Fall Virtual Meeting 
Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society
April 14, 2023
Time Zone: Central 

A printable version with paper and poster abstracts is available here

Program
9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.	Popular Music
	Chair: Brian Wright
	“Narrative, Disorientation, and ‘Queer Exuberance’ in Lil Nas X's ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’ (2021),” Jonathan Gerrard (University of California, Irvine)
	“Clave, Backbeat, and the Superimposition Aesthetic: A Compilation of Black-Led Popular Music in the United States, 1950-Present,” Sam Protich Rives (Texas State University)
	“Exoticism from Tchaikovsky to Katy Perry: Teaching the Canon to Reckon with Our Past and Present,” Robert Michael Anderson (University of North Texas)
11:00 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.	Pause
11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.	Texas History
	Chair: Mark Brill
	“Rediscovering Three Texas Women Composers: Zulema Garcia, Julia Owen, and Stella Kaiser,” Garrett Douglas (Texas State University)
	“A milestone in the development of music appreciation in South Texas”: The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s 1947 Tour,” Sarah M. Lucas (Texas A&M University-Kingsville)
12:15 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.	Business Meeting
1:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.	Lunch
2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.	Performance Studies Redux: Performance, Composition, and Reception
	Chair: Kathryn Caton
	“Unlocking a Deeper Understanding of Clara Schumann's Interpretive Voice,” Krissy Gray (Independent Scholar)
	“On the Pedagogical Piano Works of Underrepresented German Composer Hanning Schröder (1896-1987),” Clark Haygood and Nico Schüler (Texas State University)
	“Tulsa Opera’s Prima Donnas in the Popular Press,” Michelle Jaluvka (University of Oklahoma & Oklahoma Baptist University)
3:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.	Closing Remarks

Abstracts

“Narrative, Disorientation, and ‘Queer Exuberance’ in Lil Nas X’s ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’ (2021),” Jonathan Gerrard (University of California, Irvine)

Since his debut in 2019, Lil Nas X has often deployed creative formal structures in his songs—a compositional propensity which is particularly prominent within “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” (2021). “Montero” defies easy categorization within conventional theoretical models of popular music, and this paper instead draws on notions of musical narrative as developed by Byron Almén and others in order to fashion a meaningful analysis. 

Musical features like rhythmic layering and melodic–harmonic ambiguity contribute “Montero’s” sense of sequential action, ultimately lending this two-minute pop song an almost through-composed feel. Using Almén’s analytical framework, I demonstrate how these elements combine to represent a “Romantic” narrative archetype. Reinforcing the song’s narrative richness is the fact that “Montero” was inspired in part by the film Call Me By Your Name (2017), ultimately summoning feminist scholar Sara Ahmed’s notion of “disorientation” as a means to unpack critical extramusical connections. Jennifer Rycenga’s description of “Queer exuberance” and Gavin Lee’s discussion of “anti-normativity” add further analytical context while also helping to situate Ahmed’s Queer-phenomenological concepts within music discourse more broadly. 

Given the song’s direct connections to Queer identity, we might allow ourselves to hear “Montero” with “Queer-phenomenological ears.” That is, rather than relying on recognizable formal boundaries to guide listening, we can instead embrace a different experience—one that Rycenga recognizes as “exuberant” while Ahmed might describe as “disorientating.” In all, these perspectives give us new ways to approach the music of Lil Nas X, while in turn pointing to potential new directions in music research.

“Clave, Backbeat, and the Superimposition Aesthetic: A Compilation of Black-Led Popular Music in the United States, 1950-Present,”

Clave – both the distinctive set of rhythmic patterns and the overarching rhythmic sensibility associated with the term – is widely believed to have originated in sub-Saharan African musical traditions. Most commentators treat clave as a stylistic trait occurring almost exclusively in Latin genres, whereas backbeat is regarded as the main rhythmic characteristic defining Black-led but non-Latin musics. General histories of U.S. popular music by authors such as Larry Starr, Christopher Waterman, and Michael Campbell typically present clave as a concept pertaining to either Latin music or the aesthetic of American popular music legend Bo Diddley (1928-2008), whose recordings often feature a rhythmic pattern that is identical to Afro-Cuban son clave but which Starr, Waterman, and others refer to as the purportedly novel “Bo Diddley beat.” Diddley is no outlier: there is overwhelmingly abundant recorded evidence from the 20th and 21st centuries of clave in Black-led, U.S.-based genres such as rock & roll, R&B, soul, funk, and hip hop – genres that are commonly coded as “Black” but not “Latin” or even “Afro-Caribbean.” Using transcriptions of a selection of songs from 1950 to the 2010s, this paper will demonstrate that 1) clave rhythmic patterns are widely represented in Black-led and supposedly non-Latin genres of U.S. popular music, and 2) clave patterns tend to be variably superimposed onto a highly emphatic backbeat in these Black-led U.S. genres, yielding what I call a superimposition aesthetic that thrives on the creative interplay between moveable clave-inflected rhythms and a metrically immoveable backbeat.

