20211111T180020211111T2000America/ChicagoEarly Musics in the 21st Century: Skills and Resources (Skills and Resources for Early Musics Study Group)
The newly-formed Study Group in Skills and Resources for Early Musics proposes a roundtable discussion centered on the following questions: What are the skills and resources needed to study early musics in the twenty-first century? What currently exists and what is missing? The discussion will feature five brief co-presentations by faculty and students addressing the following issues: how the Inclusive Early Music database might be decentered to teach and think "early music" in ways that are truly inclusive; methods through which early music scholars approach the interpretive gaps and problems of decipherment in the study of polyglot documents and multicultural sites of production; tools and tactics to make notation pedagogy more accessible; methods and resources for practicing and teaching solmization and historical improvisation; and a hands-on approach to the history and technology of instrument making, linking material science, construction, the science of acoustics and the physics of sound to evidentiary materials gathered from historical and iconographical sources. By balancing faculty and student perspectives, we aim to stimulate an inclusive dialogue about a wide range of skills and resources as well as future initiatives for the Study Group.
Organizers: Luisa Nardini (Associate Professor, The University of Texas, Austin) and Catherine Saucier (Associate Professor, Arizona State University)
The newly-formed Study Group in Skills and Resources for Early Musics proposes a roundtable discussion centered on the following questions: What are the skills and resources needed to study early musics in the twenty-first century? What currently exists and what is missing? The discussion will feature five brief co-presentations by faculty and students addressing the following issues: how the Inclusive Early Music database might be decentered to teach and think "early music" in ways that are truly inclusive; methods through which early music scholars approach the interpretive gaps and problems of decipherment in the study of polyglot documents and multicultural sites of production; tools and tactics to make notation pedagogy more accessible; methods and resources for practicing and teaching solmization and historical improvisation; and a hands-on approach to the history and technology of instrument making, linking material science, construction, the science of acoustics and the physics of sound to evidentiary materials gathered from historical and iconographical sources. By balancing faculty and student perspectives, we aim to stimulate an inclusive dialogue about a wide range of skills and resources as well as future initiatives for the Study Group.
Organizers: Luisa Nardini (Associate Professor, The University of Texas, Austin) and Catherine Saucier (Associate Professor, Arizona State University)
Presenters and Topics:
Erika Honisch (Associate Professor, Stony Brook University), Giovanni Zanovello (Associate Professor, Indiana University), and Deanna Pellerano (MA student, Indiana University)-"Mapping Inclusive Early Music / Mapping Inclusive Early Music"
Kate van Orden (Professor, Harvard University) and Felipe Ledesma-Nuñez (PhD student, Harvard University)- "Working with Polyglot Sources"
Áine Palmer (PhD student, Yale University) and Andrea Klassen (PhD student, UT Austin)- "Notation and Summer Boot Campus"
Julie E. Cumming (Professor, McGill University), and Linda Pearse (PhD student, McGill; Associate Professor, Mt. Allison University)- "Historical Pedagogy and Improvisation in the Renaissance"
Susan ForscherWeiss (Professor, Peabody Conservatory/Johns Hopkins University), Steph Zimmerman (DMA student, Peabody Conservatory), and Nonoka Mizukami (DMA student, Peabody Conservatory)- "Inspiring A New Generation of Luthiers: A New Organology within the Curriculum of an American Conservatory"
Mapping Inclusive Early Music / Mapping _Inclusive Early Music_ Study Group06:00 PM - 08:00 PM (America/Chicago) 2021/11/12 00:00:00 UTC - 2021/11/12 02:00:00 UTC
Launched in August 2020, the Inclusive Early Music website hosts a tagged bibliography of scholarship that takes up "early music" in the full sense of the term. Ideally, its coverage encompasses musical practices and traditions from anywhere in the world from the earliest accounts that have been preserved in writing or orally, to the year that was calculated by European Christians as 1650. In practice, the resource reflects both the familiarities and priorities of the contributors and editors, and the familiarities and priorities of "musicology" to this point. The languages of our contributions-mostly in English with a smattering of other European languages-replicate institutional and disciplinary biases.
In response to these observations, the editorial team is undertaking an evaluation of the bibliography that tracks several facets of the bibliography including the geographic origin of music or a musical tradition, the representation of marginalized identities, the language of scholarship, and the institutional home of scholars. In our talk, the editorial team takes a reckoning of the world charted by the Inclusive Early Music database as it stands, and points to areas for future growth, identifying areas of study that we must better represent, contemplating relationships we must build, and reflecting on how we might deepen and broaden the resource in ways that are non-hierarchical and decentered, in order to teach and think "early music" in ways that are truly inclusive.
