And if you want one, find Ryan or Drew at #musicon12. 

Or, better yet: Come to the 4th annual Amusicology No-Host reception.  All are welcome!  The gathering takes place from 7-9pm on Friday, November 2 at the Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel, just a three blocks up the road from the conference hotels. 

We hope that this year’s buttons make up for the fact that we can’t pay for your drinks!

 1. Will I have enough handouts?

I won’t try to bury the self-promotion down at the bottom of the post (because what are blogs for, anyway?) Ryan and I are both reading (Ryan on Grofé; me on Adès)! We hope you’ll come to our respective papers. As the listserv and guidelines for presenters have already indicated, there is always teeth-gnashing for whether enough copies of the handout will be made.

One way to help make sure everyone has a handout is to include a QR Code on your first powerpoint slide. It’s easy:

-          Finish your handout and get it all nice and spiffy, then make a PDF of it. SMT will post a copy of your handout on their web site before the conference. So will AMS. I couldn’t find a link on the SEM site but perhaps someone will clue me in.

-          Once your handout is posted, go to http://www.qrstuff.com to generate a QR code (one of those wacky square barcode things) which points to the link on the SMT/AMS web site. If you want to be extra fancy you can use http://bit.ly to see how many people are downloading your handout.

-          Insert the QR code just like a picture into your powerpoint. Make it big so people can see it from the back of the hall.

-          This way, conference attendees who don’t get the handout can snap a picture of the QR code and follow along on their phones/iPads/tablets, etc. If you want to be able to read a QR code, you have to download an app (at least for the iPhone), there is one that is free which I have used and was pretty good.

-          That’s it. No more being sad about not getting the handout. It’s practically mainstream since there are even QR codes for the abstracts and guidebook for the conference (see p. ii of the abstracts booklet).

2. Amusicology No-Host Reception

Our dear readers probably already know this, but the Amusicology no-host reception (that means: you pay for your drinks) will take place from 7-9pm on Friday November 2 at the Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel). Please join us! It happens before a lot of the parties later in the evening, and, if previous years are an indication, can be a lot of fun. Who knows, there might even be buttons ….

3. Stuff to do

Luckily, we are having a conference in a city that doesn’t sleep. AMS has put together a restaurant guide and a list of special events. You might also keep an eye on SEM’s special events page. The New Orleans Art Museum is open until 9pm on Fridays and 5pm other days, if you get to town early it is free on Wednesdays, and is conveniently located in the New Orleans City Park. You’ll want to brush up on the mass transit situation to get around if you aren’t renting a car or using taxis.

4. Oh yeah: Papers!

Perhaps you’ve already perused the program and the abstracts. There’s something for everyone; I’m looking forward to seeing some of my friends read, and I’m particularly excited about the Ives Fourth Symphony panel Thursday evening, and the Beatles and Film/TV panels on Saturday.  Since I’m in the process of adding a research focus in contemporary British music I’m also planning on ducking into the NABMSA reception for the first time.

That’s it. Don’t be a stranger at the conference!

As I always tell my students, live theater–especially the genre of the musical–relies on a certain suspension of disbelief.  I’m trying to hold the same for the forthcoming Hollywood adaptation of Les Misérables.

As thoroughly promoted in the “extended first look” of the film–out yesterday on YouTube–the “liveness” of the scenes sets this Broadway musical film adaptation apart from all of those that came before.  Apparently, all actors and actresses sang the score live while taping each scene.  In this trailer we see how this has been accomplished: An offstage piano accompanist provides a temp-track score, broadcast to a wireless inner-ear monitor that keeps the vocalists on pitch.  In the end, as musical director Stephen Brooker informs us, the piano will be magically “replaced by a seventy piece orchestra.”

It was a decade ago that the silver-screen adaptation of Chicago made waves when movie stars such as Renée Zellweger and Richard sang–gasp!–their own songs.  Both before and after, professional singers have given voice to characters in movie musicals.  Marni Nixon sang for Natalie Wood as Maria in West Side Story (1961); Elaine Tomkinson for Elizabeth Taylor as Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music (1977); David Hidalgo for Lou Diamond Phillips as Richie Valens as in La Bamba (1987); even Drew Seeley sang for Zac Efron as Troy Bolton in the first High School Musical (2006).

