AMSGNY Meetings

 

The Spring 2023 meeting of the AMSGNY will take place on Saturday, May 6th online.  The Zoom code is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4861123413?pwd=c0podGRzbVVtZnUwd2pBMGpFVm41UT09.

The phone number to call in using your phone is 1 929 205 6099.  The Meeting code:  486 112 3413 

11:00-12:30     Session I

 
A.  Alignment between Mode and Character in Operas by Francesca Caccini and Elisabeth de la Guerre

Solomon Guhl-Miller (Rutgers University)

B.  The Language of Tones and the Problem of Instrumental Recitative 

Eunsoo Lee (CUNY Graduate Center)

C.  A Body Reborn: Glyndebourne’s Reconsideration of Benjamin Britten’s Rape of Lucretia

Leonard Walker, Jr. (University of Florida)

 

12:30-12:45  Break

 

12:45-1 PM  Business Meeting

 

1-2:30  Session II

A.     Anthony Philip Heinrich’s 1825 Negro’s Banjo Quickstep Bricolage and a new approach to structure

Artis Wodehouse (City Island, NY)

B.     Gay Choruses and the AIDS Crisis: From Assimilation to Activism

             Poe M. Allphin (CUNY Graduate Center)

C. “It’s Here at Popular Prices!” Stage Musicals vs. Their Screen Adaptations: a Short Enquiry

Rufus Hallmark (Rutgers University)\

 

Abstracts and Bios

 

 Alignment between Mode and Character in Operas by Francesca Caccini and Elisabeth de la Guerre

 There are numerous studies that highlight the connections between keys and characters in Romantic opera. But to speak of keys assigned to characters in Baroque opera is rarely done, which is what makes Francesca Caccini's and de la Guerre's operas so revolutionary. Little work has been done on de la Guerre’s Procris et Cephale, but important work has been done on Caccini’s use of keys in Ruggiero by Suzanne Cusick. The conclusion she reached was that male characters primarily use sharp keys, the female characters primarily use flat keys, and the androgynous Melissa sings primarily in C major. However, when considering the cadences associated with each of the main characters in Ruggiero, and with the major plot developments in Procris, a clear alignment between mode and character emerges. Of particular note is the shared use of F by both Caccini and de la Guerre for their respective villains. This paper will outline the various links between modes and characters in these two operas and reflect on the use of this innovation by two of the earliest female composers of opera.

Solomon Guhl-Miller teaches music history at Rutgers University, Westminster Choir college, Temple University, and University of Hartford. He has published articles and presented papers on a wide range of topics from Ancient Greek music to Contemporary Art Music Criticism.  Recently, he received a digital humanities grant from the NEH to complete the project: Ars Antiqua Online: A Digital Edition of Thirteenth Century Polyphony.

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The Language of Tones and the Problem of Instrumental Recitative

The idea of accepting music as a type of language emerged in the seventeenth century with new importance and gained dominance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout the eighteenth century, the definition of musical rhetoric is modified and expanded, and this idea, which emphasizes the similarities between language and music, is closely linked to the emergence of musical syntax and the theory of form, as examined by Carl Dahlhaus and later by Mark Evan Bonds. However, instrumental recitative, a relatively underexplored element, hints at a gap within the paradigm shift through which instrumental music attains its own meaning. At the heart of the discussion surrounding the “vocal-music-like” or “singable” character of instrumental music, instrumental recitative becomes more complex in its morphology and epistemological meaning in the epoch. In this paper, I will examine early examples of instrumental recitative in the 1600–1700s as well as Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Fantasia in C minor, Wq. 63/6, H.75 (1753), in order to demonstrate the unique features of instrumental recitative, which ironically adheres to the aesthetic principles of rhetoric, as the so-called “speaking principle (das redende Prinzip)” but still does not closely relate to the practical principles of rhetoric and thus remains as a heterogeneous part of instrumental music.

 Eunsoo Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology at the City University of New York. Her dissertation focuses on instrumental voice-like features, or “vocality” in Beethoven’s music, within the contexts of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music history and aesthetics.

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 A Body Reborn: Glyndebourne’s Reconsideration of Benjamin Britten’s Rape of Lucretia

 Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera The Rape of Lucretia is well-acknowledged in scholarship that details musical obscurity and gendered violence in twentieth-century opera (Harper-Scott, MacDonald, Kildea); however, few have considered how this opera’s volatile content are displayed on a modern stage (Hisama). Glyndebourne’s 2013/15 production reimagines this forgotten work as a contemporary air that comments on both the original composition’s thematic approaches and modern rape politics. Britten’s initial creation tells us that her rape is more important than her body.

In this paper, I demonstrate that Glyndebourne production designers Fiona Shaw, Michael Levine, and Nicky Gillibrand, crafted a space that reconstructed Britten’s narrative, which, in turn, rebirthed the titular character as a woman of substance and bodily agency. I focus specifically on the titular act’s scene and the ways that production elements such as costume and light design, stage construction, and choreography are manipulated to divert the audience’s attention away from explicit, triggering violence. By identifying these strategies, we gain insight on how to communicate the intricacies of rape culture through a socially sensitive framework. I conclude that this Lucretia offers effective and humane ways to reimagine operatic depictions of sexual violence in the twenty-first century.