 “Exoticism from Tchaikovsky to Katy Perry: Teaching the Canon to Reckon with Our Past and Present,” Robert Michael Anderson (University of North Texas)

Recent calls to increase diversity and “decolonize” the music history curriculum are much needed corrections to the hegemony of Western art music in higher education. These efforts have, understandably, tended to focus on adding new repertoire from underrepresented groups. For some, this creates a false binary between a curriculum that values diversity and inclusion and one that that values canonical works and traditional genres and styles. One solution to this alleged impasse is to both add new course content and rethink how we teach familiar works and concepts. By teaching the musical canon in ways that both confront its historical prejudices and make clear the lasting impact of these inequities today, I argue, we can realize the goals of diversity and inclusion initiatives while still engaging with beloved composers and works. In this paper, I illustrate this approach in a class on Exoticism and Orientalism in Ballet. This class includes an overview of exoticism and orientalism as broader concepts and their manifestation in art and music, an analysis of exoticist/orientalist elements in the Chinese and Arabian dances from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, a small-group discussion activity that asks students to identify and explain examples of orientalism/exoticism in contemporary popular music, and a class-wide reflection on how we can deal with the problematic legacy of exoticist works today. Through this class, students learn to think critically about beloved works, apply class concepts to outside musical examples, and thus recognize the continued presence of Western music history’s prejudices in the present.

“Rediscovering Three Texas Women Composers: Zulema Garcia, Julia Owen, and Stella Kaiser,” Garrett Douglas (Texas State University)

Zulema Garcia (1874-1907) was a multi-instrumentalist who, while still in her teens, was said to have “composed over eighty pieces of music, and, as a pianist, violinist, and guitarist, is a musical marvel” in Prominent Women of Texas (1896) by Elizabeth Brooks. Julia Owen (1869-1964) was a pianist, violinist, singer, educator and notable composer who published original compositions for over two decades. Proclaimed a musical prodigy in the Fort Worth Gazette, Stella Kaiser (1873-1953) had an original composition published at the age of eleven. Research through commercial genealogy and newspaper databases led to the rediscovery of primary documents that showed these three musicians being celebrated in their time for their exemplary playing and composing. Though the levels of acclaim vary, their compositions can be found in the Library of Congress which further suggests that their work is of high quality, yet no scholarly research can currently be found on any of these composers. This paper will contribute to the rediscovery of the musical careers of three forgotten women composers from Texas and will summarize the research process and methodology.

“A milestone in the development of music appreciation in South Texas”: The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s 1947 Tour,” Sarah M. Lucas (Texas A&M University-Kingsville)

When the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) set off on their 1947 tour, it was heralded as the first major orchestra to visit Mexico City from the United States. On route to Mexico, the orchestra performed under the batons of Fritz Reiner and his assistant Vladimir Bakaleinikov in several U.S. cities. Many of their domestic performances took place in Texas, not only in major cities such as Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio—where Stravinsky was in the audience—but also in small towns such as Kingsville, where the orchestra played at the Texas College of Arts and Industries. Based on correspondence between Reiner and orchestra manager Edward Specter, this paper explores aspects of the tour planning process, as well as proposed programs. It also provides a chronology of the tour and an analysis of selected critical reviews of the orchestra’s performances. Although much of the U.S. press coverage touted the PSO for its outreach to Mexico, as well as its inclusion of female musicians, archival documents and some newspapers complicate these positive messages. In Mexico City, a musicians’ union attempted to block the PSO’s performance, and while Reiner celebrated the number of women in his orchestra publicly, his correspondence with Specter reveals that the conductor regretted the need to hire women during World War II. Despite these issues, the tour brought a major U.S. orchestra to rural areas where other ensembles of a similar caliber did not tour.

