary popular music. These early recordings
with such established jazz musicians as Wes Montgomery, Johnny “Hammond” Smith, and
George Benson laid the groundwork for a style of jazz that would attempt to “crossover” to
mainstream popular audiences, while at the same time stay rooted in its jazz origins. While
these recordings were well received, the style became immensely popular—and, perhaps
more problematically, profitable—as a result of Taylor’s work with a then-obscure saxophonist
 Saturday morning AMS Quebec City 

named Grover Washington, Jr. in the early s. In this way, Taylor and Washington helped
to create a style that would become known as Smooth Jazz.
While Smooth Jazz continues to control a large portion of the jazz marketplace, there has
yet to be significant work investigating its history, characteristics, or reception. The com-
mercial success of this music, coupled with its decidedly pop-like production values and its
dependence upon regularized melodic formulae, have contributed to the controversy over
whether or not it is even jazz at all. Further complicating this debate is the increasingly im-
portant role white producers and musicians continue to play in this music. At any rate, the
absence of Smooth Jazz in contemporary scholarship is made all the more conspicuous by its
ubiquity in contemporary society.
It is no accident that the development of Smooth Jazz coincided with the rise of what so-
ciologist Bart Landry calls the “New Black Middle Class” during the s and early s.
As the boundaries of jazz were being redefined, so too was the definition of blackness—es-
pecially in large northern urban centers like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Similar
to the music of Motown a decade before, Smooth Jazz was one of several means by which
the Black Middle Class attempted to negotiate its own identity within American society at
large, securing a place within the mainstream middle class without severing ties to its Afri-
can-American heritage. Building on the work of scholars of the Black Middle Class such as
E. Franklin Frazier, Landry, and Mary Patillo, this paper attempts to trace the origins of this
controversial idiom, paying particular attention to its connections to, and uses within, the
Black Middle Class.
Following examples set by Scott DeVeaux, Sherrie Tucker, David Ake, and Guthrie Ramsey,
I argue that the conscious omission of certain narratives from jazz history in favor of Eurocen-
tric models that stress autonomy and unity over popular or commercial concerns serves only
to undermine the richness and complexities of this genre. This presentation is not meant as an
apology for what has traditionally been a marginalized style within jazz studies; rather, I seek
to carve out a space for the discussion of problematic “crossover” genres such as Smooth Jazz,
and to re-imagine a jazz history that includes such varied expressions of the jazz experience.

A COSMOPOLITAN MODERN DIALOGUE: POLITICAL

AND AESTHETIC EXCHANGES BETWEEN STEFAN
WOLPE AND POST-WAR AMERICAN JAZZ
Brigid Cohen
Wesleyan University
In late s and s New York, the German-Jewish émigré composer Stefan Wolpe
enthusiastically gave composition lessons to many jazz musicians and arrangers. Gil Evans,
George Russell, John Carisi, Eddie Sauter, and Bill Finegan, among others, sought him out
for his innovative pedagogy. This remarkable exchange took place during an era when, as
Ingrid Monson has emphasized, racially integrated projects assumed special political signifi-
cance in jazz, exemplified most famously by Miles Davis’ epochal – “Birth of the
Cool” sessions (which included Evans and Carisi). Many jazz musicians at this time engaged
intensively with ideas of the avant-garde, valorizing formal and theoretical exploration while
combating racist stereotypes of black musicians as intellectually inferior entertainers rather
than high artists. Wolpe was an understandable ally in this context: he was a veteran of many
socially engaged avant-garde movements, including Dada, the Bauhaus, and agitprop theater,
Abstracts Saturday morning 

and he had been an outspoken advocate of Arab-Jewish integration and civic equality in s
Palestine. This paper explores common commitments between Wolpe and mid-century jazz
innovators, including a cosmopolitan embrace of culturally disparate aesthetic impulses, an
incipient vision of transnational political identifications, and a belief in the social relevance
of experimentation in small groups. Drawing from interviews, interpretations of their music,
and Wolpe’s unpublished writings, I aim to focus attention on a moment of mutual exchange
that broadens our understanding of the range of political values modernist musics could me-
diate at mid-century.
Like many composers after World War II, Wolpe worked to formulate an artistic response
to totalitarianism. This mission became especially personalized as he struggled to develop a
compositional aesthetic that might somehow redress his own experiences of dehumanization
in Nazi Germany and his subsequent migrations. In response, in works like Enactments and
the Oboe Quartet, Wolpe sought to imagine cosmopolitan modes of community—in his
words, an “all-union-of-the-human-tongue”—through the exploration of eclectic new formal
possibilities in his music. Creating a sense of exchange between heterogeneous musical ele-
ments and culturally diverse concepts became the motivation for his entire artistic practice.
Not dealing responsibly with pluralities, he suggested publicly, lay at the heart of the political
disasters of the century.
In this context, Wolpe explained, he identified with jazz as a “tongued” music, indicat-
ing jazz’s potential as an effective means for speaking out critically. “Tongued” also alluded
to jazz’s speech-like and dialogical qualities, similar to effects he valued in his own energetic
avant-garde music with its aspiration toward an “all-union-of-the-human-tongue.” Though
Wolpe never composed at mid-century in an explicit jazz or “third stream” idiom, many other
aspects of bebop and its offshoots jibed with his preoccupations, especially the exploration of
vastly expanded rhythmic and harmonic possibilities and a suggestive use of musical “found
objects.” Ultimately, I aim to show that this exchange was as much human as musical. As
George Russell remembered, “my interest in talking to Wolpe was chiefly about life.” A free-
dom of new musical possibilities, it was hoped, might encourage a freedom of new human
possibilities.

CHANSON MODERNE
Jane Fulcher, University of Michigan, Chair

THE CHAT NOIR AND THE BIRTH OF THE CHANSON MODERNE

Derek B. Scott
University of Leeds
The chanson moderne was created at the Chat Noir (founded ), the first and most fa-
mous of Montmartre’s cabarets artistiques, which attracted an informal gathering of musicians,
theatrical performers, poets, and bohemian artists. Cultural historians (Carco , Herbert
, Marc , Cate and Shaw , Hawkins , Gendron ) have long considered
the Chat Noir important to the rise of modernism, and have commented on its chansonniers.
Musicologists, Steven Whiting () excepted, have inexplicably ignored it. Yet, the conten-
tion of this paper is that the Chat Noir played a vital role in the history of French chanson.
 Saturday morning AMS Quebec City 

Aristide Bruant (–), whose image is well known through the poster art of Tou-
louse-Lautrec, had a profound impact on French song by creating the chanson realiste, which
reinvigorated the chanson through a concern with injustice, corruption, poverty, and crime. I
propose that his provocative cabaret persona and peculiar method of distancing himself from
sentimental involvement was highly influential, and that this is apparent in the unadorned
forthrightness found often in later chansons by Georges Brassens, Barbara, and Leo Ferre.
Not all chansonniers chose to sing of the dispossessed and disaffected. Maurice Mac-Nab
(–) specialized in macabre and grotesque chansons, such as “Suicide en partie double,”
in praise of double suicides. This subject matter shows how far the chanson moderne could
differ from the cafe-concert chanson. Another distinguishing feature is the ability to turn at
any moment from broad and inoffensive lyrics to the harshest social realism, as Emile Bessière
exemplifies in “Les Morphinomanes,” a chanson about drug addiction.
A critical evaluation is made, for the first time, of the music of the chansons modernes. Ten-
sion often exists between the music and text. For example, Mac-Nab’s anarchic “Le Grand
Métingue du Métropolitain,” with its well-crafted melody, modulations in harmony, and rich-
ly detailed piano accompaniment, reveals the skill of the composer Camille Baron, and stands
in strong contrast to Bruant’s oeuvre. Here, rather than a spontaneous quality suggesting
songs of the street, the influence of the bourgeois salon is evident—though it is in the context
of parody. Paul Delmet (–) creates similar irony between text and music when he
composes in a sentimental romance style for Maurice Vaucaire’s “Les Petits Pavés,” a chanson
about a violent stalker.
The chansons modernes are found to possess a contradictory character in their reception.
Bruant’s chansons, for example, have been regarded as a mouthpiece for the Parisian under-
class, but primary source evidence shows they also served as entertainment for the affluent,
who enjoyed “slumming” in Montmartre. This paper argues for a more nuanced interpreta-
tion of the chansons modernes, assessing their meaning and value in the context of debates
about the modern, the popular, and the avant-garde. They need to be understood as part
of a new type of artistic cabaret that engaged with the contradictions and complexities of
modernity, and spread quickly throughout Europe (to the Quatre Gats, Barcelona, the Elf
Scharfrichter, Munich, Schall und Rauch, Berlin, and Die Fledermaus, Vienna).

NOTRE DAME DE LA CHANSON: YVETTE

GUILBERT’S AMERICAN CAREER, 1915–1922
Jacqueline Waeber
Duke University
Still awaiting for a major reappraisal in the field of musicological studies, the French singer
Yvette Guilbert (–) remains trapped in her self-created image of the “diseuse fin-de-
siècle” that diverts us from her so-called “second career,” which took place from  to the
s.
Viewed as a major departure from her café-concert period, Guilbert’s “second career” can
be understood at its best by focusing on her exile in New York from  to —her fifth
and last stay in the US, where she had been celebrated since her first tour in . Drawing
on little-known and unexplored archives mostly related to her last American stay, my paper
aims to disclose the aesthetical and ideological motives underlying Guilbert’s artistic output
Abstracts Saturday morning 

during the s and s, examining the three main axes of her activities in song, theatre,
and pedagogy.
Guilbert’s American exile can be viewed as the culmination of her “second career.” It is in
New York that she eventually gave full voice to the “Vieille Chanson de France,” the repertoire
she had painstakingly started to construct since the s, notably with the unacknowledged
contribution of the Genevan pianist Gustave Ferrari. In , Guilbert pursued her “mission”
(as she would call it) with a series of concerts and lectures in collaboration with the renowned
medievalist Jean Beck, and by deepening her interest in medieval French theatre, as evidenced
by her  theatrical reconstitution of Guibour, a fourteenth-century “mystère de Nostre
Dame.”
Guilbert’s historical quest was also inscribed in an ambitious pedagogical program fuelled
by her association with the avant-garde theatre of the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhat-
tan. There she found an ideal ground for the conception of her gestural art, defended in her
book How To Sing A Song (), and her short-lived “Yvette Guilbert School of Theatre” that
included classes on plastique, pantomime, and Dalcrozian rhythmics, as well as lectures on
the literature of the Middle Ages or the Afro-American and Creole songs.
I will argue that Guilbert’s “American” repertoire still reflects the typical late nineteenth-
century French practice of juxtaposing high and popular culture, modern and past repertoires,
as has been shown in recent scholarship. Inspired by the works of folklorists and medievalists
like Julien Tiersot and Gaston Paris, with which she had been familiar since the s, she
tirelessly struggled to restore the “grandeur de la chanson française” through her pedagogical
mission, influenced by the agenda of “popular” education, like the Conservatoire de Mimi
Pinson.
If Guilbert’s second career quickly declined after her  Parisian comeback, the seeds of
her New York experience would not be completely lost: one of her most fruitful and unex-
pected legacies can still be grasped in the recreation of medieval plays given from  at the
Sorbonne by the company of the “Théophiliens” directed by the medievalist Gustave Cohen,
himself guided by the credo of “making the ancient modern.”

MEDIEVAL COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS

Rebecca Maloy, University of Colorado, Chair

THE BECKET CHANTS: MOTIVES, MODES, AND MODELS

Andrew Hughes
University of Toronto
Chants for the office for Thomas Becket, composed about  by Benedict of Peterborough,
are quite distinctive. Some of the ways in which they differ from conventional plainchant are
not hard to identify: we may cite the range, the modally coherent phrasing, and a symme-
try deriving from its setting of rhymed and metrical texts. Bruno Stäblein, in , speaking
about the high quality of the chants, thought them particularly distinctive in two ways: first,
he noticed that accented syllables were consistently set to melismas, and unaccented ones to
single pitches. Second, he claimed that individual words were set to coherent modal motives,
suggesting that they begin with and end on important modal pitches. We may call this “mod-
ally delimited word-setting.” Although Stäblein cited some examples showing this feature,
 Saturday morning AMS Quebec City 

there are no statistics and his analysis is necessarily quite brief so that we do not know how
pervasive this feature truly is.
More recently David Hiley has taken up the phenomenon of modally delimited word-
setting in the office for Mary Magdalene. I recently carried out work on a related topic,
accumulating as a secondary investigation comprehensive statistics and comparing the Becket
office with scores of other late offices and with the standard repertory of office chants to see
whether the Becket words were truly distinctive in this way. Preliminary results suggest that
they are not.
In the next months I will take the opportunity to rework systematic and comparative anal-
ysis to confirm or refute this tentative result. I will be using a database of some hundred
thousand words and the melodic motives to which they are set.
The secondary purpose, inherent in the comparative aspects of this topic, will be to show
how far the Becket melodic models were used in later offices, as was the case, in some five or
six known offices, for the text. Recent work done by one of my assistants suggests that entire
phrases were sometimes borrowed wholesale.
The overriding purpose of the paper, then, will be to demonstrate how far, and perhaps
how, melodic motives of conventional plainchant are modified or retained in newly-com-
posed chants and whether they are modally delimited.
I will demonstrate with as many visual examples as possible and, of course, with sound.

THE SCACCABAROZZI SKETCHES: SOME

ASPECTS OF COMPOSITION AND COMPILATION
TECHNIQUE IN LATE AMBROSIAN SONG
Jamie Younkin
Toronto, Ontario
Composition and compilation processes in the Middle Ages have been the topic of much
mystery and many debates in recent decades. Part of the reason these topics remain so elusive
is that fact that, unlike studies of music from later periods, medieval musical studies generally
lack the type of evidence provided by a composer’s autograph sketches. The recent discovery
of autograph sketches by a thirteenth-century plainsong poet and composer from Milan, Or-
rigo Scaccabarozzi (d. ), is therefore of some value. Bound into a collected-works volume
in Milan, Biblioteca capitolo metropolitano II.F.., these sketches provide an interesting case
study of how one composer and compiler managed the subtle aspects of medieval composi-
tional sound and style.
This study surveys some of Sacaccabarozzi’s composition and compilation techniques as
they are illustrated in his plainsong sketches. Both textual and musical aspects of the works are
examined, and special attention is paid to the use of characteristic melodic intervals and orna-
ments as types of punctuation in Ambrosian-dialect songs. By way of a conclusion, I suggest
that the plainsong characters known as the pressus and oriscus had a rhetorical significance in
Ambrosian song that became especially significant when coupled with Scaccabarozzi’s rhymed
texts.
Abstracts Saturday morning 

COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN TRECENTO MUSIC

Anna Maria Busse Berger
University of California, Davis
Various scholars have suggested that orality played a role in the creation and transmission
of trecento music. The most popular pieces are for the most part associated with specific com-
posers and transmitted in writing. Yet, there are considerable variations among manuscripts,
and it is not clear how they came into existence. The difficulties are twofold: first, composi-
tions of the period are polyphonic; at the same time, however, it is now virtually certain that
for the most part composers did not conceive pieces written in score, as we do today. Instead,
they must have worked out the coordination of the voices in the mind, “alla mente.” The voic-
es were immediately written down in separate parts. Second, there is a huge gap between the
intricate diminished counterpoint of the composers with their carefully controlled dissonance
usage and the music theory treatises devoted to the art of counterpoint which seem exceed-
ingly simplistic and rudimentary. All concentrate on note-against-note progressions and have
very little to say on diminished counterpoint. In other words, the gap between what has come
down to us in music manuscripts and what appears in theory manuals seems immense. And
it is unclear how composers bridged this gap.
Art historians have had a longer and more detailed discussion of compositional process
in the Middle Ages than musicologists for the simple reason that they have more surviving
artifacts. Particularly revealing has been a study of so-called modelbooks, which consisted of
examples, often collected or designed by the master, which could be used repeatedly by the
bottega for any number of commissions. It might include a number of drawings of heads,
which would cover essentially every kind of face an artist might have to paint. In the fifteenth
century, artists gradually replaced model books with drawings or sketchbooks. Both relied
extensively on memorized figures, which would then be adapted to particular commissions.
Yet, the artist would not be praised for copying the figures, but for how they are put together
and elaborated in ever new ways.
I would like to suggest that the memorization of interval progressions is music’s equivalent
of the model book. Moreover, I believe that our quest for dissonance rules is more indebted
to Fux than to fifteenth-century theorists and that singers and composers had little need for
dissonance rules. On the contrary, they must have believed that diminished counterpoint
was not something one could teach with the help of a textbook. It seems likely that theorists
would have covered it, had they considered it important. Diminished counterpoint could eas-
ily be passed on orally or learned by imitating or playing with other performers, or by copying
manuscripts. It was not an issue for a theorist but for a performer.
Just as artists learned by memorizing figures, composers learned by memorizing polyphony
and singing improvised polyphony. The constant singing of improvised counterpoint pro-
vided singers with instinctive knowledge of how to use consonances and dissonances and to
dispense with written scores without abstract dissonance rules.
 Saturday morning AMS Quebec City 

THE PERLARO CYCLE RECONSIDERED

Robert Nosow
Dallas, Texas
The cycle of six perlaro songs—two each by Maestro Piero, Giovanni da Cascia, and Jacopo
da Bologna—is central to our narrative of the development of early Trecento music. I will re-
interpret the evidence by reference to three interconnected hypotheses. First, Filippo Villani’s
account of the song contest between Giovanni and Jacopo at the Veronese court of Mastino II
della Scala is correct, but the activity of Maestro Piero, not mentioned by Villani, took place
at an earlier period, centering in the s. Giovanni and Jacopo were asked to write songs in
the manner of Maestro Piero, using the same poetic conceits. This also took the form of set-
ting the same texts: “Sì com’ al canto” in the case of Jacopo, and “Con brachi assai” in the case
of Giovanni (neither text belongs to the perlaro cycle). The stylistic gap between the songs of
Maestro Piero and his two successors corresponds to a chronological lag in their creation, one
that also explains the circumscribed transmission of Piero’s music. Second, the perlaro songs,
which all refer to the perlaro tree and contain the senhal “Anna,” were dedicated to Giovanna
d’Antiochia, wife of Cangrande I della Scala and the aunt of Mastino II and Alberto II della
Scala, lords of Verona. Giovanna, or Johanna, was the daughter of Konrad von Antioch,
grandson of the Holy Roman Emperor, Friedrich II; she survived her husband by over two
decades. Third, Giovanni’s “O perlaro gentil se dispogliato” is a lament written for Giovanna
d’Antiochia upon her death in late December . Mastino II had preceded her in death in
June , while Alberto II della Scala followed his brother in September . The tone and
content of the poem, with its familiar trope of regeneration in spring as symbol of eternal life,
can best be explained as a reference to the death of Anna.

MUSIC AND THE EVERYDAY

William Weber, California State University, Long Beach, Chair

THE MUSICAL LIVES OF TWO TEENAGE

COUNTESSES IN DARMSTADT, 1742–1744
Andrew Talle
Peabody Conservatory
The study of musical life in the eighteenth century has traditionally favored professional
musicians over amateurs. Those who made music professionally were far more likely to leave
traces in the historical record than those who did so recreationally. The libraries of amateur
musicians were typically discarded, in part because they were generally smaller than those of
professionals and in part because their owners lacked students and admirers eager to preserve
the materials.
The Pretlack Sammlung of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin includes some fifty manuscripts
of keyboard music which were prepared between  and  by a single scribe on be-
half of two teenage daughters of Count Ernst Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt: Louise Charlotte
and Friederica Sophia von Epstein. The manuscripts include short keyboard pieces excerpted
from the printed works of diverse contemporary composers, including J. S. Bach, Handel,
Graupner, Agrell, and Telemann. The sources have attracted little attention because they are
Abstracts Saturday morning 

often corrupt and thus worthless for purposes of edition-making. And yet these materials
provide a fascinating window into the musical lives of these two young women. Many of
the manuscripts are dated by month and year, and arranged in collections according to key,
providing insight into the pedagogical approach of their teacher, who identified himself only
with the monogram “Me.” On the basis of archival work I was able to determine his identity
and illuminate his life as a theology student from Marburg, who instructed these two sisters
not only in music but also in religious studies. Further contextual information is provided by
letters they wrote about their governess and by an estate catalog of their mother’s home in
Rauschenberg. That they were active and enthusiastic participants in their own musical edu-
cation is suggested by two minuets composed by Friederica Sophia, which she herself copied
into a manuscript prepared in advance by her teacher.
Though the noble status of Count Ernst Ludwig’s daughters gave them privileges that must
have separated them from many amateur musicians, their musical lives were apparently typi-
cal in some important ways: their teacher was young and inexperienced, the sources for their
repertoire were less than authoritative, and they seem not to have had many personal con-
nections to the composers whose music they practiced. The investigation of this substantial
collection of neglected keyboard manuscripts illuminates the ways in which solo keyboard
music by well-known composers such as Bach, Handel, and Telemann was actually used by
the public.

“IN THE PANTRY, OR THE LIBRARY . . . UPSTAIRS IN THE

BEDROOMS”: BRITAIN’S HIDDEN CHAMBER MUSIC
Christina Bashford
University of Illinois
One of the strongest claims in the historiography of chamber music in general and British
musical life in particular is that Britain in the nineteenth century lacked a significant domestic
string quartet (or serious chamber music) culture, of the sort so prevalent in Germany. This
view, promulgated by such mid-twentieth-century scholars as Ernst Hermann Meyer, Denis
Arnold and Michael Tilmouth, holds that such activities dried up in Britain, along with indig-
enous chamber-music composition, around , and were replaced by the ubiquitous parlor
piano. This paper re-evaluates these claims and implications, and explores why they should
have taken root so strongly in the literature.
The starting point for my analysis is a body of newly-discovered primary evidence for do-
mestic and public music-making in Britain, taken from newspapers, novels, private diaries,
letters, auction catalogs, amateur drawings, and so on. From this, it emerges that, contrary to
much received opinion, British composers produced a considerable number of string quartets,
piano trios, piano quartets etc. across the nineteenth century; that these works were usu-
ally publicly performed; and that chamber music was frequently played in private (by men,
and later, as gender boundaries were negotiated, women) in wealthy middle-class households
across Britain. There are traces of domestic chamber-music making in grand country houses,
parsonages, Oxford and Cambridge colleges, garrison towns, and so on—mostly corners of
musical England neglected by the traditional, London-centered historical narratives.
But the recovery of this evidence alone cannot explain why such a negative picture of Brit-
ain’s domestic chamber-music life has persisted for so long, and the paper goes on to explore
 Saturday morning AMS Quebec City 

the ideas and assumptions that lay beneath these assertions, both within the period and as
handed down across the twentieth century.
Conclusions in the secondary histories may well have been based on ideas that the appar-
ent lack of British chamber-music composition spawned a negligible domestic performance
tradition; and on simplistic explanations about the shift from music made in the home to the
concert hall—assumptions that are now being seriously challenged. Further marginalization
may have come from scholars subscribing to the mainstream musicological view of chamber
music as an inherently German phenomenon, and to their indifference to contextual music
history. At the same time, the underlying thinking may have owed something to an ideology
embedded in the nineteenth century itself. A knot of cultural anxieties around the intersecting
issues of gender (especially masculinity), class, intellectualism and national identity may have
led observers at the time to consciously down-play, caricature, or ignore the serious, private
pursuit of chamber music among British men of wealth and leisure.
Although probably never more than a minority activity, the chamber-music-making of
devoted amateurs in nineteenth-century Britain was by no means as negligible as it has been
portrayed, and its rehabilitation offers a new and meaningful counterpoint to the stereotype
of the Victorian female at the piano, while also uncovering societal issues and tensions around
the pursuit of serious music.

