I should have known better than to believe that I would have had time/energy to provide daily updates on the conference while in the midst of all that was AMS Philadelphia 200[9].*  In fact, three days after returning home, I’ve still got a pretty good conference hangover.  So, for what it is worth, here are some highlights from my weekend at the conference of all conferences.

Friday

After filing my Day #1 Post, I made my way to “The Musical Aesthetics of Race and Ethnicity” panel sponsored by the Committee on Cultural Diversity (CCD).  It was standing room only, but well worth it.  Senior and junior scholars alike discussed a range of topics (which really deserve their own post) including, the ways race and ethnicity influence their own research and how the AMS has contributed to/hindered such considerations.  I finally got to a seat halfway through Sindhu Revuluri’s remarks, which urged greater attendance to holes in the archive, those voices that remain silent in our work as a result of past imbalances.  A constant concern of the CCD over the course of its 15-year existence has been the absence of diverse voices in AMS.  While this has improved (some say more than others), the problem faced now is an embrace of that scholarship.  Though few practical solutions were offered by the panel, the session revealed consideration of race and ethnicity as an intellectually stimulating one.

The rest of Friday was spent meeting with friends and colleagues, old and new.  I echo Phil’s observation that it may be a sign of “getting older” that I don’t make it to more papers, I just didn’t think I’d hit this point only 8 years after my first meeting.  I called it an early night (perhaps my first ever at AMS) in preparation for a long Saturday.

Saturday

I was in and out of meetings (first one at 7:30am) and coffees most of the day.  I did, however, manage to make it to three papers:  Albin Zak explored “Mitch the Goose Man” Miller’s contributions to the development of modern record production and problematized the fine line between gimmick and innovation.**  John Howland connected Jay-Z to the shifting aesthetics and “browed” (low, middle, and high) conceptions of Symphonic Jazz through “six degrees of separation” and the most acrobatic handout I’ve ever seen.  [Update: Phil Ford over at "Dial M" has posted a copy of said handout.]  Stephen Thursby, who took his masters (an odd phrase, that one) at the University of Washington the same year as I, gave a source-rich presentation on stage designer and Secession artist Alfred Roller, whose sketches for a 1903 production of Tristan und Isolde contain intriguing musical notation.

Saturday night was, of course, the epic “Joint Alumni Reception and Gala AMS 75th Birthday Party.”  Given the economic struggles of many academic programs as of late, a group party certainly presented a financially viable alternative to the traditional individual receptions.  However, I found it next to impossible to find anyone.  With the usual format, you knew you could generally find people at the party of their current program or alma mater.  No such luck in a ballroom filled with 1000+.  Apologies to many of the people I agreed to “meet up with at the party.”  If anyone still needs a drink coupon, let me know.

Sunday

The highlight of Sunday was finally getting out of the hotel and seeing some of Philly.  Further apologies to the owners of those papers that I should have attended, but didn’t.  Thanks to a local friend, I got out to a great brunch and enjoyed the warm weather and fresh air of Rittenhouse Square.  This same friend also happens to work for the Philadelphia Orchestra, so I got a personal tour of the dazzling Kimmell Center for the Performing Arts.  Then it was off to the train station to catch Amtrak back to Boston.

All-in-all the meeting was a great success.  Thank you to Bob Judd and the countless organizers (from program committee to tote bag stuffers) for all your work!

I’d say “see you next year in Indianapolis,” but the opportunity to stay connected in between conferences is one of the larger goals of this blog.  Please let Drew and I know if you’d like to submit a post.  We’re always happy to have outside contributions!

* Biggest typo of the conference award:  The Tote Bags

** Best audio of the conference award:  Frankie Laine’s “Cry of the Wild Goose”

A quick run-down of yesterday’s events before running out the door to the first session:

The day began with a very pleasant train ride from Boston to Philly–kind of strange to pass through the center of Manhattan without even seeing it.  A quick cab ride to the conference hotel and we’re off.

I always find that Thursday afternoon at AMS is a  nice “calm before the storm.”  So, I took the opportunity to sit in the lobby, catch up with old friends and colleagues, and book up my lunches and dinners for the remainder of the weekend.

As a result, I only made it to two papers: Dave Paul and John Z. McKay.  Both were well delvired and received presentations (more on particular aspects of individual papers in a later post).

