Vol. 4, No. 1/Winter 2004

H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y D E P A R T M E N T O F

M U S I C

Music BuildingNorth Yard

Harvard UniversityCambridge, MA 02138

617-495-2791

DEPARTMENT CHAIR

Thomas F. KellyDEPARTMENT ADMINISTRATOR

Nancy ShafmanNEWSLETTER EDITOR

Lesley Bannatyne

www.music.fas.harvard.edu

ArtPlacementonly

I N S I D E2

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I N S I D E2 Faculty News2 Shelemay in Ghana3 Library News4 Jazz innovator Greg

Osby at Harvard5 Alumnae News6 Graduate News6 Undergraduate News7 Heisey-Rotner’s

Music & Art8 Aaron Berkowitz: An

Interview9 Arthur Berger10 Calendar11 2004 Fromm

Commissions Announced11 Staff News12 Yannatos Celebrates

40 Years at Harvard

Bernstein and Copland, the Cold War: Oja and Schreffler’s 20th-Century Studies

N E W S L E T T E R

“I take pride in working across disciplines,” saysCarol J. Oja, referring to her recent work with20th-century American music. Oja has just fin-ished her first semester at Harvard as the newlyappointed William Powell Mason Professor ofMusic. “I really loved my graduate seminar this fall.The discussion around the table was extraordi-nary, with students in ethnomusicology, theory,composition, and historical musicology—evenone from the History of American Civilization—and the sparks that flew were pretty amazing.I’m looking forward to building a network ofgraduate students interested in investigatingAmerican musical traditions from diverse disci-plinary perspectives.” For Oja, “American” is most compelling whenwidely defined. “The notion of ‘national identity’ is continu-ally fluid, posing all sorts of intriguing issues.Take Cage. Cage was certainly American, but hiswork was profoundly shaped by Asian philoso-phies at the same time as it had a strong impactin Western Europe. Studying American musicisn’t about being a nativist booster but ratherprovides an opportunity to probe our culture interms of its internal diversities and relationshipto traditions around the globe.” Oja is happy to be stepping onto the movingtrain at Harvard. “The maverick here in study-ing American music was Eileen Southern [the

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“I would have never thought of it in America,”says Anne Shreffler of her current project, abook on new music during the Cold War.Shreffler spent nine years in Europe, at theUniversity of Basel, before joining the facultyat Harvard. “It changed my life. I thought about the dif-ferences between Europe and America every daywhile I was there. Europeans do it this way,Americans do it this way; it was a constant back-ground noise, this awareness of difference.” Shreffler is interested in the decade afterWWII—1945-1957—and in exploring the dif-ferences in political context between American

and European new music: “We had such differ-ent experiences of the war, our music historiesare different. It wasn’t just Soviet and commu-nist cultures that created a political music, whatwe think of when we think of Eisler and Brecht.People in the West were writing music—Cage,Schoenberg, Boulez—that occupied an ideologi-cal position. It was a political music as well.” New music, Shreffler believes—music per-ceived by creators and listeners as advanced, orexperimental—was part of the political contextof the Cold War. “One strand of new music after WWII inAmerica was highly systematized. It was relatedto science and technology—think IBM in the50s. There was an academic establishment be-

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CAROL J. OJA

ANNE C. SHREFFLER

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Kay Kaufman Shelemay took a research tripto Ghana during the first half of January,2004. Shelemay worked primarily in Accra,the Ghanaian capital, where she researched acase study of urban musical life for the sec-ond edition of her Soundscapes textbook. Incollaboration with Harvard historianEmmanuel Akyeampong, Shelemay also vis-ited traditional healers in the Volta region tothe east of Accra, where she and Akyeampongexplored collaborative research possibilitiesrelating to healing, ritual, and music for theHarvard African Studies initiative.Akyeampong and Shelemay also met with of-ficials at the University of Ghana and trav-elled north to Kumasi, where they had anaudience with the Asantehene (King of theAsante Nation), Otumfuo Osei Tutu II. While in Ghana, Shelemay attended manyevents with rich musical content includingchurch services, healing rituals, performancesby various funeral and dance associations, anda rehearsal of the national Ghana Dance En-semble. Shelemay interviewed a number ofGhanaian musicians and came back with re-cordings and photographs documentingmany aspects of present-day Ghanaian mu-sical life.

F a c u l t y N e w s

Professor Emeritus REINHOLD BRINKMANN

delivered a “Wiener Vorlesung” at theSchubert-Saal of the Vienna Konzerthauscommemorating the 175th anniversary ofSchubert’s death. The topic was Schubert’s“Winterreise.” In March, ProfessorBrinkmann will give the annual Donald J.Grout lecture at Cornell University, also onSchubert songs.

Assistant Professor MAURO CALCAGNO andJames Edward Ditson Professor ANNE

SHREFFLER initiated a seminar on opera atthe Harvard Humanities Center. The semi-nar is a discussion group, and will provide aforum for presenting new work and bring-ing together scholars from different fields.

SEAN GALLAGHER is co-editor of WesternPlainchant in the First Millennium, a collec-tion of essays recently published by Ashgate.He is on leave this year, thanks to a fellow-ship from the American Council of LearnedSocieties, and is currently writing a book onmusical poetics in the fifteenth century.

Morton B. Knafel Professor THOMAS FORREST

KELLY gave the opening lecture for the LosAngeles Philharmonic orchestra in WaltDisney Hall during a series entitled “FirstNights,” based on his Harvard Core courseand his book of the same title. In Februaryhe was the Geiringer Lecturer at the Univer-sity of California, Santa Barbara. He pre-sented a paper to the American Musicologi-cal Society on a new fragment of Old-Ro-man chant, and he spoke in the Department'sown lecture series. Kelly also addressed theHarvard Clubs of Westchester and Louisville.

Dwight D. Robinson, Jr. Professor ROBERT

LEVIN is working full tilt on his commissionfrom Carnegie Hall to complete the MozartC-minor Mass, K.427 (to be premiered byHelmuth Rilling at Carnegie, January 15,2005). Recent performances include concertswith Günter Herbig, the Detroit Symphony;Christopher Hogwood, Götegorg Symphony(Sweden); Nicholas McGegan, New WorldSymphony (Miami Beach, FL); Sir RogerNorrington, Stuttgart Radio Orchestra

Shelemay in Ghana

Top to bottom: Children from families associated withAfrican Star Dancers in Accra learn to play drums; StarDancers performing a dance to drum accompaniment;Master drummer accompanying singing and dancing ofthe Agbadza by an Ewe Funeral Society in Accra.Photos by Kay Shelemay.

