Glenn Watkins
Encyclopedia
Glenn E. Watkins is the "Earl V. Moore Professor Emeritus of Music History and Musicology
" at the University of Michigan
and a specialist in the study of Renaissance and 20th-century music.
, Watkins served in the United States Army from 1944-46. During this period he was enrolled in the ASTP
engineering program at Oklahoma University, the Japanese language programs at the University of Pennsylvania
and the University of Minnesota
, and was later stationed in Tokyo with the "Allied Translator and Interpreter Section" of MacArthur
's General Headquarters
. Immediately after the war in 1947 he briefly attended North Texas State University where his first organ teacher, Helen Hewitt, directed him to the field of musicology.
He received his B.A. (1948) and M.Mus (1949) from the University of Michigan; and Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music
, University of Rochester
, in 1953. Watkins was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship at London and Oxford, 1953-54. He studied organ with Jean Langlais
in Paris in 1956 and analysis and organ at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger
, who commissioned him to play the Poulenc
Organ Concerto for the composer. His teaching career began at Southern Illinois University
from 1954–58, and continued at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1958-63. In 1963 he moved to the University of Michigan, where he taught until retiring in 1996.
Grant, and Senior Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities
and the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities. He has published numerous articles, reviews and editions, and is co-editor of the complete works of Gesualdo. His critical study of that composer, Gesualdo: The Man and His Music (1973), which carries a Preface by Igor Stravinsky
, was a 1974 National Book Award
nominee. It was translated into Hungarian in 1980 and into German in 2000, and a second revised English edition was published in 1990. In 2005 he was awarded the Premio Internazionale Carlo Gesualdo and was elected as an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society
.
and Carlo Gesualdo have been recorded by numerous international groups, including the Deller Consort
, the Consort of Musicke, the Tallis Scholars
, La Venexiana, The Kassiopeia Quintet, and Les Arts Florissants
. His text Soundings (1988) offers a synthetic overview of music in the 20th century, and his book Pyramids at the Louvre (1994) argues the idea of collage
as a foundation for musical Modernism and a catalyst for the rise of Postmodernism
. Watkins’s book, Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War (2003), investigates the variable roles of music during World War I primarily from the angle of the Entente
nations’ perceived threat of German hegemony. His most recent work, The Gesualdo Hex (2010) traces not only the recognition accorded to a Renaissance prince from his own time to the early twenty-first century but places it within the context of ongoing historiographic debates and controversies.
Watkins has lectured widely in America for universities, orchestras and art organizations, and his interest in both late Renaissance and 20th-century studies is reflected in numerous invited papers for international conferences as well as in projects for Columbia
, Nonesuch
, Pye
, Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre
, Harmonia Mundi
, Glossa, and Deutsche Grammophon
records and for BBC
, German, and Italian television.
Musicology
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 University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
and a specialist in the study of Renaissance and 20th-century music.
Biography
Born in McPherson, KansasMcPherson, Kansas
McPherson is a city in and the county seat of McPherson County, Kansas, United States, in the central part of the state. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 13,155. The city is named after Union General James Birdseye McPherson, a Civil War general...
, Watkins served in the United States Army from 1944-46. During this period he was enrolled in the ASTP
Army Specialized Training Program
The Army Specialized Training Program was a military training program instituted by the United States Army during World War II at a number of American universities to meet wartime demands for junior officers and soldiers with technical skills...
engineering program at Oklahoma University, the Japanese language programs at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
and the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
, and was later stationed in Tokyo with the "Allied Translator and Interpreter Section" of MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the...
's General Headquarters
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the Occupation of Japan following World War II...
. Immediately after the war in 1947 he briefly attended North Texas State University where his first organ teacher, Helen Hewitt, directed him to the field of musicology.
He received his B.A. (1948) and M.Mus (1949) from the University of Michigan; and Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music
Eastman School of Music
The Eastman School of Music is a music conservatory located in Rochester, New York. The Eastman School is a professional school within the University of Rochester...
, University of Rochester
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...