The best part of the day was definately the Amusicology reception.  Thanks to all who came by!  It was really great to see everyone, especially the bloggers: 2′23″, Zeitschichten,  ThoughtLights, and one new one whose name escapes me in the pre-coffee phase of my day…I’ll add it when I remember it!  We’ll do it again next year for sure.

See you round the conference!

As I sit in the country’s first LEED-certified Airport terminal, (with free WiFi by our benevolent sponsor, Google), I though I would give a quick rundown of some events that come highly recommended at the Philadelphia Conference:

1. The Amusicology Party! (in case you haven’t heard already)

2. The McClary/Del Tredici Interview Friday Night, part of the LGBTQ Study Group. If you really like it, I think that J & J Lubrano is brokering the sale of Del Tredici’s manuscripts, for the truly enterprising collector.

3.  Sundry Harvard grad students presenting papers: Evan MacCarthy, Ali Monchick, John McKay. Sorry if I’m forgetting anyone.

4. Seda’s Concert! See previous post.

5. Finally, Phil Gentry has an excellent post that gives a not-for-tourists flyover of logistics at the conference.

Safe Travels! Your faithful correspondents will be back once they are on the ground in the city of brotherly love.

This from our friend and colleague Seda Roder:

I am writing to share an mp3 with you
that I just recorded today. It contains a short piece that I am going to
perform in my upcoming concert at the Annual Meeting of the American
Musicological Society in Philadelphia this weekend. (More about this concert
which features music from the time of Alban Berg can be found on my website
at http://www.sedaroeder.com/ams/ )

Please download the mp3 here:
http://www.sedaroeder.com/music-files/SedaRoederWellesz.mp3

The composition is by Egon Wellesz and is the first of his Three Pieces for
Piano, op. 9.

I just received the following CFP from Program Committee Co-Chairs, William Cheng and Hannah Lewis.  Looks like a great conference, especially the keynote speaker!

The Harvard Graduate Music Forum is pleased to announce that its Seventh Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference on the theme of Song and Dance will take place at Harvard University on *Saturday, February 27, 2010*.  We invite graduate students across all disciplines to submit proposals and to interpret this theme broadly and creatively. Historical, theoretical, analytical, ethnographical, and other critical approaches that deal with any aspect of song and/or dance are welcome.

Possible topics include:

-          Voices and bodies
-          Sound and movement
-          Sense, essence, and presence
-          Lyric flight
-          Staging sex and desire
-          Dance and disability
-          Performing gender and sexuality
-          Gesture and rhythm
-          Ritual
-          Transmission and choreography
-          Songs without words
-          Ventriloquism
-          Opera, musical theater, radio, television, film, video games, and new media

*Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by Friday, January 8, 2010 (5:00PM EST) to gmfconference [at] gmail.com.*  Since proposals will be reviewed name-blind, please ensure that your abstract does not contain your name or academic affiliation.  Attach your abstract as a word document and include your name and contact information in the body of your email. *Speakers will be notified by January 20, 2009.*

We are honored to announce that the keynote lecture will be delivered by *Dr. Tomie Hahn*, Associate Professor of Performance Ethnology in the Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  Dr. Hahn received her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University, her M.A. in urban ethnomusicology from New York University, and her B.S. in performance and art history from Indiana University (Bloomington campus).  She holds the professional stage name Samie Tachibana and is a teacher and performer of shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and nihon buyo (Japanese traditional dance).  Her ethnography Sensational Knowledge-Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance (Wesleyan University Press) was the 2008 recipient of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Alan P. Merriam Prize, which recognizes the most distinguished published English-language monograph in the field of ethnomusicology.  For more information about Dr. Hahn, visit http://www.arts.rpi.edu/tomie/.

Join our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=174069169150&ref=mf

We look forward to reading your submissions!

Last Friday, Osso (just one word, not “Osso String Quartet,” as you might think) came to Tufts to give a one day residency. They offered a Q & A in the afternoon, followed by a multimedia evening. As I attended the various events over the course of the day, I felt keenly aware of the phenomenon the issues of instrumentation, genre, and musical marketplaces as I watched the entire event.

