Utah has a coast?

West Coast Conference of Music Theory and Analysis
University of Utah, Salt Lake City

Friday April 20th, 2007

8:30 – 10:00 am

Registration and Welcome with Coffee and Pastries.
Room 200, “Thompson Chamber Music Hall”, Main Floor, David Gardner Hall.

10:00 - 12:15

Session: Current Theories of Harmony (Room 324 DGH)

“UTT-Spaces”, Scott Cook, University of British Columbia.

“Transformational Harmony and the Substituted-Sixth Chord in the Early Music of Richard Strauss”, Stuart Woronecki, University of Connecticut.

“Flat Primary Triads, Harmonic Refraction, and the Harmonic Idiom of Shostakovich and Prokofiev”, Gabe Fankhauser, Appalachian State University.

12:30 – 2:00

WCCMTA Banquet Luncheon, Crimson View Bistro, Ray Olpin Student Union.

2:15 – 3:45

Short Session : Meter as Performed and Heard (Room 302 DGH)

“Hypermetrical Ambiguity and Performance Choices in BWV 540/1”, Leon Couch, Converse College.

“Tracing the Path of Metric Focus in Four Chopin Etudes”, Brent Yorgason, University of Texas, San Antonio.

3:45 – 4:00 Break

4:00 – 6:00

Session: Tracing Rhythm Across Different Repertories (Room 302 DGH)

“Construing Rhythmic Spaces in Diasporic African Music”, Christopher Stover, University of Washington.

“Revolving Variations Via Rhythm”, Susan De Ghize, University of Denver

“Rhythmic Conflict in Janacek”, Zdenek Skoulmal, Kwantlen University College.


Saturday April 21st, 2007

8:00 – 11:00 am

Session: Analysis of Twentieth-Century Music, (Room 306 DGH)

”Analyzing Tonal Embellishment In Post-Tonal Music”, Peter Silberman, University of Rochester.

“Adams and Stravinsky”, Luke Ma, UC Santa Barbara.

“En‘light’ening the Musical Idea: Text and Musical Structure in Webern’s Das Augenlicht”, Darin Hoskisson, Texas A&M – Kingsville.

“Pitch and Duration Contours in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Super-Formula for Licht”, Mustafa Bor, University of British Columbia.

11:00 -11:15 Break

11:15 – 12:45

Short Session: Theories of Form in Different Contexts (Room 306 DGH)

“Transpositional Combination and the Analysis of Form in George Crumb’s Lux Aeterna”, Brian Moseley, Cincinnati, Ohio.

“Burning Bridges: Defining the Interverse Using the Music of U2”, Christopher Endrinal, Florida State University.

12:45 – 2:00 Lunch On Your Own

2:00 – 4:30

Special Session: Schoenberg’s Drei Klavierstucke, Op. 11 Reconsidered (Dumke Recital Hall)

“Networks of Reference in Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11”, Richard Kurth, University of British Columbia.

“Tonal Pitch Space, The Musical ‘Idea’ and the Normative Body in Schoenberg’s Op. 11, No. 1”, Bruce Quaglia, University of Utah.

“Schoenberg’s Compositional Philosophy and the Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11”, Áine Heneghan, University of Washington.

“The ‘Musical Idea’ and Motivic Structure in Schoenberg's Op.11, No. 1”, Jack Boss, University of Oregon.

John Brackett, University of Utah, Respondent.

Heather Conner, University of Utah, will be performing.

4:30 – 4:45 Break

4:45 – 6:00 Keynote Address, Martin Scherzinger, Eastman School of Music: “Time-Transcendence in African Harmony and Rhythm: Ambiguities, Resonance, Effects.” (Dumke Recital Hall)

FriPod: International Women's Day

Yesterday was International Women's Day, so I'm putting off the shortest track list to next week, so I can list the tracks about women and ladies.

1. "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" by Gershwin, performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. This comes across as a love song, even though the words imply an unequal ownership, with Porgy owning Bess. This cognitive dissonance bothers me, perhaps because the opera is about race and disability issues, but ignores gender issues here.

2. "I Got a Woman" performed by Ray Charles. Yes, more ownership issues. This is worse, as it is more contemporary, and has a line that lays it out explicitly: "She knows a womans place is right there now in her home." My kids love this CD, and often would ask for it when we were commuting a lot. I hated it when this song came up, and frequently felt obligated to point out how wrong it was.

3. "Kind of Woman" from the musical Pippin. Much more empowering, this song is about the strengths of average women.

4. "Lonely Woman" by Horace Silver. A haunting ballad, no lyrics to offend.

