Ph.D. student in Musicology, Cornell University
PAPERS AND PUBLICATIONS
Conference Activity, Journal Articles, and Books
“HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: ALMA GLUCK AND THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF SCHOENBERG IN AMERICA”
21st Quinquennial Congress of the International Musicological Society, August 2022
It is typically thought that American audiences read about the compositions of Arnold Schoenberg long before they ever heard them in the United States. Several performances have been cited as Schoenberg’s U.S. premiere, the earliest dating from October 1913. Schoenberg’s early music, however, had been heard in the United States well in advance of this date. This article examines for the first time the 9 November 1911 New York premiere of Schoenberg’s “Waldsonne” from the Op. 2 Vier Lieder, sung by Alma Gluck as part of her yearly song recital at Carnegie Hall. This performance not only currently stands as the first performance of Schoenberg’s music in the United States, but it is also closely connected to the death of Gustav Mahler in January of the same year, a powerful link between Gluck and Schoenberg. In this article I argue that Gluck first became aware of the young Austrian composer through Mahler, and her programming of Schoenberg’s song was linked to Mahler’s death. Mahler’s death functions as a means of uniting Gluck and Schoenberg through grief, a bond rendered stronger by their shared Jewish heritage. This study forces us to reevaluate our understanding of the early U.S. reception of Arnold Schoenberg, as well as the chronology of the transatlantic premieres of his compositions. Furthermore, in uncovering the history behind this premiere, this article engages with broader questions of historiography as well as how scholars choose to record reception and musical migration.
“WALKING FORWARD INTO THE FUTURE: MODERNISM, MUSIC APPRECIATION, AND MARION ROUS IN ‘WHAT NEXT IN MUSIC?’”
48th Annual Conference of the Society for American Music, March 2022
A pianist and pedagogue whose career spanned much of the twentieth century, the name of Marion Rous has until now only gained the occasional cursory mention in an index or appendix. In particular, previous scholarship has overlooked the contributions of Rous as a figure linked to the music appreciation movement, evidenced mainly through her career-defining lecture recital “What Next in Music?” Heralded as a trailblazing undertaking by the likes of Harvey Gaul and W. J. Henderson, “What Next in Music?” served as the centerpiece of Rous’ national debut in July of 1919 as well as her New York debut in January of 1924. This program focused on modernist piano repertoire, ranging from the atonality of Schoenberg to music such as ragtime and blues. Paradoxically, Rous sought to present such music through the normatively white and traditionalist lens of the music appreciation movement, blending such diverse ideologies as the avant-garde, active listening, and occultism. This article traces for the first time the history, content, and reception of “What Next in Music?” as well as its intended goal of bringing the analytical yet approachable presentation of modernism to a broad audience. Rous emerges as a case study in the unlikely middlebrow intersection of modernism and the music appreciation movement, adding to our understanding of an intersection later witnessed more prominently in the work of Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. Furthermore, this study unearths for the first time the career of a hitherto neglected figure of twentieth-century modernism and American musical life.
“LEGACY, MEMORY, AND ERASURE: A HISTORY OF THE DYER MEMORIAL AT ROLLINS COLLEGE”
Annual Meeting of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the American Musicological Society, March 2022
In the Southwest corner of the Rollins College campus in Winter Park, Florida, there stands a small multipurpose building known as the Faculty Club. Now a rarely-utilized space, the Faculty Club was erected in 1940 in memory of Rollins professor of music Susan Dyer, and was originally named the Dyer Memorial. Dyer was responsible for professionalizing the Music Department throughout the 1910s, making it a thriving center for the arts. With the building’s change of name in 1975 Dyer’s legacy has effectively been erased, and scholarship has all but completely neglected Dyer as well as the memorial originally dedicated in her honor. This paper examines for the first time the complicated history of the Dyer Memorial, starting with Dyer’s premature death in 1922 and continuing through the project’s proposal, delays, alterations, and ultimate renaming. The Faculty Club pictorializes the erasure of Dyer’s legacy in more than its change of name; originally to be an open-air amphitheater on the banks of Lake Virginia in accordance with Dyer’s own unrealized plan, it was altered to its current state as a Spanish-Mediterranean chapel due to Rollins president Hamilton Holt’s obsession with architect Richard Kiehnel. Such a study of the Faculty Club engages with contemporary discussions of monuments and memorials even while inverting their critiques; rather than problematizing the mythologies perpetuated by memorials, this paper questions the outcome of a memorial being stripped of its historical significance. This study furthermore revives the legacy of the forgotten Susan Dyer at the centenary of her death.
“‘AN ANATOMY OF MODERNISM’: MARION ROUS AND ‘WHAT NEXT IN MUSIC?’”
Master's Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2021
Previous scholarship has all but completely overlooked the contributions of Marion Rous to modernism and the music appreciation movement through her career-defining lecture recital “What Next in Music?” A pianist and pedagogue whose long career spanned much of the 20th century, the name of Marion Rous now only warrants a cursory mention in an index or appendix. “What Next in Music?,” a lecture recital on modern European piano repertoire, was the subject of Rous’ New York debut at Aeolian Hall in January of 1924. But this was far from the first time that she had presented this lecture recital, it having been inaugurated in 1916 when Rous was a professor at the Peabody Conservatory. This study traces for the first time the development of “What Next in Music?” from this early manifestation through to Rous’ presentation at the 1919 Biennial Convention of the National Federation of Music Clubs in Peterborough, New Hampshire, a success that earned Rous national renown and years of nationwide touring. This research features an unlikely intersection of modernism and the music appreciation movement, thus adding to our understanding of the development of both disciplines in the 1910s United States. Furthermore, it studies for the first time the career of a hitherto neglected figure of 20th century modernism in America.
“ECHOES OF ALOYSIUS: EXAMINING FUGAL FORM IN BACH’S BWV 856 IN LIGHT OF GRADUS AD PARNASSUM”
Annual Meeting of the Southern Chapter of the American Musicological Society, February 2021
While Johann Josef Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum (1725) has generated much academic research on its theory of species counterpoint, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the tripartite organization of fugue outlined in the Musica Pratica section of the treatise. Previous scholarship has questioned the applicability of this model to fugues outside of the Gradus itself. Indeed, many scholars have made the specific point of arguing that this tripartite organization is inapplicable to the works of J. S. Bach, Das wohltemperierte Klavier in particular. In this paper I analyze Bach’s Fugue no. 11 in F Major, BWV 856 (1722) and demonstrate that it adheres to Fux’s model of exposition, counter-exposition, and stretto while also adopting the form’s finer details of texture and tonal motion. Through my analysis I demonstrate how Bach’s BWV 856 brings this form to fruition three years before the publication of Fux’s Gradus. This chronology forces us to reevaluate our understanding of Fux’s generally dismissed theory of fugue; it liberates the Fuxian model from the realm of the theoretical hypothetical and contextualizes it within contemporary artistic practice. Furthermore, this analysis exhibits how rather than merely outlining an extinct tradition, Gradus ad Parnassum was also observing a compositional practice that was still evolving and manifesting itself even in the fugues of J. S. Bach.
