Glenda Goss
Encyclopedia
Glenda Goss is an author and music historian whose special interests are music and culture, early modernism, critical editing, and European-American points of cultural contact. Her most notable work has revolved around the life and works of the Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius
.
at the Université libre de Bruxelles
with François Lesure and Robert Wangermée. She continued her studies at the University of North Carolina
, where she completed a Ph.D. in musicology with a dissertation on the Renaissance
composer Benedictus Appenzeller
, the leading court musician for the Habsburg
regent, Queen Mary of Hungary.
and was promoted to full Professor. She won university-wide teaching awards (in 1986 and 1990) and served for some years as the head of the division of musicology. She has also taught at the University of Helsinki
(1995–96) as a Fulbright professor. In 1998 she accepted an invitation to join the critical editing project, the Jean Sibelius Works, and served as the project’s editor-in-chief from 2000 to 2004. A native of St. Simons Island, one of Georgia’s Golden Isles, she currently teaches at the Sibelius Academy
in Helsinki, Finland.
Goss is the author or editor of a number of respected books and articles on topics ranging from Renaissance music to music in the United States and scholarly editing. She has written on and performed the works of George Antheil
, Bohuslav Martinů
, and Igor Stravinsky
.
In the area of Sibelius studies her contributions belong among the most important scholarship on this composer. These include the first scholarly editions of the composer’s letters, the first full-scale reception history, and the critical edition of the seminal Kullervo
symphony. Her book, Jean Sibelius and Olin Downes
: Music, Friendship, Criticism (Northeastern Univ. 1995) was reviewed by Joseph Horowitz
in the Times Literary Supplement. Jean Sibelius: A Guide to Research (Garland, 1998) was selected as the Outstanding Reference Book of the Year by the Music Library Association
, whose jury described the Guide as “the Bible of Sibelius studies.” In 2009 her biography, Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the Awakening of Finland, was published by the University of Chicago Press
.
Goss is the recipient of numerous research awards from such organizations as The American-Scandinavian Foundation
, the Paul Sacher
Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland, and the National Endowment for the Humanities
. She has also been honored with two Sibelius medals: Medal No. 17 (1996), awarded by the Sibelius Society of Hämeenlinna, Finland; and the Sibelius medal awarded by the Sibelius Society of Finland
(1997, and designed by Finnish sculptress Eila Hiltunen
). In 1998 Goss received the Phi Kappa
Award for contributions to American music. In the year 2000, she was given the Vincent Duckles Award.
Fellow Musicologist, Howard Pollack
, dedicated his article, Samuel Barber, Jean Sibelius, and the Making of an American Romantic to Goss. The article appeared in Music Quarterly, vol. 84.
Jean Sibelius and Olin Downes: Music, Friendship, Criticism. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995. ISBN 1-5553-200-4
Jean Sibelius: Guide to Research. New York: Garland Press, 1998.
ISBN 0-8153-1171-0
Jean Sibelius: The Hämeenlinna Letters. Edited with Introduction and Commentary by Glenda D. Goss. English translations by Margareta Örtenblad Thompson. Esbo: Schildts, 1997. ISBN 951-50-0865-4
Jean Sibelius: Kullervo. Edited with an Introduction and Critical Commentaries by Glenda Dawn Goss. Jean Sibelius Works, 4 vols. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2005.
Music and the Moderns: The Life and Works of Carol Robinson. Metuchen, N.J. and London: Scarecrow Press, 1993. ISBN 0-8108-2626-7
Paul Sjöblom. Finland from the Inside. Edited with an Introduction and Commentary by Glenda Dawn Goss. Helsinki: NewBridge Press, 2000.
ISBN 951-98534-0-5
Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the Awakening of Finland. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. ISBN 0-226-30477-9
The Sibelius Companion. Edited by Glenda Dawn Goss. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996. ISBN 0-313-28393-1
Vieläkö lähetämme hänelle sikareja? Sibelius, Amerikka ja amerikkalaiset. Trans. from the English into Finnish by Martti Haapakoski. Helsinki: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 2009. ISBN 978-951-0-35517-6
Three Programs on American Music. YLE (Finnish National Radio), 1999.