5. "Pretty Woman" by Duke Ellington. This love song annoys me, but not because of the lyrics. They are fairly standard, about a guy who is in love with a pretty woman and hopes she loves him. The emphasis on "pretty" could be offensive, but this term could be taken to mean her attitude or her intelligence as much as her looks. No, the song is annoying because I don't like the singer (Al Hibbler) and the band sounds chunky on this track.

6. Sequenza III for woman's voice, by Luciano Berio, performed by Luisa Castellani. This breakthrough piece blurs the edges of performance space, when the soloist comes on stage muttering to herself. Has the piece started yet, or is the performer crazy? Either is a valid option for many performers. One could make an issue about the incomprehensibility of most of the lyrics, but I think Berio was going for the interesting timbre issues rather than for statements about women. He did compose this piece for his then wife, Cathy Berberian, so I would think it was done with a positive attitude towards women in general.

7. "My Lady", by Bill Russo, performed by Stan Kenton's big band. This gives off a slight femme-fatale feeling because of the sax solo, but overall it doesn't have enough grit for that. I think this is an attempt by the Kenton band at sentimentality.

8. "Song for Lady M" performed by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Nicco describes it better than I can: B

ut the other song on the album which captured my teenage attention was Song For Lady M—a sad, slow saxophone solo number. Although some of the progressions are still reminiscent of Dixieland, this is more of Coltrane-inspired sound. It starts slow and sad. For some reason I could always imagine it being played from a high window off a dark street. It’s that kind of smoky feeling. In the middle of the song it starts to pick up—but the sound is not any less sad, it starts to communicate a sort of desperation. A Desperate Song for Lady M.

At 15, I had no idea what heartbreak was. But Song for Lady M was heartbreak—an intense, personal heartbreak, different from “Soul Gestures in Southern Blues”. Marsalis’ jazz genius on that number is the menacing yoke of history; the Dirty Dozen sax solo is mournful, a personal love lost.

9. "Sophisticated Lady" by Duke Ellington, Irving Mills, and Mitchell Parish. I have two versions of this, by Duke and by Chick Corea. The instrumental by Corea is very elegant and sophisticated. The lyrics of the original song are okay, except for the line "She sticks close to her lover, she obeys God's rule." This strikes a little too close to the idea of woman obeying man.

Deep feelings

I've been working at being more in touch with my emotions lately, especially the more extreme levels of those emotions. As I've been doing this, I find that my musical tastes are more definitive, yet changing depending on my current mood. I've always had moments when I've decided I wasn't in the mood to hear a particular piece of music, but those moments are much more common now. And I can't always predict what will work and what will offend. Right now Schubert's Sonata in A minor for cello and piano, second movement works very well, soothing me while still maintaining a complex mix of sadness and hope. A Bach invention would not be appealing, and the "Loseraie dire" currently being performed by Piffaro is pushing it. In fact, I just stopped the performance, and that is not something the old me would have been able to do. Before, I always needed to hear the end of the story. I pay more attention to the lyrics now, if there are any, and the application of those lyrics to my own life. And in general I prefer more complex music, especially music that has complex emotional content.

New York State of Mind

The Music Theory Society of New York State (MTSNYS, usually pronounced Mitts niss) is having its annual conference on April 14-15. The special focus of the conference is the interaction of technology and music theory.

2007 MTSNYS ANNUAL MEETING: PROGRAM:

SATURDAY, 14 APRIL

Morning Session IA: Technology I: Probability for the Perplexed Chair: Marlon Feld (Columbia University)
• Matthew Santa (Texas Tech): Probability in Musical Analysis
• Wayne Alpern (Mannes College of Music): Guide for the Perplexed: A Tutorial on Lewinian Boolean Analysis of Babbitt’s Composition for Four Instruments

Morning Session IB: Semiotics and the Simpsons: D’oh re mi Chair: Taylor Greer (Penn State)
• Michael Klein (Temple University): Musical and Cultural Values in the Theory of Narrative Archetypes
• Martin Kutnowski (Saint Thomas University): Trope and Irony in “The Simpsons” Overture

Morning Session IIA: Technology II: Poster Demonstrations Moderator: Ciro Scotto (Eastman School of Music)
• Timothy Cutler (Austin College) The Internet Music Theory Database
• Tuukka Ilomaki (Sibelius Academy) Developing More Usable Music Theory Software

Morning Session IIB: 20th- Century Atonal Voice-Leading and Dialectics Chair: Joseph Straus (Graduate Center, CUNY)
• Andrew Pau (CUNY Graduate Center): Voice Leading as Harmonic Determinant in Atonal Music
• Benjamin Wadsworth (Eastman): Dialectical Opposition between Tonal and Atonal Structures in Berg's Piano Sonata

