by Jonathan Goldman Last March 26th was not only the 188th anniversary of Beethoven’s death but also the 90th birthday of that most influential of 20th-century musicians, Pierre Boulez. Like Elliott Carter or Milton Babbitt, longevity mixed with unparalleled stature (though one that is of course far from uncontested by… Read More
Today is the tenth anniversary of the OUPblog, and Oxford is celebrating with a selection of posts it calls “The Best of the Decade.” Among these bests is Ryan Bañagale’s “United Airlines and Rhapsody in Blue” (28 August 2014). Senior editor Anna-Lise… Read More
We have reached the 50th anniversary of a memorable dialogue on the nature of American musicology. It began with Joseph Kerman’s “A Profile for American Musicology” as delivered at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, 27 December 1964, and continued through volume 18 of the Society’s Journal. Its… Read More
by Teresa M. Neff March 24, 2015, proclaims the Mayor, is H+H Day in Boston, just one part of a year-long celebration of the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Handel and Haydn Society in 1815. Today is also the opening of the… Read More
Plundered bells on the Hamburg dock in Germany, August 1945 National Archives and Records Administration The centenary of UC Berkeley’s landmark campanile (formally Sather Tower) and carillon was commemorated in late February by a sobering centennial lecture entitled “Bells… Read More
by Thomas Christensen 2014, as Gina Rivera reminds us in her posting from November 2014, was the year Jean-Philippe Rameau got his turn in the recent spate of composer celebrations. The 250thanniversary of his death spawned a number… Read More
by Matthew Werley Waldo Selden Pratt In January 1915, the American seminary professor Waldo S. Pratt (1857–1939) coined the term “musicology” on p. 1 of the inaugural issue of The Musical Quarterly. Musicology had existed conceptually and been practiced… Read More
by Gina Rivera NOTE: This is the first of two reflections on the Rameau year 2014. What could anyone possibly say to a composer dead some 250 years? Two international delegations have convened in 2014 to honor the music and life of Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764): first during a conference… Read More
It is, finally, the 200th birthday of the Star-Spangled Banner. Big doings in Baltimore, of course. There were no respondents to our challenge to ascertain the connection, if any, between Francis Scott Key and musicologist Susan Key. Offer ended. Still, we… Read More
by David Schulenberg Four years ago, while many of us were celebrating the two hundredth birthdays of Chopin and Schumann, a smaller number were observing the three hundredth birthday of another composer-keyboardist: Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the oldest surviving son of… Read More