Sonneck Society for American Music

Bulletin, Volume XXIV, no. 2 (Summer 1998)

Report from the Conference



Libby Larsen: 1998 Sonneck Honorary Member

Appraising the musical career-in-progress of the Sonneck Society's 1998 Honorary Member is like viewing an Alexander Calder mobile. Deeply inspired creation and eloquent promotion of the arts counterbalance each other in the dynamic constellation of a spirited and colorful life.

Two years before the Society's organizational meeting in 1975, Libby Larsen co-founded the Minnesota Composers Forum, an advocacy group linking communities with composers and performers that has evolved into the American Composers Forum. This influential organization continues to encourage the making, playing, and enjoyment of music, a large portion of which is American. Larsen has been Composer-in- residence with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony, and her current appointment, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, where she also liaises with local composers and the Denver Public Schools. Awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Council on the Arts, and the Bush Artists Fellowship are interspersed with commissions from the Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Foundation, Minnesota Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, among others, on her remarkable dossier.

Marks of her fascination with acoustics, both verbal and musical languages, and timbres are abundant in a catalog spanning all traditional and many contemporary genres. In her landmark opera of 1990, Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus,, Larsen placed giant projection screens and hanging scrims in the hall, dynamic invitations to experience "What the Monster saw." Her imprint catalog of sixty works also witnesses her pursuit of the most expressive musical/dramatic languages of our age. Larsen's Sonnets from the Portuguese is featured on a 1994 Grammy-award-winning recording by Arleen Auger. An all-Larsen release from Koch International, inclusion on another CD entitled "Women of Note" from the same label (also featuring Tailleferre, Boulanger, Mendelssohn, Beach, Schumann, and Monk), and the recent premiere of Larsen's "Black Roller" on the Minnesota Contemporary Chamber Ensemble's 180 Degrees from Ordinary CD demonstrate her artistic range and wide success.

With all this notoriety she remains among the most gracious and accessible of our country's established musical figureheads. She has said, "If . . . music works, it communicates. And if it communicates, it reaches people. And if it reaches people, it becomes a part of the community." As we have seen this week, she is a composer whose music meets these worthy goals. Today, we are pleased to celebrate her relationship with the American community and to formalize the link that has existed between this notable composer and ourselves for over two decades. The Sonneck Society for American Music offers a sincere welcome to our 1998 Honorary Member, Libby Larsen.
--Kay Norton, UMKC


Sonneck Society Awards

Article Award
Picking the best article on American music was even more difficult than it has been in previous years. The article awards subcommittee identified six articles published in 1996 that demanded serious consideration as "the best." To make our job still harder, these articles covered a wide range of topics, were written in a variety of formats, and were published by six different journals. We felt as though we were comparing crisp, tasty apples with sweet, juicy oranges with plump, ripe cherries. The subcommittee could only be pleased with this dilemma. To us it signifies that the field of American music is healthy -- that people are doing different sorts of good work in many areas of interest.

The winner of the Irving Lowens Award for the best article on American music published in 1996 is Mark Tucker for his article "In Search of Will Vodery," published by the Black Music Research Journal, volume 16, no. 1. Tucker addresses an area of music history that has drawn little attention until now: the study of arrangers and arranging. Using a broad array of sources, Tucker surveys Vodery's activities and arrangements to paint a picture of the social and musical world of arrangers in New York city in the first half of the twentieth century. He shows how Vodery's success as a black musician in the primarily white world of arranging created a legend of Vodery as the transmitter of "modernist" musical ideas to the world of jazz. Finally, Tucker submits the scores from more than 75 of Vodery's compositions and arrangements to a careful and sophisticated critical evaluation to understand who Will Vodery was and what he meant to the history of American music. We predict Tucker's article will serve as both a source and a model for many future studies in American music.

We also want to congratulate Sam Floyd and the editors of Black Music Research Journal not only for publishing Mark Tucker's article, but also for creating a journal and a context in which work of this quality can appear.
--John Spitzer, chair