The Music of Jean Sibelius. Programs for “A Note for You.” National Public Radio, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994.
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
.
Education
Goss studied musicologyMusicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
at the Université libre de Bruxelles
Université Libre de Bruxelles
The Université libre de Bruxelles is a French-speaking university in Brussels, Belgium. It has 21,000 students, 29% of whom come from abroad, and an equally cosmopolitan staff.-Name:...
with François Lesure and Robert Wangermée. She continued her studies at the University of North Carolina
University of North Carolina
Chartered in 1789, the University of North Carolina was one of the first public universities in the United States and the only one to graduate students in the eighteenth century...
, where she completed a Ph.D. in musicology with a dissertation on the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
composer Benedictus Appenzeller
Benedictus Appenzeller
Benedictus Appenzeller was a Franco-Flemish singer and composer of the Renaissance, active in Bruges and Brussels...
, the leading court musician for the Habsburg
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
regent, Queen Mary of Hungary.
Career
Glenda Dawn Goss began her teaching career at the University of GeorgiaUniversity of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
and was promoted to full Professor. She won university-wide teaching awards (in 1986 and 1990) and served for some years as the head of the division of musicology. She has also taught at the University of Helsinki
University of Helsinki
The University of Helsinki is a university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but was founded in the city of Turku in 1640 as The Royal Academy of Turku, at that time part of the Swedish Empire. It is the oldest and largest university in Finland with the widest range of disciplines available...
(1995–96) as a Fulbright professor. In 1998 she accepted an invitation to join the critical editing project, the Jean Sibelius Works, and served as the project’s editor-in-chief from 2000 to 2004. A native of St. Simons Island, one of Georgia’s Golden Isles, she currently teaches at the Sibelius Academy
Sibelius Academy
The Sibelius Academy is a university-level music school which operates in Helsinki and Kuopio, Finland. It also has an adult education centre in Järvenpää and a training centre in Seinäjoki. The Academy is the only music university in Finland. It is among the biggest European music universities...
in Helsinki, Finland.
Goss is the author or editor of a number of respected books and articles on topics ranging from Renaissance music to music in the United States and scholarly editing. She has written on and performed the works of George Antheil
George Antheil
George Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor. A self-described "Bad Boy of Music", his modernist compositions amazed and appalled listeners in Europe and the US during the 1920s with their cacophonous celebration of mechanical devices.Returning permanently to...
, Bohuslav Martinů
Bohuslav Martinu
Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...
, and Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
.
In the area of Sibelius studies her contributions belong among the most important scholarship on this composer. These include the first scholarly editions of the composer’s letters, the first full-scale reception history, and the critical edition of the seminal Kullervo
Kullervo
In the Finnish Kalevala, Kullervo was the ill-fated son of Kalervo. He is the only irredeemably tragic character in Finnish mythology.-Rune 31 - Kullervo, son of Evil:...
symphony. Her book, Jean Sibelius and Olin Downes
Olin Downes
Olin Downes was an American music critic.He studied piano, music theory, and music criticism in New York and Boston, and it was in those two cities that he made his career as a music critic—first with the Boston Post and then with the New York Times...
: Music, Friendship, Criticism (Northeastern Univ. 1995) was reviewed by Joseph Horowitz
Joseph Horowitz
Joseph Horowitz is an American cultural historian whose seven books mainly deal with the institutional history of classical music in the United States. As a producer of concerts, he has played a pioneering role in promoting thematic programming and new concert formats...
in the Times Literary Supplement. Jean Sibelius: A Guide to Research (Garland, 1998) was selected as the Outstanding Reference Book of the Year by the Music Library Association
Music Library Association
The Music Library Association is the main professional organization for music libraries and librarians . It also serves corporations, institutions, students, composers, scholars and others whose work and interests lie in the music librarianship field...
, whose jury described the Guide as “the Bible of Sibelius studies.” In 2009 her biography, Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the Awakening of Finland, was published by the University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of...
.
