AMS-NE: New England Chapter of the AMS

Chapter member Andrea Olmstead writes about her new e-book that investigates "Daisy"-- the leading lady of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby )  and her real-life counterpart, Margaret Terry Chanler (nicknamed "Daisy" in real life).  Chanler is a historical figure of musical significance. Andrea shares the musicological connections of her new book below: --------------------------- Who Was F. Scott Fitzgerald's Daisy A new e- book by Andrea Olmstead Sometimes it helps to be a musicologist! You can catch things that scholars in other fields miss. In writing my Roger Sessions; A Biography I came across mention of composer Theodore Chanler's mother, Margaret Terry Chanler (1862-1952), described in a letter by Sessions' mother as "a great linguist, pianist, and reader." I knew that Fitzgerald and Sessions were born only months apart in 1896; Monday, September 24, is Fitzgerald's birthday. I also already knew that Theodore, known a...

With over 35 members in attendance, the Fall chapter meeting at College of the Holy Cross was a success. The papers covered a wide variety of topics including Haydn, opéra comique, chant, Schubert, Mahler, Busoni and Coltrane. Many thanks to Jessica Waldoff and Daniel DiCenso for their hospitality and organization. The following announcements were made at the business meeting: The chapter has now expanded its online presence to include the website, the blog, and the Facebook group. While the Google Groups continues to function as a mailing list, this may be switched over to a different way to maintain a mailing list that does not require subscription to the group. Important announcements (CFPs, meeting info, etc...) will be posted in all fora. Our Chapter Rep to the AMS, Michael Baumgartner, would like to hear from chapter members in regard to issues they feel might be brought to the AMS Council. In particular, he welcomes feedback regarding the proposed change to the AMS by-l...

AMS-NE Chapter Meeting Saturday, September 29, 2012 College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA) Erin Jerome, "Haydn’s L’incontro improvviso : Deceitful Dervishes, Greedy Servants, and the Meta- Performance of Alla Turca Style" Haydn’s L’incontro improvviso (1775), a reworking of Gluck’s La Rencontre imprévue (1764), was composed as part of the festivities surrounding the four-day visit to Eszterháza of Archduke Ferdinand, Habsburg governor of Milan, and his wife, Maria Beatrice d’Este.  With its overture in "Turkish" style, Egyptian setting, and standard bduction plot, the opera was in keeping with the exotic theme characterizing the courtly spectacles for the royal visit.  “Castagno, castagna,” a patently orientalized begging song that the scheming Calender performs for the slave Osmin, among other unsuspecting victims, has often been cited as a textbook example of alla turca style.

The seeming simplicity of this aria, however, masks an underly...

Our next chapter meeting will take place at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA in the Brooks Concert Hall. Campus Map Accessibility Note:  T he walk from parking area to the Brooks Music Center involves a healthy number of stairs. If waking stairs presents a problem for any meeting attendee, campus security can arrange a ride from the parking area to conference site. The meeting site itself is completely accessible. Please call Campus Security at: (508) 793-2224 Below is schedule and list of papers. We hope to see you there! 9:45-10:15 Refreshments and Registration Morning Session 10:15 Welcome 10:20 Haydn’s L’incontro improvviso : Deceitful Dervishes, Greedy Servants, and the Meta- Performance of Alla Turca Style Erin Jerome (Brandeis University) 11:00 H ow Opéra-Comique Became French, or, Untangling the Origins of Revolutionary Opera Julia I. Doe (Yale University) 11:40 More Roman than “Gregorian,” More Frankish than “Old Roman”: What a Newly Rediscover...

AMS-NE Chapter Meeting Saturday, April 14, 2012 Mt. Holyoke College Monica Chieffo, "Maria’s Veils, Salome’s Machinery: The Dance Scene in Metropolis and Salome" Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) has been judged by critics and scholars as a hallmark in the history of cinema and as the site of contentious statements about modernity, such as the aestheticization of technology and overtly formulaic gender roles. At the center of this discourse is the figure of the female robot Maria. In his influential analysis of the film, Andreas Huyssen notes how the perspective of the camera lens coincides with the male gaze, suggesting that the robot is constructed and subsequently animated by male vision throughout the film narrative. The film’s five-minute dance sequence—wherein the robot Maria emerges from an ornate urn to dance for a room full of male dinner guests—is reduced therefore to an instance of male vision. Huyssen leaves out completely any discussion of the...

AMS-NE Chapter Meeting Saturday, February 4, 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology DOUBLE SESSIONS MORNING SESSION A (Killian Hall):   Part 1: Analysis and Interpretation of Classical Music Alex Ludwig, "Is Haydn Too Funny for Hepokoski and Darcy? Examining Haydn's Presence in H & D's Sonata Theory" In their massive book Elements of Sonata Theory , James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy on multiple occasions allude to –– or explicitly detail –– Joseph Haydn’s well-known proclivity towards the use of humor and wit. In doing so, they portray his compositional practice as falling outside of normal conventions, as in this discussion of recapitulatory material: “Thus Haydn provided his audience with a witty work cleverly suspended in the force fields of at least three formal categories (277).” At times, the reader can almost visualize Hepokoski and Darcy throwing their hands up in desperation at Haydn’s “startlingly original musical language (16)...

AMS-NE Chapter Meeting Saturday, October 1, 2011 Capital Community College Max DeCurtins, "Changing Contexts for Bach Reception in Israel" In February 1927, an all-Bach concert at Terra Santa College appeared in the performance series of the Jerusalem Musical Society. The program notes began: “Bach occupies in the musical world the same position as Moses in the religious. He established its Torah on which everything else was subsequently built.” This venerating prose, read by attendees at one of the earliest documented Bach performances in the future State of Israel, offers a glimpse into the beginnings of the reception of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music there. The language is nothing if not charged—with religious ideas as well as ideas of musical heritage. The conflation of the musical and the religious stems from the nineteenth-century German context from which many Zionist movements began. The program notes almost seem to proclaim the secure position...