Society for American Music
Bulletin, Volume XXV, no. 1 (Spring 1999)
News of the Society
Letter from the President
Dear Sonneck Society Members:
This is my last letter to you as President, and I am amazed at how quickly the two-year time-span
of holding this office has gone! By the time you actually read this letter, Rae Linda Brown will be
your President. We as a Society have accomplished much, but evern more is just beginning -- and
I am working diligently with Rae Linda to ensure that some of these initiatives will continue,
despite the changing of the guard.
We have changed the look of the Journal, voted on the name of the Society, planned some interesting
meetings, honored some important people, and developed even more topical Interest Groups. Our
student members are more active than ever, our donations are up, and we are reaching out to a
broader range of scholars and lovers of American music.
We have made the Society more visible also by means of our various appearances at other meetings:
there was a Sonneck panel at the joint meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and the International
Association for the Study of Popular Muisc (IASPM), one on "Diversity Across the Curriculum --
American Music," with Kitty Preston representing the Society at CMS in Puerto Rico, and several
sessions were presented by several Society members, moderated by me, at the National Association
of Schools of Music (NASM) during their 1998 meeting, demonstrating the importance of teaching music
students about American music and giving attendees some tools on how to do it. The result of
this series of sessions and a proposal that I have made to NASM is that this very influential group
is now considering adding a suggestion about the importance of teaching American music to their
handbook.
Among the more important of the new initiatives is a renewed effort at Long Range Planning. A week
from the day that I am writing this letter, the executive committee, with a few invited guests, will
have their first planning session in Washington, D.C., to prepare for an inclusive, efficient,
challenging, but accomplishable Long Range Plan to take the Society into the 21st Century. When we
reviewed the Long Range Plan from 1992 at my second board meeting, we realized how many of the goals
in that plan had been accomplished and that it was therefore time to revisit the Long-Range Plan and
give it a new life for the new century. My hope is that all of you will be involved in this in one
way or another -- after all it is your Society and the ways it changes must be responsive to your
needs and wishes.
The Sonneck Society (which, whether the name is officially changed or not, will likely be the way we
old-timers refer to it for years to come) has undergone much change since its inception in 1975, but
its core values remain the same and the organization is strong enough to sustain the changes that will
likely come in the future.
I have enjoyed being your leader for the past two years, and I will equally enjoy stepping deown from
that post and cheering from the sidelines as Rae Linda takes over the reins! Thanks for give me the chance
to serve you and the cause of American Music.
Gratefully yours--
Anne Dhue McLucas
15 January 1999
Long Range Planning Report
In the Summer of 1994, after over two years of planning at many levels of the Sonneck Society, the
board presented the first Long Rang Plan to the Society -- looking at the next five years to set
goals for what the Society should achieve. At the board meeting in the Fall of 1998, we revisited
that plan and realized that we had achieved many of the specific goals on that list. While there was
a great feeling of accomplishment, with it came the realization that it was time to revise the plan to
look foward to the next five years. In January of 1999, the executive committee, together with guest
Deane Root, who had been instrumental in getting the first Long Range Plan together, met at the home
of our Executive Director Kate Van Winkle Keller and started the process of planning for the next plan!
Over the course of intensive discussions, we came up with a process for revising the Plan and some preliminary
ideas toward it.
One of the first steps of that process is to start to get feedback from the membership, and what follows is a
proposed outline (which will no doubt be subject to much revision over the next year) of goals and objectives
which might provide the framework of a revised Long Range Plan. It is not meant to be comprehensive or
complete -- in fact, it is purposely open-ended in order to solicit your ideas. Entirely missing are the
actions which might proceed from these goals and objectives -- and the budget implications of them. That must
all come later in the process, with the input of the entire Long Range Planning Committee, the Board,
the Committees, the Interest Groups, and the membership at large.
We are hoping to have a new Long Range Plan out to the membership for ratification in March 2000, in time for
the Charleston meeting. This means starting to get your input now. Please read this, talk it
over with friends, and write e-mail, or telephone your ideas to any member of the Long Range Planning
Committee. These people are President, Rae Linda Brown; Vice-President, Mark Tucker; Past President,
Anne Dhu McLucas; Treasurer, Bill Everett; Secretary, Katherine Preston; Executive Director, Kate
Van Winkle Keller; Chairs of Membership, Development, Finance, Public Relations (some of these will have
changed by the time this is read, so I will not give names), and the Board liaison for Interest Groiups,
as well as Board Member Judy Tsou and Emeritus Past President, Deane Root.
Please send us your ideas, propose them on the listserv, discuss them, argue about them -- we would
like this to be an inclusive process that will make us all aware of how the Society works and what
could work better! Thanks in advance for your help.
--Anne Dhu McLucas
Preliminary Ideas for a Revised Long Range Plan -- Goals and Objectives
I. Clarify the Culture and Identity of the Society. Sample objectives under this goal:
* Re-examine the mission of the Society in light of the changing environment for American studies.
* Cultivate outreach to other Americanist organizations (American Studies Association, film studies,
American Folklore Socieety, Smithsonian, collectors organizations, etc.)
* Expand the Society's role as a clearinghouse for information about American music.
* Encourage innovations in conference content and structure.
* Encourage the activities of interest groups.
* Explore new directions in publications.
* Increase the visibility of the Society.
* Celebrate the history of the Society.
* Other ideas/suggestions?
II. Cultivate Diverse Membership. Sample objectives under this goal:
* Encourage initiatives of the Cultural Diversity Committee
* Maintain the activities of interest groups.
* Increase visibility fo the Society amoung K-12 educators.
* Encourage cooperative relationships with profesional performing organizations at both the local
and national levels.
