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Harvard University Department of Music
 
Fromm Players at Harvard present Jour, contre-jour,
March 30, 31st at Paine Hall
Friday March 30 program: Charles Wuorinen Epithalamium; Gerard Grisey Jour,
contre-jour; Jonathan Harvey Bhakti
Saturday, March 31 program: Kaija Saariaho Io; Alvin Lucier In Memoriam Jon Higgins (Michael Norsworthy, clarinet); Roger Reynolds Personae (Gabriela Diaz, violin); Charles Wuorinen Epithalamium
Both Fromm Players at Harvard concerts are free (no tickets are required). There is free parking available for these events at the Broadway Garage (Felton Street, opposite Broadway Market).
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Mr. Rose and his team filled the music with rich, decisive ensemble colors and magnificent solos.
These musicians were rapturous—superb instrumentalists at work and play. New York Times
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The 2012 Fromm Players at Harvard concerts, curated by Harvard composition professor Hans Tutschku, are built around large-scale ensemble works with electronics that have rarely been performed in the United States.
Grisey’s Jour, contre-jour is an exploration of cyclical time that depicts changes of light during 24 hours in the desert. Saariaho's Io also explores time by layering and constantly changing pulsation patterns. Bhakti by Jonathan Harvey brings new appreciation of color and tuning in large-scale musical phrases, and Reynolds Personae is a highly virtuosic violin concerto with surprising constellations between the violin, ensemble, and prerecorded sounds. The musical language of Lucier’s In memoriam Jon Higgins focuses on details between two protagonists that lead the audience into different listening modes. Finally, Wuorinen’s duo for two trumpets, Epithalamium, acts as a fanfare that both begins and ends the two-concert series. (Epithalamium will be performed on both Friday’s and Saturday’s program).
The two-concert series will be performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), widely recognized as the leading orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to performing new music. Founded by Gil Rose in 1996, BMOP has established a track record that includes more than 80 performances, over 70 world premieres (including 30 commissioned works), two Opera Unlimited festivals with Opera Boston, the inaugural Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music with the ICA/Boston, and 32 commercial recordings, including 12 CDs from BMOP/sound. A perennial winner of the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming of Orchestral Music and 2006 winner of the John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music, BMOP has appeared at the Bank of America Celebrity Series (Boston, MA), Tanglewood, the Boston Cyberarts Festival, the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento, CA), and Music on the Edge (Pittsburgh, PA). In April 2008, BMOP headlined the 10th Annual MATA Festival in New York.
Both Fromm Players at Harvard concerts are free (no tickets are required). There is free parking available for these events at the Broadway Garage (Felton Street, opposite Broadway Market).
John Knowles Paine Concert Hall is located on the Harvard University campus, directly behind the Science Center (mapquest 1 Oxford Street). The Hall is wheelchair accessible, and is a short walk from the Harvard Square Red Line T stop.
For additional information write musicdpt@fas.harvard.edu
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Harvard University Department of Music
Mugmon selected for worldwide online panel on Bernstein
GSAS student Matthew Mugman will be one of seven panelists convened by the New York Philharmonic for a worldwide, online discussion that brings scholars together using Google Hangout. The March 22nd event features Mugmon, along with professors from NYU, Columbia, Ochanomizu University (Tokyo) and Ludwig-Maximilians-University (Munich), taking questions from an international audience on Leonard Bernstein’s groundbreaking tours to the former Soviet Union, Japan, Europe, and South America. Mugmon was selected for the panel because his dissertation in musicology centers on the reception of Gustav Mahler’s music in the United States before 1960, with a specific focus on the relationship between Mahler's music and key figures in American modernism, including Bernstein.
The online discussion, which airs
at 10:30 am in New York and Boston will stream live at archives.nyphil.org/hangout.
Click HERE to find more information about the Philharmonic's Archives, the panelists, and information about how to participate.
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Harvard University Department of Music
  
Celebrating Paine!
The Harvard University Department of Music celebrates the renovation and reopening of Paine Hall, classrooms, and sate-of-the-art practice rooms with a concert featuring the composition of its founder, John Knowles Paine.
Feburary 24, 2012 at 5:00 pm in John Knowles Paine Concert Hall
Pre-concert mini-talks by Dr. Evan MacCarthy and Professor Anne Shreffler on the music and legacy of Paine
January, 2012: Renovation of the music building this past year has resulted in new, state-of-the-art practice rooms, upgraded classrooms, and modernized heating and cooling of John Knowles Paine Concert Hall.