Like Chicago, the upcoming film version of Les Misérables allows the faces we see on screen to match the voices that emerge from them.  The twist on convention this go around is the fact that the vocals we hear are not pre-recorded.  A film-musical cast typically records studio versions of all the songs (the audio) at a point prior to filming the scenes (the visual).  According to Eddie Redmayne (who plays Marius in the film), such a process forces the cast to make acting choices before ever stepping foot onto the set.  Allowing the actors to sing “live” in the moment frees them from such restrictions.  In theory, we should end up with an film-musical adaptation more natural and expressive than any ever seen or heard before.

This is where the suspension of disbelief comes in.  One artificiality of the film making process may be obscured, but others must step up to fill the void.  It is a “tail wagging the dog” situation.  Yes, the singers are “live” but now the orchestra must “lip-sync” along.

A few other questions arise:

1. What exactly is the role of the music director here?  If he isn’t also the accompanist–who has some agency in the vocal performance–how much control does he have over the actor’s choices?

2.  If there are multiple takes of a given scene, who chooses the final assemblage?  The actor?  The director?  The film editor?  Or, does this fall to the music director?  If multiple takes are sewn together what does this mean for the “liveness” of the staging?

3. This approach prizes the individuality of the performer, allowing them to play with tempo, dynamics, the spoken/sung delivery of recicative, etc.  Several of the most dramatic scenes in Les Miserables are ensemble pieces–including, as we see in this clip, a multi-story barricade in the middle of a square.  No way the audio from that can be live.  How will these be handled?

4. How much overdubbing of these “live” performances will need to take place in post-production?

Many more questions than answers at this point, obviously.

But, as you may be able to tell, I’m excited to see the film (already making plans to take a group of students when it opens several months from now).

I’m also excited to see what others think!  Please comment below…

1. More Music(ology), less Meta-Music(ology). Don’t worry, we’ll still have our infamous job wiki roundup every year. But we are converting our format to place a renewed emphasis on covering actual music, events, and publications, rather than ruminating about the field as such.

2. More Contributors. Actually, this depends on you, dear reader. We are looking for writers! Anyone who has something (a)musicological to say, we will consider. You know how to get a hold of either of us. Even if you don’t have anything to say, but want to write, email us. We’ve got loads of ideas but not enough time to write them all up.

3. A Less Buttoned-up Style. We founded amusicology in 2007 on the grounds that musicologists needed an online forum to communicate which had some of the qualities of a conference without the pesky travel & hotel to figure out. Our initial tag line, long since defunct (but not forgotten) was “publishable scholarship on the run.” As time has gone on, we’ve found ourselves painted into a corner: the ideas which we are most passionate about end up in our (real) published scholarship, leaving little time to cogitate over a blog post. As a result, we are giving ourselves permission to cultivate a more casual tone on the blog, with fewer of the imperatives of academic writing in play. We’ll see how we do.

Upcoming Articles:

• AMS 2012 Preview (spoiler alert: Amusicology No-Host Party is from 7-9pm on Friday November 2 at the Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel).
• Thomas Adès at the Met
• Adès in conversation with Tom Service (can you guess who is writing a book on a TA?)
• (Semi) Live Coverage of AMS (also via our twitter feed)
• … and more to come!

“Tomorrow night I’m hearing Marvin Hamlisch conduct a bunch of Gershwin stuff with the National Symphony, you jealous??” [Quoted with permission]

There is a lot to be envious of in that sentence, especially given that I was deep in the midst of a month home renovations.  But what piqued my jealousy was the fact that they were going to get to experience Marvin Hamlisch in action.  With Hamlisch’s unexpected passing yesterday, I’m glad that this student had the opportunity.

Back in graduate school, fellow Amusicologist Drew and I taught for a course on the American Musical devised up by our illustrious advisor, Carol Oja.  Using the generous resources at our disposal (and the cachet that accompanies an invitation to speak at Harvard) an in-class interview with Hamlisch took place in the middle of the semester.  Personally, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect out of his visit.  Here was one of the most decorated popular composers of the late 20th century.  The man is an EGOT for goodness sakes: Emmy, Golden Globe, Oscar, Tony.  Plus a Pulitzer.  Regardless of how you feel about such awards with respect to artistry and industry, one must doff thine hat.  One might also expect a disengaged, self-important person.  This was not the case.  He was entertaining and witty, fully captivating–a complete ham.

