Sonneck Society for American Music
Bulletin, Volume XXV, no. 2 (Summer 1999)
Report from the Conference
Van Cliburn Named Honorary Member for 1999
The name Van Cliburn occupies a unique position in music as the first twentieth-century American classical
pianist whose name has become world famous. Since 1958 citizens from varied backgrounds and interests
have recognized the name and acknowledged the achievements of this legendary pianist.
The Van Cliburn name stands for competition in the piano world. He won his first competition in Texas at the
age of thirteen and continued to receive recognition of his talent by attaining virtually every major
American competitive prize -- the National Music Festival Award, the Dealey Award, the Kosciszko
Foundation's Chopin Prize the Juilliard Concerto Competition, the Roeder Award, adn the Leventritt Competition in
Moscow in 1958 propelled him to fame as a pianist on the stages of the world's music halls.
Shortly after this astounding win at the age of only 23, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
was organized in his honor. Every four years since 1962, over thirty pianists from all over the
world descend on Fort Worth, Texas, for one of the most important competitions in the world and
certainly the premier American contest. Millions of people watch the finals on television in
addition to the hundreds in attendance at the event. A top prize guarantees publicity, performances,
and erecordings, and has launched professional careers for many young pianists.
In addition, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition supports American composers by
commissioning a work that each contestant is required to perform. The roster of composers selected
for commissions, often by Van Cliburn himself, is a "who's who" of American composers -- Lee Hoiby,
Willard Straight, Norman Dello Joio, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, John Corigliano,
William Schuman, Morton Gould, and William Bolcom.
From the beginning of his international fame, Van Cliburn was recognized as an American pianist,
somehow different from all the other pianists of his and preceding generations. His music education
was different for the world of big-time competitions, as he was trained solely in America at the time
of his winning the Tchaikovsky competition. The worldwide publicity following his win stressed this
unique aspect of Van Cliburn's education. According to Max Frankel, writing for the New York Times
from Moscow, "It is generally conceded here that, despite his talent, it is the fact that is a product
of an American education that has propelled Mr. Cliburn to fame here. He has taken Moscow not only
by storm, but by surprise." Frankel reported Moscow's citizens extended congratulations to all who
looked remotely American and took delight in the opportunity to cheer an American. When Van Cliburn
returned home, his unique achievement was acknowledged with a ticker tape parade in Manhattan, the
first ever to honor such a competition winner. American training, American musicianship, American
pianism had come of age.
For his many accomplishments as a performer of international reputation, for his support of American
performers, and composers, and for the distinction he lends to American music in international circles,
the Sonneck Society for American Music is proud to have Van Cliburn accept the nomination as an
honorary member.
--George Keck
Ouachita Baptist University
Van Cliburn's Response
Thank you to all of the distinguished members of what I would classify as the cognoscenti of American
music, and music in general. As a performer, I tremble before people like you; knowing many of
you, I know very well how little I know. I think that I should mention Oscar George Theodore
Sonneck, who gave his name to this great organization and who was the first great musical scholar
and bibliographer of American music. I feel deeply grateful that you have chosen me, but I know
only too well that I am only the representative of a wonderful foundation whose work has supported
the musical endeavors of many of our citizens. I would like to recognize Alan Sampson, the chairman
of the Van Cliburn foundation, and our esteemed executive director Richard Rodzinsky, the son of Artur
Rodzinsky, the famous conductor of the New York Philharmonic.
America is a very rich, great soil, a place where great composers have had very interesting ideas.
It was here that Dvorak received his inspiration from this New World; here where Thor Johnson, the
conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony, became so interested in performing the music of Mennenties and noting
the correlations with contemporaneous events in Europe. From the days of Louis Gottschalk, Charles
Ives, and Edward MacDowell, who was the first professor of music at Columbia University, we know that
the music of America has reached all over the world. And we have yet within our shores so much
talent, so much still to be discovered. We are so grateful for those who have given of their emotion,
their personality, their experiences, so that performers will have the opportunity to see the world through
their eyes.
It is always interesting to hear how a performer perceives a composer's work. No two are alike; each one
sees uniquely in his or her own way. Every performer is like a guide taking us through their rose
garden and showing us their flowers in their own arrangement. But that is the beauty of all
that they are and the meaning of all creation.
