An inside look at AMS/SMT Meeting

In about a month, the American Musicological Society will again gather to confer, listen, perform, and celebrate. Our Annual Meeting this year will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city. We meet from Thursday to Sunday, 6-9 November, downtown at the Wisconsin Center and the Hilton Hotel. This year we are joined by the Society for Music Theory in what promises to be a very special meeting.

The program committees of the AMS and SMT have been hard at work assembling a rich selection of papers spanning a wide array of topics, from chant and medieval motets to Steve Reich, Dolly Parton, and almost everything in between. The program is especially rich in sessions devoted to American music and music and politics, with two sessions on World War I to mark this year’s centennial. Among the newer approaches appearing on the program are sessions on music and activism, arts efficacy, and intellectual property. Joint sessions featuring collaborations between AMS and SMT members include a panel on Thomas Adès, alternative-format sessions entitled “Queer Music Theory: Interrogating Notes of Sexuality” and “Why Voice Now?”, and a how-to session on preparing poster presentations that includes examples: eleven poster presentations on empirical approaches to music theory and musicology. In addition to the usual wide range of evening sessions presented by AMS committees and study groups, other evening sessions explore such topics as hymnological research, post-1900 musical patronage, the pedagogy of seventeenth- century music, and digital musicology.

Special musical performances over the weekend include Milwaukee’s Early Music Now presenting Quicksilver (Boston/New York) in a program entitled “The Invention of Chamber Music,” the Milwaukee Symphony performing  Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony and a premiere of Marc Neikrug’s Bassoon Concerto, David Schulenberg in a lecture-recital on C. P. E. Bach (it is the 300th anniversary of his birth this year), and male soprano Robert Crowe and the group Il Furioso in concert entitled “From Carissimi to Croft: The Influence of the Italian Solo Motet in English Sacred Solo Music of the Restoration.”

There’s lots more at this gathering — book fair, professional development workshops, and (not least) dozens of alumni receptions. It’s like a big reunion at times! But the most important aspect: presenting the latest research in musicology and music theory — will be central, and will send ripples well beyond the meeting, as presentations are honed and prepared for publication at our blog, Musicology Now, or in our journal, JAMS. It’s an exciting time–please come join us!

Headline Image: Cello Detail Instrument String Musical. CC0 via Pixabay