THE PEERLESS RECITER: RECONSTRUCTING THE

LOST ART OF ELOCUTION WITH MUSIC
Marian Wilson Kimber
University of Iowa
This paper explores the performance practice of combining music with spoken recita-
tion, which flourished in England and North America between  and . Professional
elocutionists sometimes specialized in melodramatic repertoire with piano or orchestral ac-
companiment, such as Tennyson’s Enoch Arden with music by Richard Strauss and Max von
Schillings’s Hexenlied. Amateur performances of poetry accompanied by piano commonly oc-
curred in domestic settings. The increase in composition of melodramatic pieces at the turn of
the century included multiple settings of oft-recited poems, including works by Edgar Allan
Poe, Adelaide Proctor, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
More informal pairings of poetry with music generally drew on pieces not necessarily
composed for any specific text. This practice has gone largely unexamined by musicologists
because it falls outside traditional conceptions of the musical work, but there is no lack of evi-
dence for it. Recitation anthologies and pedagogical publications can suggest what was heard
in undocumented private performances. The writings of Clifford Harrison, who regularly
recited with music, provided criteria for the selection of appropriate accompaniments. Reci-
tation handbooks sometimes proffered characteristic music. Alfred Miles’s The New Standard
Elocutionist (), for example, supplies several excerpts, including a section of the piano part
to Schubert’s Erlkönig for stormy, agitated situations. Popular parlor books, such as Henry
Davenport Northrop’s The Peerless Reciter () and Elsie Wilbor’s Delsarte Recitation Book
(, ), include written suggestions for adapting music successfully, and contain a sam-
pling of poems with simple musical excerpts aimed at amateur reciters.
While it is possible to reconstruct the musical settings for recitation, it is more difficult
to recapture the performance style of nineteenth-century speakers, which, according to
Abstracts Saturday morning 

numerous elocution books, would have had marked elements of pitch and rhythm. The spe-
cific musical intervals required of speakers were often notated in pedagogical works with a
variety of graphic symbols. A musical transcription of a performance by reciter Helen Potter
was published in . British composer Stanley Hawley’s vocal ideal lay somewhere between
speaking and singing, and elocutionist Emma Dunning Banks’s Original Recitations with Les-
son Talks () describes how to “intone the words in time to the music.” What was described
in the elocution manuals is borne out in early recordings of actors Herbert Beerbohm Tree
and Frank Benson. Two melodramatic works, Edward Elgar’s Carillon and Max Heinrich’s
The Raven, recorded c. –, can provide clues about the prevailing style, in which spoken
passages had an audibly musical basis in performance.

NORMAN ROCKWELL’S SHUFFLETON’S BARBERSHOP:

A MUSICAL-ICONOGRAPHICAL RIDDLE
Blake Howe
Graduate Center, CUNY
Since appearing on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on  April , Norman Rock-
well’s Shuffleton’s Barbershop has been recognized as one of the artist’s greatest works from his
period in Arlington, Vermont. In its depiction of a clarinet, violin, and cello trio rehearsing
in the back room of a small-town barbershop, it is also a valuable—and puzzling—piece of
American musical iconography. Puzzling, because such trios are exceedingly rare: by the time
Rockwell began work on his painting, only three pieces for such an ensemble had been pub-
lished. Inevitable questions arise from this musical-iconographical riddle: who are the players
in this strange ensemble, what might they be playing, and why are they playing it?
A remarkable geographic coincidence strongly suggests that the music is Adolf Busch’s
“Deutsche Tänze” (op. , no. ). Best known today as the first violinist of the Busch Quartet
and for his collaborations with son-in-law Rudolf Serkin, Busch was also a published—if not
widely performed—composer. After leaving Germany for Manhattan in , Busch and his
family spent many summers in towns around Brattleboro, Vermont, and, in , he pur-
chased a home in Guilford—roughly fifty-five miles east of Arlington. Though there is no
record of their having met, Busch and Rockwell shared a prominent close friend in the author
and philanthropist Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who could have easily introduced the two or,
at the very least, provided the right conditions for Rockwell to have come in contact with
“Deutsche Tänze.” Given their uncanny physical proximity, the odds are compelling.
A staunchly Germanic piece in title, genre, and harmonic language, “Deutsche Tänze”
introduces a witty bit of Rockwellian cultural dissonance into the mythic Americana of Shuf-
fleton’s Barbershop. As if to make the irony more apparent, a tattered American flag from a
World War II poster hangs just next to the trio of musicians. This painterly intrusion of the
foreign and worldly into a small-town community was not an unpolitical act in . Around
this time, there was much interest in the musical culturalization of rural Vermont, best sym-
bolized, perhaps, by Busch’s creation of the Marlboro School of Music in the summer of
 (just months after the publication of Shuffleton’s in the Post). Frustrated by the lack of
opportunities in America for his beloved repertoire of chamber music, Busch sought to bring
amateurs and professionals alike to the small Green Mountain town of Marlboro. Rockwell’s
painting, too, seems to be a comment on this perceived gap in American musical culture, and
his musicians—amateurs playing chamber music for pleasure, utterly without pretension—
were precisely the kind of instrumentalists that Busch would have most admired.
 Saturday morning AMS Quebec City 

MUSIC IN FILM
Michael Pisani, Vassar College, Chair

LITURGICAL BORROWINGS AS FILM MUSIC

IN EISENSTEIN’S IVAN THE TERRIBLE
Katherine Ermolaev Ossorgin
Princeton University
To date, the Russian liturgical music heard in Sergei Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible ()
has received little scholarly attention. The liturgical music, borrowed from the nineteenth-
and twentieth-century repertoire of traditional a cappella Russian Orthodox music, comprises
a significant portion of the film music, yet the origins of its inclusion in the film remain un-
known. Research on the topic has proven difficult to conduct; most of the liturgical music was
sung spontaneously on the set and the single critical edition of the film music (Sikorski, )
is riddled with errors and incomplete transcriptions. Based on both a close reading of the orig-
inal screenplay and a detailed musical analysis of the original score housed in the Glinka State
Central Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow, I have discovered that the liturgical music
in Ivan the Terrible serves a variety of functions that altogether enrich our understanding of
Eisenstein’s art and his collaboration with Sergei Prokofiev on the music for the film.
In addition to approaching the questions regarding the provenance of the liturgical music
in the film, I explore the variety of ways it was used and conclude that overall, liturgical music
serves multiple purposes in the two extant parts and planned third part of the film. In Part
I, the most important function of the liturgical music is to support the patriotic tone of the
drama. Part I is framed by scenes in which liturgical music enhances the depiction of Ivan as a
national, even God-chosen, hero. As Ivan grows increasingly dark and more complex through
Parts II and the planned Part III, the liturgical music plays an ever greater role in affirming this
character development. Liturgical texts hint at Ivan’s cruel nature by comparing his victims to
Christian martyrs and even to Christ himself. In the original screenplay, Eisenstein repeatedly
refers to Ivan and his henchmen, the oprichniki, as fallen angels. A planned scene in Part III
was to engage the oprichniki in a parody of the Orthodox Requiem service. The diabolical rep-
resentation of Ivan and his oprichniki culminates in the oprichnik Oath (written by Prokofiev)
that concludes Part II. Possessing qualities antithetical to traditional Russian liturgical music,
the Oath of the oprichniki makes Ivan and the oprichniki appear diabolical themselves.
The liturgical music helped seal the fate of the film. Part I earned the Stalin Prize in 
for its patriotic depiction of Ivan while Part II was banned and Part III never completed. Al-
legedly too “religious” and “mystical,” Part II actually has fewer liturgical borrowings than Part
I. What displeased Stalin was the manner in which religious imagery (and music) was used
to portray Ivan negatively. Understanding the liturgical borrowings is crucial to understand-
ing the fraught politics of Ivan the Terrible, and the tribulations of the Eisenstein-Prokofiev
collaboration.
Abstracts Saturday morning 

MUSIC AND IDEOLOGY IN DAS UNSTERBLICHE HERZ (1939)

Tobias Plebuch
Humboldt University
In , the German propaganda ministry reorganized the Reich’s second largest film stu-
dio. Due to its huge budget, the company’s major production of the following year, Das
unsterbliche Herz, required special approval by Joseph Goebbels himself.
One of the most remarkable aspects of this film is its music. From the catastrophic open-
ing to the triumphant finale, the score consists exclusively of compositions by J. S. Bach
orchestrated by Alois Melichar and performed by the Berlin Philharmonic. While the tradi-
tion of compiling and arranging pre-existing music goes back to the silent era, Melichar’s
arrangements sparked off a highly controversial debate about the use and abuse of canonized
masterpieces in the cinema. Nonetheless, the film became a box office hit, won lavish praise
in the German press and, its nationalistic message notwithstanding, even in the New York
Times. The film’s success was largely due to the leading actor’s brilliant performance, a care-
fully orchestrated publicity campaign, and, last but not least, a carefully orchestrated score
based on keyboard works, choral music and a Schemelli song by Bach.
The derivative nature of the score and its unknown location may have caused Das unster-
bliche Herz to be ignored in film music studies to this point. Fortunately, manuscript sources
have survived, although misfiled and incomplete, in Melichar’s estate. A close examination
of the score allows a deeper understanding of his skillful adaptations of Bach’s original music
ranging from delicate chamber ensembles to massive orchestrations of late Romantic dimen-
sions and style. An intertextual analysis reveals how narrative, imagery and particularly Bach’s
compositions under Wagnerian guise evoked Riefenstahl’s infamous documentary of the 
Nazi party rally without turning the film into a heavy-handed propaganda piece.

UNATTAINABLE TEXT?: ON A CONTEMPORARY FILM MUSIC STUDIES

David Neumeyer
University of Texas, Austin
I argue against establishing film music studies as a sub-discipline of historical musicology
in the form of a narrative of film style, achieved by accumulating case studies. Film music
studies is a topic within sound track studies, itself a sub-discipline of sound studies. Within a
historical musicology, attention in case studies should be directed as much to music’s place in
the sound track as to music’s narrative functions.
The case study mentality is not the problem—indeed, it is hard to see how information can
be gathered efficiently any other way at this point in the development of film music studies.
The problem is the myth of music as special that comes out of the classical cinema through
the engrained conventions that it fostered. In the “transition decade” (roughly –) the
status of music, however, was almost always in contention. Even if that conflict was temporar-
ily resolved in favor of an operatic conception, the consensus held true only for certain types
of films, such as high-budget spectacles and melodramas. As Rick Altman has shown, the
conventionalized model that emerged from technological and aesthetic developments in the
s was the mis-en-bande, or the aural environment of the sound track.
Music is at odds with the image—it needs mediation, and in the context of the mis-en-
bande, music is mediated by dialogue. Music’s presence always needs justification: it is justified
 Saturday morning AMS Quebec City 

to the image by speech as parallel to the latter’s basic role in the rhythmic flow of stream of
consciousness. On the other hand, the image is justified to music by the concreteness of physi-
cal anchoring in the body and of the sound of associations (words). Acknowledging the modes
of thought that have grown out of film’s “central paradox: the co-presence of movement and
stillness” (Mulvey), we can approach the matter dialectically and in its proper context, the im-
age track and integrated sound track of the sound film. As a practical demonstration, a close
reading will be carried out, similar to Bellour’s “The Obvious and the Code,” but focused on
the mediation of speech.

STEMMING THE ROSE, QUEERING THE SONG:

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, OLD HOLLYWOOD, AND THE
RADICAL POLITICS OF RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Paula Higgins
University of Nottingham
Castigated by the Christian right, and slighted for Best Picture by the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain also drew sharp rebuke from gay
critics for depoliticizing its subject matter: failing to cast gay actors, targeting a heterosexual
audience, and concealing its homosexual theme as a “universal love story.” Whatever the mar-
keting and casting decisions ineluctably driven by same-sex politics, Brokeback nevertheless
made history as a “landmark film” for GLBT civil liberties, garnering unforeseen industry
accolades and eliciting emotional reactions of seismic proportions from viewers around the
globe.
The role of the soundtrack in effecting these socially transformative responses has yet to
be interrogated. Gustavo Santaolalla’s musical score ingeniously redeploys a musical genre
(country-western) associated with the conservative, rural United States for a film whose sub-
ject matter radically challenges “traditional American values.” The soundtrack assembles an
unusually queer-friendly and activist cast of musicians. And what many deem the best song in
the film features an out-and-proud singer-songwriter known for the queer anthem “Gay Mes-
siah” and his vociferous resistance to the neo-conservative agenda of George W. Bush.
As the final song in the film, Rufus Wainwright’s “The Maker Makes” was ineligible for
Best Original Song, thus (according to some) “robbing” Wainwright of a prestigious Oscar
nomination and enabling the misogynous “It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp” to walk away with
the coveted award. Others dismiss the starkly scored, ‘cowboy lament’ for solo voice and piano
as being of little compositional interest compared to the songwriter’s complex, classically in-
spired, and richly orchestrated ‘poperatic’ productions. Why would the Taiwanese director
commission an original song from an openly gay musician “lauded as the greatest songwriter
of his generation” only to consign it to inaudibility at film’s end? And why would the song-
writer appear to have been happily complicit in a decision which some believe deprived him
of career-enhancing professional recognition?
Intrigued by this paradox, and by reports of the song’s provocation of visceral, physiologi-
cal responses in some listeners, my paper directs its attention to the closing sequence where
“The Maker Makes” forms the third panel of a meticulously crafted and emotionally charged
audio-visual triptych. I contextualize the song with respect to the film’s provocative phrase,
“stem the rose”; the homophobic political climate in the United States; Wainwright’s vocifer-
ous resistance as a political activist; his autobiographical links with icons of Old Hollywood;
and, above all, the trademark allusivity of his songs. I offer a critical reading/hearing of “The
Abstracts Saturday morning 

Makes Makes” triggered by acoustic palimpsests that collectively out this notionally “apoliti-
cal” elegy as a radically subversive text. Situated in the privileged position of final utterance,
the song functions as a multi-vocal political speech act: an anthem, a prayer, a critique of
the social pathology of the closet, and a clarion call to end the American embarrassment of
government-sanctioned homophobia. “The Maker Makes” emerges as the ideological prequel
and acoustic palimpsest for more spectacular queer utterances enacted on Wainwright’s most
recent album, Release the Stars ().

MUSIC OF DEVOTION
Christine Getz, University of Iowa, Chair

LAY DEVOTION AND CHURCH MUSIC REFORM IN LATE SIXTEENTH-

CENTURY ROME: INFLUENCES ON PALESTRINA IN THE 1560s
Noel O’Regan
University of Edinburgh
A recent discovery of musical involvement by Giovanni P. da Palestrina in two Roman con-
fraternities in the s highlights the importance of such institutions as sponsors of music
during that critical decade for church music. In concentrating on Tridentine documents and
follow-up directives, discussion of church-music reform has tended to ignore the important
contribution to change made by the devotional sphere. From earlier in the sixteenth century
devotional services required simple and effective music in both the vernacular and Latin: lam-
entations, laude spirituali, litanies, Marian antiphons, motets, music for sacre rappresentazioni,
spiritual madrigals, and so on. While some Mass-settings by Palestrina and Giovanni Animuc-
cia in the late s undoubtedly show the much-vaunted change of style, analogous changes
to the motet and other genres are often overlooked. This paper will give details of Palestrina’s
newly-found confraternity employments and will use them as a starting point for a fresh look
at the music composed in Rome during the later s. We are also now in a position to place
an end-date on Palestrina’s employment at S. Maria Maggiore as well as identifying his suc-
cessor there. Palestrina’s move to the Jesuit-run Seminario Romano in late  brought him
into direct contact with Ignatian spirituality and its devotional implications. The end-result
of all these influences was his highly-charged Liber primus motettorum, 5–7vv of  which,
together with the Latin pieces in Animuccia’s Il secondo libro delle laudi of , revolutionized
motet writing in Rome.

THE BURNING THORNBUSH AND THE HOLY TURTLEDOVE:

JOHANNES KHUEN’S THOROUGHBASS SONGS FOR THE
FRANCISCAN NUNS OF COUNTER-REFORMATION MUNICH
Alexander J. Fisher
University of British Columbia
In recent years we have learned much about the cultivation of liturgical and devotional
music behind the walls of post-Tridentine enclosed convents, particularly in Italian cities like
Rome, Bologna, Siena, and Milan. In the female houses of Catholic Germany, by contrast,
little is known about musical culture given the scattering of archival records due to the up-
heavals of religious wars and monastic secularization. Insight into this question is offered by
 Saturday morning AMS Quebec City 

a repertory of vernacular thoroughbass lieder penned by the Munich priest Johannes Khuen
(–) and published in the s and early s. Dedicated to prominent noblewom-
en and the mothers of Munich’s houses of Franciscan tertiaries, Khuen’s songbooks provide an
accessible medium for the valorization of spiritual wedding, monastic asceticism, and female
role models drawn from the Scriptures and hagiography. The sometimes lengthy strophic
poems are assigned to bipartite diatonic melodies of modest difficulty—accompanied ho-
mophonically by a lightly-figured or unfigured instrumental bass—that guarantee clarity of
poetic diction.
This paper introduces this unfamiliar repertory, while suggesting that its publication rep-
resented a propagandistic response to the recent imposition of full claustration. In  Duke
Maximilian I of Bavaria had welcomed to his duchy the Reformed Franciscans, who imme-
diately set out to enclose tertiary communities that for centuries had carried out charitable
activities in the public sphere. These open houses of women from diverse backgrounds were
to be supplanted by idealized corporations of sacred virgins—increasingly noblewomen—de-
pendent on the court for their economic survival and whose piety was to be channeled in
mystical, ascetic directions. Enclosure was not achieved without resistance, however; women
opposing the measure were forbidden to leave their houses, and archival evidence documents
the difficulty of imposing ascetic discipline and the singing of the Latin Breviary. The women
of Khuen’s time would have remembered this difficult initial wave of claustration in the s
as well as the re-enclosure of the convents after many of them fled Munich in the face of the
invading Swedish Protestant army (). Khuen, who was closely connected to the religious
and political concerns of the Wittelsbach court and the locally powerful Jesuits, designed his
songs to speak to his idealized vision of the nuns’ spirituality: heavenly wedding feasts await
those who have renounced the world and earthly suitors in favor of Christ the Bridegroom;
he celebrates the glorious martyrdom of virgin saints, with Mary at their head, as models for
emulation; and he characterizes the convent as the noble Frauenzimmer, an analogue to the
privileged spaces for women in the earthly as well as in the heavenly court. As such these
songs represent a tuneful apologia for life behind convent walls at a time when the memory
of traffic with the outside world was still fresh, their melodies serving as effective vehicles for
the transmission and memorization of texts. At the same time, devotional singing of this kind
could also resonate with a brand of post-Tridentine spirituality that convent women increas-
ingly internalized in the course of the seventeenth century.

DEFINING MUSIC IN THE CLOISTER: DEVOTIONAL SONG

IN THE ROYAL CONVENT OF LAS DESCALZAS (MADRID)
Janet Hathaway
Northern Illinois University
The royal convent of Las Descalzas distinguished itself from other female monastic houses
in Habsburg Madrid by following the austere First Rule of St. Clare, which prohibited the sis-
ters from singing their liturgy; a professional male musical chapel performed both chant and
polyphony for the convent. The women were forbidden to perform music within the public’s
hearing in the church and musical activity was strictly regulated in the locutorio (parlor). Re-
search of the last two decades has shown that nuns in prestigious convents in early modern
Spain and Italy actively cultivated sacred music and, in some instances, earned renown for
their music. These investigations have led us to a better understanding of how nuns’ music
Abstracts Saturday morning 

functioned within the spiritual and cultural context of the convent. In this paper I discuss the
unusual case of Las Descalzas, with its regulations and its male musical chapel, and why it ap-
parently sought to silence the women’s voice; this yields additional insights into the musical
practices of early modern nuns.
Surviving records indicate that music making by the privileged, well-educated women in
the highly governed environment of Las Descalzas was restricted to private, non-liturgical
music in the form of devotional songs. The most vivid account of a Descalzas nun singing in
the cloister constellates specific spiritual markers, namely, her illness; her Christ-like accep-
tance of her suffering (imitatio Christi), which prompted her to sing devotional verses; and a
miracle attributed to the piety of the nun: after her death, a piece of her clothing was said to
cure a woman who also suffered from breast cancer. A contemporary report that tells of a dif-
ferent miraculous cure experienced by a male chaplain-singer of the Descalzas chapel points
to a distinction—in this institution at least—between men’s and women’s music: while the
nun, who expressed her faith in devotional song, effected a miracle, the devout chaplain was
rewarded with a cure that enabled him to sing.
The limitations on the women’s musical expression (limits placed by Juana de Austria, the
founder of the convent and a professed music lover) helped create a rarefied atmosphere in
which the sisters’ music—unheard by the public—was divorced of any sensual element and
instead was perceived in purely spiritual terms. I consider the decision by Juana de Austria to
limit the nuns’ music in light of the contemporary shift in Habsburg women’s role in politi-
cal matters: Juana de Austria was the last Habsburg woman to be freely given an active role
in government, and the convent she founded came to serve as an institution in which her
female relatives exercised influence through spiritual and familial, rather than directly politi-
cal, means. The careful regulation of music in the cloister suggests that in the voices of these
highborn women, music was understood both to transcend the physicality of the body and
to signal exceptional piety.

ENCHANTING RITUALS: CELEBRATING THE

REFORMATION CENTENARY IN 1617
Bettina Varwig
Magdalen College, University of Oxford
On  October , many of the Protestant German territories mounted extensive celebra-
tions to honor the centenary of the Reformation, an event most powerfully symbolized by
Luther’s posting of the ninety-five theses exactly a hundred years before. Past musicological
interest in the festivities has largely been restricted to identifying the pieces that various com-
posers contributed to the occasion and asserting their function as Lutheran propaganda. Yet a
detailed examination of contemporary political and theological evidence reveals a much more
complicated network of polemics and anxieties, centered around issues of social and spiritual
identity and the power of commemorative rituals to shape such collective beliefs.
My paper addresses the ways in which music—in particular Heinrich Schütz’s large-scale
compositions for the Dresden celebrations—participated in this interplay of conflicting agen-
das. I initially investigate the ambiguous meanings of ritual within Lutheran ideology at the
time. Drawing on recent theories of ritual as a “process of emotional evocation” (Edward
Muir), I discuss the crucial dilemma the reformers faced by shifting the emphasis from the
sense of sight—paramount in Catholic forms of worship—to the sense of hearing, focused
 Saturday morning AMS Quebec City 

on the Word and its exegesis in the sermon. This intellectualized version of religion, which
banned most kinds of mystical and ritual behavior, proved impossible to implant in the wid-
er populace. Various forms of ritual were therefore retained or introduced to replace and
denigrate popular Catholic traditions, yet the ritual action was fundamentally redefined as
centering on representation rather than presence—hence, for example, the practice of com-
memorating historical events as a substitute for asserting the continual presence of Saints on
many Catholic holidays.
Music played a crucial but ambivalent role in defining the nature of these reinvented, repre-
sentational rituals: while Lutheran doctrine supposedly endorsed music as a means for making
heard the Protestant message, Schütz’s Psalm settings for the  celebrations rely surprisingly
little on Lutheran melodies or styles, instead adopting the magnificent polychoral idiom that
the composer had learnt from the Catholic Gabrieli. Moreover, the martial trumpets and
drums prominent in some pieces could equally have served to affirm secular authority, or else
might have constituted an openly aggressive gesture in a tense pre-war atmosphere. Instead
of tying the music to any one of these possible meanings, I argue that its vague and sensual
qualities (encapsulated so strikingly in the overwhelming aural experience of the Venetian
style) effectively recaptured some of the emotional power of past rituals. Such a reading not
only challenges the current widespread perception of Lutheran vocal music as a way to preach
Protestant dogma, but also complicates the familiar narrative of the progressive “disenchant-
ment” of early modern society as a result of a Protestant-inspired rationalism.

