2004 Spring

Abstracts

"Jazz Influences in Aaron Copland's Early Orchestral Music" : R. Samuel Fine, Peabody Conservatory
Aaron Copland's primary quest was to create a serious original sound that was identifiably American. He believed that since America's composers lacked a fundamental concert tradition to build upon, they should become familiar with their popular music. Born in Brooklyn in 1900, Copland grew up during the skyrocketing growth of jazz and popular song. For Copland, jazz was the first major American musical movement and from jazz he hoped to draw the inspiration for a new type of art music. Copland's early exposure to jazz and popular music came through media such as recordings, live performances and sheet music. As a child he often sat for hours with his ear to the phonograph horn listening to popular records. As a young adult he patronized jazz clubs in Paris and Vienna and recalled his astonishment at how distinctively American the music sounded in the European context. With full approval of his teacher Nadia Boulanger, he soon began to explore the potential of using jazz material in "serious" music. As a result, not only did Copland make overt use of jazz rhythms, harmonies, colors and moods in many of his works of the 1920s, but he also wrote and spoke often about its potential contribution to "serious" music. Through the examination of representative scores, particularly Music for the Theatre (1925) and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1926), and through his writings, this paper will chart Copland's fascination, application and eventual disillusionment with the use of jazz material in art music.

"Change versus Continuity: Reception of Beethoven's Late String Quartets in Nineteenth-Century France": Vashti Gray, University of Maryland
Beethoven's late string quartets not only stretched the confines of the traditional classical expectations for chamber music but also challenged the expectations that audiences had for Beethoven's own compositions. While many find these works challenging, illogical, and unenjoyable, a large and vocal audience has advocated and embraced the late quartets from the earliest premieres to the present day. In France, this support for the late Beethoven quartets was demonstrated by extensive discussion in the press and in the rise of musical societies to promote this music. The ferocity of debate regarding the reception of these works reveals much about the onset of musical romanticism in France during the nineteenth century, and indeed, of most of Western Europe. As is typical of most artistic transitions, the rise of French romanticism was associated with both those enthusiastic about change and those determined to hold fast to the traditions of the past. Beethoven's late qua!
rtets stood squarely in the center of this debate. An examination of the critical writings in the nineteenth-century French musical press regarding this music's reception reveals not only new information about the nature of the reaction to these works in France, but also demonstrates much about the arguments used in order to support artistic change or to retain traditional ideals. The advent of RIPM (Répertoire Internationale de la Presse Musicale) allows unprecedented access to this body of critical literature, allowing us a more nuanced perception of this subject.

"'His child*must not be born': Revising Erika in Samuel Barber's Vanessa": Stephanie Poxon, The Catholic University of America
Although Samuel Barber maintained that Vanessa was the heroine of his opera, critics at its 1958 premiere contended that the distinction belonged instead to Erika. However, sympathy for Vanessa's niece was jeopardized by Act III's climatic (and controversial) scene when she aborts her child. Despite the premiere's success, reviews targeted this scene, not only because abortion was illegal but because it was a cultural taboo. Librettist Gian Carlo Menotti had encountered similar problems with the topic of abortion during his stint as a script writer in Hollywood where the Hays Production Code, along with the efforts of the Catholic Legion of Decency, routinely rejected plots with any hint of abortion. However, Menotti may have decided to incorporate the scene for dramatic effect since his plots often reflected contemporary society and frequently included acts of violence. Furthermore, the operatic stage was outside the Code's sphere of influence. Examining Menotti's libretto draft and Barber's holograph sketches and piano/vocal score, this paper traces the history of this episode from its original inclusion to its eventual elimination in the 1961 revision. In response to the reaction in the press, Barber and Menotti changed Erika's action from an abortion to a suicide attempt, ironically, as the librettist clearly knew, just the solution employed when such scenes were excised from films by the Hays Code. Once the volatile topic was removed, Erika was able to garner the audience's sympathy and the critics' approbation.

"Perceptions of time in the writing and music of Olivier Messiaen": Andrew Shenton, The Catholic University of America
The first chapter of the first volume of Messiaen's colossal Treatise on Rhythm, Color and Ornithology is dedicated exclusively to a consideration by the composer of various aspects of time. The Treatise presents much new material and indicates a level of reading and analysis by Messiaen that is not apparent from the previous information we have. In this first chapter, there are references to some twenty-seven people and their ideas, including Aquinas, Einstein, Euclid, Newton, physicist Paul Couderc, and geologist Pierre Termier. The breadth of the inquiry is impressive too*Messiaen discusses time with reference to philosophy, religion, biology, physiology, psychology and physics. This paper examines what he wrote about time in this chapter, along with other statements he made on the subject, and it considers how they relate to his music. It pays special attention to those works that have an explicit reference to time, and in particular those works that deal with eternity, !
or what the poet T.S. Eliot described as 'the moment in and out of time.'

"'I want to do that too!': The Performance of Music and Mimicry in the Movies of Shirley Temple": Rose Theresa, University of Virginia
In 1937 Graham Green wrote of Shirley Temple that "infancy with her is a disguise* Adult emotions of love and grief glissade across the mask of childhood, a childhood skin deep." Her "appeal" to him was that of "a dimpled depravity." More recently the late James Snead characterized Temple's childhood work as a "sustained impression*imitating not adults, but an adult's image of a child." Snead focuses on the films in which Temple is paired with Bill Robinson to show this process of a potentially subversive mimicry enacted in the realm of race as well as age. Snead's is perhaps the most perceptive of a handful of recent writings in cultural and film studies to analyze the performative dynamics of sexuality and race in the movies of Shirley Temple. None of these essays, however, suggests the role that music and musical performance might play in the cultural work of Temple's phenomenally popular films. This paper extends the work of Snead and others to explore uses of mus!
ic in the trilogy of civil war films: The Little Colonel (1934), The Littlest Rebel (1935) and Dimples (1936). To what extent does music provide a special register in these films for the performance of mimicry? To what extent does music provide a special register for the performance of mimicry? We will see that the relation between mimicry and music in these films hinges on representations of embodiment, disembodiment, memory and desire.