I thank you very much for honoring American music and for creating a foundation such as the Sonneck
Society, for honoring those who believe in the great talent that America has offered the world
though its music. Thank you very much.
--Van Cliburn
Irving Lowens Book Award
Judith Tick's unpretentiously stunnign biography Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for
American Music unties the Gordian knot, resolves the Zen paradox, and reconciles the oxymoron
inherent in the seemingly contradictory lives of Ruth Crawford, composer, wife and mother, folksong
scholar, editor, and educator. In elegant and engaging prose, Tick guides the reader through a
chronological narrative that ultimately reconciles the tension between Crawford's "life" and her
"career," and mediates between her composition of modernist disonant counterpoit and her arrangement of
traditional vernacular music.
This is a personal study of the woman as an artists, but it is also a carefully assembled portrait of
the broader twentieth-century cultural landscape surrounding Ruth Crawford in which questions of
American musical identity, gender and sexism, politics, and religion are investigated. Crawford's
career is the lens through which we witness two world wars and the depression, the development of
musicology and ethnomusicology, feminism and modernism, and encounter a host of fascinating
personalities such as Henry Cowell, Alan Lomax Marion Bauer, Carl Sandburg, and, of course, Carl
Seeger.
Judith Tick's account sparkles with the immediacy of primary material drawn from an arsenal of personal
interviews and a wealth of letters and diaries. Ruth Crawford's own voice is encouraged to speak
clearly through aptly chosen quotations, and her music in articulately sounded through Crawford's
own analysis and facsimile examples as well as Tick's perceptive musical descriptions. This is a
biographical tour de force that marries the assessment of scholarly objectivity with the personal
insight of a subjective autobiography.
In recognition of the in which Judith Tick has shown us that Ruth Crawford's search for American music
is our own search for meaning in American music, and in acknowledging the significant contributions
this book has made to our understanding of this remarkable woman and artist, the Sonneck Society
for American Music is honored and delighed to bestow the Irving Lowens Book Award to Judith Tick for
her Oxford publication, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music.
--Ron Pen
University of Kentucky
Lowens Article Award
The Lowens Article Award for 1998 was presented to Kim H. Kowalke for his article "For Those
We Love, Hindemith, Whitman, and 'An American Requiem,'" JAMS, Spring 1997.
--Victor Cardell
University of Kansas
Publications Subventions
At the recent meeting in Fort Worth, the Publications Subvention Committee recommended three subventions
from the H. Earle Johnson Endowment: Univeristy of Illinois Press for Understanding Charles Seeger,
Pioneer in American Musicology, edited by Bell Yung and Helen Rees; University of California
Press for A Study in Contradictions: Toward a Biography of William Grant Still, by Catherine
Parsons Smith; and Vanderbilt University Press For a Good-Natured riot: The Birth of the Grand
Ole Opry by Charles K. Wolfe.
The Committee also recommended that the Board seek ways of strengthening the Endowment, in view of
increased publication costs and an increase in quality submissions in recent years. John Beckwith
has completed his three-year term as chair of the Committee, and will be succeeded by Lenore Coral.
--John Beckwith
University of Toronto
Non-Print Subventions
The Sonneck Society awarded its fourth annual Non-Print Publications subvention to Lauralyn Kolb
for her forthcoming CD of songs of John Duke (New World Records). Ms. Kolb is accompanied on the
recording by pianist Tina Toglia. Applications for the next round of funding will be accepted
starting in the fall. Deadline: 15 December. For information contact Mary Jane Corry, 8 Joalyn
Road, New Paltz, New York, 12561 (corrym@npvm.newpaltz.edu.
--Wayne Schneider
University of Vermont
Horatio Parker's Hora Novissimi
When Bernard of Cluny wrote the 3,000 Latin lines about his contempt for the world, its institutions,
and its leading personalities, shortly after the first millenium, little did he know how accurate
he was then, or how prophetic he would be now on the eve of hte second. But Parker, reflecting on the
optimism of the Gilded Age, sets only those few smiling verses of Bernard's jeremiad -- written a la
Roman satirist Juvenal -- in Hora Novissima (New York, 1893) that foretell the eternal and
glorious life awaiting the saved in a Golden Jerusalem. One wonders, were Parker alive today, would he have turned to
the other 2,600 more realistic lines of Bernard's poem for his text. In addition to witnessing churches
and governments corrupted by the evils of wine, money, false learning, perjury, and sexual scandal as did
Bernard during his tempora pessima, our ante-millenial century has seen real holocausts
and the engineering of mass destruction of urban populations. That Parker's century-old music drama
retains its power and instantly communicates a message of hope, even today, is testimony to the
composer's craft and imagination at the relatively young age of twenty-nine.