Visiting Faculty & Associates

DEBORAH BURTON’s forthcoming book—Tosca's Prism Northeastern U. Press, 2004—won an AMS subvention grant to help withmusical examples. The book derives from aninternational conference Burton organizedin Rome in June 2000 for the centennial ofPuccini's “Tosca” and the bicentennial of thehistorical events depicted in the opera. BothProfessors Kelly and Lockwood were on theAdvisory Committee.

continued on page 5

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—Thomas Forrest Kelly, ChairMorton B. Knafel Professor ofMusic

Oja, continued from page 1

Computer Workstations atLoeb Music LibraryTailored for Music Scholars

Computer workstations tailored for multi-media music research are available in theEda Kuhn Loeb Music Library’s Aldrichreading room. Students can completecourse listening assignments, composemusic, or access online multimedia re-sources from the workstations, which areequipped with high-end sound cards,headphones, and headphone amplifiers. Inaddition, Finale, a notation software forcreating, editing, and printing sheet mu-sic, is installed on each of the four ma-chines. Regular software updates ensurethe latest versions of plugins, such asRealAudio and Beatnik, are installed. “Music scholars have always conductedtheir research using a variety of informa-tional formats including text, manuscripts,printed scores, and recordings. As multi-media technologies become more sophis-ticated and quality digital content becomesmore widely available, music scholars areturning to the web to find full text articlesand books, digital images, midi reproduc-tions of manuscript and printed scores,and online audio and video. These work-stations were designed to make accessingthese technologies easy and straightfor-ward,” said Connie Mayer, Public ServicesLibrarian for Loeb Music Library. The Aldrich reading room is open dur-ing library hours.

L i b r a r y N e w sfirst professor with a dual appointment inAfro-American Studies and Music], whoseMusic of Black Americans (1971) simulta-neously established a scholarly model andmade a political statement. Currently, IngridMonson, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, and AnneShreffler are all working on different cornersof the American scene, and our methodolo-gies vary considerably, yielding a wonderfulsynergy.” Oja developed her interest in 20th-cen-tury American music through graduate studywith H. Wiley Hitchcock at the GraduateSchool of the City University of New York.A project about the music of Aaron Coplandhooked her early on: “As a first-year student,I interviewed Copland for a paper andjumped headlong into archival research–which in this case meant having the goodfortune to work with correspondence andmusic manuscripts housed in his basementin Peekskill, New York. This material is nowat the Library of Congress.” Research into American 20th-centurymusic led to Oja’s extensive publicationsabout a who’s who of composers: AaronCopland, George Gershwin, Ruth CrawfordSeeger, Virgil Thomson, William Grant Still,Edgard Varèse, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles,Marion Bauer, Dane Rudhyar, ColinMcPhee—musicians who collectively madeup the New York music scene early in thecentury. For her book, Making Music Mod-ern: New York in the 1920s (Oxford Univer-sity Press, 2000), Oja sketched a broad cul-tural environment for young American com-posers of the day. “I explored poetry, painting, and sculp-ture to contextualize musical developmentsin the U.S. And I focused closely on transat-lantic networks; a lot of composers in mybook either spent substantial time in Europe,fusing strong links to composers there, orgot to know the newest European composi-tions through the dissemination of scores andrecordings. For example, a two-piano ar-rangement of Stravinsky’s famous Rite ofSpring circulated among American compos-ers during the 1910s, providing the first op-portunity for many of them to come in con-tact with it.” Her current project is Leonard Bernsteinand Musical Theater for Yale University Press,part of a new series that will include a bookfor each major Broadway composer. Geoffrey

Block, the series editor, just published the firstvolume, about Richard Rodgers. “When I first was approached about theseries, I considered writing about Gershwin,”says Oja, “but I was intrigued by the idea oftackling a later time period.” Why Bernstein? “I admire Bernstein’s theatrical scores, andWest Side Story was an important part of myadolescence. I am a pianist and organist, andin high school I played for lots of musicals,including that one. This repertory is centralto our national identity. On a scholarly level,Bernstein’s music attracts me in part becauseof his relationship with Copland; it feels likea natural extension of work I’ve done before.There are some dissertations emerging aboutBernstein, but the scholarly literature remainssurprisingly slim.” Oja is also co-editing a volume of essaysabout Copland with Judith Tick, to be pub-lished in conjunction with the Bard Festivalin 2005 (Princeton University Press), and sheis currently president of the Society forAmerican Music. Tucked away in her file forthe future is a project about MinnaLederman, editor of the “little magazine”Modern Music, from 1924 to1946: “I’m theexecutor of Lederman’s literary estate, and Iwant to publish a volume of her essays andcorrespondence.” Lederman trained a gen-eration of American composer-journalists andwrote personal remembrances about themand others, including Cage, Copland, ElliottCarter, Igor Stravinsky, and Virgil Thomson.She also had close ties to poets and artistssuch as John Ashbury, Edwin Denby, ElaineDeKooning, and Jasper Johns.

Carol Oja’s Making Music Modern is avail-able from Oxford University Press; it won the

Connie Mayer with Chuck Gabriel at thenew Aldrich Room workstations.

Lowens Award of the Society forAmerican Music and an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. Her previousbook, Colin McPhee: Composer inTwo Worlds (1982), also receivedan ASCAP Award; it will be releasedin paperback this year by the Uni-versity of Illinois Press.