Osso describes itself as “a string quartet with a modernist pulse,” and is touring behind a track-by-track arrangement of Sufjan Stevens’s 2001 electronic album Enjoy Your Rabbitt, which has been titled Run Rabbitt Run. In this respect they are not unlike the Vitamin String Quartet, a Los-Angeles based collective of string players who have performed arrangements of a wide variety of rock and popular artists, including Radiohead.  Perhaps the most well known genre-bending string quartet is Bond, who have sold more than three million albums since they started touring in 2003. Yet Osso seems to have their own aesthetic project that defies easy comparison to either of these other groups.

Osso moves in the institutional orbit of Asthmatic Kitty Records, an organization that is perhaps more properly understood as an artists’ collective (or, to borrow a phrase from John Flansburgh, a “Syndicate of Sound”), than a record label. Osso has played with My Brightest Diamond and other artists on the label that is headed by Sufjan Stevens, and the fluid dynamic of their group – the violinists who played last week only joined Osso this October – suggests a more flexible approach to music making and ensemble identity than the personality-driven members of Bond. Some of their decisions suggest an effort to cast off conventions of classical musicians, and Bond does: they perform standing up in brightly colored dresses, the cellist Maria Bella Jeffers talks informally between most pieces, and their promotional photography by Mayumi Ando seems more like the stuff of album art for an indie-band. At the same time they avoid the hyper-sexualized personae of Bond, and have noted that as women performers they have been pigeonholed before: the quartet rolled their eyes during the colloquium as they related the story of an audience member who exclaimed with surprise that women could achieve such an “aggressive” sound.

Perhaps the most interesting thing in my mind about Osso’s project is the way that they are bringing a new spin on the age-old classical-popular divide. Attempts are legion these days: the pianists Lang Lang and Herbie Hancock have collaborated on a joint performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and even contemporary critics (who, I dare say, ought to know better) have obliged them by breathlessly describing their work as “thumbing their noses” at “musical purists” – even though that has been one of the tropes of Gershwin’s piece since it was premiered more than 80 years ago. (As an aside, one might also note the faintly racist overtones that cling to LL’s and HH’s collaboration – the critic for the Chicago Tribune suggested that “The distinctly American cadences” of Rhapsody in Blue “sometimes eluded Lang.” I digress.)   Even Michael Atkinson, the primary arranger for Osso’s renditions of Stevens’s  music, subtitled his account of the project “How I Stopped Being a Musical Snob,” suggesting that through the process of working with Stevens he overcame his deep-seated bias towards popular music through a transformative encounter with Stevens’s sound.

All this would be well and good if Stevens were squarely situated in the sphere of commercial, popular music. But he isn’t, and his career is in no small part buoyed by the exclusivity of his fan base. For many, listening to Sufjan Stevens is a mark of connoisseurship, an establishment of musical taste and elevation of one’s own musical experience above “mere” popular music. Stevens himself helps to fuel the myth of the eccentric artist, for example in his introduction to The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007, where he romanticizes his experience at a Waldorf School and – perhaps I’m missing something – suggests that the main use of reading in America is to be a good member of a capitalist society. Another example was his 35-minute film BQE, which was also screened as part of the evening’s program. In this film, throbbing electronic music and lush orchestral arrangements undergird a triptych of increasingly frenetic video footage of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, interspersed with sensual images of three hula hoop artists, gyrating madly in some sort of homage to the road itself. It isn’t clear what one is supposed to think about the film, except as a celebration of the road and urban life – which seems strange since another road in New York, the Cross Bronx Expressway, has been blamed for permanently blighting certain neighborhoods; in Boston one need not rehearse the urban impact that the Big Dig and, by where I live, the turnpike have had on living near a major highway.

What is special about Osso, then, is that there seems what might be called a “lateral” flow of prestige at work here. There isn’t the sense that Sufjan Stevens’s music is somehow made more esoteric by being arranged for string quartet – if anything it is distilled down to a clearer expression by the arrangements. So easy arguments about classical music “stealing” from – or at least, legitimating – a vernacular tradition don’t quite apply here. Nor is there the real sense that Osso is some sort of “gateway ensemble” into classical music, where a listener might attend their concert and subsequently become consumed with a desire to listen to Haydn and Mozart quartets.  That’s of course possible, but the relatively equal footing of Stevens and Osso in terms of any kind of high-low spectrum (if such spectra are even meaningful anymore) forestalls rehearsing the existing ways of conceptualizing the dynamics between popular and concert worlds. In this sense, I’d posit that Osso is reflecting one current face of pop-classical interchange.

