“Musicology Across Boundaries”
The University of Arizona
Graduate Student Music Conference
February 24-25, 2017
February 24th: Day 1
9:00 – 9:50 a.m.
Registration and Complementary Coffee and Pastries
9:50- 10:00 a.m.
Welcome from the Director of the Fred Fox School of Music
10:00 - 10:20 a.m.
“Performance Practice with Live, Non-Interactive
Panel 1
Electronics: A Spectromorphological Approach in the
Music and
Electroacoustic Music of Kaija Saariaho”
Technology
Patti Kilroy (New York University)
10:20 - 10:40 a.m.
Chair: Kari Ann
“Competing Listening Strategies in Donnacha Dennehy’s
Kreiter
‘Stainless Staining’”
Co-chair: Miguel
Julia Gjebic (McGill University)
Arango
10:40 -10:50 a.m.
Questions
20-minute break
11:10 - 11:30 a.m.
“Alberto Ginastera, Un Chôro Argentino: Searching for a
Unifying Aesthetical Model and its Intangible Concepts”
Rafael Torralvo (University of Miami)
Panel 2
11:30 am – 11:50 a.m.
The Americas and
“John Adams and Charles Ives - Influence and 'American
the Atlantic
Mavericks’”
Kirby Haugland (Indiana University)
Chair: Jule Streety
11:50 a.m. – 12:10 p.m.
Co-chair: Gwyndolyn
“The
Sonata
in
Late-EighteenthCentury Spain: Blasco de
Morneault
Nebra’s Seis Sonatas para Calve y Fuerte Piano (1780)”
Bryan Stevens (University of North Texas)
12:10 – 12:20 p.m.
Questions
10:00 - 10:50 a.m.
11:10 a.m. –
12:20 p.m.
Lunch break
2:00 -3:10 p.m.
Panel 3
Nationalism,
Activism and
Musicology
Chair: Josh Barbre
Co-chair: Candice
Sierra
2:00 – 2:20 p.m.
“This is What America Looks Like: Musical Indications of a
Progressive Occupy Movement”
Benjamin Holbrook (Butler University)
2:20 – 2:40 p.m.
“Michael Finnissy’s Piano Music and Decentering
Nationalism”
Michael Tan (New York University)
2:40 – 3:00 p.m.
“Spectralism as Activism: Georg Friedrich Haas’s Musical
Response to the Death of Eric Garner”
Mike Ford (Columbia University)
3:00 – 3:10 p.m.
Questions
3:10 – 4:00 p.m.
Reception courtesy of the SAI and PMA UA chapters
4:00 – 4:30 p.m.
“Leo Brouwer, Cuba and the Guitar”
Concert by UA Bolton Guitar Students
4:30 p.m.
Keynote Speech by Dr. Tamara Levitz:
“Academic Musicologists as Civil Rights Activists: Facing a
Trump Presidency”
February 25th: Day 2
9:00 – 9:40 am
Complementary Coffee and Pastries
9:40 – 10:00 a.m.
“Arno Babadjanian: The Genius of the Soviet Music as an
Ambassador of Armenian Culture”
Nuné Melik (McGill University)
Panel 4
Beyond the
Western Canon
9:40 – 10:30 a.m.
Chair: Gwyndolyn
Morneault
Co-chair: Olga Savic
10:00 – 10:20 a.m.
“Analysis Through Rhetoric: Form and Expression in
Clifford Brown’s Improvisations”
Matthew Dueppen (Lamar University)
10:20 -10:30 a.m.
Questions
30-minute break
11:00 a.m. –
1:00 p.m.
Workshop led by Dr. Tamara Levitz:
“ ‘The Role of the Public Intellectual’: A Critical Workshop on
Public Musicology”
Lunch break
Panel 5
Inside the Western
Canon
3:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Chair: Candice Sierra
Co-chair: Kathy Acosta
Zavala
4:10 – 4:30 p.m.
3:00 – 3:20 p.m.