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The Department of Music Blodgett Distinguished Artist Series presented a concert by the Greg OsbyFour at John Knowles Paine Concert Hall in November. Osby came to campus for a week to share hisknowledge of jazz and improvisation with Harvard students, including several at the music depart-ment. Ethnomusicology graduate student Matthew Clayton studies privately with Osby, and had thisto say about his work:

“Greg Osby is truly an innovator in the realm of jazz at a time when innovation is scarce in thegenre. He has developed his own theory of music, something he and saxophonist Steve Colemaninitiated in the early 80’s with their M-BASE collective. This theory deals with motivic cellsthat are treated intervallically, allowing for colorful and daring substitutions, harmonic andmelodic angularity, and a deeper extension of the mathematic ground rules that define all cur-rent jazz practice (i.e. chord changes, voice leading, “swing”). Osby exposes his students to thewidest range of musical sources, from jazz, to classical, to world music, to pop, and he is par-

Jazz Innovator Greg Osby at Harvard

ginning to set up big electronic music studios. Composers and theo-rists were joining the academy for first time, and hard science legiti-mized their field and work. “But in Europe it was different. New music was banned in NaziGermany and under fascist regimes: 12-tone music became associatedwith anti-fascism. Just writing it during the war was dangerous. Assoon as WWII was over, people in Europe wanted to find out every-thing Schoenberg had been writing—they had a hunger for what they’d

Shreffler, continued from page 1

is rhetoric in early 50s that rejects atonal styles for more accessibleart. But then Stravinsky, and others, started writing serial music in1955, and new music became associated with progress.” New music, posits Shreffler, although not intrinsically political,becomes “in” for reasons formed by political situation; it cannotstand outside the sphere of politics. Shreffler began thinking about this book in 1996 when she wrotean article for an exhibit catalog addressing why so many composers

missed. And it was liberating: com-posing and performing new musicwas an acknowledgement of anti-fascism. People in Europe re-discov-ered 12-tone music between 1945-48. They associated it with solidar-ity and leftist values. It was, in fact, highly political; some composerseven worked with the resistance. And some even sympathized withthe Soviet Union as the epitome of the avant garde. “Then, in 1948, things changed. The Soviets clamped down andinstituted a hard program of socialist realist art. All of a sudden, 12-tone music was elitist. Soviets demanded their composers write ac-cessible music for the masses, which is where you get ballets createdaround tractor drivers. Or even work by Shostakovich, a wonderfulcomposer, who wrote real pieces as well as pieces for the Soviet apparatus. “This jolted Westerners. People had to articulate—in 1948-49-50—why new music was reconcilable with left wing thinking. There

after WWII rejectedneo-classicism. Researchbrought her to the PaulSacher Foundation,which houses 70 collec-tions of composers, in-

cluding Webern, Stravinsky, Boulez, Carter, Berio, and Ligeti. “It’s awonderful place to think about music history. You have to get asgood a sense as you can of the whole landscape.” She especially lovedthe letters she found there. “Composers express strong political opin-ions, and from their letters you can find out a lot about the textureof their lives.”

Anne Shreffler is the James Edward Ditson Professor of Music. She will teach her firstcourses at Harvard this spring semester, Current Methods in Historical Musicology(focusing on the status of musical performance in the academic discipline) and agraduate seminar on American avant-garde and experimental music after 1945.

ticularly sensitive to tailoring lessons to eachstudent’s needs. His work with pianist An-drew Hill was very significant in his career,with Hill being one of Osby’s heroes andmentors. The recording “Inner Circle” bestrepresents Greg Osby’s wonderfully creative,and far-reaching, musical mind.”—Matthew Clayton, Ethnomusicologygraduate student

NEW MUSIC WAS BANNED IN NAZI GERMANY AND UNDER FASCIST RE-GIMES: 12-TONE MUSIC BECAME ASSOCIATED WITH ANTI-FASCISM. JUST

WRITING IT DURING THE WAR WAS DANGEROUS.

Greg Osby with Professor Ingrid Monson; GregOsby Four in concert. Photo by James Leach.

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JEANNIE GUERRERO (PhD 2003), professorof music theory at the Eastman School ofMusic, presented “MultidimensionalCounterpoint and Social Subversion inLuigi Nono’s Choral Works” at SMT, a pa-per which received the 2003 MTSNYSEmerging Scholar Award and will be pub-lished in Theory and Practice. She partici-pated in the third of the SeminariInternazionali Estivi “Jacopo da Bologna”in Dozza, Italy.

One of APRIL JAMES’ (PhD 2002) long-timedreams came true: she had a lead role inthe New York production of ChristmasRevels. The theme was the Italian Renais-sance, complete with solar eclipse andcommedia dell’arte. James playedArlecchina.

ROE-MIN KOK (PhD 2003) has been ap-pointed Assistant Professor of Music atMcGill University, Montreal, Canada.

LEONARD LEHRMAN (AB ’71) in 2003 be-came Director of the Oceanside Chorale,Minister of Music at Christ ChurchBabylon, Organist at Temple Isaiah in GreatNeck, Music Director of Parkside Players,and Associate Music Director of BroadwayBlockbusters. He completed editing thethird and final volume of The MarcBlitzstein Songbook for Boosey & Hawkes.Original Cast Recordings released the firstcomplete recording of an opera of his (histenth), “The Wooing,” on a libretto afterAnton Chekhov’s “The Boor” by AbelMeeropol (1903-1986), in honor of thelatter’s centennial. Lehrman’s article, “Mak-ing the Political Personal,” appeared on theAmerican Music Center’s online magazineNewMusicBox, with many references andlinks to his Harvard productions, especiallythe 1970 Boston premiere of “I’ve Got theTune,” with Leonard Bernstein in atten-dance. In October 2004 Lehrman will beperforming his own and other composers’music at the Nadia Boulanger Symposiumin Boulder, Colorado, along with RobertLevin, among others.

ANNE STONE (PhD 1995) and JEFF NICHOLS

(PhD 1991) announce the delivery of theirbaby boy twins, Aaron and Gabriel, on Sep-tember 13th.

A l u m n a e N e w s

JUDAH COHEN’s (PhD 2002) book, Throughthe Sands of Time: A History of the JewishCommunity of St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Is-lands, has been released and is available onamazon.com. Says Cohen, “It’s mostly his-tory, with ethnographic twists.” Cohen hasbeen negotiating his way through the Ju-daic Studies department at NYU as the solerepresentative for music/arts, anthropology/social science, and Caribbean studies. Hejust completed teaching his first class onthe Holocaust.