Dissertation Award
Judging from the excellent quality and varied subject matter of the entries for this year's prize for a dissertation in American music, the future of research and writing on American music seems rosy indeed. The prize committee, reviewing dissertations dealing with, among other topics, the role of written music in early jazz, Passamaquoddy ceremonial songs, an analaysis of fuging tunes, and music in Wyoming's cowboy culture, was hard pressed to narrow the field and even more so to select a winner. Two fine studies in particular must be mentioned: Eric Porter's "'Out of the Blue': Black Creative Musicians and the Challenge of Jazz, 1940-1995" and Allison Welch's "The Influence of Hindustani Music on Selected Works of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young." But in the end we voted to award the prize to Jennifer DeLapp's "Copland in the Fifties: Music and Ideology in the McCarthy Era." DeLapp examines Copland's letters from the 1950s interviews with the composer and other people, and previously classified government documents, including Copland's FBI files and a transcript of his hearing before the McCarthy Committee. She concludes that the Cold War and the resulting anti-Communist furor in America had a great influence on the composer's creative life. Tracing the various liberal and pro-Russian (but not pro-Communist) causes with which he had been associated, she shows why he became a target of anti-Communist politicians and how this unwelcome attention had such an impact on his life and work. She then examines Copland's attempts, in both his writings and his compositions, to reconcile tensions between late modernist aesthetics and his goals as a mid-century American composer, concluding with a detailed analysis of a major composition of this decade, the "Quartet for Piano and Strings," in which he attempted to balance serial technique and the ideology behind it with the more popular style of his early ballets.

The committee found DeLapp's work to be highly original, convincing, and provocative in a most positive way. One committee member noted that she found "a splendid balance between context and the actual music. Her writing is strong, her methodology is clear, her conclusions are solid and convincing." Another found the dissertation to be both "engaged and engaging." We congratulate Jennifer on her accomplishment, and we recommend her work to all members of the Society.
--Charles Hamm, chair


Book Award
Ingrid Monson's Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction is a fresh and innovative approach to explicating jazz improvisation. She boldly addresses the disjunction between the musical mind and scholarly approaches in the study of music. She articulates for readers who have never participated in jazz performances what many musicians have felt, experienced, and communicated to one another in their art. Her methodology is wide-ranging, drawing on anthropology, linguistics, and post-structural criticism while displaying a steady awareness of the shortcomings as well as the potential of each approach. The result is an intellectual tour-de-force that should have a lasting influence on future scholarship in American music. Most important, however in Monson's study, the music is first. As a consequence, the reader comes away hearing jazz in new ways as well as understanding more deeply this uniquely American style of music.
--Michael Broyles, chair


Publications Subventions Awards
At the Kansas City meeting, the board of the Society approved the following three subvention awards for 1998 from the H. Earle Johnson Bequest, as recommended by its publication subventions committee:
1. Oxford University Press for Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian by Adrienne Fried Block.
2. University of Illinois Press for Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions by Michael Hicks.
3. University of Illinois Press for Julliard: A History by Andrea Olmstead.
--John Beckwith


Non-print Subventions Award
The third annual Non-print Subventions Award was presented to Homer F. Edwards, Jr., President of Calcane Recordings, for the recording, Chicago Renaissance Women: The Organ Works of Florence Price, performed by Calvert Johnson. Previous recipients of the award are Benjamin Sears and Bradford Conner for their recording of Irving Berlin songs and Adrienne Fried Block for her work on a recording of music by William Mayer and Amy Beach.
--Wayne Schneider


Bunker Clark Receives Distinguished Service Citation

This year's Distinguished Service Citation is presented to a member who needs little introduction, which is what he will get. He has been a member since 1975, the very beginning of the Society. He was influential in the early years, serving as a member-at-large for four years. An indefatigable writer who kept meticulous records and always answered his correspondence, he was then elected secretary, serving for four years. Six years later, having just completed ten years handling the Society's publicity releases, he was elected its last Second Vice President. He has attended most, if not all, Society meetings, was program chair for the 1980 Baltimore meeting, and hosted the 1982 meeting at his university. He has often given papers, including the highlight of the 1987 Pittsburgh meeting, his seminal work on the infamous Pennsylvania woman composer Esee J. Mushrush. From 1989 to 1994 he was editor of the Society's directory. He has served on many important committees and was one of the very first to lead the Society into cyberspace with his introduction of e-mail, a mission he continues to the present with his network of humorous messages. In spite of retirement from his busy teaching schedule, he remains active, and is always willing to help where needed. How many brave souls would undertake the challenge of making Benjamin Franklin shrub for this illustrious gathering? Truly his service may be used as an example to others, and the Board is very pleased to present this Distinguished Service Citation to Dr. J. Bunker Clark of Lawrence, Kansas.

Response from Bunker
I was so shocked and surprised at hearing my name read for this award that it made me speechless (except for an exhortation, "more shrub!"). The honor is truly appreciated. My thanks to Bill Everett for the nomination and to Raoul Camus for writing the citation.

Actually, there are two things I'm proud of: 1) directing a NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers on the subject of American music before the Civil War -- the only such seminar on an American subject during the bicentennial year of 1976. (Raoul was one of the seminarians for its repeat in 1978, and his seminar research lead to several published articles). 2) I have the distinction of being the last second vice-president. (I tried to make the motion to eliminate this position, but this pleasure was co-opted by someone else).