In celebration, the Music Department is hosting a performance of a recently-premiered work by its founder and Portland, Maine native, John Knowles Paine. The manuscript score of Paine's String Quartet in D Major, Op. 5 (1855), was made available to the Portland String Quartet by Houghton Library, and was premiered by the quartet in 2011. Also on the program is Quartet No.1 by Harvard composer and former Music Department chair, Walter Piston.
"We are convinced that this work should become recognized as an important part of America's music history,"writes Julia Adams, violist of the Portland String Quartet. "For complex part writing, beautiful melodic content and a mastery of classical forms, this work demonstrates why a young lad of 16 from Portland, Maine, was to become through his dedicated career at Harvard 'the dean of American music."'
Paine Hall was the subject of a recent booklet by the late Professor Reinhold Brinkmann [read or download the booklet here], and was named for Harvard's first music professor, who chaired the new department from1871 when music was established as an academic study through his death in 1906. The concert hall has a long and storied history, but has never seen the performance of a work by its namesake until now.
The public is invited to the concert and to a reception immediately afterwards in the Taft Lounge.
About the Portland String Quartet
Coming together from musical training at Curtis, Eastman, Indiana, Juilliard and Oberlin, the Portland String Quartet has played an important role in the artistic renaissance of the City of Portland and the State of Maine, championing Maine and American composers both nationally and internationally. Their recordings span the repertoire from Bach to living composers. Of particular note are the complete string quartets and piano quintets of George Whitefield Chadwick, Ernest Bloch and Walter Piston for which they have received “Best Recording of the Year” commendations from The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
Concert tours throughout Europe, Latin America and Japan, in addition to music river cruises to Europe’s major cultural destinations are international highlights of their career. Annual String Quartet Workshops for professionally aspiring young students and adult amateur players attract students from all over Maine and New England and as far away as Russia, Japan, Israel, and many countries in Latin America. Since l976 the Portland String Quartet has worked extensively with two generations of musicians from Venezuela’s internationally renowned Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra.
About John Knowles Paine
Besides receiving a solid training in music theory and musicianship in his native Portland, Maine, Paine had become a formidable organ virtuoso. His performances of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach were held in especially high regard; more and more, the professional critics recognized Paine’s extraordinary musicianship. In 1861, immediately after his return from the obligatory studies in Europe (in the mid-nineteenth century still primarily in Germany) Paine accepted the prestigious position as the organist at Boston’s Old West Church; the job included teaching organ, piano, and music theory (composition). Harvard reacted promptly and offered Paine the position of “teacher of sacred music.” Once he was associated with Harvard as an instructor in 1862, Paine’s goal was to establish the study of music as a full-fledged University department. This did not happen without opposition among the faculty, the loudest from Professor Francis Parkman, a well-known historian who, in meetings of the Corporation, used to proclaim: “musica delenda est” (music must be destroyed).
Against all adverse circumstances, Paine succeeded, establishing a music curriculum, courses for credit, and advocating for the position of music within the University, as well as a constant need for space. John Knowles Paine was not able to experience the fulfilment of his professional dreams: the Music Building, which would have been the capstone of his work at and for Harvard, was finally realized in 1914, eight years after his death in 1906. Paine had discussed the project with the inner circle of the Department so intensely and in such detail that it is safe to say the 1914 building in fact still realized his ideas.
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Harvard University Department of Music
Transmission/Transformation: Sounding China in Enlightenment Europe
All eyes are turned towards China, as it continuously grows in global importance. This phenomenon may have a contemporary ring to it, but the eighteenth century was equally enthralled by the Middle Kingdom. Everything about the distant empire was fascinating to the western world, including its music. Fanny Peabody Professor of Music Alexander Rehding, in conjunction with graduate students Peter McMurray and Meredith Schweig and the students in Music 220, “History of Music Theory,” have developed a library exhibit that retraces the voyage of this music from Qing-dynasty China to the urban salons, drawing rooms, and coffee houses of Enlightenment Europe. The exhibit, Transmission/Transformation: Sounding China in Enlightenment Europe, opens in the Loeb Music Library February 1, 2012.
Much of the knowledge the eighteenth century had about Chinese culture was owed to Jesuit missionaries in the Far East, who wrote extensively about their encounter with this foreign world, and whose reports were eagerly studied by European Enlightenment philosophers and music scholars mesmerized by anything Chinese. To some, China represented an opportunity for critical reflection on Western society, and to others China represented a radically different societal order. Scholars incorporated missionary accounts—often in highly imaginative variants—into their own published works on musical evolution and knowledge, while Enlightenment composers began transcribing melodies and harmonizing them to make them “more palatable” to the European ear. The eighteenth-century public’s curiosity about China ensured that many bourgeois homes would own such musical arrangements. The operatic stage, too, eagerly took up the idea of China as a colorful backdrop for exotic extravaganzas.
