The Library Of Congress Celebrates American Classical Music Culture, While Sharon Rockefeller's WETA-FM Represses American Classical Music Culture
"The Music Division of the Library of Congress is pleased to announce the first in a series of lectures highlighting musicological research conducted in the Division’s collections.
The initial talk, scheduled for 7:00 p.m., 26 March 2008, will feature Judith Tick, who will speak about aspects of her work on Ruth Crawford Seeger in a lecture entitled "Ruth Crawford Seeger, Modernist Composer in the Folk Revival: Biography as Music History."
Open to the public, the program will be held in the Library’s famed Coolidge Auditorium in the Jefferson Building.
"Shortly after the death of the musicologist Charles Seeger, his children gave his papers and those of their mother, the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, to the Music Division of the Library of Congress," said Tick. "Without yet knowing what to look for or why, I mad-dashed through one box after another. The boxes contained manuscripts of unpublished songs and chamber music, typescripts of unpublished scholarship on American folk music, Christmas card-photos of the Seeger family, unfinished thank-you notes, grant applications, and personal diaries through which an obscure artist and woman spoke directly to my scholar’s instincts and feminist heart.
"I would return to these documents many times, and I ended up editing some of the unpublished scores. As time passed, the documents slowed me down into considering the relation between narrative truth and historical truth. They said to me: ‘Handle us with care. We are combustible. We set off chain-reactions. One thing leads to another.’ Through music to life; through a life to history. The goal of my lecture is to revisit content and process in practicing musical biography in relation to Crawford Seeger’s legacy. Music validates a composer. Our experience of that music shapes the questions we ask about a composer’s life. As life and art intertwine, so biographical narrative illuminates the history of culture."
Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C
Classical WETA-FM, so-called 'public radio' for 'Greater Washington'
Different Trains.... Ruth Crawford Seeger and Sharon Percy Rockefeller
Photo credits: (c) Library of Congress and (c)WETA. All rights reserved.
The initial talk, scheduled for 7:00 p.m., 26 March 2008, will feature Judith Tick, who will speak about aspects of her work on Ruth Crawford Seeger in a lecture entitled "Ruth Crawford Seeger, Modernist Composer in the Folk Revival: Biography as Music History."
Open to the public, the program will be held in the Library’s famed Coolidge Auditorium in the Jefferson Building.
"Shortly after the death of the musicologist Charles Seeger, his children gave his papers and those of their mother, the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, to the Music Division of the Library of Congress," said Tick. "Without yet knowing what to look for or why, I mad-dashed through one box after another. The boxes contained manuscripts of unpublished songs and chamber music, typescripts of unpublished scholarship on American folk music, Christmas card-photos of the Seeger family, unfinished thank-you notes, grant applications, and personal diaries through which an obscure artist and woman spoke directly to my scholar’s instincts and feminist heart.
"I would return to these documents many times, and I ended up editing some of the unpublished scores. As time passed, the documents slowed me down into considering the relation between narrative truth and historical truth. They said to me: ‘Handle us with care. We are combustible. We set off chain-reactions. One thing leads to another.’ Through music to life; through a life to history. The goal of my lecture is to revisit content and process in practicing musical biography in relation to Crawford Seeger’s legacy. Music validates a composer. Our experience of that music shapes the questions we ask about a composer’s life. As life and art intertwine, so biographical narrative illuminates the history of culture."
Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C
Classical WETA-FM, so-called 'public radio' for 'Greater Washington'
Different Trains.... Ruth Crawford Seeger and Sharon Percy Rockefeller
Photo credits: (c) Library of Congress and (c)WETA. All rights reserved.
posted by Garth Trinkl at 10:25 AM
1 Comments:
JW said...
How interesting! Maybe they'll make the Seeger lecture available n the website. Your post also reminds me that two of my favorite symphonies are dedicated to Franklin Roosevelt: Erich Korngold's Symphony in F# and Karl Weigl's Symphony No.5 "Apocalyptic".
7:46 AM
Garth Trinkl said...
Great idea, John! Let's contact the Library of Congress.
And thanks for the continuation of my thought with your citations of the Korngold and Weigl Symphonies. I did not know this.
Perhaps, Classical WETA-FM can program the two American Symphonies on FDR's birthday?
(Can we all think of any other works dedicated to FDR?)
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