While visiting Pittsburgh I was delighted to learn that the Pittsburgh Festival of New Music was taking place during my stay. I had the chance to hear Frederic Rzewski play his recently premiered Dreams, Part I (2012-2013) and his 1977 work, Four Pieces, plus an encore memorial piece for Milton Babbitt. This was my second time hearing Rzewski perform his own work, having met him in 2009 at the MusicX Festival at the Hindemith Foundation in beautiful Blonay, Switzerland. Continue reading “Rzewski in Pittsburgh”
Camargo Foundation Fellowship
On the good news front: I am honored to have received a fellowship to the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France!
I’ve had the pleasure of attending a number of artist colonies (Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center) in the last couple years and have always been impressed with the people I’ve met and the level of concentration I’ve achieved while in residence. There’s something about going to a beautiful and isolated new place, surrounded by talented and creative people, that seems to get the compositional juices flowing. It may also have something to do with the excellent food these colonies tend to have! In any case, I am certainly looking forward to my time in France. Time for a crash course in French language…or at least French cuisine….
Leonard Meyer Lives!
It is with both “emotion and meaning” that I spread the good news of the Leonard B. Meyer papers at Penn. This fascinating collection, housed at Penn’s Special Collections Center, is now complete and ready for all manner of researchers and thinkers. Between 2008 and 2010 I read, identified, and organized a vast trove (about a dozen boxes of correspondence, writings, teaching materials, original compositions, and memorabilia) of Meyer’s materials. My efforts have now been summarized in a concise finding aid by Ben Rosen.
Meyer, who taught at Chicago and Penn, is best known for his seminal 1961 book, Emotion and Meaning in Music. His work, which combines music theory, aesthetics, philosophy, history, and science–among other fields–stands as an example of what interdisciplinary discourse can achieve when the thinker can weave together diverse methodologies in a meaningful way.
It was very special for me to be enveloped by Meyer’s words in such a direct and personal way, particularly through his beautiful letters to colleagues. I got the feeling that I had taken a course with him or joined him for lunch after spending so much time with his words and ideas. One of the things that most impressed me was seeing multiple drafts for articles and book chapters side by side; this allowed for a clear understanding of the development of his thinking in a highly nuanced way. It was also great to see some of his original compositions (Meyer studied with Wolpe and Copland, among others.). I suspect these works may turn out to be some of the most fruitful materials in this collection.
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