The passionate performance by the not inconsiderable forces amassed by the Southwestern Baptist
Theological Seminary Oratorio Chorus and Orhcestra under the direction of C. David Keith at
Texas Christian University for the 25th Annual Meeting of the Sonneck Society was most memorable.
It alone made the trip to Fort Worth worthwhile. Neither the passage of more than a hundred years of
neglect nor critical assaults have in any way aged or tarnished this American masterpiece. It is
about time that the infantile and patronizing estimates of such works of lasting value as Hora
Novissima undergo reconsideration as we get a chance to hear actual sonorities rather than
twice-told personal opinion. In writing the history of the sound of American music, as Oscar
Sonneck sagely suggested, we have nothing to lose but our preconceptions. In so doing we
redeem a repertory of American music, the artistic equal of any other. Let's hear Mrs. Beach's
Mass in E-flat next year in Charleston!
--Victor Fell Yellin
New York University
A Centennial Concert for Ellington
On Friday evening, the First Christian Church in Fort Worth was filled with the sounds and styles
of one of America's greatest composers of jazz music, Duke Ellington. As part of the national
conference of the Sonneck Society for American Music, the University of North Texas (UNT) Jazz
Repertory Ensemble, under the direction of David Joyner, gave a stellar performance of Ellington's
music with a program spanning over four decades of the composer's career.
The UNT ensemble began the evening with "Rockin' in Rhythm" (1932), displahying Ellington's characteristic
loose swing and spontaneity which effected similar pieces in later swing bands. Immediately
following was "Black and Tan Fantasy" (1929), another characteristic piece from Ellington's Cotton
Club days. The pounding, chordal rhythms and short, moaning phrases gave life to this
jungle style of blues. "Merry-Go-Round" from Symphony in Black (1934) showed the versatility
demanded by Ellington's writing. With each chorus alternating between various sections and
soloists, the band gave this piece a rhythmic drive, vitality, and crisp feel all in a nice and tight
package. The unique colors of "Mood Indigo" (1930) brought the Cotton Club porton of the progrma
to a close. The trumpet, high trombone, and low clarinet solos gave the audience a delicious and
memorable taste of timbre, harmony, and melody, which highlighted this piece.
The ensemble created the sound sof locomotion with "Daybreak Express" (1934), a train-inspired
piece that encompasses various sounds of railway travel: leaving the station, barreling down the
track, and coming to rest. Especially nice were the recreations of the train whistle, a unique task
for the ensemble and one well executed. "Happy-Go-Lucky Local" from Deep South Suite (1946)
similarly but not as effectively depicted the sounds of a train with its rhythmic motive in the
saxophones followed by stout brass punches. Next came two trumpet features, "Boy Meets Horn" (1938)
and "Echoes of Harlem" (1938). Ellington often wrote pieces to feature certain members of his
orchestra and would tailor a piece for the specific soloist. Both the Rex Stewart and Cootie
Williams solos were artfully performed and right in style, speaking directly to the audience. Later in the
program, "Jack the Bear" (1940) gave the melody to the double bass. There was a good balance
between the ensemble and soloists, although the Jimmie Blanton bass solo came across as somewhat
mechanical in the church sanctuary.
Following intermission, the ensemble led a musical tour de fource beginning with the innovative
"Cottontail" (1940). Truly before its time, the piece presented syncopation, melodic lines, and
dynamics in a fast-swinging context characteristic of the bebop era. Next came "Transblucency"
(1946), featuring classical voice as part of the orchestraton. Ms. Tolar's performance of Kay
Davis's original vocal demonstrated why Ellington so love to orchestrate for such a sweet timbre.