It's true that Raoul heard my paper "Toward a Study of the Life and Works of Esee J. Mushrush, Northwest Pennsylvanian Composer" during the meeting in Pittsburgh in April 1987, but not for the Sonneck Society, whose program committee rejected the paper! Thanks to Bob Copeland, it was read to the Allegheny Chapter of the AMS, meeting there at the same time. The paper was later published by the Bulletin in Summer 1991 and may have been the first Bulletin article with music examples.

Benjamin Franklin Orange Shrub: Raoul took the original 18th-century recipe from the American Heritage cookbook, supposedly from Franklin's papers: "To a Gallon of Rum two quarts of Orange Juice and two pounds sugar--dissolve the Sugar in the Juice before you mix it with the Rum--put it all together in a Cask & shake well--let it stand 3- or 4- Weeks ^ it will be very fine & fit for Bottling." This was used for the first conference banquet, Bayside, N.Y., May 1976, hosted by Raoul. To quote him,

A warning: they must have been more stouthearted in those days, for the shrub is very potent. After the first banquet, we made the recipe using equal amounts of rum and orange juice (1 to 1, not 2 to 1), and found that the result was still very potent, if allowed to sit for a month or so.

For the meeting in Lawrence, April 1982, I mixed up 2 gallons each of rum and orange juice, and 4 pounds of sugar. These days, however, one cannot buy rum in gallons, so the updated version is six 1.75 liter bottles of rum, 6 cans of frozen oragne juice (don't mix with all the water required, until time to tiop off the carboy), 4 pounds sugar. It was mixed up in a plastic wastebasket (reserved for this purpose), then siphoned to the 5-gallon carboy. Two of these batches were made in early December, to there was plenty of aging (and plenty of shrub) before the conference began. Smooth enough!


Sonneck Society Brass Band in KC
For the eighth time since 1988, the Sonneck Society Brass Band entertained conference attendees with spirited renditions of nineteenth-century brass band music. Nine selections by Canadian and U.S. composers enlivened the conference reception.

The idea for hte Sonneck Society Brass Band was conceived by Craig B. Parker, Bob Copeland, and George Foreman at the Pittsburgh conference in 1987, during a Society-approved bus ride to Old Economy Village. The band has since performed at conferences in Danville, Toronto, Baton Rouge, Worcester, Madison, Washington, and Seattle. Craig B. Parker has served as the band's organizer, leader, and solo E-flat cornetist since its inception. The three-fold purpose of the Sonneck Society Brass Band is to provide a performance outlet for Society members (especially those who no longer play regularly), to bring to life the increasing number of scholarly editions of brass band music, and to provide live music for conference receptions.

The 1998 band had seventeen members: cornet and trumpet--Frank Cipolla, Craig B. parker, Deane Root, and Rob Walser; alto horns--Jim Aagaard, Raoul F. Camus and Bill Kearns; trombonists--Dianna Eiland, Patrick Hennessy, Linda Pohly, and David L. Stagg; euphonium--Ken Kreimer; tuba--Bob Copeland and John Koegel; and percussion--Tara Browner, Cynthia Bryant, and Jonathan Ruter.

This year's program featured the modern premier of "Red Deer March" by Arthur Wellesly Hughes, recently published in the Canadian Musical Heritage, Volume 21: Music for Winds I: Bands (Ottawa: Canadian Musical Heritage Society (1998); Paul Maybery's edition of "Voice Quadrilles" by the esteemed African-American keyed bugle player, Francis Johnson (1792-1844); and Herbert L. Clarke's "Caprice Waltz," from The Imperial Band Book (Toronto: Whaley Royce and Co., 1890).

Excerpts from Three Centuries of American Music: A Collection of American Sacred and Secular Music: Vol. 12: American Wind and Percussion Music (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1992), edited by Raoul F. Camus, comprised the rest of the program. The performance of W.S. Ripley's "Fireman's Polka" (from the Manuscript Collection of Dances, Marches and Other Music for Band, c. 1862, known as Hosea Ripley's Book), the band's unofficial theme song, was enhanced by the audience's skillful singing.

Thanks are due to the University of Missouri-Kansas City (especially Gary Hill and Kay Norton), Washburn University (especially BIll Everett), John Koegel, and Kenneth Kreitner for providing low brass and percussion instruments for the band. Multitudinous accolades must be given to Raoul Camus for editing most of the music that the band played this year, extracting parts, serving as the band's librarian, and keeping the band fortified with shrub during the performance.


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Updated 8/31/98