Afternoon Session IA: B & B Chair: Chandler Carter (Hofstra University)
• Austin Patty (Lee University): The Influence of Harmonic Rhythm and Melodic Pacing On Musical Climax
• Mark Anson-Cartwright (CUNY): Modulation to the Minor Dominant in Major: Three Examples by Bach
• Brent Auerbach (U. of Mass.): Tiered Polyphony as a Signal of Motivic Primacy in the Piano Music of Brahms

Afternoon Session IB: Technology III: Intelligent Systems Moderator/Respondent: Leigh Van Handel (Michigan State University)
• Panayotis Mavromatis (NYU): Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Music Theory: A Knowledge-Based Programming Framework
• Matthew Brown (Eastman School of Music): ‘The Lodovico Method’

KEYNOTE ADDRESS (3;45–4:45pm)
ERIC ISAACSON (Indiana University): Doin’ It Right: Theory, Technology, Today, and Tomorrow

SUNDAY, 15 APRIL

Morning Session IA-B: Form and Bi/Symmetry/Tonality: into the 20th century ( and beyond . . .) Chair: Jonathan Dunsby (SUNY Buffalo)
• Howard Cinnamon (Hofstra University): Classical Models of Sonata Form and the First Movement of Liszt's Faust Symphony: The Conservative Revealed
• Deborah Rifkin (Ithaca College): The Quiet Revolution of a B-natural: Prokofiev's New Simplicity in the Second Violin Concerto
• Les Black (Ithaca College): Heuristic Symmetries in Carl Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony
• Jose Antonio Martins (University of Iowa) Intervallic Reorientation in Dual-organization Spaces: Interpreting Polymodality in Works by Milhaud
9:30am–11am

Morning Session IB: Technology IV: Poster Demonstrations Moderator: Kristin Taavola (Cornell University)
• Cynthia Gonzales (Texas State University): iMovie and Flash: Hi-Tech Harmonic Dictation Teaching Assistants
• Rebecca Jemian (Ithaca College): Who Wants to Pass Fundamentals: Clickers in the Classroom

Morning Session IIB: Oppositions Chair: Mary Arlin (Ithaca College)
• J. Daniel Jenkins (Eastman School of Music) Schoenberg’s Concept of ruhende Bewegung
• Judy Lochhead (SUNY Stony Brook) The “Objective and Subjective” in Analytical Transcription

EatDrinkGambleSex

Well, that title should help my traffic. But it is also one movement of Casino, a work by Phillip Bimstein. Bimstein writes a post-minimalist type of musique concrète, with recorded and sampled sounds superimposed with traditional musical instruments. Perhaps this is the Varèse-ian school of music that Robert Gables is looking for. The voice of the dice-caller in Casino is rather bland sounding. Perhaps this can have an ironic twist on his philosophizing about a tawdry subject, but as a sonic feature it was disappointing. The voices of Robert Logan, "Bushy Wushy The Beer Man", and Larkin Gifford are more complex, combining with the sampled sounds and repetitive music in a pleasing variety of timbres. Information and other reviews about the Starkland CD, Larkin Gifford's Harmonica, can be found here.

Ancient Drama in Modern Opera

'Ancient Drama in Modern Opera, 1600-1800'
APGRD Conference, Classics Centre, Oxford, 12 July 2007

This conference is interdisciplinary, with speakers from Classics and Modern Languages as well as music academics. Registration is 20 pounds (includes lunch), and the organizers promise mystical bursaries, which is Brit-speak for student scholarships.

Provisional speakers:
Dr Michael Burden (Director of Productions, New Chamber Opera), 'Myth in Metastasio's works'
Bruno Forment (composer and performer; PhD student at University of Ghent), 'The gods out of the machine ... and their come-back'
Professor Wendy Heller (Department of Music, Princeton University), 'Playing with fortune: the fate of Pyrrhus in seicento Venice'
Professor Robert Ketterer (Department of Classics, University of Iowa), 'The influence of Agostino Piovene's translations of Greek tragedy on his opera libretti in the first quarter of the 18th century'
Dr Suzana Ograjenšek (Research Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge), 'Andromache in late 17th and early 18th century operas'
Professor Ellen Rosand (Department of Music, Yale University), 'Classical themes in Monteverdi'
Professor Reinhard Strohm (Faculty of Music, Oxford University), ' "Addio Tebani!" Oedipus
Tyrannus as opera seria (1729)'
Jennifer Thorp (Archivist, New College, Oxford), 'Dance in Lully's Alceste'
Dr Amy Wygant (School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Glasgow University), 'The Ghost of Alcestis'

After the papers there will be a wine reception and then a short recital of arias from eighteenth-century tragic operas by Ensemble La Falsirena (Suzana Ograjenšek, soprano; Luke Green, harpsichord; Henrik Persson, baroque 'cello). We currently expect the papers to run from 9.30 to 6.15, and the recital to be over by 8.00.