“The whole idea for the course grew out of a score [Acting Loeb Librarian] Sarah Adams showed me a couple of years ago,” says Rehding. “It was a English arrangement from 1796 of a song transcribed in China. It became clear to me that this apparently insignificant piece of music encapsulated the whole story of the transmission of Chinese music into Europe: from the— faulty— transcription of a popular Chinese tune to its setting in a manner that could be easily sung in a bourgeois parlor. In many ways, these simple arrangements were the precursor of the radio and the CD player: they provided simple musical entertainment at home, but in this case with an additional educational and exotic flavor.”
The class gathered material for the exhibition throughout the fall semester. In addition to the usual seminar settings, they visited many of the ongoing exhibitions at Harvard and spoke to numerous curators and experts.
“This course covers such a vast terrain,” says Rehding, “that it is quite impossible to be expert in all areas. We have made great use of Harvard’s extraordinary resources and its amazing library and museum staff.”
Schweig adds, “We’ve reached out to musicians, scholars and instrument makers from Taipei and Shanghai as well, which has helped make this a very transnational experience.”
To enhance the visual experience of the exhibit the class worked on digital augmentation—audio files of music, documentation, film files—for some of the pieces.
“The trouble with musical exhibitions,” says Schweig, “is that you really want to hear the music. In an exhibition setting this is not an easy task to accomplish. So we had to think about alternatives.”
“The Loeb library was eager to help,” adds McMurray. “They bought a number of ipads that visitors will be able to use to access the digital augmentation.”
McMurray and Schweig, two advanced graduate students in ethnomusicology, have been instrumental in developing this innovative course as part of the expanded PITF (Presidential Information Technology Fellowship) program, that now also includes Museum (MITF) and Library (LITF) variants—precisely the kinds of expertise needed for this project. In the course of planning the class and the exhibition that is its final product, the digital component of the exhibition took on an increasingly weighty part. Schweig has a background in Asian Studies and museology, and McMurray is an old hand in digital media.
“These two are the perfect collaborators,” enthuses Rehding. “I would not have been able to launch this ambitious project without them.”
Everybody involved agrees that the project has been a huge learning experience. “One thought that is always at the back of my mind,” says Rehding, “is how relevant some of these ideas are. Sure, the details have changed—sometimes drastically so—but China still occupies the central place in western imagination that it’s held since the Enlightenment.”
Exhibit open through April 30, 2012.
Supported by the Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities, the Department of Music, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Harvard University.
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Harvard University Department of Music
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First Nights Premieres Aucoin's Piece |
Aucoin conducting Dudley Opera. Harvard Gazette photo by Jon Chase.
It was Matt Aucoin’s day even though it wasn’t planned that way. The 2011 First Nights premiere was commissioned from Michael Einziger, composer and lead guitarist of the platinum-selling band Incubus. But Einziger was hospitalized during an Incubus European tour and couldn’t get back to Harvard. The premiere performance date was around the corner, and Professor Kelly suddenly found himself with nothing to premiere. Aucoin, already booked to conduct the Einziger piece, stepped in. He had some sketches for an extended string quartet, he told Kelly, and he thought that if he stayed up all night, he could finish it. He did.
“This is the most authentic First Nights experience we’ve ever had,” Professor Kelly announced to the class. “The tasks of composing, preparing parts, recruiting personnel, conducting rehearsals, and producing a first performance—and working against a deadline—are challenges that we know from other composers’ experiences in First Nights. Now we have the privilege of watching some of our contemporaries trying to accomplish the same thing. It will be a near thing, but I think it will work.”
Aucoin’s 11th-hour commission is also a happy piece of serendipity: when Matt was ten he’d skip elementary school to come to Sanders to listen to Kelly’s First Nights class. The first classical concert he ever heard was at Sanders as well—Beethoven’s Ninth.
A First Reading
At the rehearsal staged two days before the premiere, Kelly’s First Nights students packed Sanders Theatre to hear a cold reading of the Aucoin piece.
“This is the first time anyone’s going to hear this, including me,” Aucoin told the audience. Then, turning to the group of a dozen of Harvard’s student string players: “Let’s tune.”
Aucoin, conducting with a pen (he’d forgotten his baton) led the musicians through a rehearsal: “Keep the crescendo absolutely steady. Try not to back off. These notes trail off like efforts that have failed.”