Prompted by Rebecca’s recent call for musicologists to put on the hat of a critic and review “neglected” concerts, I offer the following:

A blustery westward wind swept leaves and listeners into Harvard University’s Memorial Church last Tuesday night.  As the small crowed of approximately 60 evenly distributed itself amongst the pews, several quarried aloud: “Where will the sound be the best?” This is a normal concern at general-admission concerts, but tonight the answer to this particular question is actually the reason for the recital itself.  The tricky acoustics of Memorial’s church has finally forced, some forty year’s after the installation of the Fisk Op. 46 Organ, its removal from the space at the end of the 2009-2010 academic year. This concert was the second in a series of six recitals being offered as a “celebration” of the organ and those who have been its central performers.  A full schedule can be found here.

Charles Fisk (Harvard class of 1945) constructed the mammoth four-manual, mechanical action instrument for his alma mater in 1967.  He later called it “by far the most sensitive, responsive, high-strung organ we have ever built.”* Consisting of forty-nine stops and some 4,500 individual pipes, Fisk wrote that it was designed to make the best of “an acoustically merciless building…[but] the organ sometimes behaves like a caged animal.” The Op. 46 organ, with its very German disposition and 16-foot Prestant stop (the pipes you see on the outside of the instrument’s case), is capable of creating an enormous amount of sound. However, as an article in the Harvard Gazette informs us, the acoustic troubles result from empty spaces located in the walls on either side of the organ’s pipes that absorb much of the sound produced by the organ. (These grate-covered cavities formerly enclosed the ranks of the church’s original 1932 Aeolian-Skinner.) Furthermore, there is a wooden wall that separates the front chapel from the main portion of the church.  The resultant sound it too soft to project into the church for larger services, but too loud for worship within the front chapel in which it resides.

This particular concert featured Lenora McCroskey, former Assistant University Organist and Choirmaster  (1971-1978).  Dr. McCroskey, who came to Harvard initially in 1966 to earn a master’s in musicology, recently retired from her professorial post at the University of North Texas in Denton.  She has taught organ, harpsichord, Early Music Studies, and Baroque performance practice there since 1982.  Her honors and performances are as numerous as one might expect from a musician at this stage in her career.  As she was introduced, it was announced that this would be her final solo recital performance; a fitting return to a musician who was on Harvard’s campus when the Fisk organ was initially installed.

I’m not a frequent organ recital attendee, nor am I an organ scholar (though I’ve taken a class on its history and composed a piece for my undergraduate baccalaureate service).  Therefore, my observations about McCroskey’s performance are concerned more with the overall sound, rather than with interpretation and technique.  Five selections by J.S Bach were on the program: Concerto in A Minor (BWV 593), O Lamm Gottes unschuldig (BWV 656), Fantasia and Fugue in C Minor (BWV 537), Pastorella in F Major (BWV 590), and a Partita on the chorale melody, Sei gegrusset, Jesu gutig (BWV 768).

Seated in the middle of the church, the acoustic problems of Memorial Church became apparent by the second selection.  Each of three stanzas of this Lutheran chorale for the Agnus Dei are presented in a different register: the soprano, alto, and bass respectively.   It was too soft at first and by the third stanza, with the addition of the bass, too muddy to appreciate the intricate scalar work of the inner voices. I found myself wishing that I could have sat in the front chapel, where the organ itself is located.

Nonetheless, McCroskey final selection–an eleven-variation setting of another chorale melody–revealed the wide range of colors offered by the disposition of the Fisk organ.  Visible via a projected feed set up on the alter, the audience could see both performer and console, including the dramatic shifts in stops combinations between each section.  As McCroskey released the final chord, she looked to organ casing above her and blew a farewell kiss to the instrument.  It was a fitting gesture from a woman at the end of her solo career to an instrument that served to launch it.

*Jacket notes for Christa Rakich’s Clavierubung Part III as reproduced in The Fisk Op. 46 Celebration Series program.

Guy Livingston will be coming to Tufts tomorrow (Tuesday, November 3), to give a talk about “Music and Time,” based on his fascinating project One Minute More, a DVD of sixty films based on sixty pieces by sixty composers, none longer than 60 seconds. I saw him give a preview of what he’ll be doing at a house concert yesterday, and you won’t be disappointed.

WHERE: Distler Performance Hall, Granoff Center, Tufts University Medford Campus

WHEN: 3pm-4:15pm, Tuesday November 3, 2009.

