RESEARCH PROJECTS

Links

	International Symposium on the Institutions of French Opera, September 2004
	Tannhäuser in Paris, 1861

Current Research Projects

Sounds of War: Music in the United States during World War II

During World War II, musical life in the United States reflected—often closely—the dynamic of the war: the early apprehension, intense debates, and preparatory work in 1939-41; the trajectory from deep anxiety in 1942 to increasing confidence by 1944; and finally the shift to victory and peace in 1945-46, which brought significant efforts to promote new American music overseas. Composers, performers, and musicologists in America contributed to the war effort actively and consciously as musicians. Thus Marc Blitzstein, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Roy Harris, Colin McPhee, and Kurt Weill were all involved in the propaganda missions of the Office of War Information. Performers from Yehudi Menuhin to Lili Pons played and sang for soldiers at the front. Civilian commissions for new music focused on patriotic and "martial" subjects, most famously the series of fanfares that Eugene Goossens, the chief conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, requested from American composers and from European musicians in exile: Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man is a still much-performed result. Classical music was heard on the radio and in film scores; it was performed in the Armed Forces, for example by the Camp Lee Symphony Orchestra; and it even played a role in the intelligence-gathering work of the Office of Strategic Services. Indeed, classical music in 1940s America had a cultural relevance and ubiquity that is hard to imagine today, and it played an important role as a cultural counterpoint to the military effort as musicians and politicians were—in Henry Cowell's words—"shaping music for total war."

"Mon cher Copland": The Correspondence of Nadia Boulanger and Aaron Copland.

The Project consists of the edition and translation of the correspondence between one of the key American composers of the twentieth century, Aaron Copland, and his celebrated composition teacher, Nadia Boulanger, about whom the American composer Ned Rorem wrote in 1979: "So far as musical pedagogy is concerned—and by extension musical creation—Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever lived." Indeed, the list of Boulanger's students reads like a Who's Who of American twentieth-century music and includes such influential musicians as Leonard Bernstein, Mark Blitzstein, Elliott Carter, Philip Glass, Quincy Jones, and Virgil Thomson. Her American star student, however, was the composer Aaron Copland, whose works represent for many listeners the archetypal "American" sound with such compositions as Fanfare for the Common Man, Appalachian Spring, and Rodeo. Aaron Copland became one of Nadia Boulanger's first American students when he went to Paris in 1921. Instead of working with the official composition professor of the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, Paul Vidal, he signed up to study with the already famous, 34-year-old composer, teacher, and organist. Their correspondence began in the subsequent year (1922), when Copland had gone to Berlin for the summer, and it continued for over 50 years until Boulanger's death in 1979. The letters chronicle Copland's beginnings as a composer; they contain fascinating discussions about music, repertoire, and friends; and they accompanied the two correspondents through both hard times—especially Boulanger's exile to the US during World War II—and happy ones (such as Copland's successes as composer and conductor).

Updated 9/15/2009