“The Evolution of the Flute Family as the “Outsider” in
Gustav Mahler’s Wunderhorn Symphonies”
Justin Gregg (University of Hartford)
3:20 – 3:40 p.m.
“The Music and Politics of Pierrot: Challenges to National
and Gender Identities in France, 1880-1898”
Siu Hei Lee (University of California, San Diego)
3:40 – 4:00 p.m.
“A Forgotten Father: Franz Danzi and the Op. 56 Wind
Quintets”
Kirsten Westerman (University of Cincinnati)
4:00 – 4:10 p.m.
Questions
Farewell and Thank You Reception
Keynote Address
“Academic Musicologists as Civil Rights Activists:
Facing a Trump Presidency”
Dr. Tamara Levitz
Professor of Comparative Literature and Musicology, UCLA
In this keynote presentation, I will clarify and define through historical analysis how and whether
academic musicologists can function as political activists in their professional roles as teachers,
administrators, and researchers. I limit myself to musicologists working in academia, because I believe
their current role in the political landscape is worthy of focused scrutiny. For the sake of my argument, I
will also distinguish clearly between private individuals—who have free choice in their personal political
views and in the actions they wish to undertake to support them—and professionals who have public
and institutional responsibilities that go beyond their personal preference. I am interested in exploring,
through acute historical analysis, the limits and challenges of political activism within the discipline of
Musicology as practiced in academia, and within the context of the American Musicological Society,
which allegedly represents that discipline on a national and international scale.
Tamara Levitz is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Musicology at UCLA, who specializes in
twentieth- century modernism. She is currently completing a large project on “Decolonizing the American
Musicological Society,” in which she examines how structures of white supremacy and practices of
exclusion and inequality became instituted in the society and have shaped the profession of Musicology
to the present day. She is also in the initial stages of a book project on Imperialism and Modernism, in
which she will examine modern literature and music from the perspective of global imperial politics.
Workshop
“ ‘The Role of the Public Intellectual’:
A Critical Workshop on Public Musicology”
Dr. Tamara Levitz
Professor of Comparative Literature and Musicology, UCLA
In this workshop, we will critically analyze “Musicology Now,” the blog of the American
Musicological Society, in light of historic and current debates on the role of the public intellectual. In
preparation, I ask participants to read all blog entries of “Musicology Now” from January 1, 2017 to the
present. I also ask you to read the following three short articles. I will send out some focused questions
and points of discussion from these articles before the workshop:
Saleem H. Ali and Robert Barsky, “Introduction,” in Quests Beyond the Ivory Tower: Public Intellectuals,
Academia, and the Media,” eds. Saleem H. Ali and Robert Barsky, Special Issue of AmeriQuests, 2006.
Online at: http://ejournals.library.vanderbilt.edu/ojs/index.php/ameriquests/article/viewFile/69/69
[Full issue here: http://www.robertbarsky.org]
David Graeber, “Anthropology and the Rise of the Professional-Managerial Class,” HAU: Journal of
Ethnographic Theory 4, no. 3 (2014): online at
https://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/hau4.3.007/1651
Lambros Fatsis, “Becoming Public Characters not Public Intellectuals: Notes towards an Alternative
Conception of Public Intellectual life,” European Journal of Social Theory (2016): 1-20; online at
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1368431016677977
Abstracts
Panel 1: Music and Technology
Performance Practice with Live, Non-Interactive Electronics:
A Spectromorphological Approach in the Electroacoustic Music of Kaija Saariaho
Patti Kilroy (New York University)
Works for live performer(s) and electronics are typically separated into two broad categories of
possessing either “fixed” or “live” electronics. Live electronics can be separated further into the
categories of interactive electronics, which respond and generate musical material in response to the
input of a performer, and non-interactive electronics, which encompasses live processing, triggered
musical samples, and any other electronic element that is temporally flexible, but not generating musical
material that can be notated. When discussing relationships among performers and electronics, the
literature on performance practice with live electronics relies heavily on drawing parallels to relationships
found in non-electronic settings, such as the relationship between soloists and accompanists, or
between partners in acoustic chamber music. As a result, the literature fails to account for the
complexities of this relationship within works with non-interactive electronics such as Kaija Saariaho’s
(b. 1952) Nymphéa (1987), which utilizes effects like reverberation, spatial reverberation, harmonization,
and delay effects that do not generate distinct musical material, yet create a sense of space that is
essential in identifying the work.
