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.

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Prizes

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