Working with Polyglot Sources Study Group06:00 PM - 08:00 PM (America/Chicago) 2021/11/12 00:00:00 UTC - 2021/11/12 02:00:00 UTC
Some reflections on interpretive strategies for polyglot source materials from c. 1600. Felipe Ledesma-Nuñez will discuss his archival research in Andean rural communities and the recording of Quechuan languages in Spanish sources. Kate van Orden will discuss her work on song repertoires that cross linguistic borders and pick up the sounds of polyglot speech communities. By comparing two sets of source materials, and two means of approaching them, we hope to invite a broader discussion of the methods through which early music scholars approach the interpretive gaps and problems of decipherment that so often arise in the study of polyglot documents and multicultural sites of production.
Notation and Summer Boot Campus Study Group06:00 PM - 08:00 PM (America/Chicago) 2021/11/12 00:00:00 UTC - 2021/11/12 02:00:00 UTC
Historical Notation Bootcamp is a collaborative seminar devised by Anna Zayaruznaya (Yale) and Andrew Hicks (Cornell), that ran in the summers of 2016 - 2019. Over the course of just under a week, participants are given the history, context and skills to sing straight from the source. In this presentation, two bootcamp alumni, Áine Palmer (Yale, HNB '19) and Andrea Klassen (UT Austin, HNB '17), combine our different perspectives to consider what makes good notation pedagogy, and how can it and the necessary resources become more accessible? After establishing the value of historical notation in the modern university (both in the undergraduate classroom and as a research tool), we draw on our experiences from Bootcamp and beyond to consider how to best introduce students to early notation, and continue to develop this skill through regular practice. Synthesizing our different institutional perspectives and more recent experiences of online learning, we will try to envision tools, resources, and tactics that can be used to make good notation pedagogy more accessible to all.
Historical Pedagogy and Improvisation in the Renaissance Study Group06:00 PM - 08:00 PM (America/Chicago) 2021/11/12 00:00:00 UTC - 2021/11/12 02:00:00 UTC
Cumming and Pearse will discuss their experience in undergraduate and graduate courses in which students learned solmization and techniques of historical improvisation. Learning to put these techniques into practice provides crucial insight into how Renaissance musicians learned to read music, improvise polyphony, and compose without a score. We will discuss Guidonian solmization using the hand as well as multiple improvisatory techniques. These will include note-against-note improvisation against a chant melody, contrapunto fugato over a long-note cantus firmus, parallel sixths, thirds, and tenths, fauxbourdon, falsobordone, stretto fuga in 2, 3, and 4 voices, and chant-paraphrase canon. We will also provide a list of publications and online videos that can be used in teaching historical pedagogy and improvisation.
Inspiring A New Generation of Luthiers: A New Organology within the Curriculum of an American Conservatory Study Group06:00 PM - 08:00 PM (America/Chicago) 2021/11/12 00:00:00 UTC - 2021/11/12 02:00:00 UTC
The curricula of musical studies in the twenty-first century often overlook the skills and resources needed for an understanding of the history and technology of instruments. Courses in organology, when they are offered, address the history of western and non-western instruments, particularly systems of classification, but rarely include a hands-on component. For the past several years, The Peabody Conservatory has offered a course that combines history and technology. Affectionately called "The Archeology of Musical Instruments," it attracts a diverse core of students-undergraduates and graduates-from several divisions of Johns Hopkins University including its music division as well as the Homewood Schools: The Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and The Whiting School of Engineering. The 'workshop' component links material science, construction, the science of acoustics and the physics of sound to evidentiary materials gathered from historical and iconographical sources. Students from these diverse backgrounds apply their talents as performing musicians and their knowledge of music history from pre-historic times through to the present while working with faculty and local luthiers to recreate musical instruments. The advantages of combining an historical approach with the attention to the physics of musical instruments has opened new vistas for music students wishing to broaden their knowledge of their own instruments and for non-majors to gain a new appreciation for music beyond what they learn in the requisite courses in music history and theory. Moreover, they all gain an appreciation for the craftsmanship that goes into making a musical instrument and a few have even aspired to pursue careers as luthiers, a vaunted but endangered occupation in need of more dedicated and talented musicians.
Giovanni Zanovello
Susan Forscher Weiss