To begin approaching performance practice with live, non-interactive electronics, new frameworks and
terminology need to be developed to describe the forces at work. Denis Smalley’s work developing the
concepts and terminology of spectromorphology, which is concerned with how the spectral content of
sound change and are shaped through time, is a valuable framework utilized in composition but not yet
performance. Smalley’s approach is intended for electroacoustic music primarily concerned with spectral
qualities; therefore, his terminology, particularly for works like Nymphéa where instruments are amplified
and the reverberation and other live processing effect spatial or timbral change, may be helpful.
I am interested in investigating the applicability of Smalley’s terminology to performance practice,
particularly his terms addressing spatial perspective in electroacoustic music. I am also interested in the
extent to which a richer description of the electronic element of works like Nymphéa may lead to
opportunities for more substantive interaction among the electronic element and performers, and how
richer descriptions may lead to the development of new frameworks for performance practice with live,
non-interactive electronics.
Competing Listening Strategies in Donnacha Dennehy’s “Stainless Staining”
Julia Gjebic (McGill University)
Drawing on perceptual frameworks proposed by Hanninen (2012) and Margulis (2013), I propose an
analytic paradigm based on the competition of two types of listening strategies: associative and
continuous. Associative listening describes the recognition of similiarities between musical events and
the subsequent shift of attention to those similiarities, while continuous listening refers to the real-time
processing of the musical surface. In this paper, I demonstrate how these competing listening strategies
play out in Donnacha Dennehy’s “Stainless Staining” (2006) for piano and electronics; specifically, I
examine the interactions between the large-scale timbral process that governs the form of the piece and
the small-scale rhythmic process at the music’s surface.
In “Stainless Staining,” the pitch material for both the live piano and the soundtrack derives from an
overtone series with a G#0 fundamental, but is presented in conflicting tuning systems: the live piano is
equal-tempered, while the soundtrack consists in piano samples representing just-intoned harmonics of
this G# spectrum (Dennehy 2007). The juxtaposition of the equal-tempered live piano and the just
soundtrack results in a “dialectic between [timbral] fission and fusion” (Harvey, quoted in Whittal 1999).
Attending to these changes in timbre leads to an associative listening strategy, where timbrally similar
events are grouped and build a structural schematic based upon these associations (Hanninen 2012). A
saturation of slowly-evolving rhythmic cells on surface of “Stainless Staining,” however, encourage a
continuous mode of listening, consequently drawing attention away from the background timbral
associations. The conflict between listening to the surface-level rhythmic processes and the overarching
process of timbral fission yields a clear sense of development, climax, and consequently, a goal-directed
form. My analysis focuses on the climax of the piece, demonstrating that at this moment in the form, the
separate processes coincide.
Panel 2: The Americas and the Atlantic
Alberto Ginastera, Un Chôro Argentino: Searching for a Unifying
Aesthetical Model and its Intangible Concepts
Rafael Torralvo (University of Miami)
Although a significant number of scholars have discussed the musical influences on Alberto Ginastera,
they often emphasize the contribution of European and North American composers, such as Bartók,
Stravinsky, and Copland. Yet, current scholarship does not focus on the influence of South American
composers on his works. Ginastera held Heitor Villa-Lobos in great esteem and recalled in an article for
Buenos Aires Musical that: “Villa-Lobos was for me the answer to many questions that young musicians
posed about their own means of expression.” As an emerging composer in search of his own style,
Ginastera dedicated a movement of his Doce preludios americanos (1944) to Villa-Lobos to pay tribute
to a musician who had shaped his works of the period. Villa-Lobos, in turn, acknowledged Ginastera as
an emerging voice in South America and regarded him as his “spiritual son.”