STRAVINSKY
Pieter van den Toorn, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chair

STRAVINSKY AND THE 1903 CRYSTALLIZATION OF DEBUSSY’S STYLE

François de Médicis
University of Montreal
Scholars have long recognized the strong affinities between French and Russian musical
culture during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and their increased interaction
that lead to the development of a viable alternative to German aesthetics. The rapprochement
between Debussy and Stravinsky is a well-known if argued case in point, for which I provide
concrete and detailed evidence. I demonstrate this in two stages. First I provide a new under-
standing of a decisive stylistic crystallization that occurred in Debussy’s works around .
Second, I point to previously unobserved commonalities between the French composer’s post-
 style and Stravinsky’s first Russian-period mature works of the early s.
The emergence of a new Debussyst style in works such as La mer, L’Isle Joyeuse, and Es-
tampes is recognized both in the composer’s own letters from the period and in Laloy’s first
“authorized” monograph (). But I describe this shift much more concretely, in terms of
characteristic textural and pitch organizations. Admittedly, the influence of the French school
on Stravinsky’s musical development was widely accepted in Stravinsky studies (Schaeffner,
White) until Taruskin’s revision in Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions (). While Ta-
ruskin acknowledged various reminiscences from the French repertoire (e.g., Debussy, Ravel,
and Dukas), he considerably downplayed its relevance and deemed it superficial by compari-
son to the Russian legacy. In technical terms, he positioned the Russian stylistic hegemony
Abstracts Saturday morning 

mainly in the pitch domain, along with the conjunct exploitation of modal and octatonic/
symmetrical pitch formations. In aesthetic terms, Taruskin found Stravinsky’s music reflective
of the Russian traits of stasis, additive form, and brute simplification (or roughly Nepodvizh-
nost, Drobnost, and Oproshcheniye).
For all his remarkable insights into Stravinsky’s ties to the Russian tradition, Taruskin’s near
exclusion of foreign influence appears questionable as far as the first mature Russian works
are concerned (e.g., Petrouchka and Nightingale). As a case in point, I highlight the striking
similarities between Stravinsky’s Petrouchka (“Shrove-Tide Fair”) and Debussy’s Estampe (“Pa-
godes”)—a work Stravinsky heard in . Following Taruskin’s own strategy, my discussion
will focus less on musical borrowings than on technical procedures and aesthetic values. The
commonalities between the two works are closely tied to Debussy’s new shift in the use of
layered texture, a predilection for ostinati and pedal points, and the subtle formal interactions
between the strata. Furthermore, the two works feature a linking melodic motive: in both
cases, it is based on the same set-class [], has the same linear contour, and is moreover
integrated as a subset into various pentatonic and heptatonic scales.
As a whole, the stylistic features that define Debussy’s shift have little precedent in Russian
music. To be sure, the quintessential Russian color in Petrouchka owes nothing to Debussy.
Nonetheless, the aesthetic values Taruskin recognizes in Stravinsky are very similar to the ones
scholars have long ascribed to Debussy’s music: stasis, disruption, additive form, and decora-
tive figurations—a substitute for brute simplification (Jarocinski, Jankelevitch, Wheeldon).
This contrasts radically with the Germanic valuation of teleology, organicism, and pathos,
suggesting that both leaders of French and Russian modernity reacted in similar ways to Ger-
man culture.

THE STRAVINSKY CODE: JEUX DE NOMBRES IN THE RITE OF SPRING

Matthew McDonald
Northeastern University
The margins of Stravinsky’s sketchbook for The Rite of Spring are littered with numerical and
symbolic notations: tallies of instrumental forces, unidentified equations, clusters of mysteri-
ous symbols, and personalized dal segno indications. Many of these are extremely cryptic, but
most have received no more than casual interpretations and have sometimes been dismissed
altogether as trivial. Upon careful study, however, these markings can be shown to relate to
an idiosyncratic and secret set of compositional procedures that account for an astounding
number of The Rite’s most famous rhythmic innovations. Specifically, Stravinsky seems to have
translated the intervallic structures of prominent chords and melodies into durational series.
The process is straightforward: each interval in a chord or pitch collection is measured in
semitones, and these numerical measurements are converted into beats, which are then used
to generate an irregular pattern of accents or a series of changing rhythmic values. The paper
begins with a selection of representative examples, each taken from the beginning of one of
the titled sections of The Rite, where the best known music of the ballet resides. I then turn
to Stravinsky’s sketches for the “Sacrificial Dance,” which contains the highest concentration
of numerical and symbolic markings in the sketchbook. Here, I attempt to decode various
quasi-hieroglyphic characters, equations (which Robert Craft has speculated might have con-
cerned “overdue rent” or “railroad timetables”), and other numerical markings. In considering
these pages, I draw upon evidence from Stravinsky’s autograph score and the four-hand piano
 Saturday morning AMS Quebec City 

reduction upon which he recorded choreographic instructions for Nijinsky. Together, these
analyses of score and sketches uncover a precompositional musical/numerical/symbolic com-
plex that seems to have informed Stravinsky’s compositional decisions and, as suggested by the
role of the composer’s own monogram in this complex, that Stravinsky may have designed as
a way to encode his own identity into the work.
This new perspective on Stravinsky’s compositional method calls for a reappraisal of the
meaning and significance of The Rite. As a first step in this direction, I speculate upon the
difficult question of how Stravinsky might have conceived of these procedures: Do they
constitute an instance of proto-serialism, an early example of the tendency towards rigid
precompositional systems that would emerge more fully in the music of the Second Viennese
School? Did Stravinsky design these procedures as a means of diminishing his conscious con-
trol over his musical product, and if so was this impulse linked to the practice of “automatic
writing” soon to taken up by Andre Bréton and others (a tantalizing possibility in the context
of Stravinsky’s experimentation with a new script in his sketchbook)? Or were they primarily a
response to the subject matter of The Rite, a representation of a Pythagorean view of nature, in
which simple numerical relationships are imagined to underlie the processes of life? Through
these and other questions, we can begin to situate Stravinsky’s numerical games within the
context of his personal history and views about music as well as in relation to early-twentieth-
century European modernist ideas and practices.
 Saturday afternoon, 3 November

FROM SCHERZO TO SON: PIANO MUSIC BY CUBAN

WOMEN COMPOSERS, C. 1870 TO THE PRESENT
Margaret E. Lucia, Piano
Shippensburg University

Today, American musicians have become increasingly aware of the rich resource of melo-
dies and rhythms of their politically estranged neighbor, Cuba. However, in the midst of this
newfound admiration for the country’s folk/popular forms, Cuban concert music has been
somewhat neglected, despite the strong presence of contemporary composers such as Tania
León, Leo Brouwer, Aurelia de la Vega, Orlando Jacinto Garcia, and others. Further, com-
posers of previous generations, particularly those of the late nineteenth century, who helped
develop the concert art forms, have been similarly disregarded.
In this lecture-recital, I will show the evolution of concert music in Cuba by performing
solo piano music from the late nineteenth century to the present. Further, I will present this
development entirely from the perspective of the woman composer in Cuba. Although their
numbers are not large (or, at least, our current knowledge about them is limited), women of
this time period have benefited from the education of a classic conservatory tradition firmly
established in the eighteenth century by Esteban Salas, superb organizer, philosopher, and a
composer of refinement. Throughout the nineteenth century, musical training closely paral-
leled that of Europe; students were given a thorough grounding in Mozart and Beethoven,
but were also exposed to the extravagance of opera as well as the shorter genres for piano and
voice of the romantics.
One of the first women to establish herself as both a composer and pianist was Havana
composer Cecilia Arizti (–). Born into a musical family, she studied first with her
pianist/composer father, and then with Nicolás Ruiz Espadero (–), then one of the
best-known composers and teachers in Cuba. While Espadero was known for his virtuosic
fantasies on opera themes, Arizti’s music is characterized by a unique lyricism and careful for-
mal construction. The first two selections on the program, Scherzo, Op. , and Reverie, Op.
, exemplify this more refined romantic style. Unlike Manuel Saumell (–), or her
contemporary, Ignacio Cervantes (–), she did not use native rhythms in her music.
However, as the twentieth century progressed, the genres of son, rumba, canción, contradanza
(and later, danzón), guajiro, and zapateo developed and became popular—and found their
way into the art music. Indeed, unlike musical education in the United States, conservatory
training in Cuba has long reflected the richness of its entire musical culture by its all-inclusive
approach to the education of its students. When asked by NewMusicBox interviewer Frank
J. Oteri if she was taught about local music and composers as well as standard classical reper-
toire, Tania León responded, “for us to study Chopin and to study Lecuona, it was on equal
terms . . . You couldn’t learn to play the twenty-four Études by Chopin without learning the
Lecuona dances or the Cervantes Contredanses.” Thus, the diversity of style and incorporation
of indigenous rhythms in the art music of Cuba from early in the tweintieth century to the
present should come as no surprise. Gisela Hernandez (–), who was educated in the
United States as well as in Havana, adopted both neoclassical and impressionist techniques
in mid-career, but turned increasingly to nationalism in her mature works. The “Cubanas”
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

Suite offers a contemporary view of son and guajira (a country style); Zapateo Cubano takes
the form of a set of variations on Cuban dances.
Turning to living composers, one continues to find a broad range of styles. María Alvarez
Ríos (b. ), who has devoted much of her career to the musical education of children (she
composed a musical theater piece on Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince), evokes the memory of
Saumell in two Contradanzas. Magaly Ruiz Lastres (b. ), a leading figure both education
and composition in Cuba, also utilizes the rhythm of the contradanza/habanera in En Pregon,
one of Twelve Cuban Studies for piano. Tania León, former composer in residence with the
New York Philharmonic and one of the most celebrated Cuban-born composers, writes in the
most eclectic style of all, often combining native instruments, such as bata drums, with stan-
dard orchestral ensembles and voices. Momentum, written in New York in , juxtaposes
fragments of blues, jazz, and Latin rhythms in a context of great intensity. Tumbáo, one of her
most recent works, is a short, fast salsa-like toccata—irrepressible and brilliant.

THE AMERICAN MUSICAL

bruce d. mcclung, University of Cincinnati, Chair

BERNSTEIN’S WONDERFUL TOWN AND MCCARTHY-ERA POLITICS

Carol J. Oja
Harvard University
In the “canon” of Broadway, Leonard Bernstein’s shows—or, rather, two of them—have a
solid ranking. West Side Story () looms to such an extent that it has taken on an almost
folkloric stature in American culture, and Candide () has a reputation for being exception-
al but quirky, with its much-loved score and history of ongoing revisions. Both also embed
a political agenda, and both exhibit the kind of cross-over that Bernstein cherished, fusing
opera and operetta with dance and musical theater.
Wonderful Town, which opened on Broadway in February of , represented quite a dif-
ferent story. The show was Bernstein’s second collaboration with lyricists Betty Comden and
Adolph Green, and it hewed closer to the musical theater conventions of the day than its more
illustrious successors. At the same time, it achieved its own version of cross-over, with operatic
flourishes, up-to-date conceptions of ethnic numbers, jazz vamps, brilliant comedic timing,
and a score that is far more challenging than meets the eye. Its initial success was enormous,
exceeding the demand for tickets of South Pacific (), Guys and Dolls (), and The King
and I (). The critics raved, calling Wonderful Town a “masterpiece” (Harold Clurman in the
New Republic) and a “well-nigh perfect show” (Olin Downes in the New York Times). But it
has ended up with a spotty performance history and no traction in the scholarly literature.
Of the many enticing issues raised by Wonderful Town, the focus here will be on its political
profile—one that exemplifies the challenge of making art at the height of the McCarthy hear-
ings. Despite the show’s affable surface, it encoded political messages addressing both public
and private issues, and sketches reveal provocative lyrics that were dropped during revisions.
Added to this, Ruth McKenney, author of the stories that inspired the show, had strong and
public ties to the American Communist Party. Jerome Robbins, Bernstein’s otherwise ever-
present collaborator, played a prominent role in revisions of Wonderful Town but was not
acknowledged publicly, perhaps because he was bracing for a now-infamous hearing before
Abstracts Saturday afternoon 

the House Committee on Un-American Activities. And political fears closed the show for one
night in April of , two months into its run, because a block of tickets had been sold to an
alleged left-wing group.
This paper considers Wonderful Town and its contemporaneous contexts afresh by drawing
on archival materials in the papers of Bernstein (Library of Congress) and Comden and Green
(New York Public Library).

“WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER”: NEW MEDIA, NEW SHOW

MUSIC, YOUTH CULTURE, AND HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL
Jessica Sternfeld
Rhode Island College
High School Musical () offers a new model for a twenty-first-century hit musical.
While movie musicals and family-oriented Broadway shows have healthy recent histories,
High School Musical points to television and computers as the future of musical theater, espe-
cially for youth. Disney’s first made-for-cable musical immediately became a sensation with
kids and teens, partly thanks to the technological means by which HSM (as its fans call it)
is delivered. Repeated airings on The Disney Channel, sing-along and dance-along versions,
discussion boards, an interactive website, and the movie’s availability on iTunes not only grant
media-savvy viewers easy access, but create an aura of shared experience around the show.
Fans can learn the lyrics and moves, talk with peers, and feel like members of a trendy com-
munity.
This paper explores both the technology by which HSM so effectively reaches its audience,
and—diving into a largely unaddressed area beneath this slick sheen—the highly political,
socially loaded messages it delivers. What is a musical, according to this movie? And what
sort of community are this show’s fans joining? The story concerns a basketball player, Troy,
who discovers an affinity for singing, but must overcome peer ridicule for engaging in the
socially questionable practice of musical theater. As a cafeteria production number (one of
many borrowings from Grease and Fame) explains, the cliques in Troy’s school are sharply
divided—though in a thoroughly Disney move, they are divided only by interest and dress,
yet meticulously integrated by race. While this unspoken but visually powerful gesture toward
integration might reach kids and please parents (who discuss their fondness for the film in
glowing terms on message boards), the subtly homophobic undercurrent of the entire film
goes unaddressed both in the story and by audiences and critics. The film makes it clear that
Troy risks his popular social standing and his masculinity/heterosexuality by singing “show
music” on a stage in a costume. More subtly, he also faces the accusation that theater music
(represented by two belting, conniving theater kids) is not, as Troy’s friend explains, “essential
to culture.” HSM contrasts traditional stage singing (read as insincere and tacky) with heavily
mixed pop ballads and hip hop (coded by musical and lyrical cues as heartfelt and modern),
thereby presenting its loyal audience with a new definition of a musical that apparently avoids
the threat of homosexuality, while never becoming culturally relevant beyond a Disneyfied,
vague, rather Orwellian “we’re all in this together” feeling.
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

GESTURE AND PANTOMIME

Mary Ann Smart, University of California, Berkeley, Chair

FROM GARRICK’S DAGGER TO GLUCK’S DAGGER: THE DUAL

CONCEPT OF PANTOMIME IN FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT
Sin-yan Hedy Law
University of Chicago
In the article “From Garrick to Gluck” (), Daniel Heartz explains Gluck’s operatic
reform within the contexts of Noverre’s dance reform, Goldoni’s comic opera reform, and
Garrick’s acting reform. Central to these reforms, as the work of Harris-Warrick, Brown, and
Harris has shown, is a fascination with naturalistic gesture. Yet musicologists still do not know
the specific ways in which physical gestures function in eighteenth-century operas. The im-
portant issue, I argue, is not merely to identify the contexts in which Gluck wrote his operas,
but also to examine the ways in which gestures informed his compositional thinking. This
shift of focus reveals a bias against dance in modern productions of Gluck’s opera. In John
Eliot Gardiner’s production of Alceste (), for example, nobody pantomimes on the stage
even though Gluck specified pantomimes in the performance material. Gardiner’s “interpre-
tation” dismisses bodily gestures, suggesting that “pantomime” was to Gluck nothing but a
form of dance that is inferior to the music he composed. This dismissal stems, I argue, from
our underestimation of the musical importance of gestures in Gluck’s compositional process,
from our neglect of the extensive stage directions Gluck specified in his librettos and first edi-
tions, from our ignorance of the struggles Gluck had to face while attempting to introduce
the “speaking body” to the Opéra, and from our failure to understand what “pantomime”
meant to Gluck.
Drawing evidence from a host of primary sources and performance material, I argue in
this paper that Gluck’s Paris operas sustain a dual concept of pantomime. Pantomime was
to Gluck a form of dance as well as naturalistic acting. I begin by outlining Gluck’s struggles
with ballet writing, the Opéra administration, and the publishing business in Paris between
 and , the period during which he inserted ballet-pantomimes in Iphigénie en Aulide
(, rev. ), Orphée et Euridice (), and Cythère assiégée (). While he insisted on us-
ing ballet-pantomimes, he developed pantomime as acting in his reproduction of Quinault’s
Armide (). In setting the recitative “Enfin, il est en ma puissance” of the dagger scene,
Gluck demonstrated much awareness of Rousseau’s analysis of the same recitative in Lettre
sur la musique française (). With a subtle textual change of Quinault’s verbal text, Gluck’s
setting exaggerated the physio-psychological turmoil that Armide experiences. Most remark-
ably, Gluck’s dagger scene simulates Garrick’s famous performance of the dagger scene in
Shakespeare’s Macbeth. While Garrick pioneered to exemplify inner psychological conflict by
physiological means, Gluck articulated psychological depth by means of music.
Examining Gluck’s Paris operas from the perspective of pantomime is important because
it raises issues of embodiment, interiority, performance, authority and authenticity, voice and
silent speech, and the concept of “nature” that have been neglected in Gluck studies. In ad-
dition, these operas respond to Enlightenment theories of signs and senses that had been
debated most notably by French philosophes including Diderot, Condillac, Rousseau, and
Marmontel. Perhaps most importantly, the dual concept of pantomime provides a much-
Abstracts Saturday afternoon 

needed historical perspective on staging for future producers of late eighteenth-century French
operas.

FEELING DEATH’S HAND ON THE OPERATIC

STAGE: THE EMBODIMENT OF SUFFERING IN
WIELAND AND SCHWEITZER’S ALCESTE
Estelle Joubert
University of Toronto
Following the premiere of Schweitzer’s Alceste (), one author observed: “Alceste was
performed here for the first time on  May, and did that which no other tragedy, which I
have ever seen, has ever done. All eyes overflowed, the most insensitive [people] were moved.
. . .” Widely acknowledged as the first German tragic opera, the work was repeatedly credited
during the eighteenth century for its unusual evocation of intense feeling and uncontrollable
tears in the audience. As Alceste wept on stage, so audience wept bitterly in their seats. But
precisely how did these operatic productions provoke this exceptional reaction? Within mod-
ern scholarship, the compositional language used by Schweitzer is not regarded as particularly
innovative: most scholars view the style as deriving from opera seria. But, as I shall demon-
strate, it is necessary to look beyond musical techniques to account fully for the audience’s
heartfelt response.
In this paper, I shall argue that Wieland and Schweitzer’s Alceste is inextricably linked with
the spoken theatrical tradition in Germany, particularly that of the bourgeois tragedy, inaugu-
rated by Lessing in  with his Miss Sara Sampson. Crucial elements of this tradition include
fashioning the drama in order to display the most innermost feelings through gesture. Alceste
too was starkly reduced to an intimate domestic drama—containing only four characters and
discarding all moving scenery—serving as a platform to display bourgeois sentiments of grief
within the conjugal family. Most importantly, the intensity of Alceste’s physical suffering and
death was revealed through that which I argue is an innovative use of music and gesture in
German opera. An eyewitness review of the opera—claiming that he has seen the “German
Garrick”—gives evidence that performances made use of gesture characterized by unprec-
edented realism. Heartz describes Garrick’s acting style as one in which the character would
not merely strike a pose and sing the aria (as was the case in Italian opera seria), but instead
would explore various expressive motions governed by rapidly changing sensibilities. Also,
many of the gestures used in Alceste are described and illustrated in J. J. Engel’s Ideen zur einer
Mimik (), revealing fascinating insights into the staging of the physical and psychological
trauma associated with her suffering and death.
I shall provide a “close reading” of one at the end of Act II, during which Alceste reveals her
physiological and psychological responses as she begins to die. A grotesque display of fainting
and emotional trauma ensues as she feels the cold hand of death and hears the wings of the
shadows descending upon her. Chills run through her veins and she experiences convulsions
and visions of the Parcae coming to take her away. During a performance of this scene, J. M.
Kraus remarked that he “feels the hand of death, which Alceste feels.” Finally, I will investigate
audience identification with the protagonist and the notion of communal tears and trans-
parency, viewed as characteristic of a morally upright citizen, standing against the perceived
opaqueness and corruption of Old Regime Europe.
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

INTERWAR
James Deaville, Carleton University, Chair

PLOTTING THE INSTRUMENT: ON THE CHANGING

ROLE OF TIMBRE IN MAHLER’S NINTH SYMPHONY
AND WEBERN’S SYMPHONIE OP. 21
Dániel Péter Biró
University of Victoria
This paper examines the dialogue that occurs between “primary” and “secondary param-
eters” within the discursive form of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, and traces the historical
employment of timbre both in that work and in Webern’s Symphonie op. . While studies
by Adorno, Abbate, Lachenmann, and Ratz have dealt with the functionality of “second-
ary musical parameters” in these works, my analysis investigates the historical lineage and
changing role of timbre in these two works. Following theories of Carolyn Abbate and Carl
Schorske, I interpret how this transformative development existed as a socio-cultural syn-
drome that stemmed from problems of linguistic comprehension in an increasingly socially
unstable fin-de-siècle Vienna.
As Erwin Ratz has shown, the narrative of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony is dependent on
thematic dialogue, but the syntactical context of the “speech principle” is reinterpreted, as
Mahler’s themes, motives and harmonies all seem to be intimately interrelated in terms of
rhythm, contour, interval content and timbre. Theodor W. Adorno has shown how each
thematic identity is constituted with a built-in motivic similarity to other themes. Such simi-
larity presents a new “speech principle” that functions to expand the micro-level of motivic
relationships and simultaneously dissolve the larger formal scheme of symphonic thematic
development. The employment of such motivic “variants” became coupled with Mahler’s ex-
ploitation of timbre as a new constructive tool for symphonic narration.
Employing sketch material, I first show how Mahler constructs relationships between tim-
bre, harmony and pitch, thereby charging timbre with new constructive possibilities. My
analysis demonstrates how the initial timbral elements of the work, introduced in an encoded,
oblique manner as part of the structural background, actually become primary elements of the
larger musical narrative. This constructive employment of timbre allows Mahler’s instruments
to become both extended and estranged from their previous existence.
Mahler’s dismantling and recontextualization of the traditional functionality of the or-
chestral apparatus allowed for the constructive possibility of employing timbre as a primary
musical parameter, a possibility exploited in Webern’s Symphonie. Mahler’s deconstructive
approach to symphonic instrumentation and form represents the preliminary stage of We-
bern’s parameter-based musical architecture. Just as Mahler’s transformation and alienation of
the orchestral machine permitted an implosion of his instruments’ traditional functionality
and historical aura, Webern was the first to radically employ instrumental timbre as an eman-
cipated compositional parameter in his Symphonie op. . Comparing the employment of
the horn “fanfare” in both works, I investigate how Webern’s universe of timbral functionality
clashes with semiotic associations of its past. I then go further to analyze Webern’s instruments
in their orchestral context to see how their historical positioning relates to his new symphonic
form and musical expression. I argue that Webern’s employment of timbre as a primary pa-
rameter was an attempt not only to reinvent the symphonic “speech principle” but also to
Abstracts Saturday afternoon 

create a new musical language that would transcend the discursive dialectic of symphonic
form. Finally, I demonstrate how this increasingly emancipated, encoded, modernist musical
structuring was a direct response to problems of expression and political alienation in bour-
geois Vienna of the early twentieth century.

