Joseph Kerman
Encyclopedia
Joseph Wilfred Kerman is an American critic and musicologist. One of the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (published in the UK as Musicology) was described by Philip Brett
in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field." He is Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of California, Berkeley
.
there. He then attended New York University
where he received his BA
in 1943 and Princeton University
where he received his PhD
in 1950. While at Princeton he studied under Oliver Strunk
, Randall Thompson
and Carl Weinrich
and wrote his doctoral thesis on the Elizabethan madrigal
. From 1949 to 1951 he taught at Westminster Choir College
in Princeton. Then he joined the faculty of University of California, Berkeley
where he became a full professor in 1960 and was chairman of the music department from 1960 to 1963. In 1971, he was appointed Heather Professor of Music at Oxford University, a post he held until 1974, when he returned to Berkeley, where he again became chairman of the music department, from 1991 until his retirement in 1994.
He based his first book, Opera as Drama (1956), for which he is best known to general readers, on a series of essays written for The Hudson Review
beginning in 1948. Opera as Drama, which has been published in several languages and multiple editions, expresses Kerman's view that an opera's story is key and provides the basis for the structuring of both the librettist
's text (which expresses the narrative) and the composer's music (which expresses the emotions in the story). For Kerman, the value of an opera as drama is undermined when there is a perceived disconnection between text and music. Among the operas Kerman discusses in the book is Puccini's Tosca
which he controversially describes as a "shabby little shocker." His doctoral thesis on Elizabethan madrigals was published in 1962 and was notable for contextualizing them in the preceding Italian madrigal tradition. He maintained an interest in the English madrigal composer William Byrd
throughout his career, and wrote several influential monographs on his work. He also wrote several monographs and articles on Beethoven's works and with his wife, Vivian Kerman, wrote the widely used textbook, Listen, first published in 1972 and now in its 6th edition. In 1985 he published his history and critique of traditional musicology, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology, which argued that the intellectual isolation of musical theorists and musicologists and their excessively positivistic
approach had hampered the development of serious musical criticism. Described in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field", the book has been credited as helping to shape a "new musicology
" that is willing to engage with feminist theory
, hermeneutics, queer studies
, and post-structuralism
.
From 1997 to 1998 Kerman held the Charles Eliot Norton
Memorial Chair at Harvard University
, where he gave a series of public lectures on the importance of approaching musical texts and performances via a "close reading
" similar to that used in literary studies, a theme that was central to many of his writings. The Norton lectures were published in 1998 as Concerto Conversations. Kerman has written regularly for The New York Review of Books
since 1977 and was a founding editor of the journal, 19th Century Music. Critical essays written by Kerman from the late 1950s to the early 1990s are collected in his 1994 book, Write All These Down, which takes its title from a phrase in one of William Byrd's songs. Joseph Kerman was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music
in 1972, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1973, and Fellow of the American Philosophical Society
in 2001. He also received ASCAP's Deems Taylor
Award for excellence in writing on music in 1981 and 1995, and the Otto Kinkeldey
Award from the American Musicological Society
for an outstanding work of musicological scholarship in 1970 and 1981.
Philip Brett
Philip Brett was a British-born American musicologist, musician and conductor. He was particularly known for his scholarly studies on Benjamin Britten and William Byrd and for his contributions to the development of lesbian and gay musicology...
in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field." He is Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
.
Biography
Kerman, the son of an American journalist, was born in London and educated at University College SchoolUniversity College School
University College School, generally known as UCS, is an Independent school charity situated in Hampstead, north west London, England. The school was founded in 1830 by University College London and inherited many of that institution's progressive and secular views...
there. He then attended New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
where he received his BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in 1943 and Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
where he received his PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in 1950. While at Princeton he studied under Oliver Strunk
Oliver Strunk
William Oliver Strunk was an American musicologist.Strunk was the son of Professor William Strunk, Jr. . He attended Cornell University from 1917 to 1919 and again in 1927, studying under Otto Kinkeldey...