One scholar who ventured explaining the influences of Villa-Lobos on Ginastera is Carleton Sprague
Smith (1985), who alludes to a connection between Ginastera’s Duo for flute and oboe (1945) and VillaLobos’ Chôros no. 2 for flute and clarinet. Sprague Smith mentions Juan Carlos Paz’s Duo and
Hindemith’s Drei kanonische Sonatine as two other possible influences. However, he fails to delve
deeply into these relationships and does not consider Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6, which is
also scored for a woodwind duo. In this paper, I propose to clarify the compositional models in
Ginastera's Duo by analyzing the piece from a Latin American perspective. By comparing this work with
Villa-Lobos’ two compositions I explore the influences on Ginastera's Duo. Furthermore, I will address
the aesthetic elements in the two Villa-Lobos works and the way they shaped Ginastera’s developing
conception as a composer of the Americas. I will show how the Duo served as a transitional work
allowing Ginastera to cultivate an even more complex musical language in his Pampeanas (1945-54),
which reveals his assimilation of Villa-Lobos’ nationalistic aesthetic. Through this study, I will shed light
on the cross-cultural relationships between two of the most prominent musical figures of South America.
John Adams and Charles Ives - Influence and “American Mavericks”
Kirby Haugland (Indiana University)
In the 1990s and early 2000s, American composer John Adams frequently cited Charles Ives as an
important influence. As a conductor, Adams regularly programmed works like Ives’s Fourth Symphony
and Three Places in New England, which he said offered a model of the orchestra as a “giant mixing
board.” Adams put this model into practice in a pair of his own Ivesian works, the 9/11 threnody On the
Transmigration of Souls (2002) and the subsequent orchestral suite My Father Knew Charles Ives
(2003).
While these works make explicit reference to the elder composer, affinities to Ives appear more widely in
Adams’s oeuvre, from early works like American Standard (1973) and Grand Pianola Music (1982), to
the recent Absolute Jest (2012). Adams and Ives both engaged with diverse musical traditions during
their formative years and developed unique eclectic styles. Works like Ives’s Fourth Symphony and The
Unanswered Question made strong but conflicted impressions on Adams, leading him to investigate
Ives’s biography and style, and eventually to incorporate elements of that style into his own music. This
influence was not naïve, however, as Adams consciously invoked his New England forebear while
growing into an elder statesman of American composers.
Drawing on interviews, program notes, Adams’s scores, memoir and blog, and Harold Bloom’s theory of
influence, this paper traces Adams’s relationship to and use of Ives and his music over the course of
Adams’s career. Adams learned techniques of orchestration and musical borrowing from Ives, and was
inspired to write pieces that emulated or even quoted Ives’s music. Perhaps more importantly, Adams
saw in the quasi-mythical figure of Ives a way to reposition himself historically. Instead of remaining a
member of a generational category, the “minimalists” or “postminimalists,” Adams explicitly tied himself
to Ives in order to reframe himself as part of a longer tradition of “American Mavericks.”
The Sonata in Late-Eighteenth- Century Spain: Blasco de Nebra’s
Seis Sonatas para Calve y Fuerte Piano (1780)
Bryan Stevens (University of North Texas)
While the study of the Classical era sonata has typically focused on the music of Austro-Germanic
composers—and overwhelmingly that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—the influence of this form
outside that locality has received significantly less attention. This is particularly true of Spanish music,
the study of which has concentrated on early Italian composers working in Spain and their students,
such as Domenico Scarlatti and Antonio Soler, whose majority of sonatas are in binary form; however,
no work has been done on Spanish composers of the late-eighteenth century in regard to their particular
use of sonata form. The present paper addresses this lacuna through an examination of Seis Sonatas
para Calve y Fuerte Piano by the Sevillian composer Manuel Blasco de Nebra (Madrid, 1780).