The themes in Aucoin’s new work, he told the crowd, came from an opera he’s writing based on the story of Hart Crane, an openly gay poet who lived in New York in the 1920s, and died young. “Some themes have a sadness to them,” explains Aucoin. “There’s a striving, then toppling off before a successful peak.”
Music for Mike
On the morning of the premiere, Professor Kelly introduces the piece; it’s now titled “Music for Mike.” The players have had a rehearsal or two, and the audience has swelled. Aucoin strides out from the wings, lifts his baton, and the ensemble of 13 plays a strikingly beautiful, seemingly flawless twelve minutes of music. After the last note, the audience cheers.
As Aucoin slips off the stage, Kelly addresses his First Nights 2011 class for the final time.
“I am always amazed by my First Nights students,” he confides. “I know that many of you out there are not going to become musicians. You may become doctors, or go get an MBA, or try to become president. I am always impressed that you would use your valuable time to take a course on music, to answer the question, ‘Would my life be better with art in it?’
“We are all here today to celebrate live performance. Here’s something that didn’t exist a few days ago. It began, it was practiced, and it happened. If you weren’t here you didn’t hear it. It belongs to us. We audience members can take some credit for bringing a new piece of art into the world. That is a good thing.”
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Harvard University Department of Music
Composer Alvin Curran Gives 2012 Elson Lecture
Tuesday February 28 at 5:15 pm
John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, Music Building, Harvard campus, Free
"The New Common Practice, or, A Life in Unpopular Music"
Democratic, irreverent and traditionally experimental, Curran makes music for every occasion with any sounding phenomena -- a volatile mix of lyricism and chaos, structure and indeterminacy, fog horns, fiddles, and fiddle heads. He is dedicated to the restoration of dignity to the profession of making non-commercial music.
Early in his career, composer Alvin Curran co-founded the radical music collective MUSICA ELETTRONICA VIVA, and composed for Rome's avant garde theater scene. In the 70's, he created a poetic series of solo works for synthesizer, voice, taped sounds and found objects. Seeking to develop new musical spaces—and considered one of the leading figures in making music outside of the concert halls—he developed a series of concerts for lakes, ports, parks, buildings, quarries and caves. In the 1980's, Curran extended the ideas of musical geography by creating simultaneous radio concerts for three, then six, large ensembles performing together from many European capitals. He has also created a body of solo performance works and a series of sound installations, some of them in collaboration with visual artists including Paul Klerr, Melissa Gould, Kristin Jones, Pietro Fortuna, Umberto Bignardi, and Uli Sigg. Curran's more than 150 works feature taped/sampled natural sounds, piano, synthesizers, computers, violin, percussion, shofar, ship horns, accordion and chorus.
Curran will bring his thoughts and experiences to Harvard as the Louis C. Elson Lecturer, and will talk about his uncommon music and life on Tuesday, February 28th at 5:15 pm in John Knowles Paine Concert Hall on the Harvard University campus (Harvard Square Red Line T stop). Paine Hall is wheelchair accessible, and the lecture is free, no tickets required. www.music.fas.harvard.edu
Alvin Curran is a recipient of the Bearns Prize, BMI award 1963, National Endowment for the Arts (twice), DAAD (Berlin residencies 1963-4 and 1986-7), WDR Ars Acustica International 1988 ("For Julian"), Prix Italia 1985 (Gian Franco Zaffrani Prize, for "1985 - A Piece for Peace"), the city of Pisa Premio Novecento, Fromm Foundation (Harvard University), Hass Family Award (San Francisco), Meet the Composer (assistance to many concerts), Leonardo Award for Excellence 1995, interviewed by the Yale Oral History American Music project (category: "Major Figures in American Music"), Guggenheim Foundation 2004, Ars Electronica 2004, Phonurgia Nova 2005 ("I Dreamt John Cage Yodeling in the Zurich Hauptbahnhof"); Experimental Music Studio (Freiburg residencies 2006, 2007), Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Gutenberg Fellowship (Mainz 2010-11).
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Harvard University Department of Music
Professor Thomas Forrest Kelly Elected 2011 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow
CLICK HERE TO READ American Academy Press Release
Some of the world’s most accomplished leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities, and the arts have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The list this spring includes Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music Thomas F. Kelly, who joins one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies and a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to Academy studies of science and technology policy, global security, social policy and American institutions, the humanities, and education.