SLAYING THE WAGNERIAN MONSTER: DAS NUSCH-NUSCHI

AND THE POSTWAR CRISIS OF MUSICAL GERMANNESS
Joel Haney
California State University, Bakersfield
When Paul Hindemith’s one-act opera Das Nusch-Nuschi was premiered in Stuttgart in
, it quickly helped establish him as a rising enfant terrible in German music. Hindemith
had based his opera on a Burmese marionette play whose sexualized buffoonery scandalously
satirized Tristan und Isolde. Das Nusch-Nuschi outraged critics and audiences alike, but despite
the furor that initially greeted the opera, scholarship has yet to address the most pressing
historical and cultural questions surrounding its Wagner parody. Nor has any commentator
accounted for the telling presence in Hindemith’s score of a powerful non-German influ-
ence, one that chafes against Wagnerian ideals of compositional seamlessness and expressive
opulence.
Emerging in the years immediately after the First World War, Das Nusch-Nuschi came into
being when Wagner’s legacy was at the center of heated debates over the newly precarious
status of musical Germanness. After years of bloody fighting, the Empire had been lost, and
a severely weakened Germany was forced to assume responsibility for the war. This shook
German self-understanding to its roots and polarized cultural discourse. In early , while
demanding the “conscious separation” of “true German national sentiment” from foreign,
“Jewish international” forces hostile to it, the intransigent Hans Pfitzner stridently lauded
Wagner as the musical standard-bearer of German heroism. He even quoted from Wagner’s
Meistersinger libretto while envisioning a self-conscious artistic nationalism that would func-
tion as an aesthetic surrogate for the vanished Empire. By contrast, Paul Bekker, the prominent
music critic against whom Pfitzner had directed his polemic, was arguing passionately for the
dismantling of German musical chauvinism. In a little-known lecture delivered repeatedly
at this time, Bekker strongly implicated Wagner in the chauvinistic forces that had precipi-
tated the war and, further, singled out Pfitzner and Richard Strauss as holdouts of a morally
indefensible post-Wagnerian enterprise. In the interest of postwar harmony, Bekker argued,
German composers needed to abandon such suspect musical trajectories for a vigorous en-
gagement with recent non-German music.
I propose that the central peculiarities of Das Nusch-Nuschi come sharply into focus with-
in the context of this debate. (Having sidelined the project in late , Hindemith—an
acquaintance of Bekker’s—redoubled his efforts only after the debate had been thoroughly
aired.) First, a historically sensitive reading of the opera’s parodic dimension might, follow-
ing Linda Hutcheon’s theory of twentieth-century parody, locate its target less emphatically
in Wagner’s own work than in a dangerously hardened postwar artistic nationalism. Second,
situating Das Nusch-Nuschi amid the controversy over internationalism brings to our atten-
tion numerous musical passages that apparently have been modeled on another puppet-piece
of conspicuously non-German parentage: Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Careful examination of the
score reveals Hindemith’s fascination with that aggressive simplicity that Richard Taruskin has
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

identified as a hallmark of Stravinsky’s Russian “neonationalism” of the s. My reading of

Das Nusch-Nuschi argues that this budding alliance with Stravinsky, which cleared aesthetic
space for Hindemith’s influential anti-Romanticism of the s, allowed the composer to
hold at bay a cultural past whose arm reached threateningly into the postwar present.

IDENTITY, MUSICAL BORROWING, AND REGIONALISM:

JEWISHNESS IN MILHAUD’S INTERWAR COMPOSITIONS
Marie-Noëlle Lavoie
University of Montreal
In the preface to his memoirs, Darius Milhaud defined himself in clear and concise terms:
“I am a Frenchman from Provence, of the Israelite religion.” (Milhaud /: ). In his
Entretiens avec Claude Rostand, Milhaud pointed more particularly to one aspect of his three-
fold identity, claiming, “If I have emphasized my Jewish side, it is because I am profoundly
religious.” (Milhaud, /: ) A construction of the composer as an artist deeply in-
spired by the Jewish faith dates from the years following the Second World War and his
completion of works such as Service Sacré () and the opera David (). At the same
time, it is important to bear in mind that the very first “Jewish” works predate this period, and
figure in a distinct corpus of works that are centered around Judaism.
This paper explores the various ways that Judaism informed the work of Milhaud during
the interwar period by looking to three works that borrow from Jewish music. Studies con-
cerned with the influence of Jewish music on Milhaud (Rosen , Zeitlin , Gineys ,
Kelly ) have not examined these borrowings in the cultural context of France in the s
and s. Of chief concern here is how the composer expressed his attachment to the Jewish
community through music, during a pivotal moment in which Milhaud positioned himself as
a major composer of his generation in France.
Born into a well-established Aixois family, the composer’s identity was shaped by a strong
sense of regional and secular rooting in the ancient Southern province of Venaissin and
through an awareness of otherness with respect to the larger Jewish diaspora. With this back-
ground in mind, I will turn to three of Milhaud’s settings of pre-existing Jewish melodies.
Based on an Eastern European collection, the Six Chants populaires hébraïques () resulted
from Milhaud’s more generalized interest in folklore and constitute not merely a simple har-
monization, but a powerful example of true appropriation of folk material. At the other end
of the spectrum, the mélodie “Holem Tza’adi” () was part of a project that aimed to en-
courage Jewish immigration to Palestine in the s. As a Zionist gesture, this song reveals a
more politicized aspect of Milhaud’s Jewishness. The final example, Liturgie comtadine (),
draws on chants published at the end of the nineteenth century in a Jewish Provençale an-
thology and speaks a language of regionalism that permeates many of the composer’s Jewish
works of the interwar period. This regional model allows Milhaud to distinguish himself from
the larger Jewish community by underlining the regional specificity of his faith. His ties to
Provence also serve to anchor his work in French and Latin traditions, a cornerstone of Mil-
haud’s aesthetic. With this in mind, Milhaud’s recourse to regionalism should be considered a
deft means of expressing his Jewishness in a cultural milieu where this type self-identification
had all the potential to place him in a position of vulnerability.
Abstracts Saturday afternoon 

THE SKATING RINK BALLET: HONEGGER’S RONDO SONATA

FORM AS COUNTERPOINT TO LÉGER’S CUBIST SCENERY
Jacinthe Harbec
University of Sherbrooke
On the evening of  January , Rolf de Maré’s Ballets Suédois took to the stage at the
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with Skating Rink, a ballet based on a poème dansé by Riciotto
Canudo with contributions by painter Fernand Léger and composer Arthur Honegger. Crit-
ics greeted this “ballet on skates” with skepticism, denouncing a certain aesthetic disparity
between the ballet and the music (Häger, ). The object of this paper is to present an in-
terdisciplinary study of Skating Rink in order to come to terms with the dissonances formed
by its storyline, music, and scenery.
In  Canudo published a poem in the form of a ballet synopsis under the title of Skating
Ring à Tabarin in Le Mercure de France. The story, which takes place on a roller-skating rink
set up in the Tabarin hall in Paris, is a passionate drama revolving around three individuals—a
Mad Poet, a Woman and a Man—whose collective suffering goes unacknowledged by the
dizzy crowd of skaters around them. Canudo’s “unanimiste” situation thus takes place in an
urban context where men and women “spin and spin the desperate meaning of life.”
By the fall of , Rolf de Maré had decided to produce Canudo’s ballet with the abbre-
viated title Skating Rink. Enlisted to provide curtain, set and costume designs, Léger based
his work on the kinetic properties and popular spirit of the urban crowd suggested by the
synopsis: he accentuated the angular forms of the skating dancers’ bodies and transformed
the characters into an asymmetric grouping of moving geometric forms arranged within an
immense cubist tableau. The effect is a caricature of frivolity through the portrayal of popular
morality with Chaplinesque mechanical gestures.
Honegger, on the other hand, sought to highlight the dramatic essence of the story, and
Canudo later acknowledged that his music had in fact captured all of the details of the work
(Bonsoir Figaro,  January ). Bringing together some forty instruments, the composition
has an orchestral intensity that the crtitic Émile Vuillermoz would describe as “animated by
a feverish movement and intoxicating gliding.” (Excelsior,  January ). Cast in a poly-
tonal language, this symphonie chorégraphique presents a series of insisting gliding ostinati and
highly contrasting Leitmotifs that unfold within a rigorous sonata form.
At first glance, Honegger’s classically structured work seems at odds with Léger’s cubist
staging. Further investigation reveals that the rhythmic and melodic specificities of the com-
position as well as the strident density of the orchestration bring a supplementary dimension
to the ballet’s visual component, essential for a better understanding of the synopsis. This
deeper examination suggests that the music and scenery form a counterpoint as equal and
autonomous entities. Finally, this paper underscores the artistic value of Skating Rink, a ballet
that has suffered from unfortunate neglect in our time.
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

THE MUSICAL WORLD OF JEAN MOLINET,

BURGUNDIAN CHRONICLER AND POET
Jane Alden, Wesleyan University, Chair

WHAT FORTUNA CAN DO TO A MINIM

Anna Zayaruznaya
Harvard University
Among the numerous references to music found in Jean Molinet’s writings, none is more
puzzling than a passage from his  Roman de la Rose moralisé. There the Burgundian court
chronicler, poet, and composer describes in precise musical terms the misadventures of a
note—a minim—that is so unlucky as to fall under the influence of the goddess Fortuna. She
elevates the little note to the top of her wheel, where it feels itself to be very long and impor-
tant and begins to sing a song by Du Fay. But the fickle goddess has other plans: suddenly,
with one turn, the minim is plunged to the depths, where it sings so quietly that no one can
hear it complain.
Strange though this description may seem, it not the only place where Molinet mixes For-
tuna with music: I have found analogous imagery in his Petit traictié soubz obscure poetrie.
Taken together, these passages suggest that Molinet, a skilled composer in his own right, was
drawing on his knowledge of specific pieces on the theme of Fortuna. I will single out for
analysis two such works—the Fortuna desperata masses of Jacob Obrecht and Josquin des
Prez—in which the cantus firmus treatment is evocative of the transformations borne by
Molinet’s minim: augmentation, transposition, and the illusion of circular motion.
In fact, Molinet’s language is neither random nor unduly whimsical. Rather, his description
of the minim’s misadventures references a parallel compositional trend of depicting Fortuna
and her wheel in musical terms. An awareness of such depictions, in turn, should cause us
to broaden our conception of the kinds of images that masses, in particular, can project, and
invites us to accord greater place to extramusical imagery in our understanding of late fif-
teenth-century music more generally.

“MON FLAÏOLLET NE VAULT PLUS RIENS:” ON SEX,

MUSIC, AND RHETORIC IN JEAN MOLINET
Michael Randall
Brandeis University
One of the most peculiar things about the poetry of Jean Molinet, the court historian of the
Court of Burgundy from  to , is the frequency with which things (res) become words
(verba). In rebus poems such as A domine my reverende, images of tables and dice become the
syllables “table” and “dé” in words such as “redoubtable” and “recommendé.” Molinet is more
interested in the sound of the words than in the things themselves. This is important in rela-
tion to music, which appears so often in his poetry and prose. Allusions to musicians such as
Ockeghem, Busnois, and Compère; lists of instruments in poems such as Le Naufrage de la
pucelle; his poetic exchange with Antoine Busnois—all attest to the importance of music in
Molinet’s work. Yet, it can be asked whether music per se really enters into Molinet’s poetics,
Abstracts Saturday afternoon 

or whether it is simply rendered into a purely discursive form in which all that counts is the
bruissement of words used to highly rhetorical effect.
Although Molinet brings music into poems such as his Recommendacion a Jehan de Ranchi-
court, in which musical notes are used to rhyme words such as rechut with conchut and adoré
with doré, it can be asked to what degree Molinet’s interest is limited to the sounds of the
words ut, re, do, etc. Critics such as François Cornilliat have explained that Molinet’s language
is a uniquely fallen one. Molinet uses this fallen language to recreate a pastiche of the harmony
lost in the fall from grace. In this light, harmony is less a matter of musical sounds than of rhe-
torical mellifluousness. In his Art de rhétorique, Molinet famously called poetry a “rhétorique”
that was also a form of “musique rythmique.” Despite Molinet’s allusion to music here, almost
all of the Art de rhétorique, as its title indicates, is devoted to questions of rhetoric and not to
music. Poetry is less musical than rhetorical.
I would like to try to understand this phenomenon in relationship to the overtly sexual
context of two of Molinet’s more musically-minded poems. In both his Résponse a monseigneur
maistre Anthoine Busnois and in his Debat du gendarme et de l’amoureux, in which music or
musicians play crucial roles, characters make detailed allusions to their current state of sexual
impotence, which they compare with an earlier time when things looked up more, so to
speak. Although the appearance of sex and music in these poems might be entirely coinciden-
tal, their juxtaposition might be part of larger picture. In a fallen world, depicted in terms of
sexuality, language can only be fallen, and harmony, whether musical or celestial, can only be
produced as an illusion in language. Despite the obvious importance of music in Molinet’s
poetry and prose, rhetoric might just necessarily trump music, par la force des mots.

CHARLES D’ORLÉANS, PHILIP THE GOOD, AND A

WOOL MERCHANT’S DAUGHTER: AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE BRITISH LIBRARY MS LANSDOWNE 380
Kathleen Sewright
Rollins College
Assumed for nearly a century to have been produced in France for French consumption, the
manuscript London, British Library, Lansdowne  has long been known to musicologists
because of its sixty French chanson texts dating from the fifteenth century. The manuscript
has never been studied in detail, however. Nor has there been, until this present study, a
complete inventory of its contents: a seemingly confusing mix of Latin and French liturgical,
moralistic and didactic texts (including a religious ballade by Molinet), medical recipes and
treatises, courtesy texts, “historical” poems, astrological texts, and a variety of courtly verse,
including what Martin le Franc called “the English book” of Charles d’Orléans.
The confusion is only superficial, however: a close examination of its contents shows that
the volume was compiled for the use of a young, unmarried woman who had recently learned
how to read. The compilation was to serve as a primary tool of her education, with the re-
ligious and moralistic items included to ensure that she would be molded into a devout
Christian, while a broad range of secular literature guaranteed a proper cultural upbringing.
It is to this second category that the chanson texts belong.
The contents of the manuscript exhibit the dual influences of the Burgundian and central
French courts—influences that also permeate the chanson texts. The most likely point of con-
fluence for these two influences is the geopolitical territory most contested between France
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

and Burgundy during the fifteenth century: Picardy, the Artois region of the Somme river,
and French-speaking Flanders. During much of the fifteenth century, administration of these
provinces was largely the responsibility of the Croy family, on behalf of their overlord, Duke
Philip the Good of Burgundy. The same family, however, also pledged allegiance to the French
monarchs Charles VII and Louis XI, in recognition of which various members were given
positions at the French royal court as well as estates within the above-mentioned disputed
territories. Evidence within the chanson texts of Lansdowne , such as certain incipits and
an acrostic, suggests that this particular repertory of songs was cultivated by one of the Croys
before their fall from grace in .
But more remarkable than the provenance of the chanson texts themselves is the origin
of the manuscript in toto. Despite the longstanding assumptions of its French provenance, a
study of the included liturgical items demonstrates that the manuscript was, in fact, compiled
for use in England, not on the Continent. Moreover, it was probably produced in London
for the use of the daughter of a wool/cloth merchant connected with Bristol. Lansdowne 
thus offers proof of interest in the French poetry of Charles d’Orléans in England during the
fifteenth century, as well as evidence of the continuing popularity of the francophone courtly
chanson across the English Channel.

GUILLAUME DU FAY’S LATE SONGS AND THE CIRCLE OF MOLINET

Alejandro Planchart
University of California, Santa Barbara
Like Igor Stravinsky in the twentieth century, Guillaume Du Fay appears in the course
of his career as something of a stylistic chameleon, and yet, also like Stravinsky, he managed
virtually all of the time to sound uniquely like himself. In his youth, he adapted the style of
Ciconia; in the s he absorbed the rhythmic language of Dunstaple while retaining the
kinds of motivic writing found in his earlier music. In the late s he adopted the textures
and structural innovations of the master of the Missa Caput in a series of works that are con-
sidered by scholars as archetypal examples of his mature style. Even in his old age, he sought
to absorb the stylistic traits of a younger generation, possibly on account of his friendship with
Jehan de Ockeghem.
While these influences can be readily observed in the sacred and ceremonial works, Du
Fay’s songs are in many ways his most idiosyncratic works and the ones where is its hardest to
see influences from predecessors or contemporaries. In a few early works we can hear echoes of
Loqueville and Velut, but there are few traces in Du Fay of the style of his most famous con-
temporary, Binchois. This applies also to Du Fay’s choice of texts: an unusually large number
of the early songs are New Year or May songs with dance-like rhythms and bourgeois rather
than courtly texts. This bourgeois tone affects even what at first sight appear to be more con-
ventional songs, as in the case of Ma belle dame souverainne.
There may be a change in pieces from the s. Although the sources for these pieces (with
the exception of MS Porto ) are transmitted with corrupt or incomplete texts, there are a
number of compelling pieces found only in late sources, some of which can be dated, as Fal-
lows has shown, after , when Du Fay spent some time with the French. In these works,
the types of text prevalent at the courts of France and Burgundy become more common, and
even the contrapuntal style of the pieces changes.
Abstracts Saturday afternoon 

Among the late works are songs with texts in the style championed by Molinet and other
rhétoriqueurs, refined to the point of hermeticism and set to music that shows stylistic traces
of Ockeghem and Busnoys. In some cases, Du Fay even goes beyond his younger colleagues,
including temporary mensuration shifts characteristic of sacred music, as in Dieu gard la
bonne, but these are also a throwback to procedures in Du Fay’s earliest works. These songs
can be read as summations of Du Fay’s modus operandi: they present a style that would have
been readily accessible to Molinet’s generation, while their roots go back to music that most
of its rhétoriqueur hearers would barely have remembered.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY EXOTIC
Jonathan Bellman, University of Northern Colorado, Chair

THE STYLE HONGROIS AND SCHUMANN’S

FORMAL EXPERIMENTS OF 1842
Julie Hedges Brown
Northern Arizona University
In the finale of Schumann’s  A major Quartet, op. , no. , critics have observed
certain oddities: the paratactic nature of the main theme and a reversal of refrain and epi-
sode functions, with the latter more stable than the former (Kohlhase and Newcomb); and
a large-scale “parallel” form, in which a sectional rondo unfolds once again: ABACADAB-
ACADA (Daverio and Brown). This paper argues that an alternative musical language—the
style hongrois, evoked especially by the recurring refrain—prompted these and other anomalies
within the quartet. As Jonathan Bellman has shown, evoking the style hongrois might do more
than merely reference an increasingly popular strain of nineteenth-century music; it could en-
code deeper meanings that resonated with, even reinforced, aspects of the Gypsy stereotype.
Schumann’s quartet provides a new illustration of such subtexts, revealing how an alternative
musical language might open up new paths for formal experimentation. Resistance to societal
norms and expectations, for example, finds a parallel in the finale’s subversion of refrain and
episode functions. The finale’s tonal construction also evokes the Gypsy-as-wanderer. Because
refrains modulate constantly, the movement unfolds without a definitive tonal “home.” In-
deed, among the dizzying array of keys, A major—the putative tonic—surfaces in a seemingly
aimless, arbitrary fashion: initiating refrains here, terminating them there, disappearing alto-
gether, even emerging within episodes. Ultimately, unequivocal tonic definition occurs only
as an end-oriented event, another subversion of tonal practice.
I also explain how this quartet movement became the basis for the unusual finale of
Schumann’s Piano Quintet, op. , composed two months later: it too features a refrain-based
parallel form that emphasizes non-tonic returns of the main theme (mm. –); a wander-
ing through numerous keys (indeed, the music traverses the circle-of-fifths via a symmetrical,
chromatic pitch space); and a delayed confirmation of the true home key. As many know, the
movement features a progressive tonal scheme, opening strongly in G minor, only to end in
E-flat major. The refrain-based parallel form facilitates this tonal narrative: by stressing non-
tonic thematic returns and a chromatic tonal journey, the form sets in motion the gradual
subversion of G minor. Ultimately, the change in tonal hierarchy betrays a larger pattern of
continuously shifting perspectives, ones analogous to those experienced by Clara and Robert
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

as they hiked in Bohemia just weeks before composition of the Quintet began. And if “on
the following day one feels how with effort and exertion one can reach even higher,” so too
can the artist surmount previous accomplishments, for “so it is in life and in art.” The quintet
finale illustrates such artistic journeying not only internally but externally as well: although
not evoking the style hongrois directly, it clearly builds upon the formal innovations prompted
by this style in the earlier string quartet. Thus, Schumann—like Weber, Schubert, Liszt, and
Brahms (figures emphasized by Bellman)—must also be counted as one who uncovered new
paths of expression from this alternative musical language.

“YOU WERE BORN TO BE A SPARK FOR POET’S INSPIRATION”:

EXOTIC OTHER IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIAN ART SONG
Adalyat Issiyeva
McGill University
Edward Said’s binary model (colonizer-colonized), as well as his view that the Orient
was seen by Europeans as a homogenous, monolithic entity is not entirely appropriate for
understanding Russian Orientalism. Unlike Great Britain and France, Russia colonized its
immediate neighbors. Since European Russia met the Asian steppe within one vast Eurasian
landmass, a mental map separating the Russian West and its subjugated East was not always
clear-cut, either geographically or culturally. This situation deeply marked the nineteenth-
century Russian repertoire of cultural representations of the conquered peoples. Taruskin,
following Said’s general premise, has aligned Russian musical Orientalism with various phas-
es of imperialistic expansion. However, he has also depended on Said’s colonizer-colonized
opposition, presenting Russian Orientalism as an extension of the European, and claiming
Russian composers’ casual attitudes towards oriental verisimilitude. Although Russian/Soviet
musicologists were aware of the importance of eastern influences in Russian music and legiti-
mized them as part of their own national musical culture (in , Vladimir Stasov identified
“the Oriental element” as one of the four distinguishing features of Russian music), research-
ers have been mainly dealing with the origins of borrowed oriental tunes and with musical
gestures that would be classified as “oriental.” Almost nothing has been said about political
implications of the nineteenth-century Russian oriental art song.
I argue that not all the images in Russian oriental art song emphasized Said’s idea of the
antagonism between collective imperial “us” and colonized “them,” nor do they all replicate
nineteenth-century European Orientalist clichés. Using examples from early nineteenth-cen-
tury art songs, I claim that, first, Russian images of the oriental Other are not as homogenized
as those of the European. Early examples of art songs, especially those of Alexandre Aliab’ev
(–) based on original transcriptions of Caucasian and Asian tunes, demonstrate con-
siderable thoroughness in representing various Russian oriental ethnicities. This is due to the
geographic proximity of Russia to its Orient, which allowed composers to experience oriental
music first hand. Second, not all the images in Russian art song stigmatize the oriental Other
as barbaric, militant, and undergoing moral degradation, and not all of them express imperial
conviction of the Russian state. Some songs reveal favorable attitude towards the rebellious
spirit of Caucasian mountaineers, by associating the subjugated Orientals, who fought for the
natural rights of freedom, with the Decembrists, who also yearned for liberation from tsar-
ist autocracy. Circussian and Kabardian songs, for example, demonstrate Aliab’ev’s use of the
oriental image and space to transmit his own rebellious stance against the state’s oppression.
Abstracts Saturday afternoon 

In Kabardian song, by intentionally avoiding musical “corrections” to render linguistically ap-

propriate Russian stresses, Aliab’ev—answering Spivak’s famous question positively, lets “the
subaltern speak” with his own musical accent. Therefore, on the local level, this paper exam-
ines the significant yet under-represented repertoire of Russian art songs; on the larger level, it
reconsiders the theoretical framework of Orientalism and addresses enduring questions about
the relationship between music and politics, as well as representation of the colonized.