The UNT ensemble gave a fantastic realization of "Harlem Air Shaft" (1940), another of Ellington's
programmatic pieces. Transforming the blues into the mass of diverse sounds found in Harlem life, this
hard-swinging gem showed the ability of the ensemble to assimilate a plethora of musical ideas
into an invigorating performance. The evening highlighted many pieces from Ellington's jazz suites, including
Such Sweet Thunder (1957) and The Far East Suite (1966). Especially memorable were
both "Bluebird of Delhi" and "Ad LIb on Nippon" from The Far East Suite, which encompassed the
quartal/quintal sounds of eastern music, and "Star-Crossed Lovers" from Such Sweet Thunder.
The finest moment of the evening came, however, from one of Ellington's later pieces, as the
ensemble captured the flavors, colors, and atmosphere of the Crescent City in "Second Line" from
New Orleans Suite (1970). Closing the first half of the concert, the amazing performance
stood out even after the second half's tour de fource. The bluesy and contrapuntal nature of New Orleans-style
jazz combined with Ellington's chromatic and accentual innovations came to full life as soloists and
ensemble masterfully put forth the parade of sonic colors woven into the musical fabric of the suite.
This tribute to one of America's greates composers showed Ellington's diversity of styles during his
long and rich career. Working from transcriptions, the ensemble took the audience back in time to the
original performances of each piece. Not only did the performance bring to life th sounds of the
Duke Ellington Jazz Orchestra, but also the ensemble went beyond the transcriptions to capture the spirit
of the music. Only the final number of the concert, "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" (1937), lost
sight of the program's repertory nature as the three tenor saxophones improvised their own solos
in a style totally uncharacteristic of both piece and period. Despite this single and much
unexpected aspect of the repertory concert, Dr. Joyner and the members of the UNT Jazz Repertory
Ensemble presented a well-performed and rich program that celebrated the works and contributions
of one of America's musical treasures.
--Michael N. Riggs
Texas Christian University
Interest Group Council
The Council, consisting of chairs or co-chairs of each of the twelve interest groups, convened over
lunch on Saturday at the annual meeting. Board member Judy Tsou was introduced as the next Interest
Group Council coordinator, to assume this position in 2000 after Jean Geil's term is completed. Geil
announced that handbook revisions concerning administrative structure and activities of interest
groups had been approved at the Fall board meeting. A schedule has been established to insure that
groups undergo periodic revalidation.
Much of the meeting was devoted to a discussion of possibilities for interest group sessions at
future conferences. Katherine Preston gave a brief announcement as to upcoming conference program
deadlines for Toronto, Charleston, and Trinidad, and summarized guidelines for joint, interdisciplinary,
and SAM presentations at the Toronto conference. There will be no individual interest group sessions
at Toronto, but chairs were urged to start planning well in advance for their programs at
Charleston and Trinidad.
Outgoing and incoming presidents Anne Dhu McLucas and Rae Linda Brown each noted that interest groups
playe a pivotal role within the society. McLucas urged interest group chairs to forward to Mark
Tucker by 1 July any suggestions for consideration by the Society's Long-Range Planning Committee.
Board members of the Society for American Music have recently approved the formation of a Student
Interest Group, to replace the existing Student Committee. Christina Baade and Rebecca Bryant will
continue to serve as co-chairs of the newly formed interest group. Plans are being formulated for the
Student Interest Group's initial session during the next annual conference in Charleston.
--Jean Geil
University of Illinois at Urbana
Popular Music
On Friday morning 12 March, Jean A. Boyd, Associate Professor of Musicology at Baylor University in nearby
Waco, Texas spoke to the group on the topic of western swing. A native of Fort Worth, Dr. Boyd recently
published The Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing (University of Texas
Press, 1998), and her talk centered on her focus for her book, her recent work with the LIght Crust
Doughboys, and her ideas about western swing as a manifestation of jazz. She punctuated her comments
with exciting and rare film footage of several western swing bands, including Bob Wills and the Texas
Playboys, the Light Crust Doughboys (Bob Wills's original band -- still performing today), and several
local Texas bands. Good discussion and interesting questions followed. The interest group would
like to thank Dr. Boyd for her insightful and extremely engaging presentation and
outgoing Interest Group Chair John Covach for his hard work and dedication to the group for
the past five years. A tough act to follow indeed. If you have ideas for sessions in Charleston,
Trinidad, and Lexington, please let us know!