 Leonard Walker is a performing artist, dramaturg, and Ph.D. student in Historical Musicology at the University of Florida (UF) focusing on the production design and histories of Benjamin Britten’s vocal works. Walker holds a master’s in Musicology from Western Michigan University, as well as undergraduate degrees in voice and dance. His thesis analyzed Ted Hearne’s Consent to illuminate the ways in which American society justifies gendered violence. Leonard currently serves as the Student Representative for the American Musicological Society’s Southern Chapter, a vocalist in UF’s Early Music Ensemble Lux Solaris, and teaching assistant for undergraduate music and dance history surveys.

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 Anthony Philip Heinrich’s 1825 Negro’s Banjo Quickstep Bricolage and a new approach to structure

After losing his inherited fortune in the economic crash following the Napoleonic Wars, Anthony Philip Heinrich (1781-1861) immigrated from Bohemia to the young United States. There he turned his musical avocation into a new career, becoming a professional composer, violinist and conductor. He settled ca. 1817 for a period in a log cabin in Kentucky, where he began to compose. 

Heinrich exuberantly seized upon and expressed in his music the freedom and  — without prejudice — the diversity of peoples and their musics that he found in his adopted new homeland. 

Despite the acute originality of The Negro’s Banjo, Heinrich’s ca. 1820 composition — featuring rapid and profuse juxtapositions of styles and genres ranging from Bohemian, Scottish, and African-American folksongs and dances, to late Viennese “Beethoven-esque” musical topics, to virtuoso piano figuration—appears to lack coherent architectural design. 

However, understanding the structure of The Negro’s Banjo Quickstep may in fact begin by assessing Heinrich’s unique bricolage construction using high and low musical genres and styles.

The presentation will include Wodehouse’s video performance of Heinrich’s rarely heard work. Her performance will be visually paired in real time to the original 1825 score onto which will be projected salient print commentary. 

Pianist, harmoniumist, pianolist and MIDI editor Artis Wodehouse has devoted her career to preserving and disseminating neglected but valuable music and instruments from the past, with an emphasis on American music.  Cited by the NYTimes as “savior of the old and neglected”, she received a National Endowment grant that propelled her into production of CDs and published transcriptions of recorded performances and piano rolls made by George Gershwin, Jelly Roll Morton and Zez Confrey. Wodehouse performs on a representative group of antique reed organs, harmoniums and antique pianos that she had restored and brought to concert condition.

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Gay Choruses and the AIDS Crisis: From Assimilation to Activism

 Many of the first gay men’s choruses in the U.S. were established either shortly before or during the advent of the AIDS crisis, as an explosion of gay choruses across the country formed between 1979-1981. Early efforts by gay choruses attempted to provide community gathering spaces in rehearsals while frequently presenting a more assimilationist front in concerts. In the straight press, gay men’s choruses were commended for bringing back the art of the male chorus, but often discredited for any embracing of their titular gayness. One New York City Gay Men’s Chorus member who only wished to be identified by his first name in a June 1981 issue of Fire Island News, described the ensemble’s activities as “music sung by men who happen to be gay.” Gary Miller, their first director, told a journalist that “the less camp we do, the happier I’ll be.” the AIDS crisis shaped the musical and cultural landscape of gay men’s choruses and created a more politically charged environment that was reflected in choruses’ commissions and concerts. This paper explores the effects of AIDS on the gay men’s chorus scene in the U.S. through archival work.     

 Poe M. Allphin is a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center who works at the intersection of trans studies, music, archives, and oral histories. His academic and creative work has been published in Transgender Studies Quarterly and the Anthology of New Music: Trans & Nonbinary Voices. Poe holds a B.A. in music from Smith College and an M.M. in music theory from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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“It’s Here at Popular Prices!” Stage Musicals vs. Their Screen Adaptations: a Short Enquiry

Since my teen age I have loved musical comedy, but the only way I could see shows was at the movies. Later, when I was able to see them on the stage, I realized how much richer an experience live productions are. This essay is an attempt to understand why staged musicals have such “magical” appeal. The stage holds a personal allure for me, but I wish to inquire about the impersonal physical and aesthetic factors that are peculiar to live theater and denied for the most part to film. Many of these are common to any stage play versus its screen adaptation, but some are particularly true for musicals. To take one example, what is the difference between stage and film when a character breaks into song in the middle of a spoken scene? Some find this sudden transition jarring, but there are factors in a live, staged performance that ameliorate this rupture. The central problematical factor of film is its almost inevitable implication of realism.               

Rufus Hallmark was a Professor in the Department of Music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, New Jersey. He is the editor of Schumann's song cycles Dichterliebe and Frauenleibe und Leben for the new critical edition of the composer's works.