Review: Sound and Score (de Assis/Brooks/Coessens, eds.)

Cross-posted at Rebecca's Reading Rants and Raves

As with any anthology of essays, a particular reader will find some contributions more useful than others. Admittedly there were essays that I skimmed, as I was looking for specific writings that would interact with discussions for my graphic notation seminar. I appreciate the multitude of perspectives and styles, although I found the essays that were well-grounded in theory to be more useful. Both Virginia Anderson's "The Beginning of Happiness: Approaching Scores in Graphic and Text Notation" as well as Jeremy Cox's "What I Say and What I Do: The Role of Composers' own performances of their scores..." were particularly enlightening in their examination of score/performance relationships. Cox adapts Krenek's 1966 theory of process of musical thought to reveal a composer's performances as a "triangulation tool" (p. 21) between the score and Gestalt/musical thought. The only real quarrel I have with his investigation of Stravinsky's tempi in two different recordings (1946 and 1961) of the Symphony in Three Movements is that it is predicated on an assumption of "logic" when it comes to tempo choices--an assumption that isn't clearly delineated by the author.

Anne Douglas's "Drawing and the Score" is one of the strongest essays as she offers a succinct summary of the relationships that can be established when "an artist transposes concepts of drawing and notation across the borders of art forms" (p. 207). In just under ten pages, Douglas convincingly concludes that the tension between musical score and drawing is essential to all stages of the musical work, and in effect "loops" the components of a performed musical work "between author/audience." (p. 215).

The editing is good, for the most part, although there is a significant error in the captioning of Fig. 4 of Cox's essay (p. 24) and certain essays could have used a stronger editorial hand in order to keep expositional consistency. The book's division into four parts seemed somewhat unnecessary, particularly given the holistic interpretation that underscores the entire book. That said, the parts (I: Score and Idea; II: Mapping the Interface; III: Extending the Boundaries; IV: Choreographies of Sound) do provide interesting inroads to the larger discussion.

This is a very worthwhile collection and has readings that are provocative and useful for a whole host of different types of research and teaching, especially in contemporary music. Some essays are more accessible than others, but it is a valuable compendium for anyone who teaches composition, contemporary music performance, and/or music history.

People over Publications: A mini-manifesto

Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis in "Time Enough At Last" (Public Domain)

Well, a three year hiatus is a long time...even for me. It isn't that I haven't had anything to say, but I've been taking a step back to monitor my field for awhile. There's a lot of good stuff happening--some of it online, some of it in print, and some of it in the classroom.

Something I've noticed lately is the privileging of print (publication) over other types of work. I'm not talking about tenure and promotion. I don't mean in regard to the job market. I'm talking about every day musicologists (ha!) and how they measure each other's expertise.

Much of my own research has not been published, but it has provided rich and provocative fodder for inquiry in my teaching and my graduate seminars. I really enjoy discussing these seminars with colleagues and hearing about the seminars they are teaching as well. If I find resources I think might be helpful, I share. If I know someone has previous experience with the topic, I often consult them, believing that multiple sources of input can enrich my own syllabus.  To me, it matters very little how much they have published. What matters more is their willingness to share and participate in professional dialogue. I have colleagues whose publication dossiers might focus on seventeenth-century opera but would also be people I could go to for information on hip-hop or country music. I know this because we have conversations. I listen and I learn from what they know. I don't ask for their credentials. They are invested and interested in the research and that is enough for me.

I feel we've lost some of that old nostalgic quality of the "life of the mind." I was lucky enough to work with a dissertation advisor who could discuss Du Fay, Brahms, and Zappa in the same half hour without ever signposting a change in direction. One of the things that makes musicology so exciting for me is what I DON'T know. And while my youthful fantasies of being a Henry Bemis have now downgraded to "I wish I had more time to read," there is much I'd rather learn from a conversation over beers than a lengthy journal article.

This also means that a good chunk of conference papers I attend are for the person giving the paper. I might have little interest in the topic, but I am interested in the person's interest, and that for me is reason enough to go. I'll admit to having a rather disheartening experience recently where I gave a paper at a national conference for my "subset" of specialization and only one colleague showed up for my paper. I know there are plentiful reasons why people didn't show up, and certainly I've missed many many papers due to conflicts of my own. But when I finally pushed my pride out of the way, I realized that a 20-minute conversation with one interested person would probably be more engaging and fruitful than having two rows of uninterested people sitting at my paper thinking about where they were headed for dinner that night.

So, all of this to say: I will continue to privilege people over publications. And if that keeps me on the outside looking in (to what, I'm not always sure), so be it. If you see me at a conference, sitting at the bar, come tell me what you're up to--even if I'll never read about it in JAMS.