“Unlocking a Deeper Understanding of Clara Schumann’s Interpretive Voice,” Krissy Gray (Independent Scholar)

In the nineteenth century, female pianists began to appear as soloists more frequently than ever before. They became entangled in discourse about their roles in society, the gendering of both musical genres and also specific works, and the retention (or not) of their femininity at the piano. Clara Schumann capitalized on private performances to build credibility as an interpreter of musical works. Her motivation for using private concerts can be found in her diary entries, where she discusses her anxieties surrounding performance and fears about her father, Friedrich Wieck, sabotaging her career. Schumann’s diary also contains entries written by her father, who wrote as though he was Clara. This attempted control of even the most intimate aspects of her life, such as her thoughts, raises questions about how her relationship with music could have served as a tool to maintain autonomy over her thoughts and feelings. Nancy Reich asserts that Schumann used performance to reclaim her musical voice, which was taken from her by her father. By engaging with literature which examines the reception of Schumann’s performances and her public persona (David Ferris and Alexander Stefaniak), and through original analysis of her personal diary, this paper argues that Schumann experienced a loss of her personal voice, which she regained through performance and interpretation of works which were regarded as hard to understand. Schumann’s relationship with her father is much discussed, but by examining its effect on her performances, this paper seeks to unlock a richer understanding of her interpretive voice.

“On the Pedagogical Piano Works of Underrepresented German Composer Hanning Schröder (1896-1987),” Clark Haygood and Nico Schüler (Texas State University)

After studying in Freiburg and specializing in old music (under Willibald Gurlitt) and composition (with Julius Weismann), Hanning Schröder (1896-1987) gained fame as a composer during the early 1920s. In 1930, Schröder co-founded a pioneering trio for historical performance practice of old music: The Harlan Trio. During the Nazi time, however, Schröder was prohibited from composing and publishing his music. He did compose some pedagogical piano music (and chamber music) in private during the Nazi time, which was published many years later (1951). Schröder also suffered under the political situation after World War II: He lived in West-Berlin, worked in East-Berlin, and was caught in the cold war. When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, he was cut off from his workplace, and his compositions were no longer re-published. Some research on Schröder has focused on selected compositions (Dümling 1986) or on his use of the twelve-tone technique (Eberle 1980), but his pedagogical work has only been mentioned in passing. His pedagogical piano pieces were originally intended for his daughter (born in 1934) and eventually grew to a two-volume collection. This paper will, for the first time, discuss this collection, Kleine Klaviermusik, published in East Germany in 1951. The paper will summarize some of Schröder’s use of modern musical elements to expose beginning/intermediate piano students to contemporary music (also provided as a handout to conference participants). This presentation will also include samples of the first-ever recording (by one of the co-authors of this presentation) of Schröder’s Kleine Klaviermusik.

“Tulsa Opera’s Prima Donnas in the Popular Press,” Michelle Jaluvka (University of Oklahoma & Oklahoma Baptist University)

In mid-20th-century America, opera’s elite prima donnas enjoyed celebrity status. Newspapers and trade publications created a fan culture that allowed opera enthusiasts to feel more connected to their favorite stars. Incorporating approaches from media studies (Shackleford and Vinney, Finding Truth in Fiction), I draw parallels between present day fan culture and the reception of prima donnas active in the Tulsa Opera between 1964—1968. Fans formed relationships with prima donnas based on their depiction in the popular press. These relationships bolstered the reputations of prima donnas and repaired negative historical stigmas that were formerly attached to female performers. My examination of fan culture in 20th-century opera focuses on extensive analysis of primary source documentation of prima donnas who performed with the Tulsa Opera in the 1950s and 1960s. Press coverage of these prima donnas in Opera News, The Tulsa World, and the New York Times reveals common themes. Prima donnas were described in terms of not only their vocal ability, but also body image, fashion, and lifestyles. While some journalists primarily emphasized superficial qualities of the body and fashion, others applauded the prima donnas’ rare vocal ability and framed them as positive role models. I conclude that some gendered stereotypes of women in opera persisted, yet press coverage from the mid-20th century also reveals the weakening of previous stigmas and the emergence of some American prima donnas in the role of cultural figurehead.

Presenter Biographies

Robert Michael Anderson is a visiting professor of Music History in the University of North Texas College of Music. His research has been supported by the Karl Geiringer Scholarship from the American Brahms Society and an Ernst Mach Worldwide Grant from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research. He has published articles in the American Brahms Society Newsletter and the Musical Times and presented at national and international conferences, including the annual meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Austrian Studies Association, and both the North American and Biennial International Conferences on Nineteenth-Century Music.