, Randall Thompson
Randall Thompson
Randall Thompson was an American composer, particularly noted for his choral works.-Career:He attended Harvard University, became assistant professor of music and choir director at Wellesley College, and received a doctorate in music from the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music...
and Carl Weinrich
Carl Weinrich
Carl Weinrich was an American organist, choral conductor, and teacher. He was particularly known for his recitals and recordings of Bach's organ music and as a leader in the revival of Baroque organ music in the United States during the 1930s.-Biography:Weinrich was born in Paterson, New Jersey...
and wrote his doctoral thesis on the Elizabethan madrigal
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
. From 1949 to 1951 he taught at Westminster Choir College
Westminster Choir College
Westminster Choir College is a residential college of music, part of Rider University, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States.Westminster Choir College educates men and women at the undergraduate and graduate levels for musical careers in music education, voice performance, piano...
in Princeton. Then he joined the faculty of University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
where he became a full professor in 1960 and was chairman of the music department from 1960 to 1963. In 1971, he was appointed Heather Professor of Music at Oxford University, a post he held until 1974, when he returned to Berkeley, where he again became chairman of the music department, from 1991 until his retirement in 1994.
He based his first book, Opera as Drama (1956), for which he is best known to general readers, on a series of essays written for The Hudson Review
The Hudson Review
The Hudson Review is a quarterly journal of literature and the arts. It was founded in 1947 in New York by William Ayers Arrowsmith, Joseph Deericks Bennett, and George Frederick Morgan. The first issue was introduced in the spring of 1948...
beginning in 1948. Opera as Drama, which has been published in several languages and multiple editions, expresses Kerman's view that an opera's story is key and provides the basis for the structuring of both the librettist
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
's text (which expresses the narrative) and the composer's music (which expresses the emotions in the story). For Kerman, the value of an opera as drama is undermined when there is a perceived disconnection between text and music. Among the operas Kerman discusses in the book is Puccini's Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
which he controversially describes as a "shabby little shocker." His doctoral thesis on Elizabethan madrigals was published in 1962 and was notable for contextualizing them in the preceding Italian madrigal tradition. He maintained an interest in the English madrigal composer William Byrd
William Byrd
William Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music.-Provenance:Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely...
throughout his career, and wrote several influential monographs on his work. He also wrote several monographs and articles on Beethoven's works and with his wife, Vivian Kerman, wrote the widely used textbook, Listen, first published in 1972 and now in its 6th edition. In 1985 he published his history and critique of traditional musicology, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology, which argued that the intellectual isolation of musical theorists and musicologists and their excessively positivistic
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
approach had hampered the development of serious musical criticism. Described in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field", the book has been credited as helping to shape a "new musicology
New musicology
The New Musicology is a term applied to a wide body of musicology with focus upon the cultural study, analysis, and criticism of music, with influences from feminism, gender studies, queer theory, and postcolonial studies...
" that is willing to engage with feminist theory
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
, hermeneutics, queer studies
Queer studies
Queer studies is the critical theory based study of issues relating to sexual orientation and gender identity usually focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and cultures. Universities have also labeled this area of analysis Sexual Diversity Studies, Sexualities...
, and post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
.
From 1997 to 1998 Kerman held the Charles Eliot Norton
Charles Eliot Norton
Charles Eliot Norton, was a leading American author, social critic, and professor of art. He was a militant idealist, a progressive social reformer, and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries considered the most cultivated man in the United States.-Biography:Norton was born at...
Memorial Chair at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, where he gave a series of public lectures on the importance of approaching musical texts and performances via a "close reading
Close reading
Close reading describes, in literary criticism, the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text. Such a reading places great emphasis on the particular over the general, paying close attention to individual words, syntax, and the order in which sentences and ideas unfold as they...
