AMS

Over the weekend, I traveled to Nashville for the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society. I’ve been to AMS several times, but this was the first time I presented a paper at the conference. My paper was an abbreviated version of my chapter on keyboard battle pieces during the Napoleonic wars. It came off well…and by that I mean that it sparked debate and discussion. A friend had told me ahead of time that the only really intolerable response to an AMS paper is silence; what you want is for people to care about what you’re doing, even if they disagree with you.

The only comment during the post-paper discussion that was difficult for me to swallow was one about comedy and the Battle of Prague. While I like to ham the work up in my performances, offering a very comic interpretation, the entire point of my paper is to show how performance choices influence the meaning of the work, rendering some interpretations that are primarily funny, but also those that are tragic, dramatic, and athletic. I argue that some moments might act as brief episodes of comic relief in an otherwise serious performance. I even begin my paper by stating that playing the Battle of Prague was a way that women coped with war, embodying the events of battle, and my paper ends with an account of the work where the audience is moved to silence and even tears. So it was difficult when a very distinguished listener stood up and stated that he felt I was making a joke out of the piece. I have been thinking through my paper to see if I favor the comedic too much, rendering that the obvious interpretation of my paper. I hope not. Perhaps, instead, some of the nuances of my argument got lost to a hopefully small portion of listeners because of several distractions in the room as I read—technological problems, someone getting sick in the front row.

One of the most exciting aspects of attending AMS is the opportunity to get to know musicologists whose work I admire. Giving a paper makes that all the more likely, especially since some of my favorite scholars came to see me present; it is pretty terrific to mention Matthew Head and Dana Gooley in the text of your paper and look up to see them in the audience. Over the course of the weekend—and in the last two days via e-mail—I chatted with some of my very favorite scholars: Elaine Sisman, Kathryn Libin, and Richard Leppert, as well as Matthew Head and Dana Gooley.

And, of course, the best part of AMS this year may well have been seeing Nashville. If you know me, I’m sure you’re aware that I’m a country girl through and through. How could I not be happy in a city where cowboys strut down the street and live music pours through the doors of bars starting at ten in the morning? I visited the Country Music Hall of Fame, and saw, among other things, Elvis’s car, Earl Scruggs’s bowties, and the bodies of four squirrels that Hank Williams shot and had a taxidermist turn into a bluegrass squirrel band. It was a good time.

Now I’m back in Los Angeles (until tomorrow) and looking forward to some concentrated writing this month. The end of my dissertation is in sight.