--Kristen K. Stauffer and Philip Todd
University of Kentucky
Twentieth Century Interest Group
During the 1998 conference in Kansas City, members of the Twentieth-Century Interest Group hatched
an idea for a session at the Fort Worth Conference which would tie in with the local culture. We
decided to explore the idea of a SIG session which would focus on the Van Cliburn Foundation's
contribution to twentieth-century music by means of its commissions of compositions for a required contemporary
piece as part of the challenge for contestants in the Van Cliburn International
Piano Competitions. Since there have been thirteen of these competition commissions, such a
session could range anywhere from a recital of the music to a "paper session" engaged in analysis,
impact, acceptance, or a variety of other issues.
This idea quickly caught the imaginations of many people within the Society, including members of hte
central administration, who realized its potential as a backbone for the plenary session in which
Van Cliburn would be inducted as an honorary member of the society. And so it happened that on
10 March 1999, the Interest Group had the supreme pleasure of walking into the beautiful Bass
Performance Hall in downtown Fort Worth, and joining the audience for four excellent performances of
four of these commissioned pieces. What an unusual opportunity it was -- not only to hear first-rate
performances of pieces that were new to most of us, but as well to have had an idea, and then
be able to enjoy the fruition of that idea without having had to do any of the work involved in
realizing it.
In another byproduct of the brilliant original idea (special thanks to Ann Sears), the group joined
the Research Resources IG to listen to Laura Ruede, the Van Cliburn Foundation's archivist. Ms.
Ruede spoke about various issues involving the preservation of material accumulated by the Foundation,
including the original compositions.
The session concluded with an open discussion of ideas for next year's Conference in Charleston,
SC. We noted the plethora of 100-year anniversaries in the coming months, as well as the fact that this
will be the first opportunity to discuss the twentieth-century in its entirety. But the
suggestion that so far has attracted the most attnetion was Wayne Shirley's idea to perform
John Cage's Theater Piece (1960). See you in Charleston!
--Louis Goldstein
Wake Forest University
Musical Theater
The Musical Theater Interest Group session at the 1998 National Conference was attended by sixteen
people with interest ranging throughout the history of the American musical theater. The agenda was
for scholars to share their experience in theatrical archives and to describe current projects,
encouraging the free-ranging discussion that educates all concerned. Paul Laird (University of
Kansas) described the Roger Imhof Collection at the Spencer Research Library in Lawrence, Kansas,
extensive holdings of vaudeville and burlesque materials. Tom Riis (University of Colorado-Boulder)
shared information about the theatrical holdings of the American Music Research Center which he
directs, including the large Alvin G. Layton Theatre Music Collection of orchestral parts from the
1920s and 1930s. Paul Charosh (Brooklyn College), demonstrating his own large sound archive, brought
fascinating recordings from 1903 and 1920. He also suggested that we remember the importance of
broadsides, of which there is a large collection at the New York Public Library. William Everett
(University of Missouri, Kansas City) described the holdings of the Theatre Museum in London, part
of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The collection includes playbills, press releases, and other
primary sources from American musicals performed in the United Kingdom. Tom Riis also mentioned
the Garrick Club in London and its large portrait collection of actors in roles and library of
theatrical materials. Orly Krasner described the extensive collection of the Schubert Archives in
New York with materials from most shows the family has presented. She also described collections
at St. John's College in Oxford and at Brandeis University related to composer Reginald DeKoven.
In rapid succession, with several scholars providing information, we discussed: the Harry Ransom Center
for the Humanities in Austin, Texas which holds, among other collections, materials related to Jules
Styne; the Museum of the City of New York; the New York Historical Society; and the State Historical
Society of Wisconsin, which hold part of the Tams-Widmark collection of orchestral parts,
prompt books, and other materials. The remainder of the Tams-Widmark collection is at the Library
of Congress.
Several members described their current projects. Jim Lovensheimer is writing a dissertation on Sondheim's
Assassins at Ohio State University. Paul Machlin (Colby College) is working on Early to
Bed, a show with a white cast for which Fats Waller wrote the music. Jessica Sternfeld, a
doctoral student at Princeton University, is writing a dissertation on Andrew Lloyd Webber's shows.
Her descripotion led to a useful discussion on how a scholar might approach such a topic and
celebrity. The session concluded with Tom Riis announcing that the Susan Porter Memorial
Conference in 2001 at the American Music Research Center will be on the Hollywood musical.
