Abstracts - American Musicological Society

16
FridaY morning
deterred scholarry efforts to ex.plain incongruities
apparent ln .n.
iti'"atl"a a tho:?:ih
'"i;t'
l.nvestigation of ui"et"pl'it"i "''a
and musical
significance, "Jt-t-"-i,--
A critical reading of the original tt*t1*^l'
conjunction atith J" -"aiay of relevani sources- -among
ttrem, Berg's correspondence, essays by schoenb ttCl
and webern, the riterary and rnusital works cited in -"?lE cne
l-etter, contemporary ieriodical literature, an-d the
sketches for the Streg!ci----g-r!-ee!E9---sheds light on
Berg's eonplex motivatlon for writing the letter, and
suSgests several possible interpretations of its
contents, all of whictr must be understood qtithin the
context of his relati,onship to Schoenberg.
The "Open Letter' reflects Berg,s increasing
ambiwalence towards his former teacher, as well as
recent developments in his own career. His avowed
indebtedness to Schoenberg for the concerto's technical
innovations can be discredited on the basis of evidence
gleaned frorn correspondence, sketches, and analysis of
the Serenade, Opus 24, and the Wind Ouintet, Oius 26.
The sketches also provide further insight into the
underlying program for the concerto, alluded to in the
closing paragraphs of the letter.
RESPONDENT: Douglass M. Green
FRIDAY, 7 NOVEMBER, 9 : 00 - 12 : 00 A. M
TEXT AND MUSIC
Don M. Randel, CorneII University, Chair
REFERENCES TO MUSIC IN OLD OCCITAN LITERATURE
Elizabeth Aubrey, University of Iowa
The materials available for studying the music of
the trobadors are not limited to the musical and poetic
texts. Epic poems and narrative works, the vidas,
epistolary and didactic writings, and O1d Occitan
treatises on literary and linguistic conventions, such
as the Leys d'Amors, have yielded significant
information on the compos itions and performance
practices of the trobadors and j oglars. While many of
these sources have already been plumbed for
information, much of what we know still depend.s on
analyses made in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.
Many details about the nusicians and their music
have gone undetected or misunderstood because
musicologists have left the task of evaluating the
documentary evidence largely to philologists. Obvious