Blasco de Nebra’s Seis Sonatas shows three clear musical influences: first, from the keyboard music of
Scarlatti, who gave lessons to Blasco de Nebra’s father; second, from features typical of Spanish music
such as guitar patterns and the free use of the harmonic minor; and third and most significantly, sonata
form. This paper employs methodology from Sonata Theory to begin to place these works in the larger
study of sonata form: the general formal features (norms) of all twelve movements are analyzed and the
relationship between these norms and those of Sonata Theory are compared. Each of the six sonatas
consists of two movements (slow–fast), and of these twelve movements, seven follow textbook sonata
form (Type 3) with an Exposition, Development, and Recapitulation complete with the return of the
primary theme (P) in tonic; the remaining five are the binary variant type (Type 2). The aims of this study
are 1) to demonstrate the influence of the ‘Austro-Germanic’ sonata form on Blasco de Nebra’s
compositions that is lacking in the preceding generation of Spanish music; 2) to show how Blasco de
Nebra assimilates sonata form into his own ‘Spanish’ style; and 3) to serve as a starting point for further
analysis of late-eighteenth century Spanish music, which has hitherto been neglected, especially outside
of Spanish-speaking scholarship.
Panel 3: Nationalism, Activism and Musicology
This is What America Looks Like:
Musical Indications of a Progressive Occupy Movement
Benjamin Holbrook (Butler University)
On September 17, 2011, members of the Occupy Movement established a protest camp in
Zuccotti Park in New York’s financial district. Writing about what would be labeled Occupy
Wall Street, James C. McKinley Jr. of the New York Times declared the movement “lacks a
melody” compared with the previous century’s protest movements. Despite the common
perception of little music accompanying the movement, associated organizers released Occupy
This Album: 99 Songs for the 99%, a collection of songs connected with, written for, or about
Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movement to raise funds for future protests.
Occupy This Album serves as a guidebook to the ideological and political makeup of the
movement and provides material that can be compared with output from previous social
movements like the Industrial Workers of the World’s “Little Red Songbook,” Broadside of the
1950’s – 60’s folk revival, or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee songbook.
Building upon a framework designed by R. Serge Denisoff that uses an analysis of the
propaganda and persuasion songs of social movements to determine class consciousness, the
music found on Occupy this Album is used to assess the progress of the Occupy movement
through historical materialism and Parsonian modernization theory. I contend that due to
globalization and the increased abstraction of the goals set forth by Occupy, the music found on
Occupy this Album is most accurately assessed through modernization theory, and that when assessed,
is indicative of a progressive, modernizing movement. This paper works to further legitimize Occupy
This Album, and through extension, other modern socio-political song, as an area of study and analysis
as important as the protest and propaganda music of movements from the twentieth century.
Michael Finnissy’s Piano Music and Decentering Nationalism
Michael Tan (New York University)
Michael Finnissy often uses his music to cast commentaries on political, social, and cultural situations,
but this essential detail is typically overshadowed by the New Complexity historical narrative. The label
focuses superficially on notational practice and visual intricacies of scores. However, the label
reproduces notions of strict musical autonomy and ignores much important context that can inform a
better historical interpretation. This paper seeks an alternative approach and utilizes Finnissy’s English
Country-Tunes (1977) as a case study. In this work, as in many of his other works, composing is an act
in which one can assert an identity against hegemony. In this paper, I will consider the work from the
standpoint of national and sexual identities.
I will take Finnissy’s musical influences into consideration, situating him in relation to both the practices
of the mainstream European avant-garde and British musical culture in the 1960s/70s. The study will
address the “time-lag” myth and late musical modernism in Britain, as well as the influence of Bernard
Stevens and Cornelius Cardew. I will discuss Finnissy’s ambivalent position towards Englishness as
evidenced throughout many interviews and notes in scores, drawing upon theories by Homi Bhabha,
and will situate English Country-Tunes within a wave of important cultural pieces which criticized the
Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in 1977, such as Derek Jarman’s Jubilee. I also take into
consideration the work’s intersections with an emerging awareness of gay subjectivity in the 1970s and
briefly discuss how Finnissy expresses sexual identity throughout his music. Within this context, I argue
that English Country-Tunes is an anxious expression that reveals ambivalence towards Englishness but
simultaneously asserts a sexual identity.
