AMS-NE: New England Chapter of the AMS

AMS-NE Chapter Meeting Saturday, September 28, 2013 University of Massachusetts Amherst Erinn Knyt, " New Instruments, New Sounds, and New Musical Laws:   Ferruccio Busoni, Edgard Varèse, and the “Music of the Future”" The disparity between Edgard Varèse’s early European compositions, described in Romantic or Impressionistic terms by those who heard them, and his experimental American compositions has contributed to the widespread assumption that Varèse reinvented himself after encountering the sights and sounds of New York. When composers are named as sources of influence, Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy are most frequently mentioned. Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky sometimes follow. While these composers undoubtedly influenced Varèse, especially with regard to his harmonic choices and use of episodic structures, they did not provide models for more characteristic features of his experimental compositional style: rhythmic simultaneity, expansion of the tonal...

Our hosts at U Mass Amherst recommend parking in Lot 62, which you can find in quadrant D-4 on this map: http://www.umass.edu/visitorsctr/downloads/map_2012.pdf Other campus maps and directions are available here: http://www.umass.edu/visitorsctr/campusmaps Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday!

AMS-NE Fall Chapter Meeting September 28, 2013 Bezanson Recital Hall, Fine Arts Center University of Massachusetts Amherst 9:45-10:15 Refreshments and Registration Morning Session        10:15    Welcome 10:20    New Instruments, New Sounds, and New Musical Laws: Ferruccio Busoni, Edgard Varèse, and the “Music of the Future”         Erinn Knyt (University of Massachusetts Amherst) 11:00    The English Voyage of Pietrobono         Evan MacCarthy (College of the Holy Cross) 11:40     A Late Blossom: Torquato Tasso’s Lyric Poems and Neapolitan Madrigal Culture         Emiliano Ricciardi (University of Massachusetts Amherst) 12:20-2:00    Lunch Break 2:00-2:30      Business Meeting Afternoon Session 2:30      Masse...

The Fall 2013 meeting of the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society will be held on Saturday, 28 September 2013 at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA. The Program Committee invites proposals of up to 300 words for papers and roundtable sessions. Abstracts should be submitted by Wednesday, 31 July 2013 via email to jsholes@bu.edu or by mail to Jacquelyn Sholes, AMS-NE Program Chair, Department of Musicology & Ethnomusicology, School of Music, College of Fine Arts, Boston University, 855 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215. Presenters must be members of the American Musicological Society. Those who are not currently dues-paying members of the New England Chapter will be asked to kindly remit the modest Chapter dues ($10).

**PLEASE NOTE: Due to the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013, this meeting was cancelled. Papers that were read at the following Fall Chapter meeting are marked below.*** The abstracts for the papers are included here, but the meeting did not take place. Melanie Lowe, "Topics of Consumer Identity in the 1780s: Pleyel’s op. 1 and Mozart’s op. 10 String Quartets" By considering the role of topics in the musical experience of late eighteenth-century amateur musical consumers, this paper addresses: 1) the role of burgeoning consumerism in the formation of taste and consumer identity; and 2) relationships between patterns of consumption and musical style. While there is frustratingly little documentation that reveals the listening experiences of amateur consumers, the music itself offers a rich source of information. As practitioners of a rhetorical art, eighteenth-century composers tailored their music for a specific audience. Given the commercial r...

 In light of Northeastern University's cancellation of two campus events scheduled for tomorrow, as well as the ongoing shelter-in-place order and T shutdown, we are cancelling tomorrow's chapter meeting of the AMS-NE. I would like to thank Hilary Poriss and Matthew McDonald at Northeastern for their help and assistance in planning this meeting. I also send my regrets to our presenters, but we hope to find some way to ameliorate this situation in the Fall. Please stay tuned. And lastly, many thanks to the Program Committee and Chairperson Jacquelyn Sholes for putting together a wonderful program. This measure may be unnecessary, but I would rather play it safe, given the open-ended nature of the situation at present. Thank you all, and I look forward to seeing you at U Mass Amherst on September 28th, when hopefully we are back to more peaceful times here in Boston. Stay safe, Rebecca Marchand AMS-NE President

Dear Members and Friends, Given the fluid and dynamic situation with the current manhunt in Boston, the organizers of tomorrow's AMS-NE chapter meeting at Northeastern have decided to wait to see how the situation unfolds before cancelling the meeting. We will make a decision at 5pm EST and will let you know. We sincerely hope that those who are presenting papers will get the chance to do so, but we also want to make sure that people feel safe both at the meeting and in transit. Thank you for your patience.  Please watch this blog for updates.  I will also send a message out via the Google Groups list and the Facebook group. I hope you are all safe, and wish you the very best during this difficult time. All best, Rebecca Marchand AMS-NE President rmarchand at bostonconservatory dot edu