Among the 2011 class of scholars, scientists, writers, artists, civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders are winners of the Nobel, Pulitzer, and Pritzker Prizes; the Turing Award; MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships; and Kennedy Center Honors, Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy awards. Kelly will be welcomed to the Academy in a ceremony later this year.
Scientists among the newly elected Fellows include: astronomer Paul Butler, discoverer of over 330 planets and cancer researcher Clara Bloomfield, who proved that adult acute leukemia can be cured; Anthony Bryk, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Roberta Ramo, the first woman to serve as president of the American Bar Association; and jazz icon Dave Brubeck; singer/songwriters Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, and Bob Dylan; documentary filmmaker Ken Burns; actor Daniel Day-Lewis; ethnographic historian James Clifford; playwright John Guare; conceptual artist Jenny Holzer; Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro; and actor Sam Waterston.
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Harvard University Department of Music
Commencement 2011
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| Faculty members Anne Shreffler, Alex Rehding, and Carol Oja, and Christoph Wolff with Ryan Banagale, Sheryl Kaskowitz, Ellen Exner at the department reception in Taft Lounge. |
Back row: Anne Shreffler, Alex Rehding, Carol Oja, Ryan Banagale, Christoph Wolff, Jean-Francois Charles, Ulrich Kreppein, Evan MacCarthy. Front Sheryl Kaskowitz, Ellen Exner, Anna Zayaruznaya, Alexandra Monchick, Davide Ceriani, Tolga Yayalar. |
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Commencement 2011:
Selected Articles
Harvard Gazette coverage
Amy Poehler at Class Day
Commencement Address
Video coverage
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| Department receiption for the new graduates: Historical Musicologists Davide Ceriani, Emily Ansari (PhD '10), Evan MacCarthy, Ellen Exner, Alexandra Monchick |
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| Ellen Exner, Anna Zayaruznaya, Sasha Siem, Ali Monchick and Ryan Banagale in the staging area. |
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| Professor Thomas F. Kelly processes with Placido Domingo, who received an honorary degree at the 2011 commencement ceremony. |
Commencement photos courtesy of the MacCarthy family.
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Harvard University Department of Music
Renovation Begins in Music Building
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PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release May 10, 2010
For More Information
Jack Megan, megan@fas.harvard.edu Thomas Lee, lee16@fas.harvard.edu; 617.495.8676
Andrew Clark named Director of Choral Activities for Holden Choirs at Harvard University
JOINT OFA-MUSIC DEPARTMENT APPOINTMENT INCLUDES SENIOR LECTURESHIP
Cambridge, MA)—The Office for the Arts at Harvard (OFA) and Harvard University Music Department are pleased to announce the appointment of Andrew Clark as Director of Choral Activities at Harvard, and Senior Lecturer in the Music Department. Clark succeeds Dr. Jameson Marvin who is retiring from the post after thirty-two years of extraordinary service.
Andrew Clark comes to Harvard from Tufts University, where he has served as Director of Choral Activities since 2003. Under his leadership, the Tufts choirs have quadrupled in membership, and have undertaken international tours, new music festivals, and regular collaborations with other university choirs and ensembles. Clark teaches conducting, music theory, and orchestration in the Tufts Music Department.
Clark is also Artistic Director of The Providence Singers, an award-winning choral organization of 120 singers and five staff members. With Clark, the Providence Singers has earned critical praise for artistically rewarding and innovative concerts, distinctive community engagement programs, and dynamic organizational partnerships. Clark conducted the Providence Singers and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in two acclaimed commercial recordings: Lukas Foss’s cantata The Prairie, and Jonah and the Whale by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Dominick Argento.
The Providence Singers was selected from a national pool to produce one of seven National Endowment for the Arts “American Masterpieces Choral Festivals” in 2007. The Providence Singers has also collaborated with the Kronos Quartet, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, New Haven Symphony, Newport Baroque Orchestra, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.
In addition to these appointments, Clark has served as Music Director of The Worcester Chorus, Chorus Master and Assistant Conductor of Opera Boston, Associate Conductor of the Boston Pops Esplanade Chorus, Director of Choral Activities at Clark University, Assistant Conductor of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh (the chorus of the Pittsburgh Symphony), and Assistant Conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum.
Clark has led ensembles in prestigious venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris, Stephansdom in Vienna, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Mechanics Hall, and throughout Europe and North America. He is a member of the national music honor society Pi Kappa Lambda and has been recognized by Chorus America as one of our country’s most promising conductors. He holds his Masters in Choral Conducting from Carnegie Mellon University, studying with Grammy-award winning conductor Robert Page, and is completing doctoral coursework at Boston University with Professor Ann Howard Jones.