Spectralism as Activism: Georg Friedrich Haas’s Musical
Response to the Death of Eric Garner
Mike Ford (Columbia University)
In a recent New York Times article, Eun Lee laments the complete lack of response by classical
musicians to the stream of brutal attacks on and killings of African Americans at the hands of (white)
police officers since 2012. Lee contrasts the failure of the classical music community to react against
systematic racism and its tragic results to the vibrant response from hip-hop artists and fans; indeed,
three days after the Times article, Rolling Stone Magazine published “Songs of Black Lives Matter: 22
New Protest Anthems,” an article that includes songs by Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, and many other hiphop artists. While these two articles make it clear that the hip-hop community has taken an active and
activist stance in the #blacklivesmatter movement, classical musicians are not as passive in this protest
as Lee believes them to be. Georg Friedrich Haas, a New York-based composer of spectral music, is
one such exception: in 2015, he reacted to the death of an African American at the hands of white police
officers by composing I can’t breathe for solo trumpet in memoriam Eric Garner.
This paper demonstrates the ways in which Haas’s I can’t breathe responds and corresponds to the
horrific event(s) that incited its composition. After situating it within the #blacklivesmatter movement,
partially by drawing upon interviews with the composer, I provide a close reading of the work, drawing
parallels between I can’t breathe and the physical violence that Garner suffered on July 17, 2014,
including musical topics associated with death and pitch- and timbre-based means of depicting
suffocation. Haas focuses solely on Garner’s experience, denying the police officers any music. In my
discussion of Haas’s response to systematic racism, I address the widely publicized issue of the
dominant-submissive relationship between the (white) composer and his (black) wife. My study shows
not only that this classical composer is indeed involved in #blacklivesmatter, but reveals some of the
compositional strategies he employs to add his voice to the national and international protest anthem
against racism and police brutality embodied by #blacklivesmatter.
Panel 4: Beyond the Western Canon
Arno Babadjanian: The Genius of the Soviet Music as
an Ambassador of Armenian Culture
Nuné Melik (McGill University)
The purpose of this presentation is an introduction of a composer who is widely known in present day
Russia and Armenia but often neglected by Western society, Arno Babadjanian.
Born in Erevan in 1921, Babadjanian moved to Moscow at the age of eighteen. His successful careers
as both a virtuoso pianist and composer unfolded during the period of the Soviet regime. Forced to
maneuver around musical censure and Soviet ideology, the composer managed to develop a truly
unique musical style. In his works, Armenian folk characteristics and contemporary language co-exist in
perfect balance. As a student in Armenia, Arno Babadjanian spent hours learning traditional music,
including the music of Sayat-Nova, Jivan and the founder of Armenian classical music, Komitas
Vardapet. The presentation provides an analysis of the connection between Armenian folk music and
composers’ use of them in such compositions as Nocturne, Vagarshapati Dance for piano and Piano
Trio in F-Sharp Minor.
As an established composer, Babadjanian favored the atonal system and applied it in his works.
Bababdjanian was among the first Soviet composers who learned about the Second Viennese School
and pioneered the music of Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Under the Soviet regime’s strict power
structure, the composer implemented elements considered subversive to Soviet ideology, such as jazz
and other more popular genres. His musical style easily distinguished from his contemporaries, as it
combined the old traditions of the East with the comparatively newer ones of the West.
The composer’s friendship with Dmitry Shostakovich will be also highlighted in one of the chapters of
this presentation, providing the music examples such as the Violin Sonata in B flat minor and Quarter
no. III – works that were dedicated to the latter.
