4:00 PM
Harkness Chapel, Classroom
Music colloquia provide a weekly forum for presentation and discussion of recent research by distinguished visitors and CWRU faculty and graduate students in musicology, historical performance practice, and music education.
All talks happen on Fridays at 4:00 PM in Harkness Classroom and are open to the public.
About the Talk
“Chorus from verse: Cadential fulcrums in the Great American Songbook”
Dane Harrison: Composers of popular American standards, along with their lyricists, constantly grappled with the structural dividing line between verse and chorus, which is signaled musically by what I argue is usually the most powerful cadence in a given song. The keystone-like function of these cadences within the Great American Songbook has often been obscured by presenting songs in mutilated versions—notably, in the chorus-only lead sheets that are characteristic of jazz fake books. Using examples from popular songs of the 1920s–1950s to illustrate strategies by which songwriters weld together verse and chorus, I show that the cadence dividing these two structural elements is also the fulcrum upon which a song finds its equilibrium.
"Voicing the Apostola Apostolorum: Grief, Desire, and Madness in Cozzolani’s Maria Magdalene Stabat”
Katie Sucha: Borrowing from ancient and contemporary styles, including medieval liturgical plays, opera, and oratorio, Chiara Margarita Cozzolani weaves together an innovative and efficient operatic miniature in her sacred dialogue Maria Magdalene Stabat. Cozzolani’s Magdalene expresses herself by combining characteristics of the most common styles afforded to women singers in the mid-17th century; the lament and the mad scene. As the first commissioned preacher of Christianity, Mary presents the perfect character with which to explore the bounds of women’s public speech and expression.
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