Ryan, Drew, Marvin, and Carol (2008)

By popular vote, the class requested that he perform his song from A Chorus Line: “Dance: 10, Looks: 3.”  Sitting in the front row of Paine Hall watching him pound away at our concert grand, bellowing out Edward Kleban’s lyrics of the song was one of the more notable moments in my graduate school career:

Tits and ass.
Bought myself a fancy pair.
Tightened up the derriere.
Did the nose with it.
All that goes with it.

Tits and ass!
Had the bingo-bongos done.
Suddenly I’m getting nash’nal tours!
Tits and ass won’t get you jobs
Unless they’re yours.

A song about implants may not not be all that titillating today, but in the context of Broadway 1974 it was ahead of its time.  A Chorus Line is basically about people—about life stories and identity, individuals and community.  Characters are constructed through vignettes that are part monologue, part song.  Here is a foot-taping ditty by an outspoken female character that unabashedly mixes sex and work, placing second-wave feminism front and center.  The message at hand–that talent isn’t worth a damn if you don’t look the part–is smoothed over, perhaps even masked a bit by the vaudevillian styling that unfolds in the quasi-AABC form of Hamlisch’s song.  But that is one reason that his music for A Chorus Line became as popular as it did.  Even when it wears its heart out on its sleeve, as in “What I Did For Love” there is so much more beneath the surface.

What I like best about Hamlisch’s music is the fact that he was a pianist/composer.  That is, like Gershwin, his songs fit very neatly under the hands.  The chord progressions make greater sense when played and consider in terms of voice leading, than when analyzed through traditional means.

Take the opening of “One” for example.  The changes over the first stanza are as follows:

• WYSIWYG. I don’t try to verify the information on the wiki.
• These numbers are based on named accepted positions only – rumored acceptances or “accepted but name unknown” are not counted.
• Breakdown by sub-discipline is based on the actual announcement, not who a school ended up hiring.
• Lateral moves account for some of the positions which took place with less recent PhDs.
• “ABD” for our purposes means anyone receiving their degree in 2012 (i.e., probably was offered a position prior to receiving the degree).

 By the numbers:

As of 5/29/2012, there were 58 named hires, which cleaved out along the following categories:

TT, all ranks, Ethnomusicology: 13

TT, all ranks, Historical Musicology: 29

TT, all ranks, Other: (i.e., multiple disciplines, digital music, etc.): 3

Postdoctoral Fellow, Ethnomusicology: 1

Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical Musicology: 0

Postdoc, Other (or open): 4

VAP, Ethno: 3

VAP, Historical Musicology: 2

Unknown: 3

Total number of positions versus positions with named acceptances:

Placements were made from 37 Schools:

1 Hire (17 schools): CUNY; Florida State; KCL; Michigan; Ohio State; Oregon; Oxford; Pittsburgh; Rutgers; UBC; UC Riverside; UCLA; UCSB; UT Austin; Western Ontario; Wesleyan; Yale

2 Hires (10): UC Berkeley; Brown; Chicago; Cornell; Indiana; Northwestern; Nottingham; Penn; Princeton; Stanford

3 Hires (4): Columbia;  Eastman; UCSD; UIUC

4 Hires (1): NYU

5 Hires (1): Harvard

Year on Year High Placements by Institutions:

Number of hires (TT, Postdoc, and VAP) based on year of PhD receipt:

ABD/2012 (16); 2011 (10); 2010 (13); 2009 (5); 2008 (4); 2007 (4); 2005 (2); 2004 (1); 2003 (1); 1999 (1); 1981 (1)

Tenure Track (TT) Hires based on year of PhD receipt:

ABD/2012 (10); 2011 (8); 2010 (10);  2009 (5); 2008 (3); 2007 (3); 2005 (2); 2004 (1); 2003 (1); 1999 (1); 1981 (1)

Postdoctoral (PD) Hires based on year of PhD receipt:

2012 (4); 2010 (1)

Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP) Hires based on year of PhD receipt:

2012 (2); 2011 (2); 2008 (1)

And, because I’m jealous of Ryan’s graph last year, here’s another one with this year’s data:

As before, the curve falls off sharply four years out, but the market for PhDs earned prior to 2009, at least as reported on the wiki, seemed a little bit firmer.

The Wiki’s Changing Audience

As it is not yet June, it seem likely that a number of VAP and one year positions will continue to be filled over the summer (a certain “Brigid” made this point in comments to our 2010 wrapup ). And certainly the fact that less than 60% of the positions announced this year have named hires at this point suggests that there are still several acts of drama to play out (also something to keep in mind if you are on the job market!).

