AMS-NE: New England Chapter of the AMS

AMS-NE Fall Chapter Meeting Saturday, October 2, 2010 Amherst College Yu Jueng Dahn, "'Virgin Soil' for Bach's Music: The American Reception of Robert Franz"  In 1867 John Sullivan Dwight asserted in Dwight’s Journal of Music that Robert Franz and J. S. Bach “have grown to be almost inseparable.” Criticized in Germany for his editorial emendations to Bach’s vocal works, which were considered historically inaccurate, Franz curiously found many supporters in the United States as early as 1855. This eventually led to benefit concerts in Boston in 1867 and 1872, to assist Franz financially because of his deafness. Dwight praised Franz’s editions of Bach’s vocal works as being “almost Bach-like in its spirit” and so true to the composer’s style that they could be considered “Bach’s having done it himself.” This paper traces Franz’s positive American reception as an editor and composer, examines his opinion of the United States as “virgin soil” for promoting qu...

AMS-NE Spring Chapter Meeting Saturday, April 17, 2010 University of New Hampshire Feng-Shu Lee, "Contextualizing the “Götter Ende”: The Conclusion of the Ring in Relation to the Creation of the Cycle (1848-1852)" In the first four years of the Ring’s 26-year evolution, Wagner expanded the work from one single music drama to a tetralogy. During this process, he also revised its conclusion, gradually turning the happy ending in Siegfrieds Tod into a denouement, in which the gods’ downfall takes place. A new look at Wagner’s prose and verse drafts shows that the cyclic expansion and the creation of a new ending are closely interrelated and occupy a significant role in the gestation of the tetralogy. I will focus on three examples to illustrate this interrelation: the Norns’ scene, the Waltraute scene, and Siegfried’s meeting with the Rhine maidens. In the original version of these scenes, the idea of the "Götter Ende" was missing: the dramaturgical function of t...

AMS-NE Winter Chapter Meeting Saturday, February 6, 2010 Brandeis University Presenters and Abstracts (Archived) Jeremy Leong, "The Influence of Kant in Chinese Music Education under the Pre-Communist Regime" Is there a connection between German music scholarship and Chinese music education? On first glance, it may seem rather implausible. Yet, if one takes a closer look at the contribution of Cai Yuanpei, such an association may not sound so inconceivable after all. Despite his relative obscurity to the Anglophone world, Cai Yuanpei was among the most prominent figures during the Republican era (1911-49) in China.  In addition to being an outstanding educator, he also held key governmental and administrative positions as Minister of Education, Chancellor of Beijing University, and founding member of the music department at Beijing University and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. His achievements were not confined to the boundary of China, as his influence was also...