" similar to that used in literary studies, a theme that was central to many of his writings. The Norton lectures were published in 1998 as Concerto Conversations. Kerman has written regularly for The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
since 1977 and was a founding editor of the journal, 19th Century Music. Critical essays written by Kerman from the late 1950s to the early 1990s are collected in his 1994 book, Write All These Down, which takes its title from a phrase in one of William Byrd's songs. Joseph Kerman was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
in 1972, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1973, and Fellow of the American Philosophical Society
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...
in 2001. He also received ASCAP's Deems Taylor
Deems Taylor
Joseph Deems Taylor was a U.S. composer, music critic, and promoter of classical music.-Career:Taylor initially planned to become an architect; however, despite minimal musical training he soon took to music composition. The result was a series of works for orchestra and/or voices...
Award for excellence in writing on music in 1981 and 1995, and the Otto Kinkeldey
Otto Kinkeldey
Otto Kinkeldey was an American music librarian and musicologist. He was the first president of the American Musicological Society and held the first chair in musicology at any American university....
Award from the American Musicological Society
American Musicological Society
The American Musicological Society is a membership-based musicological organization founded in 1934 to advance scholarly research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning and scholarship; it grew out of a small contingent of the Music Teachers National Association and, more directly,...
for an outstanding work of musicological scholarship in 1970 and 1981.
Selected bibliography
- Opera as Drama (1956)
- The Elizabethan Madrigal (1962)
- The Beethoven Quartets (1967)
- The Kafka Sketchbook (1970)
- The Masses and Motets of William Byrd (1980)
- The New Grove Beethoven (1983) (with Alan Tyson)
- Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (1985) (UK title: Musicology)
- Write All These Down: Essays on Music (1994)
- Concerto Conversations (1998)
- The Art of Fugue: Bach Fugues for Keyboard, 1715-1750 (2005)
- Opera and the Morbidity of Music (2008)
Sources
- Alperson, Philip, Musical Worlds: New directions in the philosophy of music, Penn State Press, 1998. ISBN 0271017694
- Colby, Vineta, World authors, 1980-1985, H.W. Wilson Co. (1991). ISBN 0824207971
- Cummings, David, "Kerman, Joseph (Wilfred)", International Who's Who of Authors and Writers, Routledge, 2003, pp. 294-295. ISBN 1857431790
- Evans, David Trevor, Phantasmagoria: A sociology of opera, Ashgate, 1999. ISBN 1857422090
- Harvard University Gazette, "Norton Lectures To Be Delivered by Musicologist", May 22, 1997
- Kerman, Joseph, Write all these down: Essays on Music, University of California Press (1994). ISBN 0520083555
- Kerman, Joseph, Opera as Drama, University of California Press (2005, first published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1956). ISBN 0520246926
- Kerman, Joseph; Tomlinson, Gary; and Kerman, Vivian, Listen (6th edition), Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. ISBN 0312434197
- Lorraine, Renee Cox, "Write All These Down: Essays on Music by Joseph Kerman" (review), Notes, Second Series, Vol. 52, No. 2 (December 1995), pp. 505-507.
- Nicassio, Susan Vandiver, Tosca's Rome: The Play and the Opera in Historical Perspective, University of Chicago Press, 2002. ISBN 0226579727
- Pratt, Scott L., "Opera as Experience", The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Volume 43, Number 4, Winter 2009, pp. 74-87
- Rothstein, Edward, "The Concerto as a Metaphor for the Individual in Society", New York Times, October 30, 1999
- Tambling, Jeremy, A Night in at the Opera: Media representations of opera, Indiana University Press, 1994. ISBN 0861964667
- Wingell, Richard and Herzog, Silvia, Introduction to Research in Music, Prentice Hall, 2001. ISBN 0130143324
External links
- Joseph Kerman, Professor Emeritus, Musicology, Department of Music, University of California, Berkeley
- Joseph Kerman on WorldCatWorldCatWorldCat is a union catalog which itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories which participate in the Online Computer Library Center global cooperative...
- Erich LeinsdorfErich LeinsdorfErich Leinsdorf was a naturalized American Austrian conductor. He performed and recorded with leading orchestras and opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, earning a reputation for exacting standards as well as an acerbic personality...
, "Culture and Musical Thinking" (review of Kerman's Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology), New York Times, May 26, 1985