Soprano CAPRICE CORONA (AB ’97) wasawarded First Prize in the Nineteenth An-nual International Opera Singers Compe-tition, sponsored by the Center for Con-temporary Opera in New York City. Co-rona was chosen from twenty-one semifi-nalists. In addition to the cash prize she willbe presented in recital during the 2004-2005 season at Weill Recital Hall in NewYork City. Corona recently teamed up withcomposer/husband Jonathan Holland(PhD 2001) for a performance of Holland’s“Love Songs” at Berklee College of Music.

THOMAS J. CROWELL (AB ’43) continues towork at combining chemistry and music,playing chamber music on piano and doingchemical research.

SARA JOBIN (AB ’91) will be the first womanto conduct at the San Francisco Opera thisupcoming fall, when she conducts Tosca onNovember 7th, and Flying Dutchman on De-cember 1st.

(Mannheim, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe); andMario Venzago, Indianapolis Symphony.Levin was conductor/soloist for the Orches-tra of the Age of Enlightenment’s perfor-mances of Beethoven Piano Concertos No.1 in C major, Op. 15, and No. 3 in C mi-nor, Op. 37 (Bristol, London).

In December 2003, Professor EmeritusLEWIS LOCKWOOD gave a lecture at theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences; thetopic was “Beethoven and His Royal Dis-ciple.”

Associate Professor KAREN PAINTER, who re-cently gave birth to Elizabeth Homer Painter,is completing work on a volume she is co-editing with art historian Thomas Crow. Inaddition to her essay, “Mozart in the Shadowof Beethoven: Biography and Musical Inter-pretation in the Twilight of Idealism, 1827-1871,” the book’s contributors on music in-clude Zoe Lang (doctoral candidate in mu-sicology at Harvard University), JohnRockwell (a member of the musicdepartment’s visiting committee), StanleyCavell (emeritus professor of Philosophy atHarvard), Frank Gehry, John Deathridge,and Bryan Gilliam.

The International Contemporary Ensemblepresented The Music of Bernard Rands, a ret-rospective celebrating Walter Bigelow RosenProfessor BERNARD RANDS’ 70th birthday.His new string quartet was premiered atSymphony Space in New York City by theYing Quartet.

ALEX REHDING’S book Hugo Riemann and theBirth of Modern Musical Thought was recentlypublished by Cambridge University Pressand is available both in the U.K. and the U.S.

JAMES YANNATOS’ Concerto for Double Basswas performed by Alea III (Edwin Barker,bass) in February. His Prayers from the Arkwas also performed, both in Philadelphia byOrchestra 2001 and again at SwarthmoreCollege, also in February. Albany Recordsrecently released Yannatos’ 2nd and 7th Sym-phonies.

Faculty News, continued

Caprice Carona. Photo by Susan Wilson.

Errata:The portrait of Bernard Rands in the previous issuewas erroneously attributed. The photographer isMegan Summers.

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Graduate Student News

Undergraduate News

We welcome your news and suggestions.Please send information about your re-cent activities, publications and projects.To contribute an article, please contactnewsletter editor Lesley Bannatyne at:

Music BuildingNorth Yard

Harvard UniversityCambridge, MA 02138

bannatyn@fas.harvard.edu

Congratulations to junior FRANCESCA

ANDEREGG, violin, and sophomore WEI-JEN

YUAN, piano, who were named finalists in theHarvard-Radcliffe Orchestra 2004 ConcertoCompetition.

Two music concentrators received Office forthe Arts Music Grants this year. MARISA

GREEN ‘04 was awarded an Eckstein-Lipsongrant for a production of the Baroque operaThe Ethiop by Harvard Early Music Society.ALEXANDER NESS ‘04 earned a Kahn Grant forthree fall projects: a concert of contemporary,classical, experimental, and electronic musicfeaturing works by undergraduates and estab-lished composers; the staging of a parade inHarvard yard featuring homemade instru-ments; and the creation of a permanent per-forming group that promotes the composi-tion and performance of contemporary mu-sic by undergraduates.

AARON GIRARD co-organized a panel at the2003 Annual Conference of the InternationalAssociation for the Study of Popular Musicin Los Angeles in September. As part of thepanel, “The Popularizing Voice: Questions ofSinging and Gender,” he read a paper entitled“Singing Along with the Posthuman Voice.”His research on music theory in Americanuniversities has led him to many other con-ferences and academic events.

This November JOSÉ LUIS HURTADO won theAward of the City of Wolkersdorf (Austria),with his compositions De verde y gris (en-semble) and Tres Piezitas Op.15 (piano solo).The prize includes a monetary award and twoconcerts in Vienna in April of 2004. His com-position Seis (for fifteen instruments) won the20 de Noviembre Prize in Mexico.

LARA PELLEGRINELLI contributed the entry onElla Fitzgerald to the National African Ameri-can Biography edited by Henry Louis Gates.An article she wrote on jazz vocalist ShirleyHorn appeared in the New York Times Sun-day Arts & Leisure section last spring. Her“Singing for Our Supper: Are Vocalists Sav-ing the Jazz Industry?” appeared as the coverof the December issue of Jazz Times and Laramoderated a panel on the same topic at theInternational Association of Jazz Educationannual conference in New York City.

KEN UENO received a Fromm Music Founda-tion commission for his upcoming piece forthe Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra (to be pre-miered May 16, 2004 at Sanders Theatre),was named composer-in-residence for theRadius Ensemble (commissioned piece to be

premiered April 10), received first prize in the“Luigi Russolo” competition for electroacous-tic music, and was hired as assistant professorat Berklee College of Music.

JESSE RODIN recently directed a concert en-titled “A Roman Armed Man”—a ‘compos-ite’ L’homme armé mass with movements byJosquin, Compère, Tinctoris, de Orto, andVaqueras. Department members CAROLANN

BUFF, MARY GERBI, EVAN MACCARTHY, SCOTT

METCALFE, MATTHEW PEATTIE, and JON WILD

sang.

The Department holiday party, left to right: Juniors Toni Marie Marchioni and DoanNhi Le with 93r T.A. Robbie Merfeld; Ethnomusicology graduate student NatalieKirschstein; Administrator Nancy Shafman, Communications Coordinator Lesley Bannatyne, theory graduate student Mary Greitzer and Front Office Co-manager KayeDenny. Top of page: Musicology graduate students Myke Cuthbert and Matthias Roeder with Professor Thomas Forrest Kelly.

