AMSGNY Meetings

 

The spring meeting of the Greater New York Chapter of the AMS will take place on Saturday, May 18^th, over Zoom.  All are welcome to attend.   The Zoom code is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4861123413?pwd=c0podGRzbVVtZnUwd2pBMGpFVm41UT09

10-11 AM Session 1—Popular Song

Who Are You, Miss Simone?: Vocal Androgyneity and the Acousmatic Question

Amanda Paruta (University at Buffalo (SUNY)

An “Over the Rainbow” Precedent? Nostalgia, Borrowing, and MGM’s THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)

Laura Lynn Broadhurst (Rutgers University)

11:30-12  Business Meeting

12-12:30  Lunch Break

12:30-2:30 PM Session 2—Music from the 16^th-19^th Centuries

A Tapestry of Devotion: The 12 Lassus Chansons in Simon Goulart’s Cinquante Pseaumes de David (Heidelberg 1597)

Bethany Brinson (Eastman School of Music)

An American Business Romance:

The Career of John Valentine Steger, Piano Manufacturer

William E Hettrick (Hofstra University)

Tancrède’s Crusade: A Military View of Campra’s Opera

Catherine Ludlow (University of Washington)

Music Lessons for the Discerning Woman in Seventeenth Century Spain

Deborah Lawrence  (St. Mary’s College of Maryland)

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A Tapestry of Devotion: The 12 Lassus Chansons in Simon Goulart’s Cinquante Pseaumes de David (Heidelberg 1597)

     In 1597, Genevan Protestant cleric, poet, and editor Simon Goulart (1543-1628) compiled the Cinquante Pseaumes de David (Heidelberg 1597), a substantial volume of music printed by Jerôme Commelin and dedicated to the Amsterdam Collegium Musicum.  Of the 70 works within, 50 are strophic settings of Psalms set to compositions by Orlando di Lasso, in a hybrid kind of contrafacta where Goulart artfully superimposes pre-existing text onto Lassus’ pre-existing music.  Lassus was widely admired for his exceptional ability to integrate music with text in moving and meaningful ways, thereby imbuing the music with a sensitivity and poignancy that would have appealed to Goulart’s Protestant circles, even with the altered texts (only sacred or “expurgated” texts were acceptable for recreational singing).  In what ways does Goulart’s use of Lassus’ expressive abilities, particularly in the 12 five-voice French chansons featured, develop (and go beyond) the prevailing intentions of chansons spirituelles in order to create a "tapestry of devotion”?  By examining the text-music enmeshment that Goulart carefully weaves, I demonstrate Goulart’s prioritization of the affections as the listener-performer becomes “one” with the words. 

     Curiously, as Simon Groot suggests, Goulart tries to distance (rather than merely separate) listeners' attention from the original chanson lyrics, while at the same time retaining the potent text-united-to-music qualities.  Distancing listener-performers from associations may facilitate a personal internalization.  By exploring examples of affective integration in the twelve Lassus chansons, I illuminate the ways in which Goulart’s decision-making, both in compilation and reworking, takes inspiration from the music’s inherent expressive intentions. 

 

Bethany Brinson, originally from North Carolina, is a second-year Ph.D. student in musicology at the Eastman School of Music. Her research interests include 20th-century sound art and continued experimental and poststructural approaches to composition, particularly involving mimesis and naturalism. She has participated in intensive learning experiences to support and supplement her research, notably joining an immersive summer 2023 course abroad in France to study spectral music. In addition to her studies and scholarship, she maintains an active performing career, having collaborated frequently with composers, singers, instrumentalists, and ballet ensembles. She recently joined the collaborative piano staff at Nazareth University.

 Bethany graduated from Indiana University in 2022 with a B.M. in piano performance, a B.A. in mathematics (with highest distinction), and a minor in French. Motivated by the transformative power of music, she is pursuing a multifaceted career in teaching, writing, performing, composing, and collaborating. Outside of all things music, Bethany enjoys drawing, creative writing, birds, and spending time outdoors.