PERFORMERS AND PERFORMANCE

José Bowen, Southern Methodist University, Chair

PERFORMERS, COMPOSERS, AND OUR NEED FOR A

NARRATIVE: THE DELAYED DEMISE OF PIANO PRELUDING
Kenneth Hamilton
Birmingham University
The improvisation of preludes and transitions was a routine part of keyboard performance-
practice for centuries, but even the finest specialist treatments of the topic have claimed that
the custom rapidly declined with the increasing solidification of a standard repertoire after
the middle of the nineteenth century, and by the end of the Romantic era was happily dead.
Improvisation’s unlamented demise is, according to this chronology, conveniently illustrative
of the dramatic shift from irreverent performer-centered to serious work-centered practices
that has become a familiar part of the narrative of nineteenth-century music.
This paper claims the contrary: the custom of improvised preluding was in rude health
until the early decades of the twentieth century, and the shift in emphasis from performer to
composer in the nineteenth century, while certainly real, has been demonstrably exaggerated
in the laudable if misleading interests of a clean historical narrative. A sidelining of relevant
written evidence, and the relative rarity of preluding on early recordings—easily explicable
on both aesthetic and technical grounds—has also helped to obscure the hardy endurance of
the practice in the concert hall. Nevertheless, fascinating improvised transitions can be heard
on a disc by Ferruccio Busoni from , and on live recordings by Josef Hofmann and Percy
Grainger from subsequent decades. It is highly likely that the increasing focus on recording
as the twentieth century progressed, rather than performers’ desire to play a useful part in an
uncomplicated historical trajectory, formed preluding’s coup-de-grace.
Extemporization was used by players not just to join pieces or movements slickly together,
but often to add spontaneous musical commentary. A little-known example of a fairly elabo-
rate transition in the improvised style was provided by Charles-Valentin Alkan in his fifth
book of Chants (). Here hesitant reminiscences of earlier pieces in the collection make an
evocative linking passage to the last in a manner strongly recalling accounts of Mendelssohn’s
own improvised transitions during performances of his Songs without Words. Thought-pro-
voking thematic quotes from alien but allegedly related works, inserted with an insistently
didactic intent, were also a striking feature of concerto cadenzas by Alkan and Busoni.
Hans von Bülow was especially famous for offering reminiscences of one Beethoven sonata
as a transition to another. The audience was effectively given a wordless program note on
stylistic development through these extemporized cyclical links. But Bülow’s custom was, if
more imaginative than common practice, clearly reflective of it. The openings of at least two
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

Beethoven Sonatas—op.. no. (“Tempest”) and op.—seem to have been specifically writ-
ten with audiences’ expectation of an improvised prelude in mind. Even as late as , Percy
Grainger published a specimen “Preliminary Canter” to be used (transposed) as a preface to
any piece in any key. For much longer than usually realized, performance practice not only
tolerated, but insisted upon this improvised musical dialogue between player and composer.
The context in which we now hear our standard repertoire has, in this respect as in so many
others, more radically and more recently changed than we might wish to believe.

THE COMPOSER’S RAINBOW: RUDOLF KOLISCH AND

THE ROLE OF INTERPRETATION IN PERFORMANCE
David Trippett
Harvard University
Schoenberg’s brother-in-law, the violinist Rudolf Kolisch (–) was a performer,
pedagogue and theorist. Over the course of his life, Kolisch developed and taught a theory
of musical performance which sought to base musical interpretation on what he regarded as
“objective-structural” rather than “subjective-sensory” categories. His theory is striking for re-
jecting the “false idols” of sonorous beauty, musical idiom and extant performance traditions
in favor of a cerebral process that “reconceives the compositional working,” a quasi-analytical
process leading to “true [musical] reproduction [which] is the x-ray of a work,” as his friend
Adorno put it. In this view, the act of performance becomes an event that illuminates clini-
cally a total comprehension of the work, rendering it visible to the extent that “what you fulfill
in performance is actually none other than the uncovering of the integration process that is
played out in the music itself . . . which leaves far behind it . . . [any] distinction between
productive and reproductive.”
This paper will interrogate Kolisch’s theory from the twin perspectives of pragmatism and
idealism, asking what assumptions are operative about the musical text, the musical work and
the very act of performance. Kolisch believed his theory applies to all Western art music, yet
his writings focus primarily on the German canon, principally the music of Beethoven and
the Second Viennese School. While all surviving manuscripts pertaining to the theory were
drafted after Kolisch’s emigration to America in , the cultural origins of his system can be
located securely in the musical circle around Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna and Berlin, in par-
ticular that of the Verein für musikalische Privataufführung. These Austro-German beginnings
will be explored in the context of sound reproduction technologies and critical public voices
that were largely unfavorable to the music of high modernism.
Drawing on unpublished documents and recordings from Kolisch’s Nachlass, housed in
Houghton Library at Harvard University, I will consider his theory of performance in tan-
dem with selected passages from Adorno’s parallel, fragmentary text: Zu einer Theorie der
musikalischen Reproduktion, which was intended to form part of a joint publication with
Kolisch. My paper will revisit the metaphor of a musical “language” that is so fundamental
to Kolisch’s aesthetic, and pursue the implications of his claim to articulate a non-semantic,
musical “meaning” through a performed work. Furthermore, I consider the spectre of media-
mechanical reproduction that underpins ideals of objectivity in performance, asking if and to
what extent this implies a reversal in agency on stage between the performer and the work.
Finally, on hearing an electronically precise performance, Kolisch’s realization in  that it
was “far removed from a rhythmically exact representation in performance” begins to call into
Abstracts Saturday afternoon 

question his erstwhile ideal of objectivity, an implication I pursue. His consequent decision to
sublimate silent reading for performance undermines the very possibility of musical objectiv-
ity and structural “meaning” in a performance. In doing so, it ultimately questions the need
for performance itself.

PLAYING WITH SIGNS

Richard Mook, Arizona State University, Chair

PHONETIC PLAY IN LOUIS ARMSTRONG’S TIN PAN ALLEY

Jonathan Greenberg
UCLA
While Tin Pan Alley compositions in the s and s largely conformed to a narrow set
of formal conventions, actual performances varied radically. A single song was the pretext for
performances in a variety of styles, and in each style, performers added a significant layer of
meaning to the pre-existing text. Blues singers, “crooners,” jazz singers, and even opera sing-
ers sang many of the same songs. A common repertory bound elements of the popular music
world together; but the possibility of idiosyncratic interpretation allowed singers and com-
munities to express their differences.
Louis Armstrong’s singing resisted the kinds of stylistic markers distinguishing contem-
porary singers: it was not particularly loud or resonant like that of blues singers, belters, or
opera singers; nor was it soft and intimate as microphone singers tended to be. In contrast to
the clear tone and seamless phrasing of many contemporary white vocalists, Armstrong took
melodies apart, building them up again with colors, contours, and effects new to much of his
audience.
In his scatting, and in the vocables interjected throughout his singing, Armstrong made
the voice more like an instrument: when we listen to him sing, we often lose the sense that
he is uttering words (even when he is); indeed, one contemporaneous critic described this
activity as “playing upon the voice” rather than singing. However, as Benjamin Givan has ar-
gued, Armstrong’s singing style largely derives from speech: he shortens vowel duration, limits
the vocal range, and makes use of frequencies outside of the twelve-note scale, all of which
contribute to a more conversational delivery of the text. I hear both of these effects in the
context of African American rhetorical strategies that foreground phonetic, rather than lexical
elements of language. Well-documented and theorized practices such as signifying and mark-
ing involve what scholars have understood as language play, which often involves changes in
inflection and pronunciation. In his singing, Armstrong played as much with the sounds of
the English language as with the notes of the tune. His interpretations of Tin Pan Alley songs
not only refashion melody and rhythm but also transform the sounds of the lyrics. The se-
mantic content of songs like “Dinah” and “All of Me” is not lost, but the sonic composition
of the lyrics acquires new meaning. This meaning is both musical and linguistic, as Armstrong
simultaneously organizes vocal sounds and English words. In this paper, I describe and con-
textualize Armstrong’s singing in the late-s and early s in order to show both what
made his voice so new and to situate it in a racialized history of singing in the United States.
Using methods of phonetic analysis derived from linguistic descriptions of dialect and voice
quality, I will provide close readings of some of Armstrong’s recordings, examining his use of
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

phonetic play within the context of other contemporary performances. It is Armstrong’s play,
with language and music, that ultimately sets his performances apart.

“ROMANTIC SAVAGE”: REPRESENTATIONS OF

RACE IN PAUL BOWLES’S DENMARK VESEY
Melissa de Graaf
University of Miami
Paul Bowles and Charles Henri Ford, two white friends and collaborators, based the unfin-
ished—now lost—opera, Denmark Vesey, on the dramatic true story of a slave who purchased
his freedom with lottery winnings and organized a violent slave uprising against the residents
of Charleston, South Carolina, in . The plan failed in the end, and authorities tried and
executed thirty-six leaders and participants, including Vesey and his co-conspirator, the Afri-
can “conjurer” Gullah Jack.
In January of , Juanita Hall conducted the Negro Melody Singers—a flourishing and
well respected WPA sponsored choral group—in a performance of the first act of Denmark
Vesey in the New York City Composers’ Forum. The performance provoked an animated,
critical discussion about the music, characters, and stereotypes portrayed. A transcript of the
conversation between Bowles and the audience provides what is possibly the most detailed
existing commentary on the work and gives us unique insight into a discourse on race and a
white composer’s representations of “blackness.” While the greater part of the opera has been
lost, the libretto and recordings of three songs remain available for study.
This opera has been a missing piece within the context of American opera in the s,
coming as it does in the aftermath of The Emperor Jones, Four Saints in Three Acts, and Porgy
and Bess. It has much to tell us about race in American opera. What sets Denmark Vesey apart
from its precursors, however, is its representation of Communist-style revolution. The opera
abounds with romanticized Marxist imagery, also reflected in Bowles’ and Ford’s correspon-
dence, Ford’s notes, and the historical context of s race and labor conflicts. Bowles and
Ford’s Communist sympathies enrich their portrayal of race and revolution.
In this paper, I reconstruct this opera and its compositional and performance history. I
draw on a rare recording of the three surviving songs, as well as on the transcript of the post-
concert discussion, the libretto, numerous letters between Bowles and his librettist, Charles
Henri Ford, and Ford’s journals from the time period. I then examine representations of race
in this work. I propose that contradictory elements are in play: while Bowles was sincere in his
sympathy for the plight of an oppressed group, like many of his contemporaries, he neverthe-
less portrayed the African American characters in stereotypically negative ways. The audience
of the Composers’ Forum was quick to criticize such representations. Taken together, the
recordings, transcripts, letters, and other documents are invaluable in exploring an intriguing
example of racial representation in American music. They broaden our context for repre-
sentations of race in s musical culture while simultaneously exposing Bowles’s uniquely
political approach to race, in a work that Virgil Thomson once called one of the three best
unperformed American operas.
Abstracts Saturday afternoon 

“BLUESOLOGY”: GIL SCOTT-HERON AND

THE SEMIOTICS OF THE VOICE
Gabriel Solis
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Vocal music—song and singing—is at the heart of virtually every African American musi-
cal tradition since the beginning of the twentieth century, and the voice is a central metaphor
in African American music, indexing a musician’s artistic self. Given this, it is incumbent
upon musical scholars to account as robustly as possible for the meaning of vocal perfor-
mance. To that end, this paper explores the music of Gil Scott-Heron, especially the meanings
performed and heard in his voice. Through listening to Gil Scott-Heron I propose a model
of the voice as culturally meaningful (as it is in Alan Lomax’s Cantometrics), as socially mean-
ingful (as it is in John Shepherd’s musical sociology), as significantly tied to the basic, shared
aspects of human psycho-physiology (as it is in Roland Barthes’s formulation of the “grain”
of the voice), and yet more specific than any of these general models can account for. Scott-
Heron is known today largely for his musical spoken-word piece “The Revolution Will Not
Be Televised,” from . The song is justly renowned, both because it is an inspired piece of
music, and because of its impact as “proto-rap.” As important as “The Revolution” and other
pieces like it in his catalogue are in style and sentiment, Scott-Heron’s other work as a singer
expresses a gamut of emotion and experience of black masculinity in a musical language that
is fully equal to his lyrics.
The most significant aesthetic and political context for Scott-Heron is the Black Arts move-
ment, as theorized by such authors as Amiri Baraka, Eugene Redmond, and Haki Madhubuti.
The Black Arts movement had the goal of reconnecting Black artists with working people,
connecting art to the movement for social justice and liberation, connecting black Americans
to the peoples of the Third World, and creating expressive approaches that would somehow be
organic outgrowths of black vernacular culture. Others have noted the relationship between
Scott-Heron’s work and Black Arts, including Eugene Redmond himself, and more recently
Mark Anthony Neal. Generally, however, they have focused exclusively on the content of
Scott-Heron’s poems, and to a much lesser degree on the form, particularly on the fact that
the poems are, for the most part, lyrics, intended to be rapped or sung. As such they have prin-
cipally demonstrated only Scott-Heron’s connection to the ethics of the Black Arts movement
(liberation, revolution, clean living, and such), and not the aesthetics. A careful listen to Scott-
Heron’s work as a singer shows the extent to which he fulfils the Black Arts aesthetics, per se,
crafting a music that shows a remarkable understanding of the potential unity of Soul, Blues
and Avant Garde Jazz proposed by Amiri Baraka as the “changing same” in Black music.

PLAYING WITH MASCULINITY: THE POLITICS OF MUSIC

AND SPORTS IN LEON GAST’S WHEN WE WERE KINGS
Ken McLeod
University of Toronto
The relationship between sports and music forms a complex and little understood nexus
of cultural production that has consistently shaped our understanding of gendered identity.
Young males are typically steeped in the values of competition and dominance over their peer
groups. This attitude is particularly prevalent in the worlds of sports and music which both
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

encourage notions of a “no pain no gain” approach to practice and a stoic concentration on
“performance.” Among the most significant manifestations of this interaction is the consider-
able aesthetic rapport between African-American music and sports. Built into the structures
of African-American musical and sporting practices are complex rhythms, improvisation, call
and response patterns, and competitive interaction that require individuals to assert their ex-
cellence as soloists while remaining part of a cohesive ensemble.
The connection between sports and music is particularly highlighted in Leon Gast’s 
Academy Award-winning documentary When We Were Kings. The film captures the October
, , “Rumble in the Jungle” heavyweight title bout between George Foreman and Mu-
hammad Ali and the elaborate musical festival that accompanied it. I argue that this film, that
purports to present an empowered vision of African-Americans, uses music that is in dialectic
tension with that message. African-American musicians symbolically colonize their African
counterparts while hypermasculinized funk and blues are projected as more evolved forms of
native styles. As such the musical language of this movie is framed in the rhetoric of Social
Darwinism. Ali, the underdog, is identified with the Third World, while Foreman is portrayed
as a colonialist First World oppressor, complete with his German Shepherd—a dog associated
with the former Belgian overlords. Similarly, a connection between the primitive rendering
of Africa and Ali is furthered through concert performances by B. B. King and James Brown
that accompanied the bout. Repeated shots of Western black musicians rehearsing, perform-
ing and partying are juxtaposed with images of native Africans drumming and dancing in
tribal dress. Ali pointedly listens to soul music and gives a speech on the importance of black
music to black Americans framed between clips of B. B. King’s performance. In one unfortu-
nate episode Miriam Makeba, among the first artists to bridge African and American sounds,
is portrayed as a “succubus” (a common figure in blues) who symbolically robs the otherwise
“awesome” Foreman of his strength before the fight.
Gast also compares the physically aggressive performance of James Brown with that of the
two fighters. Brown was an ex-boxer and attributed his well known dancing prowess to his
boxing training. Audiences are thus presented with a powerful image of black masculinity
that is primarily based on physical ability and aggression. Conversely, Ali won the fight with
his legendary “rope-a-dope” tactics. By juxtaposing Ali’s creative strategy against B. B. King’s
improvisational blues guitar solos the film links the improvisatory genius of both artists and
reinforces a powerful trope of African-American culture.

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH MUSIC

Georgia Cowart, Case Western Reserve University, Chair

PIOUS PERSUASION: BÉNIGNE DE BACILLY’S

SPIRITUAL AIRS FOR REPENTANT SOULS
Catherine Gordon-Seifert
Providence College
Throughout the seventeenth century, Catholic church leaders in France sought to persuade
female aristocrats to renounce frivolity and live a life of religious devotion. Beginning with
François de Sales’s Introduction à la vie dévote (), authors of similar treatises provided an
itinerary of pious activities and supplied meditative texts to guide women towards achieving
Abstracts Saturday afternoon 

a heightened spirituality. Authors also recommended singing religious songs. To fill the need
for a musical repertory proper for pious meditation, Father François Berthod published three
volumes of sacred parodies of popular love songs or airs sérieux (, , ). Yet certain
critics found Berthod’s works not only inadequate as expressions of an increasing religious
fervor, but also irreverent by reference to their profane originals.
This paper explores a new kind of sacred song, composed for women, that captured the
spirit of an intensifying religious zeal through a new persuasive rhetorical-musical language:
Bénigne de Bacilly’s two volumes of spiritual airs (, ). Five re-editions (–) at-
test to their popularity. The airs were set to sacred lyrics by L’Abbé Jacques Testu, whose poems
were revolutionary; they were not parodies or French paraphrases of psalms but newly-writ-
ten inspirational poems on sacred themes. Bacilly’s spiritual airs, set to this new kind of pious
verse, differ significantly from Berthod’s parodies. While Berthod’s airs express love for Jesus
or God, Bacilly/Testu pieces are utterances of repentance and remorse, betraying a shift from
a conciliatory to an obdurate theological stance, thought to be more appropriate for women
than the seemingly “trivial” nature of Berthod’s parodies.
By reference to theological and rhetorical treatises, prefaces to Testu’s verses and Bacilly’s
airs, and through an analysis of texts and settings based on rhetorical principles, particularly
memoria, I show how Bacilly manipulates musical conventions, associated with profane airs,
in unconventional ways, befitting Testu’s texts. Bacilly draws on profane conventions to cre-
ate a sense of familiarity that make both melody and text more immediately memorable. This
approach served a pedagogical function: to enable women, most of whom did not read mu-
sic, to learn the airs easily and sing them from memory. Bacilly’s use of profane conventions
was also meant to “imprint” upon the memory the meaning of the texts. While the poems
are humble and intimate confessions in communion with God, reflecting the Jansenist view
of predestination, the musical settings are not representations of passionate expression, as in
profane airs, but rather symbolically demonstrate the opposition between earthly vice and
heavenly virtue.
This study not only examines Bacilly’s spiritual airs, what they represent, and how, it also
demonstrates the widespread belief that songs, properly composed, could be so persuasive
as to alter one’s mental and physical state—this during the reign of Louis XIV, who himself
eventually repented under the influence of Mme de Maintenon and her ever-increasing com-
mitment to religious devotion.

THE RHETORIC OF MOUVEMENT AND PASSIONATE EXPRESSION

IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH HARPSICHORD MUSIC
Margot Martin
Los Angeles, California
Although the concept of rhetoric is generally associated with verbal expression, there ex-
isted in seventeenth-century France an entire branch of rhetorical discourse based upon the
non-verbal notion of mouvement. In fact, a philosophy of expression through mouvement was
prevalent not only in artistic and intellectual disciplines, but in the circles of polite society and
in the musical arts as well. While modern studies have examined this philosophy especially
with regard to the visual and the verbal arts of the day, very few have considered how this
once prevalent way of thinking relates to contemporaneous instrumental music. This paper,
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

however, will do just that, illustrating how the principles of the rhetoric of mouvement apply
especially to seventeenth-century French harpsichord music.
Mouvement was a complex concept in seventeenth-century French thought, going beyond
basic temporal motion (i.e., meter and tempo) to also encompass interior motions (i.e., emo-
tion) associated with feeling and passion. For example, Richelet’s Dictionnaire states that
mouvement signifies “Thought, sentiment. All that touches and moves the heart,” and Fu-
retière’s Dictionnaire states, “Mouvement also has signification in the Arts. In rhetoric and
poetry one says, ‘to excite the mouvements,’ when the passions of the auditor are moved by the
force of the eloquence . . . David with his Harp calmed the impetuous mouvements of Saul.”
It was believed that mouvement resulted from a physical/temporal motion that could both
represent interior passion and incite people to feel passion.
This paper examines prevailing philosophies of mouvement and passionate expression, dis-
cussing chief tenets and demonstrating how they manifest themselves within different artistic
disciplines, including instrumental music. It considers how passionate expression through
mouvement derives from various disciplines, citing Félibien’s and Le Brun’s commentaries on
painting, Méré’s writings on civility, Bellegarde’s treatise on eloquence, and Masson’s and
Mersenne’s treatises on music. The principles discussed in these writing are echoed once again
in St. Lambert’s treatise on harpsichord playing, allowing us to apply these principles directly
to harpsichord music.
The paper then turns to defining how mouvement in harpsichord music was engendered by
effecting the physical/temporal motion of sound on many levels—i.e., tempo, meter, melodic
motion, rhythmic activity, harmonic rate of change, use of agréments, etc. It focuses on two
key aspects of mouvement in harpsichord music: the general rhetoric of mouvement found in
the chief dances of the repertoire, and the agréments, which functioned within this general
framework to create another level of mouvement fashioning the music’s passionate-expressive
gestures. Thus, musical agréments, rather than being mere extraneous embellishments to the
music, were part of an intricate declamatory language, used to create an expressive rhetorical
discourse that reflected contemporaneous socio-aesthetic values.

SACRED MUSIC IN LOUIS XIII’S MUSIQUE DE LA

CHAMBRE: THE RISE OF THE MODERN AND THE
ORIGINS OF LOUIS XIV’S GRAND MOTET?
Peter Bennett
Case Western Reserve University
The study of sacred music at the court of Louis XIII (r. –) has, for obvious reasons,
historically focused on the Chapelle Royale. The small amount of surviving repertoire from
the Chapelle, most of it in the stile antico, together with archival sources which indicate a
performing ensemble of men’s and boys’ voices doubled by cornets, all convey the image of an
institution stylistically still firmly rooted in the sixteenth century. By contrast, sacred music in
the Chapelle Royale of Louis XIV (r. –) exemplifies the Modern (at least in the terms
of mid-seventeenth-century France)—instrumental participation, basse-continue (one of the
features extensively discussed by Le Cerf de la Vieville in  in connection with the grand
motet), homophonic choruses, and declamatory solos.
Until now, little explanation has been possible for this dramatic change in aesthetic and
genre which had taken place by the early s when the first grand motets appeared. The
Abstracts Saturday afternoon 

subtitles of the Dumont () and Lully () published editions of motets (“motets a deux
choeurs”) has led much recent scholarship to search for the origins of the grand motet in the
Venetian double-choir motets of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century as reflected in
the works of such earlier court composers as Du Caurroy and Le Jeune. Others have the seen
the immigrants Henri Du Mont (trained in the Italian style) and Jean-Baptiste Lully (an Ital-
ian) as providing the impetus for the change. Newly identified works from F-Pn ms. rés. 
(the so-called “Deslauriers” collection) suggest, however, that long before Dumont and Lully
arrived in France, the performers and composers of Louis XIII’s musique de la chambre were
making use of the basse-continue and that a large repertoire of previously unknown sacred mu-
sic diametrically opposed to the stile antico repertoire of the Chapelle Royale had already been
developed. (This large newly identif ied repertory represents a previously unknown facet of the
musique de la chambre’s activities.) Thus, when Dumont and Lully arrived in France, the fea-
ture of the grand motet which Le Cerf deemed most essential—a simplicity and directness of
expression—was already in place: the expert singers of the chambre were already using a more
text-based style, and the basse-continue had been in use in the chambre decades before Dumont
supposedly introduced it in . And far from the “double choir” designation of these works
being related to the Venetian model of antiphonal choirs exchanging thematic material, their
soloist-ripieno model (in many of Dumont and Lully’s motets the chorus merely doubles the
soloists at important moments) reveals their origins as works for an expert body of singers
(the musique de la chambre) and a less expert one (the Chapelle Royale), a fact alluded to by
numerous literary accounts from the early seventeenth century but only now supported by
musical evidence.

