Program

Research Programs: Fellowships for University Teachers

Period of Performance

9/1/2011 - 8/31/2012

Funding Totals

$50,400.00 (approved)
$50,400.00 (awarded)


Between Collaboration and Retrospection: John Kirkpatrick, American Music, and the Printed Page, 1929-1989

FAIN: FA-55869-11

Drew M. Massey
President and Fellows of Harvard College (Cambridge, MA 02138-3800)

For this fellowship, I propose to undertake the first book-length study of any individual American music editor. I plan to focus on the career of the American musician John Kirkpatrick (1905-1991), and suggest how exploring editors can enrich our understanding of music. I argue that Kirkpatrick was an individual endowed with a robust agency whose editorial output may be read as a detailed and sustained commentary on the past and present state of American composition. At its broadest level, if this perspective is compelling, it requires that musicologists and performers reconsider their relationship with scores as sources. Editions can no longer be seen as vehicles for the inert delivery of authorial intent, but must be consistently situated within their particular historical context, and understood as the product of a particular vision of how music ought to be. If Kirkpatrick's editorial output teaches us anything, it is that behind every edition lies an argument.





Associated Products

John Kirkpatrick, American Music, and the Printed Page (Book)
Title: John Kirkpatrick, American Music, and the Printed Page
Author: Drew Massey
Abstract: A biography on the musician and editor John Kirkpatrick and his influence on the American modernists.
Year: 2013
Publisher: The University of Rochester Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781580464048
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism
Date: 10/7/2014
Organization: American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers
Abstract: na