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Laura Lynn Broadhurst (Rutgers University)

In recent decades, the nostalgic reception of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz has led to considerable hagiography of the film. This paper challenges such adulatory commentary by disclosing a startling revelation: MGM’s more than likely borrowing of the title and opening plot device from a 1915 operetta entitled Over The Rainbow. I first clarify U.S. copyright law about titles, confirm the operetta’s popularity across the U.S. (particularly through 1929), and pose several key questions: did Oz lyricist Yip Harburg know about this operetta prior to his MGM assignment? Alternatively, did someone at MGM tell him about it? If so, who might that have been, and when could this have occurred? The ensuing discussion explores several topics: an overview of the operetta and its obvious parallels to MGM’s Oz (accompanied by images from a rare 1915 piano-vocal score acquired for this project); Harburg’s possible pre-Oz familiarity with the work; and numerous documented performances of the operetta in NYC (Harburg’s home city) and southern California (near innumerable MGM personnel). I then propose the most likely candidate to have introduced the operetta’s dramatic ideas to the 1939 movie: MGM screenwriter Florence Ryerson, with whom Harburg worked on Oz’s screenplay in spring/summer 1938. This crucial analysis is supported by several hitherto unpublished screenplay drafts from June 1938, demonstrating the operetta’s great impact on Oz’s prologue and Dorothy’s ever-famous ballad. A conclusion considers Harburg’s claims of having originally conceived the song’s title and narrative concept, especially in light of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

 

 

Laura Lynn Broadhurst received her PhD in Musicology in 2020 from Rutgers, where her dissertation presented the first archival study of Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg’s songs for MGM’s THE WIZARD OF OZ. In 2019, part of her dissertation was published as a chapter within a multi-authored Oxford University Press volume, and she is currently converting the entire manuscript for book publication. Broadhurst's principal research interest is source study of mid-twentieth-century American musical theater. Accordingly, she was invited by the Library of Congress to process numerous Arlen-related artifacts. She has taught a variety of courses at Rutgers and has presented widely. 

 

Raised in the NYC metro area within a family of professional musicians, Broadhurst was originally trained as a pianist and vocalist. Her first BM (Piano Performance) is from the University of Northern Colorado, where she was highly involved with UNC’s renowned vocal jazz program (highlighted by a GRAMMY award nomination for UNC’s Vocal Jazz I). She also holds a BM (Vocal Performance) and an MA (Music History) from the University of Washington (graduate assistant to Larry Starr). Before reentering academia for the PhD, Broadhurst was an active professional vocalist in numerous genres, including opera, oratorio, art song, contemporary concert music, jazz, and commercials/studio work. 

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An American Business Romance:

The Career of John Valentine Steger, Piano Manufacturer

 William E Hettrick (Hofstra University)

                Among the many German immigrants to America in the late nineteenth century who pursued piano manufacturing, Johann Valentin Steger stands out for his remarkable success. Arriving in New York in 1871 at the age of 17, he Americanized his name and became fluent in English. He held various jobs, earning enough capital to establish his first piano store in downtown Chicago in 1879. He had no experience in this field, but he possessed strong determination. In 1891 he opened his largest retail piano store, where he also began to manufacture his own instruments. The next step was his first factory, built in 1893 in a neighboring town that he paid to incorporate in 1896 as Steger, Illinois. As sales and profits increased, he enlarged his factory and created houses for his employees, offered at reasonable rates for rental or purchase. His charitable acts also included free Thanksgiving Day dinners for thousands of poor families, as well as profit-sharing benefits to his workmen, which averted the labor problems experienced by another empire-builder, George Pullman, in his own town not far away. Steger made only upright pianos until 1899, when he introduced a baby-grand model. He manufactured his pianos under two brands: his high-grade instrument with his own name, and a popular commercial line (openly advertised as a stencil piano) called the Singer.  A newspaper considered his career “one of the business romances of America.”  His 1909 nineteen-story Steger Building became a Chicago landmark. Steger had enemies, however, especially the trade-journal editor Marc Antony Blumenberg, who damned him as a tyrannical slave-driver. Steger sued for libel. His family blamed his sudden, dramatic death in 1916 on incitement caused by Blumenberg’s attack, but it couldn’t be proved. Carried on with some success by his two sons, Stager’s “business romance” was largely defunct by 1929 and was officially dissolved in 1949.

William E. Hettrick’s most recent publications are The American Piano Industry: Episodes in the History of a Great Enterprise (Pendragon Press; Edwin Mellen Press, 2020); “Out in Front: The American Cabinet Piano-Player at Home and Abroad,” Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society 49 (2023): 5–60; and Johann Herbeck: Selected Sacred Works, Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 91 (A-R Editions, 2024).

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Music Lessons for the Discerning Woman in Seventeenth Century Spain

Deborah Lawrence 

(St. Mary’s College of Maryland)

 

 

Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano is well-known as the first of several printed courtesy manuals in the early modern period. Such books explicitly demonstrated how to behave in aristocratic circles, including what one should know about music. At the same time, printed popular fiction implicitly provided behavior models. Two such literary works are those of María de Zayas (1637 and 1647, respectively) in which young noblewomen and men at a soiree in Madrid take turns telling tales, often performing songs within their accounts. Additionally, music is an important feature in the framing narrative of these stories.