One surprise is that the wiki tracked lateral moves this year, reaching all the way back to 1981. As far as I know, this is the deepest into the past the wiki has ever tracked, and suggests that its audience paying attention to and updating positions across ranks.

As with years past, there are of course a lot of unknowns in this analysis: the total pool of applicants (reportedly ranging from 100 to 200 for many jobs); the total pool of PhDs in historical and ethno looking for TT work in any given season; the total number of PhDs in historical and ethno actually being awarded every year. As in years past, I have not made an effort to track gender or diversity statistics for this analysis, and continue to believe that AMS and SEM would be able to develop much more authoritative numbers for the state of the market if there was the desire to do so.

As usual, tensions continued to run high this year’s wiki – there were accusations of deletion; bruised feelings by a variety of slights both perceived and real; large and small. But the incorporation of a “Dear Search Committees” and “Venting Page”  the Wikia (which hosts the Ethno/Historical wiki) provides some company for those dark nights of the soul.

So, is the job market getting better?

With six years of data, there seem to be a few overall trends which stick out. Of course, generalities have exceptions, but here’s my take:

-          In general, there are about 100 jobs a year, or which around 60-80% are ultimately filled.

-          Certain institutions do seem to place more graduates. Of course, some individuals are counted more than once – someone could have a postdoc in 2009 and a TT job in 2011. But it is noteworthy that UCLA and Columbia have been in the top three placements for four of the past six years. Harvard and Berkley trail just behind, landing among the top placement institutions for three of the past six.

-          At least as reported on the wiki, musicology TT positions tend to outnumber ethno positions by between 2-1 and 3-1 since 2010.

Despite its volatility for its participants, I think the argument can be made that the job market for ethnomusicology and historical musicology is actually rather flat over the course of the last six years. Of course, if the pool of applicants is growing larger and larger, that means it really is becoming more competitive…. But that’s a topic for another day.

Sorry I haven’t written for a while, things have been busy. I’d like to give a big high-five to Ryan for keeping the dream alive while I am hunkered down.

But this is exciting: Thomas Adès‘s new opera is going to be premiered in Salzburg sometime between 2013 and 2016! It is based on the film The Exterminating Angel which is totally awesome and continues his trend of far-out themes for his operas. For all of the times that Adès has been compared to Britten, if that is going to hold up I think it will depend on how Adès ‘s career as an opera composer takes shape. But for now I hope everyone is as excited as I am.

I’m writing to disseminate my thoughts on being a first-time AMS conference attendee in the age of Twitter and academic hipsterism.

The San Francisco AMS meeting was indeed my first national conference. I’m incredibly grateful to my institution’s music department for awarding me a decent amount of funding to help offset the cost of flying across the country and staying in a swanky hotel. I more-or-less attended the conference alone; I didn’t know anyone who had less than ten years and 3 degrees on me. I had also never been to San Francisco. Going to AMS meant a lot of “firsts.”

(Here’s the part where I talk about the things I’m supposed to pretend didn’t happen:)

I was incredibly nervous leading up to the conference. In preparation, I packed my suitcase a full week early, wrote several versions of an “elevator pitch” describing my thesis, and frequented department websites in order to match faculty names, faces, and research projects. I even wrote out the entire BART schedule for Thursday afternoon, and made sure to have exactly $8.10 to make the trip to the Hyatt. I convinced myself that everything had to be perfect to survive the conference.

I quickly learned that papers are the glue that holds the meeting together, but more celebrated conference traditions include meeting new people, catching up with old friends, and drinking lots of coffee. Since I have no musicological “old friends,” I relied on a few individuals to help me meet new ones. The conference Buddy Program is an excellent resource; I was lucky to be matched with Amusicology’s own Ryan Raul Bañagale, who served as living proof that musicologists at my school aren’t the only human musicologists out there. (By the end of the conference, I realized that pretty much everyone is a real person, but more on that later.) If I can impart any wisdom upon future first-time conference attendees, I’d strongly encourage participation in the Buddy Program. I’m also going to name names and thank my advisor/mentor/professor/more-than-occasional therapist Phil Gentry and my former professor Charles Carson for always being around when I wanted an introduction and for making sure I was surviving the conference. I could go on with more thanks to more people, but that’s not the point…

It turns out that AMS is exactly my scene. Pardon my gushing, but I found it incredibly refreshing to spend a weekend being around brilliant, kind people who share my otherwise fringe-interests. This may be old news to most of the community, but I found myself amazed by the scope of thought represented at the conference. I find it hard to believe Michael Jackson and C.P.E. Bach can be examined at the same conference, within a single discipline. Isn’t the diversity wonderful? I certainly think so.