GOSSIP, TRAVELOGUES, DRINKING SONGS & POLITICAL SATIRE:

THE AFTERLIFE OF THE “AIR POUR LA MAISON DE FRANCE”
FROM LOUIS XIV’S COURT BALLET, HERCULE AMOUREUX (1662)
Rose Pruiksma
Lewiston, Maine
Many recent histories of the reign of Louis XIV still fixate on the idea of his absolute
power and his nobility’s complete submission, but contemporaneous manuscript collections
of the numerous anecdotal, satirical and political contrafacta offer competing voices to the
dominant panegyric histories of Louis’s reign. These songs cover a wide range of topics: light-
hearted drinking songs; misogynous bawdy songs; songs relating current court scandals; songs
critical of the king’s ministers, mistresses, or generals; songs celebrating military victories or
deriding losses; and even songs recounting prominent trials. Through them French nobles
maintained a lively, if clandestine, commentary on current affairs.
Dimissed or bowdlerized by nineteenth-century historians and marginalized by twenti-
eth-century scholars, these songs document the underside of Louis XIV’s reign. Compiled in
manuscript volumes during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries “pour servir
d’une histoire du temps de la regne de Louis XIV,” the collections were self-consciously histor-
ical and often lavishly bound. They were prized possessions in noble libraries, and collectors
prided themselves on completeness. Copying them was, at times, forbidden, but escaped the
official censorship to which print was subject. Making such contrafacta sometimes came with
a heavy price—ex-courtier Bussy-Rabutin lost his place at court and was imprisoned for his
 Saturday afternoon AMS Quebec City 

verses on the king’s mistresses set to the Easter “Alleluyia”—but this did not extinguish the
verses, nor did it discourage the production of many others.
This unruly repertory demands our attention as it documents the ways music served as a ve-
hicle for subversive histories—the seemingly inconsequential, ignoble, and scandalous details
of court society. It offers a glimpse of how anecdotes became fixed, passed along from ear to
ear, from hand to hand, among the nobility. The recurrence of certain tunes throughout the
volumes also warrants closer attention: are the tunes simply vacant vehicles for new texts, or
might tune choices and textual subject matter work in relationship to each other?
To address this question, my paper examines the twenty-plus verses composed on the mel-
ody from the King’s entry as the House of France in the  ballet Hercule Amoureux. The
range of subject matter—from genealogies, travelogues, versified fables from LaFontaine, to
accusations of sodomy—exemplifies the richness of these verses as cultural documents while
also suggesting the ways a tune from the court ballet might carry its connotations into avenues
quite distant from the decorum, dignity and politesse normally associated with Louis XIV.
These verses played on the musical gestures of the tune, with its marked references to French
noble dance style, adding an important layer of critique, subversion, or sometimes even legiti-
macy to the texts. The texts alone are subversive, disturbing the established order; using a tune
from the king’s ballet renders them doubly powerful. Once the newly composed verses had
circulated among the nobility, one could not know, when hearing the tune whistled, whether
to think of Louis’s grandeur, the sodomitical exploits of various nobles, the fall of an ambi-
tious debutante, or the corrupt Archbishop of Paris.
 Saturday evening, 3 November

EARLY FRENCH MUSICAL MODERNISM: ITS SOURCES AND IDIOMS

Michael J. Puri, University of Virginia, Moderator
Daniel Albright, Harvard University
Gurminder Kaur Bhogal, Wellesley College
Carlo Caballero, University of Colorado, Boulder
Ralph P. Locke, Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester)
Jann Pasler, University of California, San Diego
This panel pursues three main goals in addressing early French musical modernism from
the end of the Franco-Prussian War to the beginning of World War I: to open up new critical
perspectives on the repertoire of this period, which has historically received less attention than
its Austro-German counterpart; to situate this repertoire within a larger historical context;
and to critique the concept of modernism as it has been applied both to this repertoire and to
twentieth-century music in general.
The panel comprises six scholars of modernism and French music whose individual pre-
sentations group naturally into three pairs. After providing a brief history of the concept of
modernism as it has been invoked by musicology, Michael Puri argues for a modernist anti-
metaphysical attitude in Ravel’s music similar to that appearing in Strauss’s orchestral tone
poems, thereby proposing a transnational understanding of French musical modernism. Next,
Gurminder Bhogal shows how decorative gestures in Ravel’s “Noctuelles” and “Ondine” reso-
nate with contemporaneous modernist trends in literature and the visual arts that sought to
endow the ornament with structural and narrative significance.
The second pair broadens the scope of inquiry to trace the origins of this movement and
outline its overriding aesthetic principles. Understanding modernism on the one hand as a
response to urban modernity, Ralph Locke considers Meyerbeer as a proto-modernist for
having placed onstage a panoply of contending social groups. On the other hand, if mod-
ernism is understood primarily to mean experimentalism, complexity, and originality, Locke
considers Berlioz to have been its progenitor in French music. Jann Pasler, in turn, brings to
light listening practices that were central to the emergence of modernism in France. Devot-
ing particular attention to the phenomenon of contemplative admiration, she discusses how
composers and critics during the s increasingly compelled listeners to focus on the formal
beauty of music rather than interpret their personal responses through sentimental or imagi-
native projections. Such practices stimulated a reevaluation of Bach, among others, supported
the composition of difficult music, and rewarded connoisseurship, thereby wresting art music
back from the masses.
The third pair places our concerns with French musical modernism within an even larger
framework. Noting that musicology has largely borrowed the concept of modernism from
literary and art-historical studies without critical reflection on the validity of this maneuver,
Carlo Caballero argues that its current use in musicology does not promote historical insight
but actually hinders its proper articulation. Daniel Albright responds with a more positive
position that upholds the inter-art correspondences laid out in detail in his recent Modernism
and Music.
 Saturday evening AMS Quebec City 

MUSICOLOGY AND NATION: A CANADIAN PERSPECTIVE

Mary Ingraham (University of Alberta) Chair
James Deaville (Carleton University)
Serge Lacasse (Université Laval)
Sherry Lee (University of Toronto)
Gordon E. Smith (Queens University)
Given the amount of border-crossing that takes place between the United States and Cana-
da, it is understandable why musicologists should assume that North America comprises one
large scholarly community. If one were to survey research in the realm of “traditional” his-
torical musicology, that observation may find support. However, such perceived uniformity
begins to falter when attention turns to historically “peripheral” areas of musicological inquiry
in the two nations, including popular music studies and ethnomusicology. Moreover, even
for the study of Western “art music,” arguments could arise that the divergent infrastructures
for the funding of research in Canada and the United States and the countries’ differing politi-
cal, social, cultural and—significantly—linguistic characters have an impact on the types and
nature of musicological work.
This panel’s purpose is to create a forum for the discussion of these ideas surrounding mu-
sicology and nation. Since the AMS is meeting in Canada, such a dialogue seems especially
appropriate. The opening question regards whether there exists an identifiable Canadian
musicology, followed by consideration of the factors that could contribute to its identity
and what it would look like in practice. These questions have preoccupied the thoughts of
Canadian musicologists for decades, manifested in such AMS-related developments as the
discussions surrounding a Canadian “Chapter” of the Society and the recent practice of the
New York State—St. Lawrence Chapter to accept papers in French. This session should result
in a spirited and fruitful interaction among Canadian and American musicologists, contribut-
ing to a heightened awareness of the interface between musicological discourse and national
identity, inside and outside the North American context.
Each of the five panelists will present a brief position statement based on the questions ar-
ticulated above, after which the participants will respond to each other, followed by a general
discussion among audience members and the panel.
Panelists represent a variety of fields and subject positions within Canadian musicology.
James Deaville was educated in the United States, but has spent most of his professorial career
at Canadian universities and is currently President of the Canadian University Music Society.
Mary Ingraham teaches and conducts research in twentieth-century Canadian music and
cultural politics, and is the creator of educational materials for the Canadian Music Centre.
A popular music specialist, Serge Lacasse is a member of the Executive for both the Centre
de recherche interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture québécoises (CRILCQ) and the
Observatoire international sur la création musicale (OICM). Sherry Lee teaches graduate
and undergraduate courses in Canadian music with a focus on expressions of cultural identity
across concert, popular, and indigenous musical repertoires. The research of Gordon E. Smith
includes fieldwork and publications on traditional music in Canada, as well as Mi’kmaq mu-
sic culture in Nova Scotia.
 Sunday morning, 4 November

ANONYMOUS EDITORS
Bonnie Blackburn, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, Chair

WHO DEVISED THE PROPORTIONAL NOTATION

IN ISAAC’S CHORALIS CONSTANTINUS?
Ruth DeFord
Hunter College and Graduate Center, CUNY
Isaac’s Choralis Constantinus has been renowned as a source of complex proportional no-
tation since the s. Sixteenth-century theorists, beginning with Sebald Heyden, drew
examples from it even before it was published, and it has played a prominent role in studies
of mensural notation ever since. Although the work has been interpreted as a key to Isaac’s
mensural usage, much of its unusual notation may be the work of Heyden, not Isaac. Many of
its proportion signs appear in no other works of Isaac, and some exist nowhere else outside of
theoretical treatises. The unconventional signs are concentrated in a handful of numbers that
make up only about one percent of the collection. They apply to commonplace rhythms that
were normally notated in much simpler ways. A liturgical collection like Choralis Constantinus
is not the type of work a composer would normally choose to display purely theoretical or di-
dactic notational complexities. Theorists sometimes wrote motets with complex proportions
for the benefit of students who could see the notation, but liturgical music was meant to serve
listeners, not music readers.
As the leading authority on music in Nuremberg, where the music of Choralis Constanti-
nus was collected and edited for publication two decades after Isaac’s death, Heyden would
have had both the opportunity and a plausible motive to revise Isaac’s notation for his own
purposes. The second edition of his treatise De arte canendi, the earliest surviving source for
two of the Choralis numbers with complex proportions, appeared in , the year in which
Johannes Ott announced the forthcoming publication of Isaac’s work. Heyden generated
many of his examples by altering the notation of existing compositions; if he subjected the
Isaac examples to this treatment, he would surely have encouraged Ott to adopt his revised
notation in the print. Ott may have complied both because of Heyden’s prestige and because
the striking notation, which is featured in prominent positions within the work, lends an air
of erudition to the collection.
The lost exemplar for the print was substantially complete by , but various complica-
tions delayed the publication until –. This exemplar was the direct or indirect source for
all but one of the extant sources of the notationally complex numbers in the work. Discrepan-
cies among the sources prove that Isaac’s notation was intentionally altered in the process of
transmission, though they leave open the question of which versions were the originals.
The proportion signs in Choralis Constantinus conform to Heyden’s theory, which differs
significantly from that of Isaac’s contemporaries. If they are Isaac’s, they may support the
application of Heyden’s version of the mensural system to a broader repertory, as Philip Gos-
sett suggested in a  study, but if they are Heyden’s, they demonstrate no more than the
theorist’s skill at self-promotion. In either case, they are not typical of their time, and their
reputation as examples of normal mensural practice is undeserved.
 Sunday morning AMS Quebec City 

DOM POTHIER’S TONARY AND THE GENESIS

OF THE LIBER GRADUALIS
Jean-Pierre Noiseux
University of Quebec, Montreal
The library of the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Wandrille in Normandy holds six notebooks
that belonged to Dom Joseph Pothier (–). Each of these notebooks, which Pothier
completed between  and  while he was at the abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes, is
devoted to one type of piece belonging to the Proper of the mass. The pieces are grouped by
tone and transcribed in square notation on four-line staves. For Pothier, they constituted the
preliminary phase leading to the  edition of the Liber Gradualis.
Approximately one third of Pothier’s transcriptions (some  pieces) are accompanied by
marginal notes written during or after the transcription work was completed, and refer to
some forty Gregorian chant manuscripts or copies of manuscripts. In addition, for these and
numerous other pieces in the tonary, variants in either alphabetic or a campo aperto notation
appear above or below the staves.
After a brief survey of the tonary, I will present the preliminary results of my study of these
documents. The two-fold object of this study is to better understand Pothier’s methodology
for restoring the mass chants, and to determine to what extent the numerous marginal notes
and variants can help us to identify his sources for a significant portion of the Liber Gradualis
and by extension, of the Graduale Romanum of .

COPLAND AND SCHOENBERG

Elizabeth Bergman, Princeton University, Chair

BOULANGER AND THE COPLAND PASSACAGLIA

E. Douglas Bomberger
Elizabethtown College
Aaron Copland recalled of his teacher Nadia Boulanger, “All Mademoiselle’s pupils wrote,
among other things, motets and a passacaglia.” The archaic, cosmopolitan, and rigidly struc-
tured passacaglia form would seem an unlikely choice in the era of musical modernism; in
practice, Boulanger used it to explore important principles of micro- and macrostructure with
her students. Passacaglias by her students demonstrate not only her legendary attention to the
details of musical composition but also her interest in cultivating large-scale formal connec-
tions that develop over successive variations.
Aaron Copland’s well-known Passacaglia of  provides an opportunity to examine her
teaching in detail, as the Copland Collection in the Library of Congress contains three drafts
and extensive sketches for the work. These preliminary versions of the piece are replete with
corrections and suggestions in Boulanger’s hand, allowing us to witness firsthand the evolu-
tion from initial idea to finished product. From a first draft that was predictable in phrase
lengths and highly sectional, Boulanger elicited a reshaping of the work into a fluid progres-
sion that builds dramatic tension over multiple variations.
The Passacaglia is recognized as Copland’s first mature work, the first to contain a recogniz-
able “Copland sound.” Boulanger’s blue-penciled markings on the sketches and drafts shed
Abstracts Sunday morning 

light on her skill at bringing out the student’s unique strengths and helping him find his own
voice. She encouraged him to reject ideas that did not fit the mood and structure of the whole,
and she helped him to reorganize materials to highlight his strongest conceptions. As noted
by many former students, her role was to help the student hear his piece as others heard it and
thereby free himself to realize his full creative potential. The sketches of the Passacaglia present
an unusually detailed view of how that process unfolded in one seminal composition.

COPLAND THE SERIALIST, 1923–1930

Bryan R. Simms
University of Southern California
It is well known that Aaron Copland began to apply serial and twelve-tone methods in his
music following World War II, first with his Piano Quartet (). But Copland admitted that
he had also used techniques associated with the music of Schoenberg in compositions begun
in the s, including the “Poet’s Song” of  and Piano Variations (–). “‘Poet’s
Song’ . . . is quite twelve-tony,” he told Edward Cone in , and to Vivian Perlis () he
described the Piano Variations in similar terms: “I did make use to some extent, but in my
own way, of the method invented by Arnold Schoenberg that came to be known as ‘twelve
tone’ and from which developed ‘serialism.’”
Copland’s interest in Schoenberg’s music was apparently awakened during his studies with
Nadia Boulanger. Léonie Rosenstiel asserts that Mlle. Boulanger examined Schoenberg’s
twelve-tone works at her Wednesday gatherings with her students as early as  (Copland
recalled the year as ). But the content of these discussions is uncertain since virtually no
information about the twelve-tone method was available in , and Schoenberg’s first major
twelve-tone composition, the Piano Suite, Op. , was published only in the summer of .
In this year Mlle. Boulanger cooled toward Schoenberg when she learned of his bitter attacks
on her friend Stravinsky.
Copland nevertheless returned to music by Schoenberg later in the s. He analyzed
Schoenberg’s compositions in  to prepare for a lecture on the Viennese modernists at
the New School for Social Research, and his interest in serial methods may also have been
provoked by the piano music of Schoenberg’s student Adolph Weiss, which this composer
performed on the Copland-Sessions Concerts in .
Which were the works by Schoenberg that could have provided models for Copland? This
paper will attempt to answer this question by assessing Schoenberg’s serial methods of the ear-
ly s and their influence on Copland’s music from  to . An analysis of Copland’s
Piano Variations and its sketches shows that Copland probably relied for his knowledge of
Schoenberg not on twelve-tone music per se, but instead on Schoenberg’s pre-twelve-tone
compositions, works that resulted from what Schoenberg called “composing with tones.” An
especially relevant model for the Piano Variations is Schoenberg’s Piano Piece, Op. , No. 
(the music for which, published in , was acquired by Copland for his personal library). It
shares with the Piano Variations a strongly octatonic tonal organization and common ways by
which an opening basic shape—terse and octatonic in both pieces—is subsequently used.
Copland’s rapprochement with the music of Schoenberg in the s suggests that the per-
sonal and artistic barriers that separated French and American neotonalist composers from the
Viennese atonalists between the world wars were more permeable than hitherto thought.
 Sunday morning AMS Quebec City 

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG—AMERICAN
Sabine Feisst
Arizona State University
Like innumerable Jews from Europe, Arnold Schoenberg, pioneer of musical modernism,
fled the Nazis and settled in the United States, where he spent an important part of his ca-
reer (–) and contributed greatly to America’s musical culture. Here Schoenberg not
only grappled with his Austrian-German and Jewish identities, but also came to terms with
a third, American identity. While Schoenberg commentators often characterize him as a Eu-
ropean elitist unwilling to adapt to his new environment and draw attention to his increased
self-awareness as a Jew, they downplay acculturation processes, belittle his engagement with
American culture and misjudge dissimilative phenomena typical of his activities in the United
States. Such positions reveal that research on his American years neither achieved depth nor
breadth commensurate with the importance of this period of the composer’s career.
In my paper I will examine Schoenberg’s American identity, a lacuna in the historiography
and reception of an essential creative stage in the composer’s life. I have three objectives: to
clarify concepts such as “identity,” “acculturation,” and “dissimilation,” which help to frame
a new understanding of his activities in America; to illuminate how Schoenberg adapted to
American society outside the realm of music (his use of the English language, relations with
Americans, political thinking, interest in the Hollywood film industry); and to demonstrate
how Schoenberg professionally accommodated to American culture. As a teacher, he adjusted
to the American educational system and provided textbooks tailored to American students.
Committed to the advancement of American music, he composed works inspired by and
for Americans. I will illustrate the latter point by focusing on Schoenberg’s previously un-
known venture into the area of American folk music, his unfinished setting of “My Horses
Ain’t Hungry” from John Jacob Niles’ “Songs of the Hill Folk” (circa ). This and other
examples, however, display his receptiveness toward his adopted home in more and less subtle
ways, often revealing a hybrid quality. While many scholars tend to either ignore or criticize
Schoenberg’s bow to American culture and rebuke his dissimilative expressions as impure, I
argue that Schoenberg, far from compromising his integrity, negotiated his multiple identities
in his activities in America.
My study is based on unpublished materials, including Schoenberg correspondence and the
music manuscript of “Horses,” housed in the Schoenberg Center in Vienna. I adapted con-
cepts from sociology and ethnomusicology drawing on writings of Nettl, Kartomi, Frühauf
and others. My work is also indebted to research by Goehr (her idea of “doubleness”), Cahn,
Kangas, Ringer, Mäckelmann, Schiller, Brinkmann, and Danuser, who discussed Schoenberg’s
Jewish and German identities; and to Newlin, Lessem, and Henke, who present Schoenberg’s
American years in a novel light. Further, the work of scholars including Kowalke, Hinton,
Levitz, and Maurer-Zenck who focused on other émigré figures and exile topics and devel-
oped new points of view provides ground for my paper. By considering new archival material
and expanding these writers’ perspectives, I intend to contribute to a more differentiated un-
derstanding of Schoenberg’s American years.
Abstracts Sunday morning 

AARON COPLAND AND CULTURAL DIPLOMACY: “UN-

AMERICAN” COMPOSER MEETS COLD WAR AMBASSADOR
Emily Abrams Ansari
University of Western Ontario
In her recent scholarship, musicologist Elizabeth Bergman has fruitfully considered Cop-
land’s music from the thirties and forties within the context of a left-wing social movement
known as the Popular Front. She contends that Cold War, anticommunist historiography has
obscured from view the political progressivism inherent in Copland’s most well-known works
from this period. In this paper, I accept Bergman’s claim that the leftist themes in Copland’s
populist works were more veiled after World War II. Copland was, however, not wholly a vic-
tim of historiography. Instead, I argue, both the American government and Copland himself
played a role in reshaping the public’s image of the composer and his music. Furthermore, this
depoliticizing was essential within the context of his participation in the U.S. government’s
cultural diplomacy campaign.
During the Cold War, the State Department and the United States Information Agency
actively promoted contemporary American classical music abroad, seeking to demonstrate to
the world that democracy could result in a rich, diverse culture, thus making it an appealing
alternative to communism. To this end, they sent American musicians as cultural ambas-
sadors to countries throughout the world. They also produced informational material about
American music, including leaflets, documentaries, and panel displays, to be exhibited in local
American embassies or distributed by them. Through archival research in government papers
and the Copland Collection, I have discovered that well over a third of Copland’s visits to
foreign countries between  and his death were funded through these programs. Further-
more, during the remainder of his tours (which were primarily funded by foreign orchestras
which Copland conducted) he also made frequent Embassy appearances, assisting the USIA
around the world on an ad hoc basis with local talks and small-scale concerts. For the govern-
ment, Copland—minus the communist taint—represented an ideal vehicle through which to
promote American values. In this paper, I analyze why this was the case, examining the most
ubiquitous aspects of the USIA’s presentation of Copland.
The second part of this paper considers Copland’s motivations for such committed involve-
ment in his government’s cultural diplomacy campaign, within the context of a re-evaluation
of his politics after World War II. I begin by considering his actions against the background
of his lifelong mission to promote American high culture. I also provide evidence that he
had been dedicated to the idea of cultural exchange since at least the s. But there were
also benefits associated with his involvement: when combined with his new avoidance of po-
litical speeches and politically-inspired music, this work for the government helped Copland
establish himself as part of the political mainstream after his  appearance before Joseph
McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. And yet, I argue, such activi-
ties did not denote a move to the political center on Copland’s part. In fact, elements of his
career as a government-funded ambassador provide clues to demonstrate that his leftist, pro-
gressive politics, although hidden from public view, remained central to both his life choices
and his compositional aesthetic until the end of his life.
 Sunday morning AMS Quebec City 

FIFTEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN THEORY

Anne Stone, Queens College and Graduate Center, CUNY, Chair

“HABENT SUA FATA LIBELLI”: THE DESTINIES

OF DIVINA AUXILIANTE GRATIA
Linda Cummins
University of Alabama
Traditional textual scholarship regarded manuscript witnesses as degenerate copies of the
text the author intended; the critic’s task was to eliminate the dross and recover the original.
Zumthor (Essai de poétique médiévale, ), however, saw the variation among manuscript
copies of the “same” text as an essential characteristic of medieval writing; as Cerquiglini (Éloge
de la variante, ) put it, the task of the medieval scribe was not to copy but to rewrite. Pres-
ent-day textual scholarship, accordingly, sees surviving witnesses not as deficient copies but as
versions of a text valid in their own right, whose meaning is determined not only by the words
that make them up but by the company in which they are placed and the manner in which
they are presented; the “meaning” of a text is not fixed but evolves diachronically (Taylor,
Textual Situations, ). The surviving versions of Divina auxiliante gratia, an anonymous
treatise on modal theory extracted from the Lucidarium of Marchetto of Padua, illustrate the
variety of modifications and modes of presentation a medieval text could undergo. Despite its
derivative nature, Divina developed its own manuscript tradition, surviving in six fifteenth-
century copies and often standing in for its parent text as representative of Marchetto’s modal
doctrine. The present paper, based on my own study of Divina’s six sources in situ in prepara-
tion for an edition, surveys the destinies of the treatise; it is illustrated with digital images.
One version of Divina appears in a magnificent anthology representing—and distinguish-
ing—French and Italian theoretical traditions; in another version it gains dignity through
the acquisition of a proemium; two versions omit the musical examples present in the others,
almost certainly through scribal intention; another, in a collection representing the musico-
liturgical interests of a Carmelite monastery, systematically interleaves an alternative (and
contradictory) modal theory misattributed to Guido, and interpolates a number of chapters
on disparate subjects that more than double its length. In all six sources Divina is given a large
decorated initial or has space left for one; in three, it is honored through placement at the
beginning of a gathering, in two others of a recto; yet in one (anonymous) source it is stripped
of the attribution of its doctrine to Marchetto and merely continues an ongoing text.
Divina’s manuscript companions and their manner of presentation continue to shape its
destinies. The chain still attached to one manuscript testifies to the high regard in which it
has been held; another, already damaged when La Fage saw it in the middle of the nineteenth
century, was deprived of all evidence of its original construction through an over-zealous
restoration in the s. The entire manuscript source of one version was long overlooked
through having been bound together with three much more imposing volumes, including
a handwritten copy of the  print of Gaffurio’s Practica musice; yet another version was
enshrined in a commercial CD-ROM only because its source also contains a pre-publication
version of that same work. Such are the destinies of medieval books.
Abstracts Sunday morning 

INSIDE THE STUDIO OF A LATE-MEDIEVAL CHOIRMASTER:

JOHN HOTHBY AT THE CATHEDRAL OF LUCCA
Benjamin Brand
University of North Texas
Although musical treatises of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries show that counterpoint
was central to the curricula of late-medieval choir schools, it remains uncertain precisely how
students progressed from singing strict, unmeasured discant to complex mensural polyphony.
New evidence concerning one of the most celebrated pedagogues of the late fifteenth-cen-
tury, John Hothby, elucidates this critical stage in learning. As choirmaster at the cathedral of
Lucca from  to , this Englishman trained the chaplains and choirboys of that church
to sing the intricate polyphony of northern composers. His teachings find a telling witness in
five exercises in mensural counterpoint added to an inventory of the sacristy (Lucca, Archivio
Archivescovile, Enti religiosi soppressi, ) by a chaplain of the cathedral. One of only two
examples of “model composition” to survive from before , they newly illuminate Hoth-
by’s program of study in Lucca and more broadly expand our knowledge of music pedagogy
in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.
The Lucchese exercises witness the steadily more fluent and sophisticated elaboration of
note-against-note progressions between a cantus and tenor through imitation and diminished
counterpoint. They exemplify the rules in Hothby’s pedagogical treatises and evince particular
affinities with the Tractatus quarundam regularum artis musice. A contemporary Tuscan source
(Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Palatino, ) presents eight two- and three-voice laude in
the folia directly following that text. These include Verbum caro factum est, which also appears
as the cantus of two of the Lucchese exercises. This concordance suggests that Verbum caro
and the remaining laude served as the basis for the contrapuntal exercises of Hothby’s stu-
dents, and had thus acquired a pedagogical rather than devotional function. In so employing
the lauda, that most beloved of Tuscan traditions, for the teaching of mensural polyphony,
Hothby showed himself to be a northern choirmaster particularly attuned to the needs and
customs of his Italian students.