The Director of Choral Activities conducts the three principal choruses of the Holden Choirs. These are the Harvard Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society, and the Harvard Radcliffe Collegium Musicum. The Harvard Glee Club (HGC) is the oldest college choir in the United States and the Radcliffe Choral Society (RCS) is the oldest women’s organization at Harvard. Together they served for more than 50 years as the principal choruses for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The Harvard Radcliffe Collegium Musicum (HRCM) was formed in 1971 with the advent of coeducation at Harvard and has become one of the elite collegiate mixed choirs in America.
Each of the Holden Choirs has an active concert schedule and tours frequently during the academic year and during University vacation. The Holden Program also includes the Harvard- Radcliffe Chorus, the Holden Voice Program, and the Choir-in-Progress. The Director is responsible for all music decisions, repertoire, and conductorial leadership, and works with his staff and with students to plan, schedule, and carry out the activities of each chorus. In addition, the Director of Choral Activities teaches two courses in the Music Department and holds the rank of Senior Lecturer.
Clark's appointment is effective with the start of the 2010-2011 academic year. He will inherit a program that is vibrant, ambitious and ready for new challenges. “I have been deeply honored and thrilled to make music with these extraordinary students over thirty-plus years,” former Director of Choral Activities Dr. Jameson Marvin has stated. “Andy Clark is a perfect fit for our choral singers and for galvanizing new and important directions for the Holden Choirs and Choral Program at Harvard. His breadth of knowledge, comprehensive musicianship, and charismatic leadership will inspire a whole new generation of students.”
The Office for the Arts at Harvard (OFA) supports student engagement in the arts and integrates the arts into University life. Through its programs and services, the OFA teaches and mentors, fosters student art making, connects students to accomplished artists, commissions new work, and partners with local, national, and international constituencies. By supporting the development of students as artists and cultural stewards, the OFA works to enrich society and shape communities in which the arts are a vital part of life. Information: 617.495.8676, ofa@fas.harvard.edu, www.ofa.fas.harvard.edu.
The Music Department is an academic department of Harvard University, and offers both an undergraduate and a doctoral program focusing on historical musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, and composition. Located in the Fanny Peabody Mason Music Building, the department houses classrooms, seminar rooms, music practice rooms, the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, the Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition (HUSEAC), an Ethnomusicology Laboratory, Early Instrument Room, and offices. The Department sponsors numerous concerts, colloquia, lectures, and special music events each month, which are free to students and the public. Information: www.music.fas.harvard.edu; musicdpt@fas.harvard.edu; 617.495.2791.
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CONTACT: Thomas Lee, Office for the Arts at Harvar Lesley Bannatyne,
Harvard University Music Department, 617.495.2791, bannatyn@fas.harvard.edu
Federico Cortese Appointed Conductor of HRO
Leader of Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra and N.E. String
Ensemble—and former assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony
Orchestra—to assume new post July 1, 2009, 2010
(Cambridge, MA)—The
Office for the Arts at Harvard and Harvard University’s Music Department
announced today that Federico Cortese has been appointed Conductor of the
Harvard Radcliffe-Orchestra (HRO). Cortese assumes the post on July 1 following the 45-year tenure of Dr.
James Yannatos, who retired at the end of the 2008-09 academic term. Cortese has a joint appointment in the
Office for the Arts and Music Department, serving the latter as a Senior
Lecturer on Music.
“We are thrilled with the appointment of Federico Cortese as the
new conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra,” said Jack Megan, Director of
the Office for the Arts. “He is a
highly intelligent, musically gifted and passionate conductor and teacher who
will build beautifully on Dr. Yannatos’ rich legacy with the HRO. I look forward to an exciting new era
for the orchestra with Federico's energetic and committed leadership.”
"Frederico
Cortese is not only a first-class conductor and musician,” noted Anne C.
Shreffler, James Edward Ditson Professor of Music and Chair of the Music
Department, “but he is also passionately devoted to teaching and guiding young
people in their musical development and we are delighted to welcome him as a
colleague in the Music Department.” Added Robert D. Levin, Dwight P. Robinson,
Jr., Professor of Music, “The HRO is most fortunate to have Federico
Cortese as its new Music Director. Passionate, articulate, and committed to the orchestra’s mission, Mr.
Cortese will assure that the shining legacy of Dr. James Yannatos will be
carried forward with vision and distinction.”
