Sonneck Society for American Music
Bulletin, Volume XXIII, no. 2 (Summer 1997)
Bulletin Board
The August 1 deadline is fast approaching for the 1998-99 Competition for the
Fulbright Grants. This year over 700 awares for university faculty and
nonacademic professionals to lecture or pursue advanced research and/or related
professional activity abroad will be awarded. All US citizens with a Ph.D. or
equivalent professional/terminal degree at the time of application are eligible to
apply. Awards range in duration from two months to twelve months. Although the
majority of teaching assignments are in English, foreign language proficiency are
expected for some awards. US candidates may view detailed information via the
Fulbright Scolar Program Web site: http://www.cies.org.
Requests for the application forms can be made by e-mail:
cies1@ciesnet.cies.org; telephone: (202) 686-7877; or U.S. mail: USIA Fulbright
Senior Scholar Program, Council for International Exchange of Scholars, Box INET,
3007 Tilden St., NW, Suite 5M, Washington, DC 20008-3009.
Requests are currently being accepted by the Music Library Association for the
1998 Dena Epstein Award. Grants may be used to support research in archives or
libraries internationally on any aspect of American music. For more information contact
Victor Cardell, Epstein Award Committee, Gorton Music Library, University of Kansas,
Lawrence, KS 66-45; Tel: (913) 864-3496; vcardell@ukans.edu.
Scarecrow Press is seeking manuscripts for consideration for inclusion in its
American Folk Music and Musicians Series. The purpose of the series is to
present important and interesting materials relating to the fields encompassed
by the term "folk music" in its broadest sense. Inquiries should be directed to
Shirley Lambert, Editorial Director, Scarecrow Press, 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, MD
20706; tel: (301) 459-3366, x6897.
Ten libraries from across the United States have been given awards totaling $600,000 through a
partnership between the Library of Congress and Ameritech to digitize historically significant
American collections and make them available for the first time via the Internet from the Library's
American Memory Site. Among the winners were Brown University, Providence, RI, for 1,500 pieces
of African-American sheet music from 1870 to 1920 and Duke University, Durham, NC, for Historic
American Sheet Music for 3,000 pieces of historic American sheet music from the period 1850-1920.
Additional information on the Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition is
available at these sites: http://www.loc.gov;
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/award/; or
http://www.ameritech.com.
The ACLS is compiling a directory of current addresses for recipients of ACLS Fellowships and Grants.
If you ahve been a recipient please send us an e-mail or a postcard with your current contact
information. If you know of recipients who may be deceased we would appreciate receiving that information.
None of this information will be made public without your permission. Recipients Directory Project,
ACLS, 228 East 45th Street, New York, NY 10017; fax (212) 949-8058; grants@acls.org.
The American Music Network Committee of the Sonneck Society has compiled an electronic list of major
repositories of American Music, which can be accessed through our web homepage. If you know of or are
affiliated with a research center with major holdings of resources that should be added, please
respond to Cheryl Taranto (tarantoc@nevada.edu);
(702) 895-4623.
A donation from the family of folk musician John Jacob Niles will help the University of Kentucky to
creat the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music and a graduate fellowship in American Music.
The Center will display books, personal papers, instruments, recordings, paintings, and other memorabilia
relating to the balladeer, composer, folk music historian and poet. Also included in the American Center
will be the recently acquired Glenn C. Wilxox Collection of American musical materials, the core of which is
substantial holdings in eighteenth and nineteenth-century sacred music psalmody and hymnody. For further
information please contact Professor Ron Pen, director.
The American Music Resource (AMR) is an on-line collection of bibliographies relating to American
composers (subjects) and musical styles and technology (topics). It currently houses over 750 separate files
covering some 70 subjects and 30 topics. AMR is designed to be a starting point for research in the field,
but also as a source for scholars. This site may be reached at
http://www.uncg.edu/~flmccart/amrhome.html. Direct inquiries to Frank
McCarty, editor (mccartyf@iris.uncg.edu).
On Saturday, September 13, 1997 at 3 p.m., a statue of the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak will be
installed in the northeast corner of New York's Stuyvesant Square Park, 17th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues,
across the street from the former stie of Dvorak's residence (destroyed in 1991). Following the installation
ceremoney, a free, gala concert will take place in St. George's Church on Stuyvesant Square, featuring works that
Dvorak composed in the 17th Street house. Special guest artists include Czech violinist Josef Suk,
Dvorak's great grandson, members of the Guarneri String Quartet, and members of the Metropolitan Opera and New
York Philharmonic orchestras.