In a society where standing out was not in favor, the music of the composer, whether classical or
popular, became an essential part in shaping Armenian identity. This presentation proves and
rehabilitates the value of Babadjanian’ music for the Soviet Armenians and its impact on their national
self-identity.
Analysis Through Rhetoric: Form and Expression in Clifford Brown’s Improvisations
Matthew Dueppen (Lamar University)
Clifford Brown is recognized as one of the great jazz legends of the 40s and 50s, amidst the hard
“bebop” jazz era. Quincy Jones stated “… if any musician of the present day can be compared to
[Charlie] Parker, it’s Clifford. I can honestly say that he is the most un-blossomed talent of this
generation.” Brown’s progressive approaches to composition and improvisation remain relatively
understudied, perhaps because his life was cut short so early.
This paper will argue that Brown’s knowledge of jazz theory and musical rhetoric informed his
improvisational decisions from the small-scale motives used to larger-scale formal events. When
analyzing his improvisational approach from the perspective of classical Latin rhetoric, one can see how
devices such as alliteration and praeteritio, anadiplosis, hyperbole, and anacoluthon, assist him in the
creation of an intelligible, convincing, and well-delivered
solo. For example, Brown uses sharp or raised non-chord tones (9, 11, 13) to add harmonic delineation
in conjunction with half-valve and growl notes (a transformation of timbre). The effect of the combination
is similar to that of “cocophony” or “anacoluthon” in spoken language: they work to disrupt the common
structure of a musical line or idea and emphasize the dissonance and lack of structure to showcase a
certain musical thought. His approach to improvisation over ii->V7 progressions might be heard as
anadiplosis, delineating his ideas into sections, paragraphs, and phrases with varying degrees of
resolution. The smooth phrase endings that sometimes result function in a wide variety of ways: elisions,
enjambments, anadiplosis and asyndeton phrasing techniques. Brown’s consistent use of these devices
might seem unsurprising given casual references to jazz improvisation as a language, but all too often
scholars have avoided close analysis in favor of unsupported generalizations. Brown’s use of specific
rhetorical devices as a basis for form and melodic development are part of his individual dialect, one that
creates a spontaneous style that is fluid, malleable, and ever evolving. I will not contend that Brown was
unique by employing rhetoric, rather that this analytic approach provides important insights into
deciphering the language of jazz improvisation.
Panel 5: Inside the Western Canon
The Evolution of the Flute Family as the “Outsider” in
Gustav Mahler’s Wunderhorn Symphonies
Justin Gregg (University of Hartford)
This paper presents the argument that Gustav Mahler’s Wunderhorn symphonies portray the flute family
as an “outsider” to the orchestra. The idea of the outsider was familiar to Mahler; it was a topic that he
regularly discussed in conversation with others, and it figured prominently in the literature of his time. In
the paper, I use musical analysis to show that Mahler did not conform to the Romantic-era standards
when orchestrating the flute family in his first four symphonies. Absent are the “soft and relatively
neutral” instruments “almost devoid of expression” characterized by Berlioz and Strauss in the Treatise
on Instrumentation. Instead, the flute and piccolo become characters with their own personalities,
differentiating themselves from the other orchestral instruments through timbral and thematic elements.
The paper uses a methodology inspired by Julian Johnson’s book Mahler’s Voices, which suggests that
Mahler wrote his symphonies with clear thematic implications in the orchestration. As I demonstrate
through close analysis of the various appearances of the flute family in Mahler’s Wunderhorn
symphonies, his use of these instruments shifted over time. Moving in chronological order through these
works, we see that he treated the flute family in an increasingly distinct and separate manner from that
of the other instruments with each successive symphony. I propose that this is not coincidence; rather
that Mahler intentionally scored these four symphonies to portray the flute family as an outsider, an
effect that began in his first symphony, developed through his second, and reached its full maturity in his
third and fourth.
The Music and Politics of Pierrot: Challenges to National
and Gender Identities in France, 1880-1898
Siu Hei Lee (University of California, San Diego)
Whether the modernist aesthete, a lonely artist, or a grotesque clown, the commedia dell’arte character
Pierrot captured artists’ imaginations across Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. This paper
argues that the music composed to tell Pierrot’s story in France often betrays larger concerns, such as
nationhood and gender.