Federico
Cortese has served as Music Director of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras
since 1999 and in the same capacity for the New England String Ensemble since
2005. He has conducted operatic
and symphonic engagements throughout the United States, Australia, Asia and
Europe. From 1998-2002, he served
as Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa. Cortese’s tenure with the BSO as
Assistant Conductor was the longest of anyone who has served in that capacity;
in addition to his annual scheduled concerts he led the orchestra several times
on short notice in Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood, most notably performing
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 and
Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Cortese has conducted several prominent
symphony orchestras, including Atlanta, Dallas, BBC Scottish Symphony
Orchestra, Sydney Symphony and Oslo Philharmonic. Opera engagements have included, among others, Maggio Musicale
in Florence, the Spoleto Festival in Italy and, in the United States, the
Boston Lyric Opera, the St. Louis Opera, the Finnish National Opera and the
Washington Opera.
Cortese
has been music coordinator and associate conductor of the Spoleto Festival in
Italy. He also served as Assistant
Conductor to Robert Spano at the Brooklyn Philharmonic and to Daniele Gatti at
the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Cortese studied composition and
conducting at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome and subsequently
studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna. In addition, he has been a conducting fellow at the
Tanglewood Music Center. Cortese
studied literature and humanities and holds a law degree from La Sapienza
University in Rome.
Recently
completing its 201st season, the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra traces its roots
back to 1808 with the formation of the Pierian Sodality, a Harvard College
social/musical organization. By
the turn of the century the group began to refer to itself as the Harvard
University Orchestra and grew into a more serious musical organization that
eventually became the largest college orchestra in America. After building a national reputation
via tours throughout the country, the group joined forces with the Radcliffe
Orchestra, and eventually became the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra in 1942.The HRO continued to improve in quality
and reputation as it took tours to Mexico (1962), Washington, D.C. (1966), and
Canada (1972). In 1978, the HRO
placed third in the Fifth Annual International Festival of Student
Orchestras. The 80s and 90s saw
tours of the former Soviet Union (1984), Asia (1985 and 1988), Europe (1992),
and Italy (1996). Since the turn
of the last century, HRO has toured Brazil (2000) and Canada (2004). Currently the orchestra performs four
full concerts annually in Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre. For more information, call
617.496.6276, email hro@hcs.harvard.edu,
or visit http://hcs.harvard.edu/hro.
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Harvard University Department of Music
October 10, 2010:
Reinhold Brinkmann, World-renowned Musicologist and Emeritus Professor at Harvard, dies at 76
Jane Reed, Harvard News Office, 1994
Reinhold Brinkmann
August 21, 1934 – October 10, 2010
Reinhold Brinkmann, a distinguished scholar whose writings on music of the 19th and 20th centuries made an indelible mark on musicology in Germany and the United States, died yesterday (on October 10, 2010), after a long illness, in Eckernförde, Germany at the age of 76. He taught in the Department of Music at Harvard University from 1985 until his retirement in 2003, serving as James Edward Ditson Professor of Music and department chair. Those who knew him will remember his brilliance, wit, and immense erudition, and his passionate devotion to the department and to his colleagues and students. We will miss him terribly, and extend our love and sincere condolences to his wife, Dorothea Brinkmann.
Brinkmann came to Harvard from Berlin, where he had been Professor at the Hochschule der Künste since 1980, and prior to that, Professor of Musicology at the University of Marburg. In 2001, he was the first musicologist to be awarded the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. The international scope of his work and influence is further reflected in two Festschriften, Music and the Aesthetic of Modernity, edited by Karol Berger and Anthony Newcomb and published with Harvard University Press (2005), and one produced by the Humboldt University in Berlin, where Reinhold held an honorary professorship: Musikalische Analyse und kulturgeschichtliche Kontextualisierung, edited Tobias Bleek and Camilla Bork (2010).
His writings span a broad range of topics, including the Second Viennese School (especially Schoenberg), the Romantic Lied tradition, Wagner, Skryabin, Varèse, Eisler, and Ives. Reinhold also lived and breathed new music, and enjoyed close friendships with Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm, and Luciano Berio, who dedicated his Sonata per pianforte solo to him in 2001. Reinhold’s work combined intimate knowledge of the music, often shown in detailed, painstaking analyses, with an awareness of social and political backgrounds and ramifications. His publications in English include his nuanced and thought-provoking study of Brahms’s Second Symphony, Late Idyll (Harvard University Press, 1995) and the essays “Distorted Sublime,” in Music and Nazism: Art und Tyranny, 1933-1945 (2003); “Schoenberg’s Quartets and the Viennese Tradition,” in “Music of My Future”: The Schoenberg Quartets and Trio (2000); “The Fool as Paradigm: Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and the Modern Artist,” in Schoenberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter (1997); and “What the Sources Tell Us About Pierrot lunaire,” in From Pierrot to Marteau (1987). With his colleague Christoph Wolff, he organized an international conference at Harvard on the German musicians who fled Fascism, and co-edited the volume “Driven Into Paradise”: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United States (1999). Reinhold was always fascinated with the frieze of famous composers’ names in Paine Hall, and his last publication was a playful and learned essay on origins of the building and its visible display of the musical canon, anno 1914 (Harvard’s Paine Hall: Musical Canon and the New England Barn, 2010).