Goss is the recipient of numerous research awards from such organizations as The American-Scandinavian Foundation
The American-Scandinavian Foundation
The American-Scandinavian Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting international understanding through educational and cultural exchange between the United States and Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden...
, the Paul Sacher
Paul Sacher
Paul Sacher was a Swiss conductor, patron and impresario.-Biography:He studied under Felix Weingartner, among others. In 1926 he founded the Basel Chamber Orchestra to play works written before the classical period and modern works...
Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland, and the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
. She has also been honored with two Sibelius medals: Medal No. 17 (1996), awarded by the Sibelius Society of Hämeenlinna, Finland; and the Sibelius medal awarded by the Sibelius Society of Finland
Sibelius Society of Finland
The Sibelius Society of Finland is a society in Finland dedicated to the music of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. It was set up in December 1957. The Society and the Ministry of Education opened the composer's house Ainola as a museum in 1974....
(1997, and designed by Finnish sculptress Eila Hiltunen
Eila Hiltunen
Eila Hiltunen was a Finnish sculptor. She is most famous for the Sibelius monument . A statue by Hiltunen resembling a smaller version of the Sibelius Monument stands on the grounds of the United Nations headquarters in New York City.-External links:*...
). In 1998 Goss received the Phi Kappa
Phi Kappa
Phi Kappa may refer to:*Phi Kappa Literary Society, a debate society founded in 1820*Phi Kappa National Fraternity, a secondary school fraternity founded in 1900...
Award for contributions to American music. In the year 2000, she was given the Vincent Duckles Award.
Fellow Musicologist, Howard Pollack
Howard Pollack
Howard Pollack is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Music at the University of Houston.Howard Pollack studied piano with Jennie Glickman while attending James Madison High School...
, dedicated his article, Samuel Barber, Jean Sibelius, and the Making of an American Romantic to Goss. The article appeared in Music Quarterly, vol. 84.
Selected works
Benedictus Appenzeller: Chansons. Edited with an Introduction by Glenda Goss Thompson. Monumenta Musica Neerlandica, vol. 14. Amsterdam: Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1982.Jean Sibelius and Olin Downes: Music, Friendship, Criticism. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995. ISBN 1-5553-200-4
Jean Sibelius: Guide to Research. New York: Garland Press, 1998.
ISBN 0-8153-1171-0
Jean Sibelius: The Hämeenlinna Letters. Edited with Introduction and Commentary by Glenda D. Goss. English translations by Margareta Örtenblad Thompson. Esbo: Schildts, 1997. ISBN 951-50-0865-4
Jean Sibelius: Kullervo. Edited with an Introduction and Critical Commentaries by Glenda Dawn Goss. Jean Sibelius Works, 4 vols. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2005.
Music and the Moderns: The Life and Works of Carol Robinson. Metuchen, N.J. and London: Scarecrow Press, 1993. ISBN 0-8108-2626-7
Paul Sjöblom. Finland from the Inside. Edited with an Introduction and Commentary by Glenda Dawn Goss. Helsinki: NewBridge Press, 2000.
ISBN 951-98534-0-5
Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the Awakening of Finland. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. ISBN 0-226-30477-9
The Sibelius Companion. Edited by Glenda Dawn Goss. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996. ISBN 0-313-28393-1
Vieläkö lähetämme hänelle sikareja? Sibelius, Amerikka ja amerikkalaiset. Trans. from the English into Finnish by Martti Haapakoski. Helsinki: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 2009. ISBN 978-951-0-35517-6
Radio Series
Sibelius and America. YLE (Finnish National Radio), 2008.Three Programs on American Music. YLE (Finnish National Radio), 1999.
The Music of Jean Sibelius. Programs for “A Note for You.” National Public Radio, Boston, Massachusetts, 1994.
External links
- Goss homepage: http://www.glendagoss.fi
- Sibelius: A Composer's Life and the Awakening of Finland
- The Sibelius Society of Finland:http://www2.siba.fi/sibeliussociety/eng/publications.html
- Caliber Journals of the University of California Press:http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/ncm.2003.27.1.94