MAHLER
Jon Finson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Chair

“DER ROMANTIKER DER GROSSSTADT”:

MAHLER AND VIENNESE OPERETTA
Timothy Freeze
University of Michigan
Among the most readily recognizable traits of Mahler’s music is his frequent emulation of
folk, military, and popular styles. Drawing on Mahler’s own testimony, many scholars have
used the composer’s early experiences with German and Czech folksongs, as well as the mili-
tary band garrisoned in his boyhood hometown, to account for the idiosyncratic mixture of
these styles and idioms. This paper considers another possible source: the urban entertain-
ment music of Vienna. Though the relevance of Vienna’s popular music for Mahler’s works
is frequently acknowledged, it is usually only in general terms or in occasional asides that
 Sunday morning AMS Quebec City 

identify potential melodic allusions. To date, very little research has been devoted to the na-
ture and extent of these connections.
This paper takes the operetta as its core repertory, focusing primarily on those operettas that
Mahler conducted or which were exceptionally famous in Vienna during his years in the city.
An overview of these works shows that virtually all the idioms and styles used to link Mahler’s
music to his boyhood experiences or to romanticism more generally were also common fare
in the operettas of the day, including the emulation of folk songs, preponderance of military
signals and marches, and frequent use of dance idioms. Musical examples drawn from such
operettas as Franz von Suppé’s Boccaccio () and Johann Strauss, Jr.’s Der lustige Krieg ()
demonstrate close similarities in melodic and rhythmic formulae, strategies of orchestration,
and frequent use of ironic and sentimental expression. Musical connections between marches
in the first movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony and Carl Millöcker’s Der Bettelstudent
() take on special significance because Mahler conducted the operetta eleven times in the
months before he composed the movement. Excerpts from the critical reception in contem-
porary newspapers show that many reviewers, hostile and favorable alike, heard such echoes
of operettas or urban entertainment music in his works.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the appropriation of folk styles and stock romantic
elements by operettas and the popular music industry more generally made it possible for col-
loquial elements in Mahler’s works to have multiple plausible antecedents. Such passages as
the posthorn solo of the Third Symphony or the Ländler Trio of the Fourth, which have been
frequently understood to exemplify Romantic attributes (drawing inspiration from the folk
or expressing a longing for the past), were more frequently heard in Mahler’s day as emulating
lowbrow entertainment music. The recognition that many of the colloquial styles and clichés
in Mahler’s works invoke musically legitimate but contradictory associations can help remedy
the surprisingly widespread view held in certain Mahler literature that his references to genres
outside of art music are clearly representative and imbued with unmistakable clarity. It can
also help account for the polarized contemporary reception of his music, whose likenesses to
urban entertainment music created a scandalous exterior that has since been tempered by the
fading away of the operettas and popular music that once comprised an integral part of its
context.

HIRSCHFELD, MAHLER, AND THE FIN-DE-SIÈCLE

REVIVAL OF HAYDN’S DER APOTHEKER
Caryl Clark
University of Toronto
The first opera by Haydn revived in the modern era was Lo speziale (Eszterháza ),
freely adapted by the editor and critic Robert Hirschfeld as Der Apotheker (). By the late
s Hirschfeld had established himself as one of the most influential music critics working
in fin-de-siècle Vienna, largely through his efforts in organizing a series of early music con-
certs, teaching aesthetics at the Vienna Conservatory, writing and editing program notes for
the Vienna Philharmonic, working as a music critic for the Weiner Abendpost, and preparing
performing editions of three operas whose sources were incomplete: Der Apotheker, Schubert’s
Der vierjärige Posten (), and Mozart’s Zaide (). A German-speaking immigrant Jew
from Moravia and son of a rabbi, Hirschfeld successfully negotiated the increasingly difficult
fault-line between unbounded respect for Wagner’s music versus the more unsavory aspects of
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Wagnerism, which was closely aligned with German nationalism and anti-Semitic sentiments.
Although a former student of the conservative Hanslick, Hirschfeld praised both Wagner
and Brahms, and recognized the achievements of Bruckner and Wolf in the contemporary
idiom while denigrating those of Mahler. During Mahler’s tenure as conductor at the Wiener
Hofoper from  to , Hirschfeld grew evermore critical of Mahler’s music and oper-
atic and symphonic performances, especially after the Viennese premiere of the composer’s
First Symphony in November . His interactions with Mahler before the turn of the
century, however, were initially positive, as witnessed in their collaboration on Haydn’s Der
Apotheker.
This paper recounts the history of the revival of Der Apotheker. Following its premiere in
Dresden under Ernst Schuch in June , the production was repeated at a benefit concert
at the Carltheater in Vienna in November , after which it garnered critical praise in a
series of performances conducted by Mahler in Hamburg (–) and Vienna (). Dis-
cussed here are several important documents pertaining to these performances, including a
little-known letter by Mahler to Hirschfeld from November , Hirschfeld’s revised libretto
and keyboard edition (published by the impresario and entrepreneur Albert Gutmann), sev-
eral published reviews, and Mahler’s annotated conducting score recently discovered in the
uncatalogued collection of the Wiener Staatsoper. Haydn’s original Turkish scene in Act , in
which the gullible title character falls for a get-rich-quick scheme to move to Constantinople
to work as the Sultan’s apothecary, contrasts a pseudo-Turk with the “ultimate Other”—one
whose “difference” both textually and musically bears the mark of the Jew. Hirschfeld’s re-
construction disrupts the carefully constructed caricature in ways that fit his larger agenda of
deepening the roots of German musical culture. Mahler’s performing annotations, however,
recuperate the original characterization. Subsequent performances of Der Apotheker by the
Wiener Sängerknaben and the Verband Deutscher Apotheker, an organization of professional
apothecaries in Hamburg and Berlin from  to  before being disbanded by the Nazis,
further complicate the representation. Hirschfeld’s revival of a seemingly innocent comic op-
era by Papa Haydn unleashed many ironies.

MAHLER’S “SYMPHONIA DOMESTICA”: THE SIXTH SYMPHONY’S

SCHERZO AND A BARNYARD TALE OF FAMILY VALUES
Sue Taylor
Washington University in St. Louis
Gustav Mahler made no secret of his distaste for the family privacies Richard Strauss
exploited for the program of his Symphonia domestica. Strauss acknowledged his friend’s
indictment when he wrote to Romain Rolland, “You are extremely in agreement with G.
Mahler, who utterly condemns the program.” Mahler knew Strauss’ work when he began
composing his Sixth Symphony in . Alma Mahler wrote in her memoirs that her husband
said he had composed a musical portrait of her with the main theme of this Symphony’s first
movement. She continued, “In the third movement [Scherzo] he represented the arhythmic
games of the two little children, tottering in zigzags over the sand.” Just prior to these passages
she noted that Mahler found delight in regaling their older daughter with the story of Gockel,
Hinkel and Gackeleia, an old Neapolitan folk tale retold by Clemens Brentano in Des Knaben
Wunderhorn. This fantasy tells of parents, a daughter, and the heroic deeds of their pet fowls,
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named in the title. Heavily symbolic, this popular folk story provides a potent allegorical com-
mentary on family unity and personal ethics.
Close examination of the Sixth Symphony’s Scherzo reveals that its episodic and chrono-
logical structures parallel events in the Gockel, Hinkel and Gackeleia story. Throughout the
movement recur comic effects and material imitative of barnyard squawking. Another plau-
sible connection to the Brentano tale is Mahler’s brief interjection of garish waltz music for the
seductive dancing of an automated doll (Kunstfigur) representing the force of evil in the story.
Mahler also tinkered with his coloristic instrumentation, observed through his additions to
the partitur and Stichvorlage, in ways that seem to intensify a relationship between his use
of percussion and events in the fairy tale. In addition, the Scherzo has parodic musical ele-
ments reminiscent of those in his Wunderhorn song “Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt.”
Probably the most compelling link to the children’s tale, however, is Mahler’s “Altväterisch
Grazioso” section of the movement with its short, “precariously placed” staccato notes—a
musical portrayal of the story’s prominent Eiertanz with its inevitable ill-placed foot. Toward
the end of the movement, Mahler’s “death shriek” and a gong stroke may represent the sacri-
ficial slaughtering of the family’s beloved rooster to obtain the prized Solomon’s ring with its
power to restore familial order. These accumulating connections suggest the likelihood of a
hidden program, yet any musical ties to the story are best viewed only as stimuli for Mahler’s
satirizing of Strauss’ excesses, and not as attempts to “compose” the Gockel story.
This paper makes a persuasive case for the possibility that the Scherzo of the Sixth Sym-
phony was composed as a disguised parody—for Mahler’s personal amusement—of Strauss’
banal household exposé.

“WAS SOLL DENN EUCH MEIN SINGEN?” DISLOCATED

SOUND IN MAHLER’S DAS KLAGENDE LIED
Sherry Lee
University of Toronto
Gustav Mahler’s dramatic cantata Das klagende Lied (–) is his earliest surviving large-
scale work. Its narrative poem from Mahler’s own pen tells of two brothers seeking a flower
that will win the hand of a beautiful queen. The younger finds it, but the elder murders him,
claiming flower and bride. However, a minstrel discovers the victim’s bone in the forest and
fashions from it a flute which, shockingly, sings the story of the fratricide. The chilling tale
culminates in supernatural retribution when the flute voices its accusation at the murderer’s
wedding to the queen, with devastating results. This extraordinary work, unjustly neglected
until recently, foregrounds issues of sound and voice, bodies and disembodiment, narrative
and performance, and has inspired me to explore its significance in terms of modern concep-
tions of voice and performativity. My paper examines these issues in both text and music,
drawing upon Roland Barthes’s theorization of vocal plurality in classic and modern texts,
and Carolyn Abbate’s work on effects of sonic dislocation and vocal disembodiment in per-
formance. It demonstrates how Mahler used an essentially romantic narrative as a vehicle for
a uniquely modern exploration of the disturbing, disruptive forces of performed sound.
I begin by explaining the ways in which the text thematizes sonic displacement through
its narrative content, but also its structure: it shifts between past and present, narration and
enactment, incorporating interrogatory interruption and lyric reflection. While the story
invokes voices human and inhuman, living and dead, and the physical power of sound to
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transcend conventional boundaries, the poem’s grammatical and vocal shifts—who speaks,
when, where?—exemplify what Barthes called a “tonal instability” of utterances whose source
seems unidentifiable or absent.
I then show that the events of this narrative and the multi-voiced means of its telling
resonate with problems of voice and locus of sound that become central in Mahler’s musical
setting. Notable is the distribution of the text among multiple performing voices in shifting
narrative roles, an effect Peter Franklin has discussed recently in terms of gendered discourse.
Yet this intriguing but intricate gender fragmentation, I suggest, is less perceptible than the
fundamental experience of continuous displacement: the voice, in Barthes’s terms, “gets lost .
. . through a hole in the discourse.” Such spatial and temporal polyphonies of text and vocal
setting echo in other performance effects, vocal and instrumental, throughout the work. My
paper ultimately queries the significance of the singing bone itself, which evolves from gentle
lament to what Abbate might term a terrifying, disembodied “voice-object,” whose source
is unknowable. It clashes dramatically with an offstage band, whose spatial distance fails to
nullify its effect of bridging, with fearful immediacy, the gap to the past and the imaginary.
What is so striking about this extreme volatility of utterance is how it becomes the means of
the work’s embodiment of its own narrative content, such that we experience the radical sonic
dislocation that is the story’s theme—a theme that reverberates throughout Mahler’s oeuvre.

MAKING MEANING IN FRENCH BAROQUE OPERA

Tim Carter, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Chair

ECHOES OF ALLEGORIES PAST IN LULLY’S PHAËTON

Lois Rosow
Ohio State University
Our manner of reading Lully’s operas as political allegories, and especially of seeing the
heroes as representations of Louis XIV, has undergone revision in recent years. Scholars have
learned to see a complex relationship between the godlike “Hero” of the prologues and the
more problematic heroes of the tragédies, and in general to distrust à clef readings, with ficti-
tious events representing real events at court. Nonetheless, it has proved rewarding to read these
operas as general metaphors for courtly society—representations of symmetry, magnificence
and splendor, and top-down authority. At the same time, the primary sources occasionally
encourage us to interpret the hero specifically as Louis, and contemporaneous anecdotes dem-
onstrate that courtly audiences made a game of seeing themselves in particular characters.
Moreover, the tradition of mythological courtly symbolism served the longstanding impulse
to blur the boundary between heaven and earth and to idealize courtly society as a return to
the mythological golden age. So long as we avoid expecting consistency in the relationship of
fiction and reality, but recognize instead the genre’s “fleeting associations,” surely we are well
served by paying attention to symbol and allusion however they present themselves.
Using Phaëton as a case study, this paper will suggest another source for allegorical read-
ing: the reception of the mythological stories. In his Metamorphoses, Ovid divided the story,
introducing it at the end of Book I and opening Book II with the splendid palace of the Sun.
The splendor of Apollo’s palace is suggested in the opera by an expansive divertissement and
evocation of Versailles (where Louis XIV had recently moved his court). Whereas Ovid was
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sympathetic to Phaethon, praising his risk-taking, the principal early-modern allegory—that

of Phaethon as an immature prince attempting to rule before he is ready—expressed moral
disapproval. This disapproval pervades the love triangle and story of royal succession in the
opera, largely the librettist’s invention. Here (Acts I to III) the libretto and score follow the
conventional dramaturgy associated with heroism; yet while Corneillian heroism is evoked,
both poetically and musically, none is actually present. By contrast, the musically expansive
encounter with Apollo (Act IV) largely follows Ovid and stresses Phaethon’s gloire and willing-
ness to die for immortality, along with Apollo’s dilemma. Art historian Pierre Marechaux has
demonstrated that the depiction of Phaethon’s fall in Bernard Salomon’s highly influential an-
notated illustrations for Metamorphoses () juxtaposes Jupiter as a rigorous, severe god, and
the Sun as a source of Christian redemption. Seventeenth-century imitations of that illustra-
tion preserve Jupiter’s role but not always Apollo’s, and evidence for the early staging of Lully’s
opera agrees with that adjustment. Nonetheless, the king of France was thought to encompass
a pantheon; spectators might well have seen Louis XIV reflected both in Apollo in Acts IV
and V and Jupiter in Act V. Phaëton himself served as a foil for Louis’s virtues. The prologue
prefigures the themes of the opera and their relevance to the French monarchy.

READING ROLAND
Rebecca Harris-Warrick
Cornell University
Dance has such a strong presence inside of French baroque opera that it cannot be ignored.
However, it can be, and often has been, marginalized—damned with the label “decorative”
that obviates any need to take it seriously. In this view, dance may be part of the work, but it
is not part of the drama. By extension, the divertissements in which the dancing is embed-
ded are seen mainly as pretexts for dance and spectacle. Even scholars of baroque opera tend
to subscribe to this view: divertissements in general are characterized as having “little to do
with the main action,” as features that “inevitably dilute the dramatic intensity,” or as “a deco-
rative but nonessential and dramatically neutral ornament.” To be fair, it must be said that
these scholars do recognize that not all divertissements are alike and that Philippe Quinault,
Lully’s main librettist, was particularly skilled at integrating the divertissements into the op-
era. Nonetheless, discussions of the dramaturgy of divertissements have generally remained
on the level of the plot.
What happens if, instead of trying to explain away the presence of dance, we accept it as
an essential element of the style and ask what kind of work dance is doing inside the opera?
This switch in angle of vision encourages us to assume that the librettist, composer, and cho-
reographer knew what they were doing in constructing divertissements as they did, and that
it is our job to make sense of their choices. It further obliges us to pay close attention to the
texts, music, and (insofar as it can be discerned) the choreography of the divertissements. As
a first attempt at giving the divertissements full dramaturgical standing inside an opera, this
paper proposes a reading of Lully and Quinault’s penultimate tragédie en musique, Roland
(). This study reveals that far from offering a distraction, the divertissements deepen the
characterization of all three principal singers (Roland, Angélique, and Médor) and intensify
the main themes of the plot. And because divertissements bring on stage group characters
acting in obedience to a powerful individual, they become a vehicle for exposing or under-
mining power relationships. In Roland, one impact of the divertissements is to characterize the
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eponymous “hero” as much by his absences or failures as by the military glory to which he re-
turns at the opera’s conclusion. Another divertissement lays the groundwork for the revelation
of betrayal that pushes Roland into madness. The dancers and choral singers, who often act
together as surrogates for the main characters, thus become the means for revealing emotional
truths that the characters either are incapable of enunciating for themselves or do not wish to
face. Lully’s musical choices do not separate dance from its surroundings, but embrace it as
one of his most powerful expressive tools.

MASONIC OPERA BEFORE MOZART: RAMEAU, CAHUSAC,

AND THE RITUALS OF FRENCH FREEMASONRY
Graham Sadler
University of Hull
Shortly after the French Revolution of , rumors circulated that the whole thing had
been a Masonic plot. The idea may now seem absurd, but the very fact that it gained credence
is significant. For over fifty years before the Revolution, Freemasonry had attracted a huge
following in France, especially among writers, artists and musicians, and there can be no
doubting its special appeal to those of a liberal or reformist temperament. Although evidence
connecting Rameau with the order is mainly circumstantial (research presented in this paper
will nevertheless make the link more secure), his librettist Louis de Cahusac was secretary
to two prominent Freemasons—the Comte de Clermont, titular head of the entire order in
France, and the Comte de Saint Florentine.
Musicologists have long been aware of Masonic symbolism in Cahusac’s libretto for Rame-
au’s Zoroastre (), a work which, in its own way, is almost as much a coded representation
of Freemasonry as Die Zauberflöte. Various writers have alluded to Masonic elements in other
Cahusac-Rameau operas, yet little published research has explored this whole subject in any
detail. The present paper will relate major aspects of the Cahusac-Rameau operas to pas-
sages from mid-eighteenth-century Masonic catechisms and other specifically French sources
of Masonic ritual. In the process it will reveal that each opera approaches symbolism and
ritual from a different angle, as if to demonstrate a different, if still encoded, facet of Free-
masonry—the struggle between good and evil (Zoroastre), the opposition of ignorance and
enlightenment (Les Boréades), chaos versus order and trial by ordeal (Zaïs), and so on. Several
operas include elements of initiation, while initiatory voyages are central to the plots of Zo-
roastre and Les Boréades. (These and other Masonic elements in Les Boréades strengthen the
attribution of the libretto of this work to Cahusac.) While representations of Masonic sym-
bols and ritual are mainly limited to the librettos, evidence will be presented that Rameau
used ballet, spectacle and orchestration to represent further aspects—in particular the frappe
or mallet stroke, the Masonic hymn, and the colonne d’harmonie.

RAMEAU’S ART D’AIMER: MUSIC AND EROTICISM

IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Raphaëlle Legrand
University of Paris, Sorbonne
Diderot, in his erotic novel Les Bijoux indiscrets (), writes that Rameau was unri-
valed in his ability to discern the “delicate nuances that lie between the affectionate and the
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voluptuous, the voluptuous and the passionate, the passionate and the lascivious.” Adept at
applying his theoretical knowledge to depict wide-ranging passions, Rameau was prompted to
give musical expression to the diverse aspects of sexuality in his operas and cantatas at a time
when licentiousness was rampant in literature and the arts.
The poems that Rameau set to music abound with a veiled sexuality, which was nevertheless
utterly transparent to audiences of the time. The final arias of the cantatas, such as Orphée,
derive an amorous moral from the preceding narrative episodes. The opera prologues, notably
that of Dardanus, frequently present an allegorical reflection on the Art d’aimer (harking back
to the title of a poem by Gentil-Bernard, librettist of Castor et Pollux) by showcasing Venus,
Cupid, the Pleasures, Jealousy, etc., within a short self-contained plot. In the pastorales, bal-
lets, and tragédies en musique, the various divertissements explicitly celebrate respectable love,
while often implicitly evoking sexuality (e.g., Les Indes galantes, Dardanus). The passages that
center on the story’s main couple, whether at the moment love is declared or during the ulti-
mate lovers’ reunion (e.g., Les Boréades), also display telling characteristics.
Rather than classify all appearances of sexuality in the texts that Rameau set to music, I
intend to show how it features allusively in the lyrical genres where it cannot appear explicitly.
This entails grasping the way Rameau translates the underlying eroticism into music. So far,
musicologists have merely touched upon this subject, without probing the actual procedures.
Insight into analyzing these passages is provided by Rameau’s theoretical writings, such as the
Traité de l’harmonie (Book II, chapter , “De la propriété des Accords”), where the composer
expounds a refined theory of dissonance, and in both the Observations sur notre instinct pour
la musique and the Code de musique pratique, where he develops a theory of modulation and
cadence usage.
The question of eroticism in Rameau’s lyrical works will thus be explored from three angles:
poetical (in the sung text), dramaturgical (in the layout of certain divertissements), and com-
positional (in the music writing itself ).

POSING THE QUESTION: QUEER PERFORMANCES

AND POPULAR CULTURE
Nadine Hubbs, University of Michigan, Chair

THE SEXUALITY OF THE SURFACE: ANDY WARHOL,

DAVID BOWIE, AND THE ART OF POSING
Judith A. Peraino
Cornell University
It is well known that David Bowie found inspiration and ideas in the pop art and public
persona of Andy Warhol and his notorious entourage of transvestites. Warhol’s vacuous and
“swish” behavior, and his use of consumer items and pop icons in his art, contrasted with the
masculinist attitude and “rugged individualism” of abstract expressionist artists such as Jack-
son Pollock. Similarly, Bowie’s decidedly nostalgic musical styles coupled with androgynous
costumes, staged homoeroticism, and proclamations of his own gay or bi sexuality contrasted
with the prevailing masculinist subcultural styles that dominated s rock ’n’ roll. Both
Warhol and Bowie played the line between art and commercial product, between earnest and
Abstracts Sunday morning 

parodic expression, and between surface presentation and deeper meaning—especially via the
insinuation of queer sexuality.
The scholarly approach to David Bowie and glam rock has thus far been dominated by two
disciplines: British subcultural studies (Hebdige,Van Cagle, Frith), which understand glam
in terms of class and generation conflict; and theater studies (Auslander), which understands
glam as primarily performance art. This paper brings together musicology, queer theory, and
visual culture studies in order to create a fuller picture of the discourse and commodifica-
tion of queer sexuality mobilized in glam rock. In pairing Bowie and Warhol I want to work
through the particularities of music and painting (“sound and vision”—to quote a Bowie
song), to interrogate visual versus aural expressions of surface and depth, and then of super-
ficiality and interiority. Moreover, I will investigate the relationship of surface and depth to
sexuality. This line of inquiry leads to an interrogation of the concept of posing, as both posi-
tion and imposture. “Posing” will be contrasted to Judith Bulter’s concept of “performance”
as a theoretical tool, and I will discuss how posing functions in Bowie and Warhol as both an
aesthetic practice and an articulation of sexuality.
Visual examples include selections of Warhol’s Campbell Soup Can paintings and his silk-
screens of movie actresses from the early s; musical examples are drawn from Bowie’s 
album Pin Ups—a collection of cover songs from Mod-era London that directly engages ques-
tions of surface and depth and sexuality in Warholian terms.