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On the walls of his studio hang canvasesin saturated colors: some vertical stripes,

some still life paintings that evoke the topog-raphy of a city. Notebook paper, brushes andthe guts of an old stereo crowd a table top.James Heisey-Rotner is at work on his seniorthesis, an installation in which the observerwill view paintings while listening to musicalcompositions on a walkman: “Each group ofpaintings coordinates with a collection ofpieces of music. I want the viewer to set theirown pace, find their own rhythm.” Heisey-Rotner is a joint music/visual stud-ies concentrator, and his thesis marries the twoartforms to focus inquiry on sources of soundand image, and how the two inform eachother. “The paintings I’m working on now arein two distinct formats, because the installa-tion will have two parts. The first involvesmusic compositions that were written as pri-mary works in traditional forms, like a fugueor a theme and variations. For this part, thepaintings are made “after” the compositions,following a tradition established by Kandinskyand Klee. They might be described as stripesof color, which use line and rhythm in a se-quence that suggest the passage of time. Theywere inspired by drawings I did of the inter-nal cavity of a grand piano, where the stringshave such a strong potential for sound. “For the second part, the relationships arereversed, and the paintings—still lifes portray-ing the inside of a stereo—are primary in theprocess. The music builds aural invocationsof them, using ideas such as layering of form.To me the paintings represent a contempo-rary visual world, an electronic cityscape. Inpart I think they’re talking about sources ofsound and if there really is any validity to vi-sual information. One can certainly see theaural potential of acoustic instruments, but isthat connection lost in the electronic world?” Painting was Heisey-Rotner’s first me-dium. His mother, a quilter, introduced Jamesto visual art very early on: “I still have thesefoggy pictures in my head of when she usedto sit me on the floor with a series of fabricswatches and have me arrange them into aquilt design,” remembers Heisey-Rotner. “Ina way I still look at paintings like personali-ties of color.”

Heisey-Rotner’s Music & Art

He also started piano lessons at five.“There was a point around the time my par-ents divorced (I was eight at the time) whenI really got into music, and from then on itremained my primary interest until shortlybefore college. I think it represented a veryprivate mode of expression, and improvisingin particular became an important daily ritualfor me. I had a great piano teacher who usedto have everyone compose a piece for a bookshe made annually, and I quickly learned tolove hearing other people play my music farmore than playing it myself.” Heisey-Rotner was a senior in high schoolwhen the two art forms started to fit together.“While they are very different in some re-spects—music has the element of time, whilepainting doesn’t; painting was founded in rep-resentation, while music is ‘the abstract art’—I could see lots of paths connecting them,like rhythm, phrasing, and the many identi-ties of color. By putting them together in in-stallations I hope I can make little‘metaworlds’ where people can enjoy interre-lationships between the visual and the aural...sort of like synonyms across the two media.In a way I think it’s like looking at the worldas if it were either slowed down near to a stopor sped up until everything organic is sim-plified in excess.” Heisey-Rotner went to University ofMichigan School of Music, but transferred

to Harvard College in 2001 because it of-fered the most flexible guidelines for a jointconcentration. “I’ve been able to study withincredible professors in both departments,including Professors Rands and Levin in themusic department and Nancy Mitchnickand Sue Williams in VES. In retrospect,studying with any one of those professorswould have been would have been remark-able at Michigan, and I think it just goes toshow how incredible the faculty is here.” There aren’t many others at Harvardworking in this vein. “Almost anyone in-volved in this kind of multimedia workseems to be using a visual medium that hasa temporal dimension similar to music—like film, video, or animation—or they’reusing music that uses a nontraditional, frac-tured element of time in tandem with vi-sual art. In both cases the different combi-nations make a lot of sense: you can eithermove the visual component closer to theaural or the other way around, making theconnections easier to illuminate. For me,though, the traditional/acoustic aspect ofwhat I’m doing is very important. The factthat the temporal dimension is an apparentgulf between the media is a challenge Ireally enjoy facing. I think it’s like any pointin the creative process where you are facedwith an incongruity—the process of hav-ing to build a conceptual bridge, or in ef-fect to rethink how the proposition wasmapped in the first place, often seems toyield the most interesting results.”

James Heisey-Rotnerthinks of his paintingsand compositions as com-plete thoughts, not en-tirely interdependent. Hewants them to be coher-ent works that can standalone, but that open upother channels of thoughtwhen experienced to-gether . . . “I make little‘metaworlds’ wherepeople can enjoy interre-lationships between thevisual and the aural . . . ”

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H e i s e y -R o t n e r ’ ssenior thesisinstallationwill be pre-sented inMay, 2004a t t h eCarpenterCenter.

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Aaron Berkowitz: An InterviewYou’ve completed three years of medical school. Why earn a PhD in Musicology too?A.B.: I have been interested in both music and science/medicine for a long time and havegone back and forth between seeking some sort of combination or synthesis of these fieldsand keeping them entirely separate. As an undergrad I did a BA in music and a BS in biology(at George Washington University) “in parallel.” Although I was familiar with physicianswho treated problems of musicians as well as music therapists, to me, music and science/medicine were at that time far more interesting separately. Much of my work in biology wasin the domain of cognitive neuroscience, the study of neural mechanisms of higher corticalprocesses such as learning, memory, language, etc. Over time I became very interested inmusic as a fascinating system with which to study these questions and have thus returned toseeking synthesis of my interests in music and science.

