By Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. (NHC Fellow, 1992–93; 1996–97; 2003–04) When Jimi Hendrix transfixed the crowds of Woodstock with his gripping version of "The Star Spangled Banner," he was building on a foundation reaching back, in part, to the revolutionary guitar playing of Howlin' Wolf and the other great Chicago bluesmen, and to the Delta … Continued
By Annegret Fauser (NHC Fellow, 2015–16) Appalachian Spring, with music by Aaron Copland and choreography by Martha Graham, counts among the best known American contributions to the global concert hall and stage. In the years since its premiere-as a dance work at the Library of Congress in 1944-it has become one of Copland's most widely … Continued
By Tom Beghin (NHC Fellow, 2002–03) Haydn is the last major composer whose music was regularly discussed by his contemporaries in terms derived from the classical tradition of rhetoric. Within a generation of his death, that discourse had fallen from favor, but the historical relationship between Haydn and the rhetorical tradition endured. In this volume, a … Continued
Edited by Annegret Fauser (NHC Fellow, 2015–16) and Michael A. Figueroa Public commemorations of various kinds are an important part of how groups large and small acknowledge and process injustices and tragic events. Performing Commemoration: Musical Reenactment and the Politics of Trauma looks at the roles music can play in public commemorations of traumatic events that range … Continued
By Timothy D. Taylor (NHC Fellow, 1999–00) From the early days of radio through the rise of television after World War II to the present, music has been used more and more to sell goods and establish brand identities. And since the 1920s, songs originally written for commercials have become popular songs, and songs written … Continued
By Suzannah Clark (NHC Fellow, 2010–11) When Schubert's contemporary reviewers first heard his modulations, they famously claimed that they were excessive, odd and unplanned. This book argues that these claims have haunted the analysis of Schubert's harmony ever since, outlining why Schubert's music occupies a curiously marginal position in the history of music theory. Analyzing … Continued
By Susan Youens (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) More than any other poet, Heinrich Heine has provided composers for almost two hundred years with texts for music: more than eight thousand compositions to date. Nineteenth-century composers were drawn in particular to a limited selection of Heine's early lyrical works from the Buch der Lieder and the Neue … Continued
By Elizabeth K. Helsinger (NHC Fellow, 1997–98; 2007–08) In arguing for the crucial importance of song for poets in the long nineteenth century, Elizabeth Helsinger focuses on both the effects of song on lyric forms and the mythopoetics through which poets explored the affinities of poetry with song. Looking in particular at individual poets and … Continued
By Robert L. Kendrick (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) In this book, a follow-up to his 1996 monograph Celestial Sirens, Robert Kendrick examines the cultural contexts of music in early-modern Milan. This book describes the churches and palaces that served as performance spaces in Milan, analyzes the power structures in the city, discusses the devotional rites of the … Continued
Edited by Scott Burnham (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) and Michael P. Steinberg Few composers even begin to approach Beethoven’s pervasive presence in modern Western culture, from the concert hall to the comic strip. Edited by a cultural historian and a music theorist, Beethoven and His World gathers eminent scholars from several disciplines who collectively speak to the range … Continued