Garrett Douglas received his undergraduate degree in Music Education (choral emphasis) from Texas State University in 2020. After two years of teaching general music on the elementary school level, he returned to Texas State University to begin working towards a Master’s of Music Theory. Mr. Douglas is passionate about the analysis and study of early american music. He regularly writes and performs with his rock band Summer Rental all around Texas. Notable performances include Pecan Street Festival, Farmgrass Folk Festival, Future of Music Showcase, and regularly sold out shows in the town of San Marcos, where Mr. Douglas resides.

Jonathan Gerrard holds performance degrees from the University of California, Irvine (Guitar and Lute Performance BM and MFA), where he is currently enrolled as a graduate student in the History and Theory of Music program. Through his experience teaching weekly music appreciation classes to older adults, he developed an interest in how age, race, gender, and disability inform both the production and perception of different musical identities throughout our lives. Outside of his doctoral studies, Jonathan cares for his mental health by making sure to get plenty of rest at home with his partner, dog, and two cats.

Krissy Gray is a graduate of Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, OK, where she received a Bachelor’s degree in Piano Performance. She recently graduated from the University of Oklahoma, earning her Master’s degree in Music Theory. Her thesis is titled, “Love, Loss, And Memory: An Analytic and Hermeneutic Discussion of Clara Schumann’s Drei Romanzen, Op. 21.” She studied primarily with Dr. Sarah Ellis, as well as additional committee members, Dr. Michael Lee and Dr. Vivian Luong. Krissy currently works actively as an accompanist and piano teacher throughout the OKC metro and surrounding areas.

Clark Haygood began learning the intricacies of music theory and piano at age one, and by two was composing his own pieces. He began formal music lessons at four and passed the ABRSM Grade 5 Music Theory and Grade 3 Piano exams with distinction, and at six took the Music Theory AP Test and scored a 5. He is an active musician who loves improvising, performing, discussing, and learning everything he can. Clark is part of NACUSA, is involved with CASA, and is an eager member of JTMC in San Antonio, where he loves making music with other young musicians.

Michelle Jaluvka is a clarinetist and teacher based in Norman, OK. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2023 with a Master of Music in Musicology, a Master of Music in Clarinet, and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies. Her master’s thesis entitled “Prima Donna Culture and the Tulsa Opera, 1954—1968,” overseen by committee chair Dr. Jennifer Saltzstein, explores the intersection of gender studies and the development of opera in America. She is pursuing her D.M.A in Clarinet at the University of Oklahoma while serving as Adjunct Instructor of Clarinet at Oklahoma Baptist University teaching applied clarinet and fine arts

Sarah M. Lucas serves as Assistant Professor of Musicology at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. She completed her PhD in musicology at the University of Iowa. Her dissertation, “Fritz Reiner and the Legacy of Béla Bartók’s Orchestral Music in the United States,” is based on archival research carried out in the U.S. and Hungary, where she conducted research at the Hungarian Institute of Musicology with the support of a Fulbright Award. Her most recent research on Reiner and Bartók was supported by an American Philosophical Society Franklin Grant. She serves as Chapter Representative to the AMS Council for the AMS-SW Chapter.

Sam Protich Rives is a musician, composer, and researcher based in Austin, Texas.  Born and raised in Newport News, Virginia, he holds a BA in Music and English from the University of Mary Washington and an MM in Composition from Texas State University. His scholarly and creative work is centered on a lifelong study of the Black-led musics of the United States. He has composed a cantata, a mass, and several short chamber works that blend European and African American musical traditions. He is currently compiling a metrical catalog of songs appearing in Billboard’s year-end singles charts from 1946-1970.

Nico Schüler, Ph.D., is University Distinguished Professor of Music Theory and Musicology at Texas State University and a past-president of the American Musicological Society Southwest Chapter. His main research interests are interdisciplinary aspects of 19th/20th/21st century (world) musics, the re-discovery of underrepresented musicians, methodology of music research, music theory pedagogy, and music historiography. He is the co-editor of the international research book series Methodology of Music Research, the author and / or editor of 21 books, and the author of more than 120 articles. E-Mail: nico.schuler@txstate.edu

Acknowledgements

The Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society would like to thank:

The Fall 2023 Program Committee

• Dr. Christa Bentley
• Dr. Kathryn Fenton
• Dr. Jim McKay

The Fall 2023 Panel Chairs

• Brian Wright
• Mark Brill
• Kathryn Caton

Chapter Officers

• Dr. Megan Sarno, President
• Virginia E. Wealton, Secretary-Treasurer
• Dr. Sarah M. Lucas, Chapter Representative
• Dr. Drew Stephen, Webmaster
• Andrea Klassen, Graduate Student Representative