Conference at UIUC

GENETIC CRITICISM IN AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTEXT:

LITERATURE, VISUAL ARTS, THEATER, MUSIC

Smith Memorial Hall, Room 25, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

30-31 March 2007

Not only the final outcome but the process of creative endeavor has long attracted attention in various artistic disciplines, but only recently has the potential of coordinated research of this kind begun to be explored in detail. The most rigorous basis for the study of artistic creativity comes not from anecdotal or autobiographical reports, but from original handwritten sketches and drafts and preliminary studies, as well as from revised manuscripts and typescripts, corrected proof sheets, and similar primary sources. Especially since the eighteenth century, writers, composers, and painters have been much concerned with originality of style, which has encouraged intense preliminary efforts preceding and leading toward the production of finished artistic works.

The conference on "Genetic Criticism in an Interdisciplinary Context: Literature, Visual Arts, Theatre, Music," is based on a collaboration between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Centre nationale de recherche scientifique in Paris; the conference organizers are William Kinderman at UIUC and Almuth Grésillon at the CNRS. That "critique génétique" has been a focus of the CNRS is evident from the journal Genesis: Revue internationale de critique génétique. Kinderman is General Editor of the Beethoven Sketchbook Series at the University of Illinois Press, and has written numerous studies exploring the compositional process of various composers.

The interdisciplinary dimension of the conference will be enhanced by the presence of leading scholars in literature and the visual arts as well as music. The conference is coordinated in turn with workshop performances on 30-31 March of the important new play "33 Variations" by distinguished playwright Moisés Kaufman. Kaufman's play explores the creative process of Beethoven as situated at the intersection of life and art, and he thoughtfully probes our own engagement with the artistic legacy of this brilliant, fascinating, witty, and sometimes elusive composer.

Conference Program

Friday morning 9-12 Genetic Criticism and Literature

Caroline Szylowicz, Chair

"Caution: Work in Progress" Almuth Grésillon, CNRS, Paris

"Varieties of Genetic Experience" Geert Lernout, University of Antwerp

"Variant and Variation: Towards a Freudo-bathmologico-Bakhtino-Goodmanian Genetic Model" Daniel Ferrer, CNRS, Paris

"Variants of Pleasure in Roland Barthes: The Genetic Record of a Voice" Armine Kotin Mortimer, UIUC



Friday afternoon 2-5 Musical Sketches and Editions

Katherine R. Syer, Chair

"Beethoven's Eroica Sketchbook" Alan Gosman, University of Michigan, Lewis Lockwood, Harvard University

"Beethoven's Missa solemnis" Patrizia Metzler, UIUC, Fred Stoltzfus, UIUC

"A 'Genetic' Edition of Verdi's La forza del Destino" Philip Gossett, University of Chicago

"'They only give rise to misunderstandings'­Mahler's Sketches in Context" James Zychowicz, Madison/Chicago



Saturday morning 9-12 Perspectives on Painting and Music

Steve Taylor, Chair

"Genetic Evolution: Changes in Delacroix's Creative Process" David O'Brien, UIUC

"Putting the Process into the Product: Exploratory Transitional Passages in Beethoven's Late Quartet Sketches" Peter McCallum, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney

"The Ineffable, The Unspeakable, and the Inspirational. Part One: Motherwell's Mother" Jonathan Fineberg, UIUC

"Studying Very Recent Music & Designing Tools for Sketch Studies: Towards 'Genetic Navigation' Through Digitalized Traces of Compositional Processes" Nicolas Donin, IRCAM, Centre Pompidou, Paris



Saturday afternoon 1:30-3:45 Genetic Criticism and Performance

Tom Mitchell, Chair

"Can Genetic Criticism be Applied to the Performing Arts?" Jean-Louis Lebrave, ITEM-CNRS, Paris

"Beethoven on the Stage" Moisés Kaufman, Director, Tectonic Theater Project, New York

"Beethoven's 'Diabelli' Variations. Lecture/performance" William Kinderman, UIUC

Memorial Room, Smith Memorial Hall



Friday and Saturday evenings, 30 and 31 March (Armory Theater): workshop performances of new play by Moisés Kaufman, "33 Variations," a co-production of the Tectonic Theater Company (New York) and the Arena Stage (Washington DC) (workshop extends from 12-31 March)