How do you see the two fields informing each other?A.B.: Music is a highly complex phenomenon requiring recruitment of various neural net-works ranging from those involved in auditory learning/memory to motor planning to imag-ery to emotion and so on. There is a lot of interest in the neuroscience/psychology commu-nity in music for these same reasons. Some seek to understand music better by studying thebrain, some seek to localize musical functions in the brain to compare these musical net-works with speech networks, for example. I am most interested in what studying music cantell us about the brain. In elucidating mechanisms of brain function, hopefully new insightsinto diseases of the nervous system could be discovered....some day... For example, there issome evidence that music can help Parkinson’s patients overcome trouble with movement.

continued on page 11

Combining the humanities and sciences must haveother benefits, at least in terms of your researchand training. How will your graduate work herebenefit your medical work later?A.B.: Doing an MD/PhD is not uncommon,though obviously it is usually a PhD in a more

medically related field than music. I wanted to pursue a PhD for broader exposure to research methodologies as well as the chance to focuson specific research questions and projects. I thought of pursuing a PhD in neuroscience but realized that I could look at some of the samequestions in a graduate program in music. In this way I will become “cross-trained” (to quote one of my medical school advisors) in thehumanities and sciences which will hopefully lead to a broader perspective on the questions I am interested in, as well as lead me to newquestions. Also, being in the humanities offers me the opportunity to learn more languages which I am very excited about. This will permitme unique opportunities for ethnography, for potentially practicing medicine abroad, and, in the process of learning a variety of languages,hopefully also give me interesting perspectives on some of the questions of auditory learning and memory that interest me in music. At Johns Hopkins, where I am working on my MD, the motto is “Research, Teaching, and Patient Care.” This triad of responsibilities forthe physician really resonates with me and the potential to excel in each of these areas will undoubtedly be shaped by my experience in thehumanities at Harvard. It is my hope that “cross-training” will inform and enhance my practices of music, medicine, science, and teaching inthe long run. I am of course very fortunate to have had such open-minded, flexible, and encouraging advisors at Johns Hopkins (Dr. H.Franklin Herlong and Dr. David Newman-Toker) who not only helped make the leave of absence possible but who truly support my pursuitof a PhD at Harvard. I cannot thank them enough for their guidance. Of course I am also deeply indebted to my advisors here at Harvard,Professor Shelemay and Professor Hasty, whose work cuts across disciplinary boundaries and who encourage and support my work acrossdisciplines.

And why Harvard?A.B.: Harvard’s program was a clear choice. Obviously the music department and its faculty are outstanding. What really drew me here wasthe interdisciplinary nature of the faculty...music functions here as part of the broader web of the intellectual community at Harvard. Forexample, Professors Shelemay and Hasty collaborate with scientists in the medical school, at MIT, and in the MBB (Mind/Brain/Behavior).One really gets the sense of an academic “web” at Harvard which cuts across disciplinary boundaries and is thus ideal for the sort of researchI am interested in. I am also a composer and the composition department here is phenomenal as are the opportunities for performance ofstudent pieces.

What overlap, if any, is there between the process of composing and that of doctoring/studying medicine?

I AM MOST INTERESTED IN WHAT STUDYING MUSIC CAN TELL US ABOUT THE BRAIN. IN

ELUCIDATING MECHANISMS OF BRAIN FUNCTION, HOPEFULLY NEW INSIGHTS INTO DISEASES

OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM COULD BE DISCOVERED . . .

9

continued on page 11

—by Carol Oja

Arthur Berger, pupil of Walter Pis-ton and self-described member ofthe “‘Harvard’ or ‘Boston’ group”

of composers, died on October 7th. He was91. A leader among mid-twentieth-cen-tury composers who fused teaching, analy-sis, and composition, Berger produced asolid body of music and criticism, all thewhile confidently articulating a centristaesthetic position in an era that leanedtoward either serialism or experimental-ism. He knew where he stood artistically,and he became a spokesperson for Ameri-can composers with university positionswho wrote in traditional forms andworked imaginatively with tonal proce-dures. A native of New York, Berger attendedCity College in its heyday, completing hisundergraduate education at New YorkUniversity. During that period, he partici-pated in the now-famous Young Compos-ers’ Group, a gathering of twenty-some-things under the informal leadership ofAaron Copland. Also included were HenryBrant, Israel Citkowitz, Lehman Engel,Vivian Fine, Irwin Heilner, BernardHerrmann, Jerome Moross, and ElieSiegmeister. Graduate work followed atHarvard, with an MA in 1936. AmongBerger’s friends on campus were OscarHandlin, Robert Motherwell, andDelmore Schwartz. But a central part ofhis experience at Harvard came from workwith Piston. In his trenchant Reflections ofan American Composer (University of Cali-fornia Press, 2002), Berger recalled Pistonas “soft-spoken and placid” with students.“In the sessions one on one with him,”Berger continued, “I had to pry the wordsout to get him to talk. It was well worth itsince he always spoke good sense.” Undera John Knowles Paine Fellowship, Bergerwent to Paris to study with NadiaBoulanger. He held long-standing univer-sity appointments at Brandeis, the JuilliardSchool, and the New England Conserva-tory. Berger made a great impact in bothprose and music. In recounting the dy-namics within the Young Composers’Group, Henry Brant told Vivian Perlis that

Berger was “the critic” among them. “Onone occasion,” Brant continued, “he . . .brought in a clipping from the New York Sunwhere the critic was W. J. Henderson. Hewrote an article wondering if young people,when they met to talk about music these days[i.e., 1932], ever pronounced the word‘beauty.’ We decided to satisfy Mr.Henderson and all pronounce ‘beauty’—andwe did so, with expression!” (Copland: 1900through 1949, 1984). Through this light-hearted anecdote, Brant put his finger onBerger’s role as critic—continually trying tocommunicate the nature of “beauty” in thenewest music. Berger shaped a distinctive

Arthur Berger (1912-2003)

Copland have continued to address—and hehighlighted aesthetic criteria, such as“economy of means” and “declamatory style”that have become standard in the criticalvocabulary for Copland. As a composer, Berger produced anequally impressive body of work, mostly fororchestra, chamber ensemble, and piano. Inthe New York Times this past December, An-thony Tommasini listed Berger’s “CompleteOrchestral Music” among the best “classicalCD’s” of the year; it features the BostonModern Orchestra Project, conducted by GilRose (New World Records). It’s a stunningCD, highlighting the pointillistic clarity,

prose style that combinedthe evocative descriptionof a critic with the nuts-and-bolts details of ananalyst. Some of his prosereached the general pub-lic, especially when hewrote for daily newspa-pers during the 1940s and1950s (including the Bos-ton Transcript, New YorkSun, and, most famously,the New York Herald Tri-bune, where he was partof an illustrious team as-sembled by VirgilThomson). He also con-tributed to specializedjournals, founding two ofthem: Musical Mercury,which he started togetherwith Bernard Herrmannin 1934, and Perspectivesof New Music, which he helped found thirty-two years later. Perhaps Berger’s best known publicationwas Aaron Copland of 1953, the first bookto address Copland’s music. It established afoundational perspective on Copland. Build-ing on the criticism of Paul Rosenfeld, Bergeridentified stylistic stages in Copland, sepa-rating the “‘serious’ or more ‘abstract’” worksfrom those incorporating folk song—a dis-tinction that subsequent writers about

hard-edged surfaces,and timbral brilliancetypical of Berger’s style.His chamber music hasearned a place in therepertory, especially hisQuartet for Winds(1941) and ChamberMusic for 13 Players(1956).

