First Prize: Marta Beszterda
Prize: $1,000.
Abstract:
This essay is the first chapter from my PhD dissertation titled: 鈥淭he 鈥楩irst Lady鈥� and the 鈥楽talinist Agent鈥� of Polish Music: The Musical Labour of Gra偶yna Bacewicz and Zofia Lissa During the Shaping of Contemporary Art Music Culture in Poland (1925鈥�1975).鈥� The dissertation as a whole explores the relationship between gender, identity, musical labor, and women鈥檚 agency in mid-century Poland. I focus on lives and careers of two key female figures who shaped the country鈥檚 contemporary music culture: composer Gra偶yna Bacewicz (1909鈥�69) and musicologist Zofia Lissa (1905鈥�80). Throughout their careers, Bacewicz鈥檚 and Lissa鈥檚 creative, intellectual, administrative, and care-labour depended on, challenged, and reinforced prevailing ideas about gender roles in music and academia in Polish interwar and postwar society. Simultaneously, their lives provide a case study to examine agency that women composers and musicologists exerted with changing politics of gender and national belonging.
In the awarded chapter, I analyze beliefs and practices around womanhood and work ethic shared by Bacewicz, her mother Maria Modli艅ska, and her teacher Nadia Boulanger. I consider the Warsaw positivism movement provenience of Modli艅ska鈥檚 values around work and womanhood as influential in shaping Bacewicz鈥檚 extraordinary dedication and perseverance in pursuing a composing career as a woman. Moreover, I demonstrate parallels between Boulanger鈥檚 and Bacewicz鈥檚 practices of self-fashioning as an 鈥渆xceptional woman.鈥� Previous analyses of the Bacewicz-Boulanger relationship have not gone beyond the context of Boulanger鈥檚 overall relations with her Polish students and the role that the French mentor played in Polish musical culture more broadly鈥攊n particular, how her visits to Warsaw in the fifties and sixties constituted a form of cultural diplomacy in the Cold War era (Bohlman and Pierce 2020). To date, researchers have not considered how the role that Boulanger played for Bacewicz might have differed from the experience of Bacewicz鈥檚 male colleagues. Based on my analysis of Bacewicz鈥檚 memoir and archival correspondence, I argue that the lineage between the two composers surpasses the boundaries of neoclassical style and of simply being comparably unique figures within their respective milieus. Although it encompasses both of these associations, it is also a lineage that was built on their shared strategy of cultivating 鈥渆xceptionalism鈥� to survive under the male-dominated status quo. Drawing on feminist approaches by Rachel Lumsden (2017) and Kimberly Francis (2015), this chapter is a case study on women and gender in musical modernism, interwoven with Polish mid-century debates around nation, music, and gender.
Second Prize: Jonathan Lindhorst
Prize $500
Abstarct
First codified in 1982 by queer Dutch composer Peter Schat (1935-2003) and later significantly expanded by New Zealand composer Jenny Mcleod (1941-2022), tone-clocktheory (TCT) is a largely unexplored post-tonal theory that provides a new framework forengaging with the whole of chromaticism. Both a harmonic system and chromatic 鈥榤ap,鈥�
TCT presents twelve previously uncategorized 鈥榗hromatic tonalities鈥� which are derived from the twelve possible atonal triads (Allen Forte鈥檚 trichordal set classes), labelled as 鈥榟ours,鈥� and organized around a circular clock face. Using a transpositional operation called 鈥榮teering,鈥� these triadic sets can then be expanded to assemble a non-repeating twelve- tone harmonic field based on its interval-class, each with its own distinct 鈥榟armonic flavour,鈥� offering innovative approaches for composition and an alternative system of harmonic analysis to
Allen Forte鈥檚 pitch-class set theory.
Despite being in existence for more than 40 years, TCT has remained obscure, with few existing texts that clearly outline its functionality while also remaining true to its unique notational nomenclature and terminology. This article seeks to solve that issue by presenting the theoretical framework of both Schat鈥檚 earlier 鈥榗lassic鈥� tone-clock theory, and McLeod鈥檚 later expansion in one easily digestible article, and serve as an introduction for anyone who wishes to engage with TCT at a deeper level.Keywords: Jenny McLeod, Peter Schat, Tone-Clock, steering, intervallic prime form,
chromatic tonality, Tone Clock Pieces, Michael Norris, Erik Fernandez Ibarz, Allen Forte, pitch-class set.