WHY: Because it will be awesome.

Drew and Ryan are happy to announce that they will be holding the first ever Amusicology No-Host Reception at the Ritz-Carlton from 8pm-10pm on Thursday, November 12, as a kick-off to the 75th American Musicological Society annual meeting in Philadelphia. Bloggers, aspiring bloggers, readers, aspiring readers, and anyone else who wants to bathe in the musicological glow should stop by.

Google Map directions from the conference hotel:

View Larger Map

ps. Lest you think that Drew & Ryan have suddenly come into some bailout money, no-host means that you pay for your own drinks. But we are looking in to having some souvenirs…

UPDATE: Ryan & Drew have ordered a limited number of fabulous amusicology buttons! The first 30 or so guests will get their very own piece of the blogosphere. Don’t be late.

It seems that the self-referential style and the learned style, at least in certain circumstances, go hand in hand. The example I am thinking of is the final fugue from Bach’s Kunst der Fuge (where Bach uses the letters of his own name – B-A-C-H (i.e, B-Flat) as the third subject), but I suppose, if you stretch a little, the “Es Muss Sein!” of Beethoven’s last string quartet, Op. 135.

In the process of writing my last blog post, though, I realized that They Might Be Giants actually have a self-referential style of their own, even if it does not have the lofty status of Bach and Beethoven in the minds of some. So, as a continuation of my previous post, I thought I would continue with looking at how self-reference works in their music – and how much it does or doesn’t correlate with any kind of “learned” elements in their music.

Their very first song on the very first album, “Everything Right is Wrong Again,” is as good as any place to start. The final chorus, “And now this song is over now” happens against the background of a hyper-kinetic harpsichord buried deep in the mix, replete with the trills and arpeggiations that make me imagine that they have cribbed it from some 18^th-century keyboard suite. This keyboard absent in the first chorus, but the addition of it seems to add a conclusive flourish to the song. The third song on the album, “Number Three,” seems to continue this trend, as they sing (somewhat ungrammatically) “There’s only two songs in me, and I just wrote the third.” On its own, I suppose, there is nothing terrible learned about this song, but it is worth noting that on a B-side (available on Then: The Earlier Years) there is a version of this song recorded in Greek. As far as I know, this is the only song I know by TMBG that is entirely recorded in a foreign language (the “Savoir-Faire” song from John Henry doesn’t count).

But, I would suggest, it goes far beyond just the first album of TMBG. Consider, for example, the song “Older” from their album Mink Car. I find this song always intensely depressing. But, it is also an excellent example of their self-referential style. In fact, the entire body of lyrics is references the fact that music, as an art form, takes place over a period of time: “You’re older than you’ve ever been,” the song begins, “and now you’re even older” it continues. Musically, the piece uses exceptionally reedy instruments at the beginning: it sounds like some sort of highly processed oboe and a contrabassoon, playing in a canon before the beginning of the first verse.

Perhaps the most obvious example of the self-referential style in their music, though, is the song “I Palindrome I” from Apollo 18. Palindromes, at some level, are always superficial, since it is not required that they make sense (although “Man O Man,” the backup lyric throughout the chorus of this song, shows that this is not necessarily the case). What is remarkably brilliant about the main lyric here, though is that “I Palindrome I,” as a phrase, is actually not a palindrome; it subverts the premise of the song in a very clever way. Similarly, the bridge, which constitutes an extended palindrome – “Son I am able she said though you scare me watch me scare you though she said able am I son” (adding the quotation marks and punctuation is an exercise for the reader) – is actually accompanied by a two octave ascending scale on the guitar and octave-doubled pizzicato strings; even though the harmony would work just as well if the scale ascended and then descended. The intersection then, of the most extended textual palindrome (apologies to purists who only allow palindromes to be at the letter-by-letter level, rather than word-by-word), with a music figure that is noteworthy for failing to reach its palindromic potential, is a remarkable feat.

There are perhaps other examples that could be fleshed out: “How can I sing like a girl” from Factory Showroom jumps to mind. So what does all this mean for fans of TMBG? Not much in terms of a pure appreciation of their music. But it does suggest an affinity for coupling musical play with lyrical play, which, taken together, seems like it is a way of reaching for a “learned” style of popular music. No wonder they have been pigeonholed as nerd rock.