Over theyears, Berger grappledwith defining his owncompositional style—and that of composershe considered artisticcomrades—in a culturale n v i r o n m e n t t h a tseemed to privilege ex-perimentation. Onesuch statement, titled“Stravinsky and theYounger American

Composers,” was selected by Gilbert Chasefor inclusion in The American ComposerSpeaks (1969). There, Berger allied himselfwith Harold Shapero, Lukas Foss, IrvingFine, Alexei Haieff, and John Lessard asmembers of “a Stravinsky school,” a rubricthat Berger proudly seized at the same timeas he recognized that it put him and his col-leagues in “a vulnerable spot.” “I may bedoing an injustice in calling attention to this

“On one occasion,” Brant continued, “he [Berger] . . . brought in a clipping from the New YorkSun where the critic was W. J. Henderson. He wrote an article wondering if young people, whenthey met to talk about music these days [i.e., 1932], ever pronounced the word ‘beauty.’ We decidedto satisfy Mr. Henderson and all pronounce ‘beauty’–and we did so, with expression!”—Henry Brant to Vivian Perlis

A LEADER AMONG MID-TWENTIETH-

CENTURY COMPOSERS WHO FUSED

TEACHING, ANALYSIS, AND COMPO-

SITION, BERGER PRODUCED A SOLID

BODY OF MUSIC AND CRITICISM, ALL

THE WHILE CONFIDENTLY ARTICULAT-

ING A CENTRIST AESTHETIC POSITION

IN AN ERA THAT LEANED TOWARD EI-

THER SERIALISM OR EXPERIMENTAL-

ISM. HE KNEW WHERE HE STOOD AR-

TISTICALLY, AND HE BECAME A

SPOKESPERSON FOR AMERICAN COM-

POSERS WITH UNIVERSITY POSITIONS

WHO WROTE IN TRADITIONAL FORMS

AND WORKED IMAGINATIVELY WITH

TONAL PROCEDURES.

10

In the current context where Boston has manysuperb new music groups, the Music departmentfelt that it was time to refocus the Fromm concerts:

adding something unique to the Boston music scene,that would complement, not compete with, other Bos-ton groups. We decided to create a Fromm Festival.

The first two-concert mini-festival will be heldthis Spring and a second festival will take place in Spring2005 with a different curator (Elliott Gyger). Each year’sfestival will be organized around a theme with pedagogi-cal as well as musical ambitions. One goal of the festivalwill be to perform pieces that other groups can't do—because they require too many rehearsals or demand toomany players. Each season we hope to program at leastfour or five really big works that are rarely performed.This year we will be doing Elliott Carter’s double con-certo, for example, with its great virtuosity, large percus-sion setups, 16 players, two soloists, and one now his-torical harpsichord with a 16-foot set of strings.

The festival format allows us to contract reallysuperb national and international soloists in addition tothe finest local players. We are asking these players notjust to perform in the soloist role, but to play with theensemble in the other works. This, we hope, will giveaudiences a chance to hear world-class performances ofworks they wouldn’t ordinarily get to hear, and give lo-cal performers a chance to work with out-of-town con-ductors and performers of the first rank. Moreover, theywill have the chance to play repertoire they wouldn’tordinarily get to perform. This should help make theFromm Players into a real orchestra of soloists.

There will be discussions in tandem with theconcerts fleshing out the pedagogical function of thefestival. We are a University Music department and it isimportant to help show the larger context in which theseworks came into being. To this same end we are alsocommissioning substantive articles for the program book.

This year’s theme is “Solo-Tutti.” It will focuson the contemporary evolution of the solo both withinconcerto-like and solo pieces. The different works coverthe gamut of new relationships between soloist and en-semble, within the solo voice itself, and even within asolo voice constructed jointly by an ensemble.

We want this to be a really wonderful weekendthat highlights the special things that we as a university,with the support of the Fromm Foundation, can do best.

—Joshua Fineberg, curatorFromm Festival at Harvard 2004

March 5 & 6, 2004 at 8:00 pmFROMM PLAYERS AT HARVARD

Solo-Tutti : The Evolution of theConcerto and the Soloi s tJeffrey Milarsky, Conductor

Friday, March 5:Salvatore Sciarrino: Hermès(Patrice Bocquillon, flute)Elliott Carter: Double Concerto for Harpsichordand Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras(Robert Levin, harpsichord, Ya-Fei Chuang, piano)Mario Davidovsky, Synchronisms No. 6 for piano & tape(Aleck Karis, piano)Giacento Scelsi: Anahit(Curtis Macomber, violin)

Saturday, March 6:George Crumb: Vox BalaenaeGeorge Ligeti: Cello Concerto(Emmanuel Feldman, cello)Bernard Rands: Concertino for oboe(Jacqueline Leclair, oboe)Tristan Murail: Ethers(Patrice Bocquillon, flute)

(Free parking at the Everett Street garage after 7:00 pm.)

Fromm Players at Harvard

Ca

le

nd

ar

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common cause,” he observed. “Twelve-tone composers enjoy a certain immu-nity from the accusation of being servilefollowers. Their method is taken to beabstract and impersonal, something thatmay be adapted to individual ends. Butthough the principles embodied inStravinsky’s music may be abstracted andadapted in a somewhat similar fashion(though not as a concrete system), hisdominating personality is likely to be in-voked in the mind of the critic or listenerwhenever these principles are appliedelsewhere.” “Neo-classicism,” he con-ceded, was an even more “unfortunaterubric.” At the same time, he felt the im-pact of serialism and responded to it, tell-ing an interviewer, “You can easily un-derstand that the mannerisms and devicesissuing out of Vienna were too remotefor this purpose [that is, for articulatingan American identity]. We found themtoo highly imbued with the atmosphereof Central Europe, of gaslit attics inVienna. It was only later, when thetwelve-tone approach divested itself oflocal color, when it could be separatedout as an international technique, thatanyone concerned with national identitywas to feel freer to adopt it” (Perspectivesof New Music, 1978). Over and over again, Berger soughtto map out this central plateau, all thewhile striving to define a stylistic—andultimately, historical—position for thoseAmerican composers at mid-century whoworked with a fusion of serialism and ex-tended tonality and who never veeredfrom the “high” end of the cultural spec-trum. Or to put it another way: Bergerfocused on the unlabeled ones—thoselike himself whose music offers great re-wards and still awaits in-depth consider-ation.

