The Art of Music Between Image and Word: An Interview with Orit Hilewicz

Entrevista com a Orit Hilewicz, professora adjunta de Teoria Musical na Eastman School of Music (the University of Rochester).

Richard Killmer

Professor of oboe at the Eastman School of Music, Richard Killmer was principal oboist of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for eleven years. In this interview, he talks about his early career and observations on the evolution of the oboe world. He discusses his teaching philosophy and shares specifics on breathing, intervallic placement, long tones, and articulation. He shares tips for technical practice and his ideas on vibrato and reeds. Killmer shares stories of his experience in helping to design the Ross gouge, and he talks about his inspirations.

Hi-Fi, Middle Brow? Frederick Fennell, Mercury Records, and the Eastman Wind Ensemble From 1952 to 1962

Frederick Fennell, founder of the internationally acclaimed Eastman Wind Ensemble (EWE), is considered by many to be the catalyst for the modern wind-band movement, often credited with revolutionizing thought and practice within the discipline. While this perception remains valid, evidence suggests that Fennell was much less serious (or “high-brow”) than many believe. Derived from original research in the Fennell Archive at the Eastman School of Music, this article seeks to highlight tensions between Fennell’s desire to record serious wind-band music and the demands of Mercury Records (EWE record label, 1952–1964) to record populist repertoire. Fennell’s archival material suggests that his philosophy was directly influenced by Mercury’s bottom line with the objective of selling records to the masses. Surprisingly, this synthesized a dynamic approach to programming for Fennell and the EWE—one that remains a tradition to this day. The influence of recorded media’s populist objective fused an approach for Fennell that is much more “middle-brow” than many may have believed.

Lecture about Electronic Microtonal Music at the Theremin Center Electronic Studio of the Moscow Conservatory in March 2004

Joseph Pehrson is a well-known New York-based composer. He studied at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan. He has been active in promoting contemporary music in New York, having been a co-director of the “Composers’ Concordance” concert organization from 1984 to 2011. Pehrson has written music in various styles, including neoclassical and avant-garde, microtonal music. The latter includes electronic compositions with and without solo instruments, which he wrote in the decade of the 2000s. He has delved very deeply into microtonal theory and has written compositions for various unusual and non-standard microtonal scales, such as the 21-note to the octave scale. The following is a transcript of Joseph Pehrson’s presentation at the Theremin Center, which was the Moscow Conservatory’s electronic studio in the 1990s and 2000s.

Bach’s Choral-Buch?

This chapter examines a collection of Bach chorale harmonizations copied in Dresden sometime during the 1730s, with the goal of clarifying both its likely provenance and purpose. “Sebastian Bach’s Choral-Buch” is a collection of chorales—melodies with figured bass, intended to accompany singing—given in a sequence similar to that found in many hymnals. The mid-eighteenth-century manuscript was purchased from Hans P. Kraus, Vienna, in September 1936 by the Sibley Library at the Eastman School of Music. This chapter first describes the Sibley Choralbuch before reviewing its provenance and content. It then considers the manuscript’s significance as a possible source of evidence for the practices of the circle of organists who studied with Johann Sebastian Bach in the 1730s and 1740s. It argues that Choralbuch served as a workbook for learning how to create four-part settings but had a double usefulness: Bach could assign particular chorale melodies for the pupil to work on as test pieces, while the anthology could serve to accompany chorale singing at services.