Silent Music: Book Release and Panel Discussion 31 October, 2011: The Foundation for Iberian Music presents the book release and panel discussion of the Susan Boynton’s new publication Silent Music: Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain. The event will feature guest speakers Walter Clark, Don Michael Randel, and Suzanne Ryan as well as introductory remarks by Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie and Antoni Pizà. Monday October 31, 2011 Skylight Room, 6:30 pm The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Ave & 34th St Reception to follow. Silent Music examines the role of music and liturgy in the eighteenth-century vision of Spanish identity. This book is the first analysis of the Jesuit Andrés Marcos Burriel’s (1719-1762) research on medieval liturgy and music. With the calligrapher Fracisco Xavier Santiago y Palomares (1728-1796), Burriel worked in Toledo Cathedral for the Royal Commission on the Archives. Burriel’s transcriptions of manuscripts, canon law, literature, and liturgy were part of an effort to write a new ecclesiastical history of Spain. Boynton provides a unique perspective on an Enlightenment historian’s work and the impact of medieval liturgical music on Spain in the eighteenth century. The book demonstrates that music and notation played an important and previously unknown role in Burriel’s research and thought and in the career of Palomares. Susan Boynton is associate professor of music at Columbia University. Her research interests include liturgy and music in medieval Western monasticism, manuscript studies, monastic education, music in the Iberian Peninsula, and music and childhood. Her first book, Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000-1125 (2006), won the 2007 Lewis Lockwood Award of the American Musicological Society. She has coedited volumes on Cluny, on music and childhood, on young singers before 1700, and on the Bible in the Middle Ages. Walter Clark is a professor of music at the University of California Riverside and the founder and director of the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music (UCR). His academic work covers Renaissance and Romanticism, Spanish opera and contemporary popular music of Latin America. He has published numerous encyclopedic entries, text books, journal articles and monographs and is the series editor for Oxford University Press’s Currents in Iberian and Latin American Music Don Michael Randel is the President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and was professor of music at Cornell University as well as the President of Chicago University. In addition to editing The New Harvard Dictionary of Music (1986) his research includes studies of the music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Arabic music theory, Latin American popular music, and fifteenth-century French music and poetry. Suzanne Ryan is the Music Editor for academic and professional books at Oxford University Press. Under her editorship, the series Currents in Iberian and Latin American Music has published many invaluable studies that seek to encompass the immensely diverse music across the Spanish-speaking world.
Listen to the NYC Andalus Ensemble 12 July, 2011: The New York City Al-Andalus Ensemble has been practicing and learning music from the Ala-Andalusit repertoire under the direstion of Rachid Halihal over the past semester. Now some recordings of their performance and practice are available to listen to on the Foundation for Iberian Music’s Audio Archive. To listen to two songs from the ensemble, click here.
The Foundation for Iberian Music Presents Inside the Music The Foundation for Iberian Music presents a new series called Inside the Music. This is a new series of interactive seminars in which composers are invited to explain, analyze, and describe their music through close listening. The series is geared to doctoral students in music and aims at creating a dialogue between them, on the one hand, and the composers and their music, on the other. By leading a seminar about their own music, composers engage with students on a more intimate level resulting in a deeper understanding of a musical piece. The seminar will include selected readings, guided listening of recordings, and live performances. All Inside the Music events will be free and open to the public and will be held at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Audio Archive: New Music by Joan Valent In April the Foundation for Iberian Music presented a concert of New Music by Joan Valent. The audio recording for the concert are now available for listening in the Audio Archive. The concert’s program to accompany the audio recording is also available online. To listen to the concert, click here.