* Increase Society visibility abroad.
* Other ideas/suggestions?
III. Maintain Our Educational Mission. Sample objectives under this goal:
* Expand the Society's role as a clearinghouse for information about American music.
* Foster the teaching of American music in preschool through 12th grade.
* Encourage the teaching of American music in non-degree granting organizations, e.g.,
Boy Scouts, Camp Fire Girls.
* Continue to foster the teaching of American music in schools of music, Departments of music,
conservatories.
* Foster American music education in adult learning programs, e.g., Elderhostel.
* Promote faculty development in American music in both preschool through 12 and higher education
(summer institutes, workshops, re-certification courses, etc.)
IV. Create Sound Mangaement and Development Policies and Structures. Sample objectives
under this goal:
* Maintain sound financial management.
* Develop effective means for communicating within the Society, including fostering
institutional memory.
* Continue to expand development efforts.
* Update the Long Range Plan and its implementation on an annual basis.
* Other ideas/suggestions?
Summary of Board Activities
The Board of Trustees of the Sonneck Society for American Music met for its semi-annual meeting in
Boston on 1 November 1998 at the meeting of the American Musicological Society. The Executive
Board of the Society plans to meet in January to discuss long-range planning issues confronting
the Society, in preparation for a meeting of the Long-Range Planning Committee later in the spring
of 1999. These metings are prompted by Board realization that the Society has fulfilled most of the
long-range goals articulated in the Five-Year Plan published in the Bulletin in Summer 1994, and that
is is time to formulate a new operating plan to direct the Society's actions as it enters the
new millennium. If members have any concerns about the long-range direction of the Society, they
are invited to communicate these concerns to any of the members of the LRPC (which consists of the
Officers of the Society as well as the Executive Director and Chairs of Public Relations, Finance,
Development and Membership committees). ALthough the preliminary meeting of this committee
will have taken place before this issue of the Bulletin is published, the formulation of a new
Long-Range Plan is a serious undertaking that will take some time; feedback of all sorts is strongly
encouraged.
The Board accepted reports from various standing committees of the Society, including a recommendation
from the Conference Site Selection Committee (Wilma Reid Cipolla, Chair) that we hold our 2002
conference in Lexington, Kentucky, with Ron Pen acting as Local Arrangement Chair. This fulfills
the Site Selection Committee's goal to meet in the Midwest in 2002. The Board decided to formally
establish the Board liaisons to various standing committees in order to facilitate communications
between these important committees of the Society and the Board. Dave Nicholls will continue to
serve as Board liaison to the Education Committee and Bill Everett was appointed liaison to
the Public Relations Committee; liaisons to th other committees will be identified in the future.
The Board accepted and approved the awards recommendations made by the Honors and Awards Committee,
chaired by Raoul Camus. The following individuals were to be awarded Society prizes at the Spring
meeting in Ft. Worth: for the Lowens Book Award (committee chaired by Ron Pen): Judith Tick, for
Ruth Crawford Seeger (Oxford University Press, 1997), and for the Lowens Article Award (committee
chaired by Victor Cardell): Kim Kowalke, for his article "For those We Love: Hindemith, Whitman,
and An American Requiem," in JAMS (Spring 1997). Prior to the meeting the Board had voted
(via its listserv) to confer upon Alan Buechner the Distinguished Service Citation. The schedule
for this was accelerated because of founding-member Buechner's failing health, and President
McLucas reported to the Board that she and Raoul Camus had visited Buechner the day prior to the
Board meeting to honor Buechner with this awared. The schedule for the Society's dissertation
prize has been changed to put it on the same schedule as the two Lowens awards; as a consequence
there was no nominee at this point. The Board also appointed a subcommittee to discuss and establish
new guidelines for the Honorary Membership Award: this subcommittee will be chaired by Board
member Ron Pen.
The Board reluctantly accepted the resignation of Larry Worster as editor of the Bulletin
and established a search committee to identify a new editor. The committee will be chaired by
John Graziano.
The most important Board action occured towards the end of the meeting when after a lengthy
discussion (which had started at the previous Board meeting in Kansas City and that had continued
in the interim by means of the Board's use of the list), the Board accepted a recommendation that we
amend the by-laws and change the name of the Society to The Society for American Music: The
Sonneck Society. The Board was uneasy that this important decision, as a by-laws change, must
be made by vote at the Annual Meeting and will hence be limited to those members in attendance.
As a compromise, a decision was made to generate a mailing to the membership a month prior to
the date of the National Conference in early March in which the pro and con sides of the name-change
issue will be discussed. This mailing will also solicit members' reactions to the proposal in
the form of a non-binding poll, the results of which will be presented to the members in
attendance at the Annual Meeting.
Other upcoming conferences of the Society are as follows: Charleston, South Carolina (1-5 March
2000) (Paul Wells, Program Committee Chair; William Gudger, Local Arrangements Chair);
Toronto, Ontario Canada as part of Toronto 2000: Musical Intersections (1-5 November 2000 as
paret of the "Mega-conference" of 15 music scholarly societies) (Katherine Preston, Program
Commitee Chair; Mark Tucker, Concert Committee Liaison; Kate Van Winkle Keller and Jim Hines,
Local Arrangements Chairs); and Port of Spain, Trinidad, in conjunction with the Center for
Black Music Research (Memorial Day weekend, 2001) (Johann Buis, Program Chair; Jim Hines, Local
Arrangements Chair).
If members of the Society have any issues of concern, they are cordially invited to
communicate these to any of the Officers or members of the Board. The names of these
individuals can be found in the front matter of the Society Directory; contact information
is in the Directory itself.
--Katherine Preston
Secretary to the Society
Updated 4/16/99