Throughout this course I’ve continued to gain new insights into the idea of modernism in Paris in the 1920s. The readings for our very first day of class discussed Taruskin’s assessment of the idea of lifestyle modernism in Paris, a movement away from romanticism towards something more deliberately shallow.1 The new generation of composers and […]
Check out this performance by the St. Olaf Orchestra and Professor Anderegg! My first attempts at researching Ravel were slightly troubling. You think there would be an abundance of online resources examining such a well-known composer, and his piece, Tzigane, which has become a staple of the violin repertoire. There are many dissertations, concert reviews, […]
Both Dorf and Moore’s writing raise issues of gender and sexuality that had been excluded from meaningful examination in musicology through much of the 20th century. Queer scholar Elizabeth Wood is a rare example among musicologists of that time, introducing the idea of Sapphonics in her first edition of Queering the Pitch in 1994. Wood […]
According to Jeffrey Jackson, the French called the 1920s “the crazy years.”1 As jazz music and dance came to France it brought ideas that made many French people uneasy, often because they felt their sophisticated way of life was being threatened. 2 Jazz music was linked to the economic developments in America, a mechanization and […]
Igor Stravinsky, ca.1937. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016872669/ I expected to find a wide variety of sources when researching Igor Stravinsky, due to the combination of his compositional success, his influence and residence within three western nations, and his consideration of himself as a neoclassical composer. There were many sources that analyzed Stravinsky’s music, which evolved from progressive […]
Many of the composers and writers we’ve read have discussed the differences between national and individual identity in French music, as well as the way these identities overlap. I enjoyed Bauer’s examination of the Belgian born composer César Franck. After studying and performing his violin sonata I found it interesting to make new meanings of […]