I’ll admit that I was afraid of meeting all sorts of people who I had been hearing and reading about from the safety of my own anonymity. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the people I met were as interested in talking to me as I was in talking to them. It also shouldn’t have surprised me that I could actively participate in the conference through Twitter, which served as an equalizer. I’m only a “little undergrad,” but I comfortably held my own on Twitter. I tweeted, I replied, I re-tweeted, I got re-tweeted. Twitter made the conference feel cozy, and it was just another way I felt welcomed into the musicological community. It also made the hour-and-a-half business meeting Saturday night far more entertaining than it should have been for a somewhat clueless newbie like myself. The best part is that it didn’t feel rude; it actually enhanced the scholarly content of the conference. Go figure. In general, the musicology Tweeting/blogging world has really helped humanize a discipline that could otherwise seem incredibly daunting.

In his recent post in Amusicology, Ralph Locke mentions the “many, many papers by grad students.” I get the sense that this is something of a criticism, implying he would like to see more papers from more senior scholars. I also noticed the abundance of papers given by graduate students, but I saw it as an inspiration. If they can do it and do it well, I’ll be able to do it, too! Seeing so many student papers at the national conference makes the field seem welcoming to the scholastically green, and therefore open to new ideas. I’ll also say that there was no shortage of papers by senior scholars; I applaud the program committee for achieving what I see as a healthy balance. I’m admittedly clueless to the programming politics, but I’m impressed by the end result.

I’d like to wrap up by thanking musicologists across the country, in varied stages of their careers, for fostering a welcoming environment. I had a fabulous time at the San Francisco conference, and I’m looking forward to a lifetime of future conferences.

I wonder if his concerns are still the same now that he has attended this conference. What I saw/experienced was lots of papers–official ones during the daytime, and unofficial ones at night, organized by Study Groups and such. Many, many papers by grad students, I thought. But this is from the perspective of a senior scholar. (I’m 62 years old, so probably now qualify for that seemingly distinguished title by simple matter of chronological age….)

The question of how to run the Annual Meeting is always being debated. If anybody reading this blog (or writing for it) has concrete proposals, by all means make them to the Board or the Council (through your Council Representative).

The Board itself ponders these matters anew almost every year. There is a questionnaire (online) that all attendees of last week’s meeting received, asking us some questions in this regard, e.g., whether papers should be shortened to 20 minutes, thereby creating 2-hour sessions and hence more sessions.

I hate this. I find that a 20-minute time frame–which I’ve had to abide by at some conferences–does not allow us to let enough music–or basic contextual info–be heard, and so our findings just don’t make much impact on a listening audience that isn’t already closely attuned to the repertoire and “where it’s coming from.” I say this also as an audience member listening, not just as a presenter speaking. I need to be eased into a topic, and have some concrete music to react to. I didn’t know the particular Telemann overtures-suites that Stephen Zohn spoke on last week. I needed to hear enough to give me a sense, or else I would have had to take almost everything he said on faith.

But that’s just me. You may feel differently, in which case I hope you’ll continue to speak up!

As for anonymity, I thought that the Board made a very wise decision a few years ago in keeping the original 120 “blind” papers and then allowing the Program Committee to add another 24 once the names of the abstract-writers have been revealed. This allows for the possibility that one or another abstract may sound much more interesting and substantive once one knows that the person who wrote the abstract is the world-renowned author of book X on the subject (a basic fact that s/he is not permitted to make clear in the abstract itself).

Speaking of which, what does an abstract writer do in order to indicate that s/he is taking his/her own work further? Some of the abstracts published in the conference program refer to “my previous article in journal X”—but clearly this wording was not in the original submitted abstract. Some of us have taken to referring to ourselves in the third person. But this can create an unintentionally misleading effect, if musicologist Y creates an abstract lamenting the weaknesses in the 2008 article by Y, in order to establish the crucial importance of getting his or her paper on next year’s AMS meeting (in New Orleans).