Berkowitz, continued from page 8Berger, continued from page 9

The University Hall Recital Series, an intimate, lunch-time treat for the Harvard community held in the Fac-ulty Room at University Hall, was inaugurated this pastsummer. Pictured here are Sonya Chung ’03 and Rob-ert Merfeld, Teaching Fellow for Chamber Music.

KEITH HAMPTON joined the department asstaff assistant in November. Keith is a mu-sician and alumnus of Boston University.

EAN WHITE was artist-in-residence at theTaipei Artist Village, now under the auspicesof the Taipei National University of the Arts.He gave a talk at the University and at thenew Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts. He wasalso production manager for a troup of Japa-nese ice sculptors who recreated Edo Castleon Boston Common as part of First Night.

Board of Directors of The Fromm MusicFoundation at Harvard University arepleased to announce the names of the twelvecomposers selected to receive 2003 Frommcommissions. These composers were cho-sen from 149 applicants. The composers who received commis-sions are: Bruce Christian Bennett (SanFrancisco, CA); Steven Burke (New York,NY); Cindy Cox (Oakland, CA); EleanorCory (New York, NY); Michael Gandolfi(Cambridge, MA); Derek Hurst(Somerville, MA); Leroy Jenkins (Brooklyn,NY); Louis Karchin (Short Hills, NY); EricMoe (Pittsburgh, PA); Mathew Rosenblum(Pittsburgh, PA); Ken Ueno (Cambridge,MA); and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon (Roch-ester, NY). These commissions represent one of theprincipal ways that the Fromm Music Foun-dation seeks to strengthen composition andto bring contemporary concert music closerto the public. In addition to the commis-sioning fee of $10,000, a subsidy is avail-able for the ensemble performing the pre-miere of the commissioned work. Among anumber of other projects, the Fromm Mu-sic Foundation sponsors the annual FrommContemporary Music Series at Harvard andsupports the Festival of Contemporary Mu-sic at Tanglewood. Applications for commissions are re-viewed on an annual basis. The annualdeadline for proposals is June 1.www.fas.harvard.edu/musicdpt/fromm.html/

2003 Fromm FoundationCommissions Announced

S t a f f N e w s

Aaron Berkowitz is a Presidential Scholar ofthe Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, anappointment offered to a select group of studentsin the humanities and social sciences on the rec-ommendation of their academic departments.

Probably the clearest parallel between theseprocesses is the need for simultaneously think-ing on the global level and on the level ofminute detail. In both medical diagnosis andcomposing, one is constantly going back andforth between these "micro" and "macro" lev-els...

I know you play classical piano; how did youpick up sitar?

My story is similar to the one I have now heardmany times by “western” musicians who fallin love with Indian music. When living inParis (where I was teaching English and study-ing piano and composition), I, on a whim,went to hear a concert of Indian music per-formed on the sitar. I was absolutely blownaway by the music on many different levels,began reading, listening, and eventually wentto India to begin studying. I now study withGeorge Ruckert at MIT. One of my fascina-tions with Indian music is how it is taught, asystem quite different from the system ofpedagogy we use here in the West for music.I am quite interested in cross-cultural com-parisons of music pedagogy (for example, howdoes one teach improvisation, "style", or com-position in a given culture?) and curious as towhat insights into learning/memory/educa-tion can be gleaned from such comparisons.

12

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Yannatos conducting in the 1970s.Yannatos Celebrates 40 Years at HarvardIn 1964, JamesYannatos was ap-pointed music direc-tor of the HRO. He’sled the group ontours, organized andc o - d i r e c t e d Ne wEngland ComposersO r c h e s t r a a n dTanglewood YoungArtists Orchestra, andhas been guest con-ductor-composer at

festivals in North America and the Soviet Union. Recipient ofnumerous commissions for orchestra, vocal and instrumentalworks, his most ambitious is Trinity Mass. He has written for thestage and television, chamber, choral and vocal works, and pub-lished music for children. Yannatos’ Violin Concerto will be pre-miered by Joseph Lin and the HRO on April 16, 2004, celebrat-ing the 40th anniversary of Dr. Yannatos at Harvard University.To start, how did you begin working at Harvard?Yannatos: My first full season was 1964–65. . . By that point, Ihad met with Leonard Bernstein, who taught me at Tanglewood,

and he told me about this opening at Harvard. So I was one ofsix selected to come to Harvard to audition with the orchestra,and the students and faculty selected me as both conductor andmember of the music department—a double appointment.What were some highlights during the years?I definitely remember we started out with a bang, with my veryfirst concert. It was an ambitious program: Berlioz’s Roman Car-nival Overture, Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, and Beethoven’s7th Symphony, and we played it very well and surprised quite afew people, I think. Then a few years later we went to CarnegieHall and performed at a concert of all Harvard composers. In1979 we went to Berlin as the U.S. representative for the vonKarajan competition of youth orchestras, and got 3rd place—though I think we were so good that we should have won 1st

(laughs). In 1984, we started touring Europe and Russia.What were some of your favorite parts of being involved with the HRO?I enjoy seeing and working with students not only in an aca-demic context. . .but outside of the institutional setting. I willalways remember the fellowship of the group, a communal spir-ited experience that happens when we travel and perform to-gether. It’s also immensely gratifying to see graduates of the HROin professional orchestras such as the Chicago or Boston Sym-phonies, and to see them contribute to the world.

“Instruments are an extension ofthe voice. If something doesn’tsing, doesn’t breathe, it’s not real,not human.”

Excerpted from Overture