--Paul Laird
University of Kansas
Biography
The featured speaker at Biography Interest Group meeting was Stuart Feder, who spoke on "Psychology
in Musical Biography." Feder began by telling of his own cross-disciplinary training in both
psychiatry and music and their uses in writing Charles Ives: My Father's Song, A Psychoanalytic
Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
He emphasized that "psychology is in biography . . . It is inherent in the selection of
material as emphasis, thus revealing as much about the biographer as the subject." Feder cited
his own work on Charles ives as example. In it the importance of George Ives is central to the
author's interpretations of Charles's inner life and creativity. Ive's quotation of music from his
father's time and his "death" as a creative artist at age forty-nine, the very age when George
Ives died, became the hypothesis or scaffolding for Feder's first book on Ives. The second, short
biography, to be published as The Life of Charles Ives (in Cambridge University Press's Lives
of Composers series) omits the scaffolding while including more of the "cultural and social
context." Feder commented that as a result he "had an interesting opportunity to learn first-hand
about the boundary betwen the sociologica nd the intrapsychic."
Feder examined the role of psychological thinking in four recent biogrpahies, Judith Tick's
Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Serach for American Music (Oxford University Pres, 1997),
Barbara Heyman's Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music (Oxford University Press, 1992),
Howard Pollack's Skyscraper Lullaby (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), a "life-and-work"
biography of John Alden Carpenter, and this correspondent's Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian: The
Life and Work of an American Composer (Oxford University Press, 1998). Feder discussed each work
in the light of its aims -- either with main focus on the music or an integrative look at the
interrelation between life and work -- pointing out the authors' psychological insights, and suggesting
further possibilities for interpretation. A lively and profitable discussion followed.
The chair called for proposals for a panel session exploring aspects of musical biography to be
submitted for the joint Toronto meeting in 2000.
--Adrienne Fried Block
New York
Folk/Traditional Music
In what is becoming an annual conference activity, the Folk/Traditional Music Interest Group again
sponsored the Sacred Harp Singing. Joined by a strong contingent of local Texas singers, Sonneck
Society members shook the rafters of First Christian Church with a wealth of shape note hymnody. It
was fascinating to share interpretations gleaned from leaders with their roots in various
regions and traditions -- the energetic velocity of Massachusetts, the vigorous Mississippi drive,
the leisurely Kentucky contemplation, and the balanced understatement of Texas. The forty-two singers
who gathered together in harmony at the conference shared the fellowship of good company and the
legacy of this wondrous American repertoire. Many thanks to David Music for helping organize
the event and to First Christian Church for the generous use of their building.
--Ron Pen
Gospel and Church Music
The Gospel and Church Music Interest Group program session, "Playing in the Spirit: Improvisation
in Worhip Settings," was held at Broadway Baptist Church during the Fort Worth meeting. This
year's program featured two presenters, Sonneck member Evalynn Hawkings, faculty member at Duquesne
University and Music Director/Producer at WDUQ-FM (Pittsburgh), and Dr. Albert L. Travis, church organist
at Broadway and professor of organ at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Hawkins discussed in interview format the jazz worship services at historic Emanuel Episcopal Church
in downtown Pittsburgh. The monthly Sunday afternoon serive attracts an ecumenical, multi-ethnic congregation; for many [congregants]
This is the only church they have all month. It features a jazz combo playing
Repertory ranging from jazz standars to hymn tune arrangements, carefully chosen
To fit the them of the service, and readings (often contemporary) from poetry or literature. Hawkins
generally gives a welcome intended to set the tone for this
non-traditional worship, and serves on the committee that selects music and readings.
Al Travis left us enamored of the stunning 191-rank, 10,615 pipe Casavant organ designed for this
historic church (with its over five-second reverb time) and installed in 1996. With two five-manual
keyboard consoles located at teach end of the sanctuary and the organ, it is the largest organ of
French aesthetic in the world. Travis demonstrated dazzling improvisatory techniques on hymn tunes,
displaying not only the organ's colors, but a hint of its power. The audience's experience of
singing a hymn to this accompaniment was not only uplifting but overwhelming.
Enamored? Between the Travis, the organ, and church's acoustic, breathless is more like it.
--Esther Rothenbusch
Voices Across Time
American Music in American Schools and Colleges
Voices Across Time
In 1998, in an effort to provide access to materials and teaching strategies for integrating
American music into the curricula, the Center for American Music at the University of Pittsburgh
developed Voices Across Time, a resource guide supported by recordings of historic songs.