His edition of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire for the Schoenberg Complete Works Edition, in particular his book-length critical report on the work’s sources and its historical and biographical position, was a ground-breaking contribution to the Schoenberg literature. His 1967 dissertation, Arnold Schönberg, Drei Klavierstücke Op. 11: Studien zur frühen Atonalität bei Schönberg, was republished in a second edition (with a new foreword) in 2000. A lifelong interest in German Lieder and poetry is reflected in his monograph, Schumann und Eichendorff: Studien zum Liederkreis Op. 39 (1997) and in his substantial contribution on the 19th-century Lied tradition in the volume Musikalische Lyrik (2004). A selection of his essays in German, Vom Pfeifen und von alten Dampfmaschinen: Aufsätze zur Musik von Beethoven bis Rihm, appeared in 2006.
The Harvard Department of Music will host a memorial for Professor Brinkmann in Cambridge, MA in the spring.
Additional information
Boston Globe Obituary (October 14, 2010)
Harvard Crimson Obituary (October 15, 2010)
Harvard Gazette Obituary (Ocotber 19, 2010)
Reinhold Brinkmann Memorial webpage
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Harvard University Department of Music
Professor Kelly,his wife Peggy Badenhausen, and Consul General Christophe Guilhou at the ceremony October 27.
October 27, 2010
Thomas F. Kelly Decorated as Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters
Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music THOMAS FORREST KELLY was decorated as “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) of the French Republic during a reception at the Boston residence of the Consul Général of France in a ceremony on October 27, 2010. The rank of Chevalier is the highest awarded.
The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is a recognition of significant contribution to arts and literature. Established by Charles de Gaulle in 1957, the Order recognizes eminent artists and writers, and people who have significantly contributed to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world. Before the creation of this Order, artists and writers could be officially recognized only through the Legion of Honor (and that in very restricted numbers), or the Order of Academic Palms, if they were connected with the field of education.
Recipients are nominated by France’s Minister of Culture. Previous awardees include David Bowie, Uma Thurman, and Joachim Pissarro, as well as French men and women of letters. Recent American recipients of this award include Paul Auster, Ornette Coleman, Marilyn Horne, Richard Meier, Robert Paxton, Robert Redford, and Meryl Streep.
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 Katherine Lee, Kiri Miller, and Kay Kaufman Shelemay at SEM. Photo by Meredith Schweig. 2010 |
Harvard University Department of Music
2010 SEM conference
Three Win Prizes at National Society for Ethnomusicology Conference
Three Harvard music department-associated scholars--Professor Kay Kaufman Shelemay, graduate student Katherine Lee, and ' 05 PhD and current Radcliffe Fellow Kiri Miller--received prizes for their work at the recent Society for Ethnomusicology conference in Los Angeles.
G. Gordon Watts Professor Kay Kaufman Shelemay was awarded the 2010 Jaap Kunst Prize for the most significant article published in the field of ethnomusicology, for her piece, "The Power of Silent Voices: Women in the Syrian Jewish Musical Tradition."
Katherine Lee (G- 6) won both the 2010 Charles Seeger Prize for Best Student Paper of the year and the 2010 Martin Hatch Award of the Society for Asian Music for her "P'ungmul, Politics, and Protest: Drumming During South Korea's Democratization Movement."
Kiri Miller (PhD '05; Bunting Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, 2010-11 American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, 2010-11 and Manning Assistant Professor of Music, Brown University) was awarded two prizes at the conference: the Richard Waterman Junior Scholar Prize (awarded by SEM's Popular Music Section for "the best article by a junior scholar in the ethnomusicological study of popular music") and honorable mention for the Jaap Kunst Prize (for "the most significant article in ethnomusicology written by a member of the Society for Ethnomusicology") for her piece, "Schizophonic Performance: Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Virtual Virtuosity," published in Journal of the Society for American Music (2009).
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