 

In her prologue introducing the first of these two novellas, Zayas primarily addresses her male readers, accusing them of withholding education and, therefore, power from women. In the narrative her characters promote the value of education for women, highlighting music education. Zayas’ women characters write their own ballad poetry and sonnets, sometimes composing the music, and accompany themselves on various instruments.

 

Carmen Y. Hsu[1] asserts that mastering music was a component of women’s acquisition of power, not just for themselves but also for the status of the men who associated with them. This paper will show how that power is embodied and taught in Zayas’ tales.

Tancrède’s Crusade: A Military View of Campra’s Opera

Catherine Ludlow (University of Washington)

 André Campra’s Tancrède (1702) is a tragédie en musique set during the First Crusade.  The story, inspired by scenes in Torquato Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1581), centers on the crusader knight Tancrède and his relationship with the Saracen princess Clorinde, herself a renowned warrior.  

 Tasso’s poem was immensely popular in the era, forming the basis for numerous paintings, plays, foreign literary works, and musical compositions, such as Jean-Baptiste Lully’s opera Armide (1686) and Claudio Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624).  Campra’s opera differs from similar compositions in interesting manners: Unlike the Combattimento, for example, the central battle is referenced but never directly depicted; and unlike most early French opera, including Armide, Tancrède’s prologue seems strongly connected to the rest of the opera, featuring phrases echoed in later acts, French views of the Crusades and colonialism, and even a sort of battle plan for the whole Crusade.

This paper will examine Tancrède from a military perspective.  Antoine Danchet’s libretto will be compared with earlier versions of the Tancred story, and will be examined in light of contemporary French knowledge of the Crusades, such as that found in Louis Maimbourg’s influential Histoire des Croisades pour la délivrance de la Terre Sainte (1675).  The paper will include discussion of the remaining dance choreographies, particularly the prologue’s sarabande, its military and societal implications, and how they may inform (and be informed by) related movements.  Lastly, the goals and ideals of the prologue will be contrasted with the conclusion of the opera.

Catherine Ludlow is a doctoral student in music history at the University of Washington.  Her current research explores notions of power (both military and magical) in French Baroque opera, and how this was manifested in dance.  She previously focused on the long nineteenth century, examining French Realist set design c. 1900, and German settings of Lord Byron in the early 19th century.

Catherine provides course and technical support for the UW School of Public Health, occasionally teaches French Baroque dance in the Seattle area, and is the secretary-treasurer of the AMS Pacific Northwest chapter.

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Who Are You, Miss Simone?: Vocal Androgyneity and the Acousmatic Question 

 Amanda Paruta (University at Buffalo (SUNY) 

 

Nina Simone’s singing voice, celebrated as sumptuous, dark, and emotionally potent, amplified the voices of America’s most oppressed, namely Black American women. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Simone performed at dozens of social justice protests and benefits, and regularly advocated for racial and gender equality within the concert hall. She cast a spell on listeners from across racial, gender, and class backgrounds, and her musical performances demonstrated an embodiment of concealed histories and practices from Western European and diasporic African traditions. This fugitive knowledge—knowledge that lingers but remains elusive— served as the foundation of her art, activism, and praxis, as demonstrated by the work of Daphne A Brooks (2021, 2011), Emily J. Lordi (2020, 2016), and Ruth Feldstein (2013). This paper seeks to extend their scholarship into the singing voice, suggesting that her vocal mechanism and expansive timbral capacity was crucial to her role as an entertainer and advocate.  

Inspired by Nina Sun Eidsheim’s musicological work on vocal timbre and race, I point to Simone’s voice as a locus of fugitivity. Posing what Eidsheim (2019) names the acousmatic question, the question of who is speaking, reveals a timbre and generic range that confounds Eurocentric definitions of gender and race. She built a praxis of invisibility around an androgynous singing timbre, audible in songs such as “Mississippi Goddam” (1963) and “Four Women,” (1966) which enabled her fluid occupation of several identities and thereby position herself as an ideal conduit for Civil Rights messaging. 

 Amanda Paruta is a PhD student in historical musicology and music theory at the University at Buffalo. She earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in music and anthropology from Buffalo State University and a Master of Music in musicology from Northwestern University. In 2023 she was awarded a Western New York Prosperity Fellowship through the University at Buffalo and Prentice Family Foundation to explore the relationship between communities and institutionalized musicking. Her public scholarship includes contributions to the Center for 21^st Century Music blog, Edge of the Center, and an essay, “Working Class Musicology,” published by Project Spectrum.