Words on Music, Perhaps: The Writings of Arthur Berger

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dc.contributor.advisorHaldey, Olgaen_US
dc.contributor.authorKobuskie, Jennifer Miriamen_US
dc.contributor.departmentMusicen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2020-07-08T05:38:48Z
dc.date.available2020-07-08T05:38:48Z
dc.date.issued2020en_US
dc.description.abstractWhen Arthur Berger (1912–2003) is mentioned in the history books, it is often as a mid-20th century American composer, or a practitioner and teacher of music theory who, during his tenure at Brandeis University, had trained a generation of theorists and composers. This dissertation aims to demonstrate that Berger made one of his most significant contributions to the history of 20th-century music as a writer of prose. As a full-time critic, his work was featured in major newspapers of New York and Boston, and nationally distributed periodicals. He helped found two music journals, contributed regularly to others, and authored two books. For decades, his voice was widely heard and broadly influential. His aesthetic views, stated boldly and unapologetically, helped shape the post-WWII discourse on modern, particularly American music, and continue to impact both public and scholarly debate on this topic. This study surveys Berger’s personal history as a writer, including his career as a music critic, his involvement with the creation of the scholarly journal Perspectives of New Music, his pioneering biography of Aaron Copland, and his seminal article on Stravinsky’s octatonicism. The dissertation also offers a detailed, comprehensive analysis of Berger’s voluminous corpus of writings, both published and unpublished, as well as his personal archive of notes, drafts, and correspondence, in order to elucidate his aesthetic principles, and his views on a broad variety of subjects related to modern music, such as neoclassicism, nationalism, innovation and tradition, the music of Stravinsky, Copland, and their American successors, as well as the role of classical music in American culture, and the place of American music in the world. Finally, the study is concerned with the reception of Berger’s ideas, his personal aesthetic evolution, and his lively involvement in his own reception.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/auqq-vt1m
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/26103
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledMusic historyen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledMusicen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledMusic theoryen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledAmerican Musicen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledArthur Bergeren_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledCriticismen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledNeoclassicismen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledOctatonic Scaleen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledPerspectives of New Musicen_US
dc.titleWords on Music, Perhaps: The Writings of Arthur Bergeren_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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