The goal is to enhance the educational resources available in secondary schools' social studies,
language arts, and music curricula. Incorporating American music into academic programs makes these
programs more relevant, meaningful, and exciting to students and may actually help them improve
their grades in American history and related courses. The guide consists of nine units, each
dedicated to a different historical era. Each era is organized in six themes: Diversity, politics,
war and peace, ideals, and how music reveals the everyday world of work and of family in home life.
The resource guide introduces instructional strategies that help students
develop critical listening and thinking skills and contains graphic and audio
reproductions of materials to which they can apply those skills. Learning
activities lead them through the process of analyzing and interpreting these
primary sources to help them understand the people who wrote, performed, and listened to the music
in their daily lives. The organization of Voices Across Time is flexible, with finding aids
allowing teachers to locate the music resources that they need to meet their instructional goals.
Voices Across Time is an innovative concept that stands apart from other school-based curriculum projects.
Among its features, the project
*works directly with teachers from the beginning. Project staff do not consider themselves experts
who tell the teachers what they should do and how they should do it. Rather the teachers tell the
staff what they need to help them teach, and the staff help them address those needs.
*helps teachers incorporate music into existing curricula. The intent of the guide is to augment
and enhance standard curricula, not to become a new curriculum in and of itself, crowding itself into
an already overburdened course of study.
During the first phase, the project identified the eras and themes to be included in the Guide;
began collecting the music and contextual information; created four complete units of the guide;
recruited secondary school teachers from schools in southwestern Pennsylvania, held two kick-off
workshops; piloted the guide to classrooms; and began designing the multimedia format for eventual
production on CD-ROM. Beginning in fall 1999, Voices Across Time is expanding to the
national level and moving toward production of the CD-ROM materials. The project staff welcome
inquiries and input from members of the Society. Contact Deane L. Root,
dlr+@pitt.edu.
--Maxine Fawcette-Yeske
Nebraska Weslyan University
A Student's Experiences at the Fort Worth Meeting
I went into the SAM meeting with one expectation already in mind: many people
Had promised that the atmosphere would be friendly, supportive, and
non-competitive. No one, I was told, would stand up after a paper and say, "If you had read my book
you'd see where you went wrong." Instead I should expect to encounter
open-minded scholars who would be delighted to have their ideas broadened and challenged. I admired the anti-establishmentarian spirit of this
notion, but wondered how it could actually encompass the personalities of an entire
group of people; it sounded a bit too idyllic and corny to be sincere. To my joy, it was all true;
everyone I met seemed genuinely interested in my work and wanted to make me feel welcome. And indeed the papers were often received with
interest and respect, which was due not only to the atmosphere of the meeting but surely also to the high quality of the
papers themselves. Having become accustomed at most meetings to being engaged intellectually by every third paper or so, I was delighted
to hear so many interesting, unusual, and flagrantly fun presentations.
I felt particularly at home when I attended the musical theater interest group, where I was not only welcomed
but encouraged to share my ideas, seek advice, and generally jump right in. Follow-up encounters with those I met there allowed me
to get to know a number of professors upon whose expertise I will surely be calling. Having always known my topic to be an unusual
one in most musicological contexts and felling something of a perpetual pressure to justify it, I was greatly encouraged to encounter so many people
who found it not only worthy but interesting and, in some cases, rlated to their own work.
The friendly nature of the meeting was aided by its intimate size; seeing the same faces many times helped us all
remember one another in a way that rarely happens at larger meetings, or even at
small but less aggressively social ones. In fact, the social experiences I had were among the highlights of the trip. I met several dozen gradate studens at the opportunities we were given, and between the relatively small number of us
and the contagious friendliness, we banded together to explore Fort Worth and get
to know each other. On Friday nigh, perhaps twenty or more of us found our way to Billy Bob's the Largest Honky Tonk on Earth,
where the locals taught us to two-step. Our socializing has already led to academic support; several of
us have been in contact to swap advice and ideas.
The experience far exceeded my expectations, in terms of both the academic support and interest
I found, and the atmosphere of welcome I'd been promised. I am very much looking forward to next year.
--Jessica Sternfeld
Princeton University
Updated 8/31/99