Parking/Maps/Directions Directions to Northeastern can be found at: http://www.northeastern.edu/campusmap/directions.html Parking and Transportation information from our hosts:  Guests can park in the Gainsborough Garage or the Renaissance Park Garage. The Renaissance Park garage is the closest to Ryder Hall--it is located at 835 Columbus Avenue. From the garage, you have to walk through Ruggles station to the other side of the tracks, and once you exit Ruggles station, Ryder Hall is the first building to the left. The garages are not cheap--($18-$24 for the day). If people want to give street parking a shot, they'll have better luck looking on the side streets off of Columbus." If you prefer to take public transportation, Northeastern is easily accessible via the Orange Line (Ruggles Sta.) or the Green Line (Northeastern Sta.). Printable Campus Map: http://www.northeastern.edu/campusmap/printable/campusmap.pdf Gainsborough Garage- #45 Renaissance P...

AMS-NE Spring Chapter Meeting Saturday, April 20, 2013 217 Ryder Hall Northeastern University 9:45-10:15 Refreshments and Registration Morning Session 10:15 Welcome 10:20 Topics of Consumer Identity in the 1780s: Pleyel’s op. 1 and Mozart’s op. 10 String Quartets                  Melanie Lowe (Vanderbilt University) 11:00 “Sing with Me a Sweet and New Song”: Chromatic Tournament in Lasso’s “Opus One”                  Lester Zhuqing Hu (Amherst College) 11:40 Regret in Gombert’s Mass for the Coronation of Charles V                  Eric Rice (University of Connecticut) 12:20-2:20 Lunch Break 2:20-2:50 Business Meeting (Elections) Afternoon Session 2:50 “Always is Always Forever”: The Musical Trajectory of the Process Church of th...

AMS-NE Chapter Meeting Saturday, February 2, 2013 Tufts University Louis Epstein, "Triple Threat: Ida Rubinstein as Patron, Impresario, and Director" Between 1928 and 1934, Ida Rubinstein and her Ballets Rubinstein presented four ambitious seasons of original works in Paris, filling a gap left by the demise of the Ballets Russes and defying the economic downturn that hobbled other cultural institutions. Like the Ballets Russes, whose opulet, exoticist performances of Cléopâtre and Schéhérezade in 1909 and 1910 had made Rubinstein a household name, the Ballets Rubinstein featured mainly foreign performers and visual artists in big budget spectacles that married dance, mime, music, and declamation. Rubinstein solicited musical scores almost exclusively from contemporary French composers. Rubinstein – who funded, managed, and directed her productions – offered exceptionally lucrative commissions to Ravel, Stravinsky, Auric, Milhaud, Honegger, Sauguet, and Ibert...

Please join us at Distler Hall, Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center at Tufts University this Saturday for the Winter 2013 Meeting of the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society. Refreshments begin at 9:45am. In addition to a wide variety of paper topics, this meeting will include the option of visiting the Lilly Library and Ritter Special Collections during lunch; tours are available, and food and drink are permitted. Directions and Parking info can be found here . ---- Program: 9:45-10:15 Refreshments and Registration Morning Session 10:15 Welcome 10:20 Triple Threat: Ida Rubinstein as Patron, Impresario, and Director (Louis Epstein, Harvard University) 11:00 Music and the Pirates of Madagascar (Basil Considine, Boston University) 11:40 Copland, Mahler, and the American Sound (Matthew Mugmon, Harvard University) 12:20-2:20 Lunch Break (The Lilly Library and Ritter Special Collections (downstairs) are open to visitors during this time; tours...

Note: If you attend a symposium or conference in New England, please consider submitting a short report for publication on this blog. You may send your submission to rebecca dot marchand at gmail dot com. ------- Beyond Notation: An Earle Brown Symposium January 18 & 19, 2013 Northeastern University I'm glad to say it was teaching that kept me from attending the first day of Beyond Notation: An Earle Brown Symposium at Northeastern University, rather than some less noble excuse. I did attend many of the events on Saturday, however, and the day concluded with an extraordinary concert by the Callithumpian Consort . I offer a few reflections here, but this is by no means an exhaustive report on all events of the symposium, nor even all the events I attended.  Richard Toop's keynote offerings (introduced via an audio recording of Toop and then read by Rebecca Kim) on lyricism in Brown's "Centering" (1973) gave me a deep appreciation for Ethan Woo...