“Mentum” Performed in Palma de Mallorca, Spain 23 April 2011: Pianist Andreu Riera performed Mentum by Composer Antoni Parera Fons at l’Església dels Sagrats Cors in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Mentum was composed for the Foundation for Iberian Music’s 2008 Composer’s Commission. This was one of the performances in the concert series XII Setmana de Música Religiosa. Antoni Parera Fons Andreu Riera
Listen to New Music by Composer Joan Valent 29 April 2011: At the CUNY Graduate Center’s Elebash Recital Hall audiences heard New Music composed by Joan Valent. Artistic director and flutist Sato Moughalian and the Perspectives Ensemble performed Valent’s pieces with conductor Josep Vincent, Andreu Riera on piano, and Smerald Spahiu, violin. For more information about the concert, check out the Institut Ramon Llull online interview and review of the event, here: Llull TV
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Composer’s Commission 2011: Distinguished Professor Tania León 2011: The Foundation for Iberian Music proudly announces that distinguished Brooklyn College professor Tania León will write the 2011 Composer’s Commission. The program is going to be “Spain in America”, a celebration of Spanish composers working in the U.S. or writing music inspired by the Americas. Prof. León’s piece is intended as a response to Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002), a Spaniard greatly influenced by the music of Cuba, from a Cuban native. This season will mark the centennial of Montsalvatge’s birth. Also on the program will be works by Carlos Surinach (who lived in New Haven), Enrique Granados (whose “Goyescas” was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera), and Octavio Vazquez (a young composer from Galicia) who currently lives here in Manhattan. The Composer’s Commission will premier her work on 30 November, 2011 at Carnegie Hall. The concert will feature pianist Adam Kent. Adam Kent will be receiving the the Spanish government’s “Orden al Merito Civil” this year for my work promoting Spanish culture at a special ceremony at the Spanish Consulate. The Consulate also recently underwrote a course Kent taught in the history of Spanish music at Brooklyn College. Spain in America Wednesday, November 30, 2011 8:00 pm Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall 154 West 57th Street New York, NY 10019 (212) 247-7800 Click photo to see the encore performance of Homenatge by Adam Kent, at Le Poisson Rouge
The Mompou Chair Presents Its Annual Spring Seminar 7 May 2011: The Mompou Chair at the Foundation for Iberian Music presents the one-day immersion seminar “Music in Barcelona during the War of Succession (1701-1714). Professor Álvaro Torrente from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid will lead the seminar at the CUNY Graduate Center. MUSIC IN BARCELONA DURING THE WAR OF SUCCESSION (1701-1714) Álvaro Torrente Professor of Music, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Saturday May 7, 2011 From 10am to 1pm The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Ave & 34th St Room 3491 Breakfast and Coffee will be provided The War of Succession (1701-1714) is considered a decisive point in the history of Catalonia for its many political and territorial consequences. The music around the court of Archduke Charles allows a preferential analysis of the musical genres, forms, works, and composers of the 18th century. It was during these years that Barcelona presided over the first performances of Italian operas, and Italian musician Giuseppe Porsile was the head of the royal chapel of music for Archduke Charles of Barcelona. Other important local composers were Francesc Valls with his Missa Scala Aretina, Pere Rabassa, and Antonio Martín y Coll, as well as many foreigners like Francesco Mancini and Antonio Caldara, author of the first Italian opera performed in Spain at the iconic Llotja de Mar of Barcelona. Some of the most popular genres were the villancico, the zarzuela, and, of course, opera. The seminar will include listening and analyzing works by these composers, a review of the latest literature, and a close examination of many unpublished documents and original scores. Álvaro Torrente, Universidad Complutense de Madrid He is a native of Madrid and a professor of Music History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He studied music in both Madrid and Salamanca, and he earned his doctorate in musicology from the University of Cambridge. His research covers the diverse aspects of Spanish music in the 17th and 18th centuries. Among his many scholarly activities, Torrente is currently on the editorial board for the journal Acta Musicologica and directs the series Catálogo Descriptivo de Pliegos de Villancicos. Readings and listening examples found at: eres.gc.cuny.edu (Instructor: piza, password: muspiza) RSVP: emmy.williamson@gmail.com
The Mompou Chair Presents Its Annual Fall Seminar 30 April 2011: The Mompou Chair at the Foundation for Iberian Music presents the one-day immersion seminar “Beginnings of Jazz in Catalonia.” Jordi Pujol Baulenas, Fresh Sound Record, Barcelona will lead the seminar at the CUNY Graduate Center. THE BEGINNINGS OF JAZZ IN CATALONIA Saturday April 30, 2011 From 10am to 1pm The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Ave & 34th St Room 3491 Breakfast and Coffee will be provided From the early decades of the 20th century, jazz was introduced and established in Catalonia by dance crazes like the Charleston, foxtrot, ragtime, cakewalk, etc. While some Catalans like Xavier Cugat popularized in the US light jazz and Caribbean music, many American artists performed for extended periods of time in Barcelona (Lou Bennet, L. Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, etc.). All this resulted in a cultural and musical explosion. Soon, Catalonia experienced a moment of musical effervescence, and many jazz clubs and associations (Jamboree, Hot Club, Discòfils, Parrilla de Ritz, Salón Amaya, etc.) were established. In addition to reviewing the early jazz discography of this movement (dating back to 1919), the seminar will provide critical readings of the latest literature, as well as analysis of unpublished materials. Jordi Pujol Baulenas, Fresh Sound Record, Barcelona Barcelona native Jordi Pujol Baluenas has been playing and studying jazz since childhood. His other great interest from adolescence was artistic design. He earned a bachelor’s in design from the Massana School. After many years working in textile design, in 1983, he co-founded Fresh Sounds Records a music label that specializes in the reissuing of jazz records. Pujol has created other labels (El Bandoneón, Tumbao, Alma Latina, Blue Moon) that reissue records from various popular music genres such as tango, afrocuban, bolero, ranchero, and US pop from the 1940-50s. He is the author of the definitive scholarly study on early jazz in Catalonia, Jazz en Barcelona 1920-1965 (Barcelona: Almendra Music, 2005). Readings and listening examples found at: eres.gc.cuny.edu (search instructor: piza; password: muspiza) RSVP: emmy.williamson@gmail.com