LIBERACE AND THE OSTENTATIOUS TABOO

Mitchell Morris
UCLA
In all major phases of his career, Liberace constructed a performance persona in which
hyperbolic signals of effeminacy and sexual irregularity were detached from all denotative
reference. Details of dress and gesture, vocal idiosyncrasies, and above all a constant barrage of
innuendo in-between song banter demanded that audiences understand Liberace as homosex-
ual; and yet in , when a review implicitly outing him appeared in the British newspaper
The Daily Mirror, Liberace sued for libel and won. This extraordinary event is interesting for
many reasons, not least of which is the way it calls attention to what has been termed “the
ostentatious taboo”—a particular style of (Anglophone) euphemism in which the phrase “you
know who/what” is meant to signal clearly what is not being named explicitly. Though the
ostentatious taboo exists primarily to allow a speaker to “say without saying,” it typically ac-
complishes this with the support of paralinguistic gestures that establish complicity between
speaker and listener. This was the foundational gesture, perhaps, of Liberace’s public style.
It was also one of the most important strategies of self-presentation in pre-Stonewall queer
cultures.
There are abundant musical equivalents to the ostentatious taboo within Liberace’s perfor-
mances. This paper will take up a consideration of a fascinating medley of the first movement
of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” and Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.” Although the date of
Liberace’s arrangement is unknown, it can on the basis of internal evidence be placed securely
within the compass of his Las Vegas performances, with all their ingratiatingly glitzy aggres-
sion. The imbrication of the two pieces is structurally persuasive, but Liberace’s care with
musical construction takes a back seat in the recorded perfomance to his ornamental pianism.
This arrangement as performed obviously violates a multitude of binary distinctions between
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the “classical” and the “popular,” or the “serious” and the “frivolous,” that were precious to
a number of mid-twentieth century audiences and critical outlooks, but its rhetorical tone
is obscure. Is this a parody or meant to be taken as a complex hommage? Both? Neither? To
whom? The gap between the performance as a gratifying surface and its indecipherable inten-
tions can be taken as an instantiation of the problematics of Liberace’s closet—of how to be
seen and unseen, heard and unheard, simultaneously.

POST-WAR BRITAIN
Andy Fry, King’s College London, Chair

PURCELL AND THE PERFORMANCE OF

SECRETS IN POSTWAR BRITAIN
Heather Wiebe
University of Michigan
The music of Purcell experienced a remarkable revival in the years immediately after the
Second World War. The newly nationalized Covent Garden announced its opening with a
production of The Fairy Queen in , and the th anniversary of Purcell’s death prompted
a set of musical tributes. Another flurry of performances followed in , when the Festival
of Britain presented a whole series devoted to Purcell’s lesser-known works, as well as produc-
tions of The Fairy Queen and Dido and Aeneas. Meanwhile, for both Michael Tippett and
Benjamin Britten, Purcell had displaced the Tudors as a source of inspiration. Britten alone
produced over thirty realizations of his songs in the late s and early s, as well as an
edition of Dido and Aeneas, while works such as the Holy Sonnets of John Donne and the Can-
ticles owe a clear debt. Purcell represented many things: the lost glories of the English musical
past; a model of English text-setting and indigenous operatic dramaturgy; and a notion of
music as magic and enchantment. But Purcell’s music, occupied as it is with the secrets of
night and dreams, also helped articulate some of the silenced anxieties of postwar British life,
within the safe confines of the national past.
This paper explores two facets of the postwar Purcell revival where such anxieties played
out, in a joint elaboration of the most alien aspects of seventeenth-century gendering and
religious feeling. The first stopping point is the remarkable career of Alfred Deller, cathedral
alto turned countertenor recitalist, whose mainstay was the music of Purcell. Early responses
to Deller fixated on the strangeness of the voice. It was a strangeness of which Deller him-
self was painfully aware, and his biography is full of awkward attempts to assure others of
his “naturalness” and his status as a “family man.” It cannot have helped that his champions
included Tippett and Britten, both gay men for whom Deller seems to have ventriloquized
an unorthodox masculinity. Secondly, I examine Britten’s preoccupation with Purcell’s sacred
songs: with their semi-hysterical emotional manner, their extremes of loss, need, and confu-
sion. Far from providing the reassuring stability of the past, Britten’s Purcell-inspired music
was some of his most tortured, preoccupied with mourning and madness. But like Deller’s,
Britten’s deployments of Purcell also rippled s orthodoxies of gender and domesticity. The
trope of domesticity askew appears frequently in Britten’s engagement with Purcell: in his re-
alizations of the devotional songs (originally for domestic use), produced for himself and Peter
Pears to tour across the English provinces; and in the Second Canticle, where Kathleen Ferrier
Abstracts Sunday morning 

played the sacrificial son to Pears’s tormented Abraham. And when Britten’s opaque domestic
arrangements were satirized in a  radio play, The Private Life of Hilda Tablet, Purcell ap-
peared there too. But if that play made light of such “eccentricities,” perhaps the most striking
aspect of this postwar British engagement with Purcell is a kind of outrageous seriousness, an
indulgence in otherwise unacceptable extremes of anxiety and morbidity for which tradition
served as the ideal veil.

“BRING ALL UP AND MIX ‘EM GOOD”: EXPERIMENTAL

SOUND COLLAGE IN EARLY BRITISH RADIO
Louis Niebur
University of Nevada, Reno
The specifically auditory nature of radio has consistently encouraged radical musical tech-
niques. Whether manifested by John Cage in his work for four radios tuned to different
frequencies, the anarchic tantrums of Antonin Artaud, or the musique concrète works of Pierre
Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, by removing the visual element in art, the medium forces listen-
ers to construct form out of abstraction. Before all of these artists, however, the experimental
tendencies of the earliest radio producers at the British Broadcasting Corporation in England
encouraged the development of techniques that would emerge thirty years later in avant-
garde musical circles outside the UK. In particular, the developments of live “Kaleidoscopic”
radio dramas in the mid-s—multi-studio, free form experimental works, especially those
by radical producer Lance Sieveking—introduced to British listeners abstract sonic collages
that not only broke down the boundaries of traditional narrative but blended musical cul-
tures as well. Sieveking and others pureed classical music, jazz and other popular musics
together by means of primitive mixing boards linking numerous live broadcasting studios,
creating auditory montage-like sculptures. The mixing board at the heart of this musical lev-
eling, the “Dramatic Control Panel,” Sieveking considered a virtuoso instrument not unlike
a pipe organ, and, in an obvious parallel to contemporary DJ practices, felt his contribution
as “virtuoso performer” during live broadcasts as the equivalent of any more conventional
musician.
This paper explores the issues Sieveking and his contemporaries raised by introducing such
radical sonic options to radio audiences. While neglected by musicologists until now, these
works demonstrate a unique and influential British form of modernism, one that exerted
a strong force on later British art, both dramatic and musical. In particular, Sieveking and
other’s productions foreshadow the vital role drama was to take in the development of elec-
tronic music as it unfolded in Britain. These forgotten radio pioneers of the s and s
created an equally forgotten art form, the live sound collage, but by examining the ideas and
philosophies behind these “Kaleidoscopes” in closer detail, the relevance to contemporary art-
ists and art forms reveals itself.
 Sunday morning AMS Quebec City 

FINGS AIN’T WOT THEY USED T’BE: BRITISH

MODERNISM AND LONDON’S SOHO MUSICALS
Elizabeth Wells
Mount Allison University
Although the history of London’s West End theatre often resembles that of New York’s
Broadway during the same period, the late s saw an astonishing and vibrant moment of
iconoclasm and modernism in the genre of the British musical. Spearheaded by such intel-
lectual directors as Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop company, a number of dark,
cynical, and experimental musicals were produced in the last seasons of the s. Dominated
by the American style and content of musical theatre, British theatre professionals and audi-
ences had been searching for the “great British musical,” a style of show that would set them
apart from their American counterparts. A handful of musicals, known as the “Soho” musicals
after the low-life characters who inhabit them, attempted to bring this new and particularly
British voice to the West End. In these works, we see tensions between the traditional and
modern, younger and older generations, and particularly British and American interests both
in the world of theatre and in the larger political relationship between these nations, known
historically as the “special relationship.” Although much has been written on early British
musical theatre and the era of Andrew Lloyd Webber, this Soho repertoire, which falls chrono-
logically between, is crucially important to the development of musical theatre in Britain and
has drifted for the most part into musical and academic obscurity.
One fascinating aspect of the Soho musicals is their portrayal of Americans and Ameri-
canness within their plots. As a way of negotiating cultural and political space, of setting
themselves apart, British composers and lyricists reserved a special place for Americans in their
works which distance themselves from perceived American values while at the same time send
up those values. These characters usually do not play important or central roles but instead
frame the Britishness of the main characters and plot lines. Exploring three examples, from
Make Me An Offer, The Crooked Mile, and Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be, reveals the musi-
cal, theatrical, and intellectual issues these works raise, especially as they sharply contrast with
more traditional and optimistic musicals of the same period. Primary material from the Lord
Chamberlain’s collection of the British Library and London’s theatre museum shed new light
on this series of remarkable works, virtually unknown in North America.
Taken from one of the most difficult but complex periods of the modern musical theatre,
the Soho Musicals reveal much about their time, place, and the fascinating relationship be-
tween Britons and Americans during the Cold War. Although Oliver! will arguably remain the
best-known British musical of this era, it does not match the complexity and ambition of the
Soho musicals, now part of a very particular period in musical theatre, a time of experimenta-
tion, social commentary, and modernity.

A COHESIVE SHAMBLES: THE CLASH’S LONDON

CALLING AND THE NORMALIZATION OF PUNK
Matthew Gelbart
Los Angeles, California
One of the most critically acclaimed rock albums of all time, London Calling (), was
the product of a desperate moment in The Clash’s creative life, a desperation reflecting a
Abstracts Sunday morning 

problem bigger than the group itself. So far punk had defined itself as a largely nihilistic and
anti-aesthetic subculture—its boundaries policed and managed carefully to maintain a sort of
isolationist purity. At least as a musical phenomenon, such a movement could by definition
not last, nor be assimilated into mainstream culture or aesthetics; it could only implode upon
itself. With the tragic self-destruction of the Sex Pistols, exactly this seemed to have happened.
The Clash, who had always approached punk without the nihilism, now faced the question of
how to continue, especially since their second album had proved unsatisfactory to the group
and fans alike. After a hermetic retreat to the recording studio, they produced London Call-
ing—an immediate success both critically and artistically.
In this paper, I argue that London Calling normalized punk, allowing it to be more than
an “event”: punk could henceforth be assimilated into traditional musical discourse and aes-
thetics. As a careful balancing act between punk street-cred and mainstream musical values,
London Calling allowed a double-reading. Punk fans could find in it what they sought: anti-
establishment anger and at times a messy, disdainful approach to traditional musicianship. At
the same time critics and listeners who had come since the late s to assimilate rock into a
romantic (or post-romantic) system of “art” values could find in it what they sought: stylistic
growth, organic coherence, originality, and even a “universal” narrative of struggle, triumph
and redemption. London Calling is basically a “concept album”—with a loose progression
from an aggressive, nihilistic opening to a feel-good ending. Along the way, various themes
(apocalypse, outlaw antiheroes) are revisited from changing angles. It is possible to isolate not
only a story, but musical connections between the songs (keys, recurrent motives and topoi)
all laid out in a logical manner. However, unlike concept albums in the s progressive
rock style against which punk reacted, London Calling calls attention away from its musical
coherence, and even its textual coherence, rather than toward it. The musical links are hidden
or developed within small “closed” song forms, and the thematic narrative is disrupted, frag-
mented, and non-linear. Indeed, the ultimate “anti-coherent” gesture is injected at the end:
the addition of an extra track as an afterthought seems to disrupt the patterns and themes
established within the album.
I will cite examples of the two different ways of reading this album to suit different ends: as
anti-“musical” and as “musical.” But I finish by considering the ways in which these two read-
ings have intersected and combined. Both draw heavily on the trope of the band/composer
as triumphant hero and on the romantic idea of organically connected fragments. It is these
intersections—pioneered in the way this album was presented and received—that ultimately
allowed punk to work as a normalized musical movement.

ROCK AND COUNTRY UNDERGROUND

Robert Walser, UCLA, Chair

PERSPECTIVES ON JIM MORRISON FROM THE UNDERGROUND:

JIM MORRISON AND THE LOS ANGELES FREE PRESS
Melissa Ursula Dawn Goldsmith
Nicholls State University
How did the Los Angeles Free Press, the largest circulating underground newspaper in the
history of journalism, impart a record of Jim Morrison’s milieu and the rise of the poet-singer
 Sunday morning AMS Quebec City 

who fronted The Doors? Morrison’s cult continues today, through pilgrimages to his grave
(a major tourist attraction in Paris), many fans, Oliver Stone’s film The Doors (), videos
broadcast on the Internet via YouTube, rediscoveries of recordings, and new discoveries of un-
released recordings, lost films, and unpublished manuscripts of Morrison’s poetry. How did
the L. A. Free Press contribute to Morrison’s images, legends, and myths? This presentation will
explore the relationship and exchanges between Morrison and the newspaper examining local
perspectives on Morrison’s milieu, the counterculture of Los Angeles, the city he loved.
Wallace Fowlie discussed the influence of Rimbaud on Morrison’s life, songs, and poems in
Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel as Poet (). He also describes Morrison’s other sources
of inspiration—theatrical, philosophical, mythological, and literary, tracing the links to An-
tonin Artaud, Nietzsche, Joseph Campbell, and Beat poets like Kerouac. Although Fowlie
mentions contemporary countercultural influences on Morrison, he does so in less detail,
usually to draw parallels between Rimbaud and Morrison as rebel artists. In their biography
No One Here Gets Out Alive (), music journalist Jerry Hopkins and Morrison’s sometime
protégé Danny Sugerman refers to several L. A. Free Press articles and reviews. Sugerman
worked as an assistant in the publicity office; he later became a promoter for the Doors and
after Morrison’s death in  a manager for keyboardist Ray Manzarek. In his autobiography
Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess () Sugerman explains that L. A. Free Press
editor John Carpenter was Morrison’s friend.
There has also been a steady stream of biographies of Morrison since his death, some more
reliable than others, but none has surveyed the L. A. Free Press fully or considered its impact
on Morrison himself and viewpoints of him during his life and after his death. The L. A. Free
Press gave many accounts of Doors concerts and contained advertisements for their concerts,
as wells as criticism, reviews, and interviews. It also included poems, leftist views of news,
columns about politics, letters about art, literature, music, and theatre, and advertisements
for events that appear to have had a significant influence on Morrison’s artistic and literary
interests, aesthetics, and creative output. This presentation provides new avenues for analyz-
ing Morrison’s songs and poems and their history. For example, the song “The End” is an heir
to poems with oedipal themes, but it also echoes the anti-Vietnam sentiments of letters and
articles as well as the “hate poetry” by Beat poets and others that appeared in the L. A. Free
Press. The song “Not to Touch the Earth,” in addition to its evocation of William Blake and
sitar music made popular by Ravi Shankar, shares with “The End” a connection to the L. A.
Free Press.

“UP AGAINST THE WALL, REDNECK MOTHER”:

CONFRONTING STEREOTYPES AND CARICATURES IN
MERLE HAGGARD’S “OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE”
Travis Stimeling
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
The meaning of Merle Haggard and Roy Edward Burris’s  hit song “Okie from Musk-
ogee” has long been the subject of debate among scholars, fans, and detractors of country
music alike. Written from the perspective of the conservative Silent Majority, it disparages the
contemporaneous hippie counterculture by challenging the masculinity and American-ness
of its members. Although Haggard has claimed that the song was intended as an innocuous
satire of his parents’ reaction to the hippie counterculture, the song quickly drew the ire of
Abstracts Sunday morning 

liberal commentators who believed the song to be a shameless representation of the racism,
misogyny, and xenophobia that they were fighting against.
This paper examines the reception history of “Okie from Muskogee,” revealing how the
song became a symbol of conservative resistance to the social upheavals of the late s and
early s. “Okie from Muskogee” was released at a time when liberal observers, most of
whom hailed from northern urban centers, were becoming increasingly scornful of country
music. Because of its close association with white southerners, many critics viewed country
music as a symbol of racist oppression in the wake of the ongoing Civil Rights Movement.
These feelings were justified when several of the patriarchs of Nashville’s Music Row publicly
endorsed and campaigned for ardent segregationist George Wallace during the  presiden-
tial campaign. Although an overwhelming majority of the country songs written, recorded,
and released in the late s and early s make no statement about the social changes
that were underway, liberal commentators nonetheless heard country music as the oppressive
and violent soundtrack of white resistance to the Civil Rights Movement. That the speaker
of “Okie from Muskogee” blatantly criticizes the counterculture only exacerbated liberal con-
tempt for country music.
The strongest reactions against “Okie from Muskogee” came, not surprisingly, from musi-
cians themselves, many of whom were associated with countercultural music scenes in San
Francisco and Austin. Songwriters Ray Wylie Hubbard, Kinky Friedman, and Charlie Dan-
iels, among others, composed songs that forced the Okie and the hippie to confront one
another in a rural bar. These songs—most noteworthy among them Hubbard’s “Up Against
the Wall, Redneck Mother”—caricature the Okie as ignorant and apelike, exaggerating the
stylistic signifiers of honky tonk music, while casting the hippie as an innocent victim of the
Okie’s violence and subhuman intelligence. At the same time, other musicians associated with
the hippie counterculture, including Willie Nelson, incorporated “Okie from Muskogee” into
their live and recorded repertoires, often pairing Haggard’s hit with the songs of Hubbard,
Daniels, and Friedman. These musical reactions reveal in microcosm the mutual distrust, mis-
understanding, and contempt among conservatives and liberals. “Okie from Muskogee” thus
became a powerful symbol for both sides in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, Second-
Wave Feminism, and the Vietnam War.
 Index of Participants

Adams, Byron  Deaville, James , 

Albright, Daniel  DeFord, Ruth 
Alden, Jane ,  DeVeaux, Scott 
Alonso-Minutti, Ana R.  de Graaf, Melissa 
Anderson, Michael  De Lucca, Valeria 
Ansari, Emily Abrams  de Médicis, François 
Applegate, Celia  DiCenso, Daniel J. 
Ashby, Arved  Dohoney, Ryan W. 
Auner, Joseph  Downes, Stephen 
Drott, Eric 
Bain, Jennifer  Dumitrescu, Ted 
Barg, Lisa 
Bashford, Christina  Ellis, Katharine 
Beckles Willson, Rachel  Ermolaev Ossorgin, Katherine 
Bellman, Jonathan 
Bennett, Peter  Fassler, Margot 
Bergman, Elizabeth  Fawcett-Yeske, Maxine 
Bhogal, Gurminder Kaur  Feisst, Sabine 
Biró, Dániel Péter  Fink, Robert 
Blackburn, Bonnie  Finson, Jon 
Bomberger, E. Douglas  Fisher, Alexander J. 
Boorman, Stanley  Flindell, Fred 
Bowen, Jose  Ford, Phil 
Boynton, Susan  Fosler-Lussier, Danielle , 
Brand, Benjamin  Freeze, Timothy 
Brobeck, John T.  Fry, Andy 
Broude, Ronald  Fulcher, Jane 
Buhler, James 
Busse Berger, Anna Maria  Gelbart, Matthew 
Butler, Margaret  Getz, Christine 
Giger, Andreas 
Caballero, Carlo  Gilman, Sander L. 
Candelaria, Lorenzo  Glixon, Jonathan 
Carr, Maureen  Golding, Rosemary 
Carson, Charles  Goldsmith, Melissa Ursula Dawn 
Carter, Tim  Gooley, Dana 
Clark, Caryl  Gordon-Seifert, Catherine 
Cohen, Brigid  Gossett, Philip 
Cohen, David E.  Greenberg, Jonathan 
Cole, Janie  Greenwald, Helen 
Cook, Susan C.  Grey, Thomas , 
Cowart, Georgia  Grimley, Daniel 
Cowger, Kelsey  Grymes, James A. 
Cummins, Linda 
Hakanson, Michelle 
Davenport, Mark  Hallmark, Rufus 
Deathridge, John ,  Hamberlin, Larry 
 AMS Quebec City 

Hamilton, Kenneth  Marissen, Michael 

Haney, Joel  Marsh, Dana T. 
Harbec, Jacinthe  Martin, Margot 
Harkett, Daniel  mcclung, bruce d. 
Harness, Kelley  McDonald, Matthew 
Harris-Warrick, Rebecca  McKinney, Timothy 
Hathaway, Janet  McLeod, Ken 
Hedges Brown, Julie  Meconi, Honey 
Hedy Law, Sin-yan  Metzer, David 
Hicks, Andrew  Mook, Richard 
Higgins, Paula  Morris, Mitchell 
Howe, Blake  Myers, Gregory 
Hubbs, Nadine 
Hughes, Andrew  Nardini, Luisa 
Hutchison, Dennis  Neumeyer, David , 
Niebur, Louis 
Ingraham, Mary  Noiseux, Jean-Pierre 
Issiyeva, Adalyat  Nosow, Robert 
Izzo, Francesco  Notley, Margaret 

Joe, Jeongwon  O’Regan, Noel 

Josephson, David  Oja, Carol J. 
Joubert, Estelle 
Judd, Robert  Pasler, Jann 
Pasternak-Mazur, Renata 
Kajikawa, Loren Y.  Paulin, Scott D. 
Katz, Mark  Pederson, Sanna 
Kernodle, Tammy  Peraino, Judith A. 
Kirkman, Andrew  Piekut, Benjamin 
Koegel, John  Pisani, Michael 
Kok, Roe-Min  Planchart, Alejandro 
Koutsobina, Vassiliki  Plebuch, Tobias 
Polk O’Meara, Caroline 
Lacasse, Serge  Polzonetti, Pierpaolo 
Lagueux, Robert  Pruiksma, Rose 
Lavoie, Marie-Noëlle  Puri, Michael J. 
Lee, Sherry 
Legrand, Raphaëlle  Ramos-Kittrell, Jesus 
Leisinger, Ulrich  Randall, Michael 
Leppert, Richard  Reardon, Colleen 
Levitz, Tamara ,  Rosand, Ellen 
Lewis Hammond, Susan  Rosar, William H. 
Locke, Ralph P.  Rosen, David 
Ludwig, Loren  Rosenberg, Ruth 
Rosow, Lois 
Madrid, Alejandro L. 
Maloy, Rebecca 
Index 

Sadler, Graham  Ximenes, Heidy K. 

Saltzstein, Jennifer 
Sargent, Joseph  Youmans, Charles 
Saylor, Eric  Younkin, Jamie 
Scherzinger, Martin 
Schmelz, Peter J.  Zayaruznaya, Anna 
Scott, Derek B. 
Sewright, Kathleen 
Shirley, Wayne 
Silverberg, Laura 
Simms, Bryan R. 
Smart, Mary Ann 
Smith, Gordon E. 
Solis, Gabriel 
Sprout, Leslie 
Sternfeld, Jessica 
Stimeling, Travis 
Stone, Anne 
Swack, Jeanne 
Swayne, Steve 

Tacconi, Marica 
Talle, Andrew 
Taylor, Sue 
Thomson, Aidan 
Tilley, Janette 
Tomlinson, Gary 
Treadwell, Nina 
Trippett, David 

van den Toorn, Pieter 

Varwig, Bettina 

Waeber, Jacqueline 

Walser, Robert 
Walton, Benjamin 
Washer, Nancy 
Weber, William 
Weiner, Marc A. 
Wells, Elizabeth 
Wiebe, Heather 
Wilson, Alexandra 
Wilson, Blake 
Wilson Kimber, Marian 
Wlodarski, Amy 