AMS-NE: New England Chapter of the AMS

AMS-NE Chapter Meeting Saturday, May 3, 2014 Providence College (RI) Ji Yeon Lee, “Tristan und Isolde and Francesca da Rimini: An Intertextual Reading” Wagner’s· Tristan und Isolde ·(1865) and Zandonai’s· Francesca da Rimini ·(1914) share important musical and dramatic similarities. Wagner and Zandonai’s compositional languages are both characterized by chromatic harmony and goal-driven mobility, although the latter’s approach is naturally more radical. Both plots portray illegitimate romance and uncontrollable passion leading the protagonists to fatal ends; furthermore,·Francesca’s narrative—drawn from “Inferno” of Dante’s La Divina Commedia—invokes·Tristan at key points. In Act 1, a minstrel recounts the Tristan story; “Isolde” is mentioned during the ladies-in-waiting scene in Act 3, as an analogy for Francesca; in the same act, Paolo’s “Daylight is my enemy, the night is my friend” recalls phrases from the Act 2 love duet of Tristan . · Beyond surface similarities,...

Here is the Program for the Spring Chapter Meeting. Please note that elections will be held during the business meeting. Nominations will be taken from the floor for President Program Chair AMS Chapter Representative AMS Student Representative We will also be voting on the chapter bylaws.  Any chapter member in good standing (dues paid for the year) may vote at the meeting. The draft is posted at the chapter Google group and the open comment period ends tomorrow, 4/25: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/ams-newengland PROGRAM AMS-NE Spring Chapter Meeting Saturday, May 3, 2014 Ryan Concert Hall Smith Center for the Arts at Providence College 9:45-10:15 a.m. Refreshments and Registration Morning Session 10:15 a.m. Welcome 10:20 a.m. Tristan und Isolde and Francesca da Rimini : An Intertextual Reading    Ji Yeon Lee (CUNY Graduate Center) 11:00 a.m. Plorer, Gemir, Crier : Musical Mourning and the Composer Jane Daphne Hatter (McGill Universit...

 The Spring 2014 meeting of the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society will be held on Saturday, 3 May 2014 at Providence College. The Program Committee invites proposals of up to 300 words for 30-minute papers and for roundtable sessions. Abstracts should be submitted by Monday, 31 March 2014 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, B oston University, 855 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215. Please refer to the AMS abstract guidelines: “Proposals should represent the presentation as fully as possible. A successful proposal typically articulates the main aspects of the argument or research findings clearly, positions the author’s contribution with respect to previous scholarship, and suggests the paper’s significance for the musicological community, in language that is accessible to scholars with a variety of specia...

AMS-NE Chapter Meeting Saturday, March 8, 2014 The Boston Conservatory Samantha Bassler, "John Dowland and Constructions of Melancholy as Disability in Early Modern England" In the past, scholars of early modern England considered John Dowland's lute songs as seventeenth-century examples of religious melancholy and the cult of melancholia. Recent scholarship on melancholy and music in early modern England argues that cultural thinking about melancholy evolved significantly throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, calling for a nuanced view of the relationship between early modern conceptions of melancholy and Dowland's lute songs. As Eubanks Winkler has shown, the early modern English conception of melancholy is complex; often intertwined with theories about madness, gender, and the supernatural. To navigate these complexities, I utilize disability studies and investigate melancholy as a narrative prosthesis in Dowland's lute songs, demonstrati...

Please join us for the Winter meeting of the AMS-NE at The Boston Conservatory .  The meeting will be held in STUDIO 401, located on the 4th floor of the Theater Building at 31 Hemenway Street. ** Given limited and expensive parking options in downtown Boston and Back Bay, it is recommended that you take public transit.  The nearest T-stop is Hynes Convention Center. We look forward to seeing you there! 9:45-10:15 Refreshments and Registration Morning Session 10:15 Welcome 10:20  John Dowland and Constructions of Melancholy as Disability in Early Modern England Samantha Bassler (Rutgers University at Newark / Westminster Choir College) 11:00 A Tale of Two Walters: A New Biography of Walter “of Odington”  Elina Hamilton (Bangor University) 11:40 Memory, Trace, and Expressiveness in Chopin’s Nocturnes  Adriana Ponce (Illinois Wesleyan University) 12:20-2:00    Lunch Break 2:00-2:30    Business Meeting Afterno...

Happy 2014! I'd like to extend New Year's greetings to members and friends of the AMS New England Chapter. Below, please find the Call For Papers for our Winter meeting on Saturday, March 8, 2014 at The Boston Conservatory . Upcoming Meetings I also wanted to mention that due to scheduling issues, our Winter meeting (March 8) and Spring meeting will be very close together. The Spring meeting will be May 3rd at Providence College (please see the Upcoming Meetings section at the foot of this blog). Hosting Regrettably, the Winter meeting conflicts with the national meeting of the Society for American Music . If you are a faculty member at a college or university in  New England, please consider hosting a meeting. The more hosts we have, the more flexibility we have in terms of picking dates for the meetings. Hosting requires providing a venue, morning and afternoon snacks,  and A/V equipment (and support). We've been very lucky to have scheduled venues between now an...

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).