This autumn you’ll be able to read my latest peer-reviewed publication in Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung [Yearbook of the Society for Children’s and Youth Literature Research]. The journal’s theme is “Klänge” which translates to “Sounds” (and also happens to be the title of an important 1913 poetry + woodcuts book by Wassily Kandinsky), and provided the perfect context for presenting my research on the socializing pressures of imaginative children’s music. My article is entitled “The Guiding Hand: Hidden Adult Authority in Children’s Piano Music” (pp. 51–65) and provides cultural context and analysis of pieces by Robert Schumann, Cornelius Gurlitt, and Théodore Lack. I here extend ongoing research that I first presented at the IRSCL Congress in Stockholm, particularly in consideration of the pianistic dramatizing of the French bogeyman figure Croquemitaine. Because it is accessible online, we were able to include links to performances so you actually hear the “sounds” of the music.
Recent Publication
Exciting times: I have been published in a national music magazine! When you pick up the September/October 2014 version of Clavier Companion: The Piano Magazine, feel free to check out the Repertoire section, pages 42 through 49. The article, fancifully entitled "Prelude sets for every occasion", gives contextual and analytical information on eight little-known prelude sets from Alkan, Heller, and Rheinberger to Zaderatsky, Auerbach, and Benshoof. The editors included typeset sheet music examples as well as publisher information for those piano teachers with an eye for repertoire adventure. (Headshot on the last page curtesy of Jess Roy Photography.)
I am very happy with this achievement! Thanks go to Dr. Derek Katz for suggesting the idea, Dr. Charles Asche for publication suggestions, and Ms. Kendall Feeney for brutally honest editing suggestions/arguments.