Ian Hobson and the Sinfonia da Camera will present a concert performance of John Philip Sousa's El Capitan
(1895) on 27 September 1997 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of the University of Illinois
at Urbana Champaign (UIUC). Maestro Hobson has engaged William Martin and Jerry Fisher of Lyric Theater International, Inc.
to restore the conductor's score, parts, and the libretto for the event using original manuscripts from the Sousa Archives
for Band Research (SABRE) at UIUC and the Library of Congress. At a pre-concert lecture, Phyllis Danner, SABRE archivist,
will explore the music, plot, characters, and history of the production of the 19th century operetta.
Works by American and American-based composers will be released during 1997 on Vienna Modern Masters' Music from Six
Continents series, artistic director, Nancy Van de Vate. Composers whose music for orchestra music will be performed in
concert at the Second International Festival of New Music for Orchestra, then recorded for compact disc by
the Moravian Philharmonic of Olomouc, the Czech Republic, from June 16-29 include Randall Snyder of the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Dinos Constantinides of Louisiana State University, Marshal Ocker of Silver Springs, Maryland, David
Fetherolf and Allen Cohen of New York Ciety, Jere Tanner of Hawaii, and Kawai Shiu from the University
of Alabama.
The National Young Composers Competition, sponsored by BMG Classical Music Service and Williams College,
has chosen its winner from the over 380 applicants. The panel of judges chaired by Gunther Schuller chose
five Grand Prize Winners, who each received $10,000: Gordon Beefman for Sonata Bombastica;
D.J. Sparr for Wrought Hocket; Haeve Brophy and Lisa Fairchild for Fugal Fantasie, and
John Supko for Eight Chagalls.
Sousa Archives for Band Research Receives $162,000 NEH Grant
The Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has received a grant for $162,710 from the National
Endowment for the Humanities' Division of Preservation and Access to preserve and describe its John Philip Sousa
and Herbert L. Clarke music collections. The award will fund a fifteen-month project in the Library's Sousa Archives
for Band Research to provide up-to-date descriptions of materials and to preserve the most embrittled manuscripts
through microfilming. The collections include 3,400 folders of published and manuscript music from the Sousa Band,
representing 74% of the extant performance library; 549 folders of published and manuscript music from the performance
library of Sousa's cornet soloist Herbert L. Clarke; 69 known manuscript scores handwritten by Sousa; 37 known scores,
solos, and ensembles handwritten by Clarke; photographs; monographs; sheet music; band programs; Sousa correspondence;
news clippings; and artifacts. Nearly 80% of the materials are crumbling. For more information, contact Sousa
archivist Phyllis Danner (p-danner@uiuc.edu), (217) 244-9309.
Performances of Note
The world state premiere of George Chadwick's opera The Padrone was given 10-13 April 1997
in the Blackman Auditorium at Northeastern University. The performance was presented by the New England
conservatory Opera Theatre, conducted by John Moriarty and staged by marc Astafan. An unusual example of an
American-style verismo, The Padrone depicts the conflict faced by a family of Italian
immigrants under the control of a compatriot padrone, a type of petty "godfather"-figure.
Originally completed in 1912 (and rejected by t he Metropolitan Opera), it was first given in a concert
performance in Waterbury, CT in fall 1995.
The Twentieth-century premier of George Bristow's two-hour oratorio entitled The Oratorio of
Daniel, the Biblical Prophet (1868) took place on 3 May 1997 in the Troy (NY) Savings Bank Music Hall. The
cast included Thomas Paul, Steve Tharp, Beverley Thiele, Marguerie Krull, Sam Sommers, Keith Kibler, Daniel Rand
Reeves, Albany Pro Musica and the Catskill Choral Society under the direction of David Griggs-Janower.
It is hailed by Thurston Dox as "the greatest American oratorio ever written." The cast of characters include
Daniel, Meshack, Shadrach and Abednago, Nebuchadnezzar and a few angels. No lions!
Chernoble by Nancy Van de Vate will be given its American premiere by the Portland
(Maine) Symphony Orchestra on November 18, 1997, Toshiyuki Shimada conducting. Van de Vate's Night
Journey for solo piano received its world premier on April 19, 1997 in the Empire Saal of Esterhazy Palace,
Eisenstadt, Austria, with American pianist, Ruth Spindler performing.
Al Benner's LIttle Suite for Solo Violin was premiered by Linda Rose on February 27, 1997,
at a NACUSA and The International Congress on Women in Music concert, El Camino College, Torrence, CA.
The piece was also played during the 1997 New Music Festival at Viterbo College, La Crosse, WI., at which
Benner was one of three guest composers and panelists on a "Young Composer's Workshop."
Updated 9/22/97