Gustave Charpentier’s outdoor spectacle Le Couronnement de la Muse (1897) and André Wormser’s
pantomime music for L’enfant prodigue (1890) both deploy military themes to take issue with
nationhood. The folk tune “mon ami Pierrot” occupies the center of Le Couronnement’s opening march.
To problematize La Ravachole, which points to anarchy, and La Marseillaise, which represents French
identity, the march juxtaposes fragments of these tunes with marketplace cries such as “iced herrings!”
and “bunch of asparagus!” Later, the lively singing of La Marseillaise and the brass fanfare of La
Ravachole were revealed to be “dreams” of Pierrot, who mimes the “Suffering of Humanity.” The
questioning of nationhood continues in Wormser’s pantomime featuring three Pierrots, the father, the
mother, and the son. After failing in every aspect of life throughout the three acts, the son comically
redeems himself in the last scene by joining the French military. This comic, absurd image of nationhood
is reinforced musically as Wormser leaves only the march out of the pantomime’s overall formal
structure.
Pierrot invites the reconsideration of gender identity through Wormser’s pantomime and Cecile
Chaminade’s piano piece Pierrette (1885). Performed by a female mime, Pierrot the son in L’enfant was
gender ambiguous. This identity coexists with the traditional, conservative femininity of Pierrot the
mother. The pantomime thus allows the audience to identify with either or both female identities in
society. Chaminade’s Pierrette, the female form of Pierrot, features the theme of recurring triplets, which
is a depiction of hysteria common in pantomime. Although hysteria was seen as a feminine medical
condition of uncontrolled, spasmic action, Chaminade develops the hysteria theme into a controlled
formal balance, thereby subverting gender expectations. By examining non-canonical music, my paper
reveals musical strategies of socio-political critique as part of the cultural history of Pierrot and
commedia dell’arte.
A Forgotten Father: Franz Danzi and the Op. 56 Wind Quintets
Kirsten Westerman(University of Cincinnati)
Franz Ignaz Danzi (1763-1826) and Anton Reicha (1770-1836) are often lauded as the “fathers” of the
woodwind quintet. However, despite being simultaneously mentioned alongside Reicha as a founder of
the genre, further research on Danzi and the nine woodwind quintets that comprise his Opp. 56, 67, and
68 remains nearly absent throughout musical scholarship. This paper seeks to remedy this absence by
providing brief historical background on the woodwind quintet as genre, while contextualizing Danzi’s
quintets of Op. 56 within the history and formation of the genre.
While growing up in Mannheim, Danzi had the benefit of being raised in a musically connected and
artistically vibrant household. His father was principal cellist in the renowned orchestra of Elector Karl
Theodor, and Danzi himself performed regularly with the ensemble. Because of the musical
connections available to him during his childhood, Danzi came into contact with many composers and
performers who were products of the Mannheim School. As a result, he was deeply influenced by many
of their traditions, especially those concerning orchestration, treatment of melody, harmony, and form.
Later in his youth, Danzi studied composition with Abbé Vogler, who was responsible for training many
Romantic composers including Carl Maria von Weber.
Because of his early exposure to the traditional Mannheim School, as well as his training with the more
progressive Vogler, Danzi’s compositions exhibit a style that places the composer at the center of the
transition between the Classical and early-Romantic eras. This project provides an analysis on the
composer’s treatment of melody, form, harmony, texture, and orchestration within these quintets. These
analyses and contextualization of Danzi’s Op. 56 will encourage musicians and future researchers to not
only place these compositions at the forefront of the woodwind quintet as a serious genre, but also
perceive them as crucial musical works that exhibit the stylistic trends towards a new era. As a result,
this paper will give proper and much-needed musical support to the ubiquitous claims of Danzi’s role as
a “father” of the woodwind quintet.