, in 1953. Watkins was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship at London and Oxford, 1953-54. He studied organ with Jean Langlais
Jean Langlais
Jean Langlais was a French composer of modern classical music, organist, and improviser.- Biography :Jean Langlais was born in La Fontenelle , a small village near Mont St Michel, France...
in Paris in 1956 and analysis and organ at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
, who commissioned him to play the Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
Organ Concerto for the composer. His teaching career began at Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University is a state university system based in Carbondale, Illinois, in the Southern Illinois region of the state, with multiple campuses...
from 1954–58, and continued at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1958-63. In 1963 he moved to the University of Michigan, where he taught until retiring in 1996.
Awards
In addition to the Fulbright Award, Watkins has received an American Council of Learned SocietiesAmerican Council of Learned Societies
The American Council of Learned Societies , founded in 1919, is a private nonprofit federation of seventy scholarly organizations.ACLS is best known as a funder of humanities research through fellowships and grants awards. ACLS Fellowships are designed to permit scholars holding the Ph.D...
Grant, and Senior Fellowships from 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...
and the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities. He has published numerous articles, reviews and editions, and is co-editor of the complete works of Gesualdo. His critical study of that composer, Gesualdo: The Man and His Music (1973), which carries a Preface by Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, was a 1974 National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
nominee. It was translated into Hungarian in 1980 and into German in 2000, and a second revised English edition was published in 1990. In 2005 he was awarded the Premio Internazionale Carlo Gesualdo and was elected as an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society
American Musicological Society
The American Musicological Society is a membership-based musicological organization founded in 1934 to advance scholarly research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning and scholarship; it grew out of a small contingent of the Music Teachers National Association and, more directly,...
.
Work
Watkins's editions of the works of Sigismondo d'IndiaSigismondo d'India
Sigismondo d'India was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He was one of the most accomplished contemporaries of Monteverdi, and wrote music in many of the same forms as the more famous composer.-Life:D'India was probably born in Palermo, Sicily in 1582, though...
and Carlo Gesualdo have been recorded by numerous international groups, including the Deller Consort
Alfred Deller
Alfred George Deller CBE , was an English singer and one of the main figures in popularizing the return of the countertenor voice in Renaissance and Baroque music during the 20th Century....
, the Consort of Musicke, the Tallis Scholars
Tallis Scholars
The Tallis Scholars are a British vocal ensemble normally consisting of two singers per part, with a core group of ten singers.Formed in 1973 by their director Peter Phillips, they specialise in performing a cappella sacred vocal music written during the Renaissance by composers from all over Europe...
, La Venexiana, The Kassiopeia Quintet, and Les Arts Florissants
Les Arts Florissants (ensemble)
Les Arts Florissants is a Baroque musical ensemble in residence at the Théâtre de Caen in Caen, France. The organization was founded by conductor William Christie in 1979. The ensemble derives its name from the 1685 opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The organization consists of a chamber orchestra...
. His text Soundings (1988) offers a synthetic overview of music in the 20th century, and his book Pyramids at the Louvre (1994) argues the idea of collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
as a foundation for musical Modernism and a catalyst for the rise of Postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
. Watkins’s book, Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War (2003), investigates the variable roles of music during World War I primarily from the angle of the Entente
Triple Entente
The Triple Entente was the name given to the alliance among Britain, France and Russia after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907....
nations’ perceived threat of German hegemony. His most recent work, The Gesualdo Hex (2010) traces not only the recognition accorded to a Renaissance prince from his own time to the early twenty-first century but places it within the context of ongoing historiographic debates and controversies.
Watkins has lectured widely in America for universities, orchestras and art organizations, and his interest in both late Renaissance and 20th-century studies is reflected in numerous invited papers for international conferences as well as in projects for Columbia
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
, Nonesuch
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...
, Pye
Pye Records
Pye Records was a British record label. In its first incarnation, perhaps Pye's best known artists were Lonnie Donegan , Petula Clark , The Searchers , The Kinks , Sandie Shaw and Brotherhood of Man...
, Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre
Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre
Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre is a music publishing company financed and established in Paris in 1932 by Louise Dyer , an Australian pianist and philanthropist....
, Harmonia Mundi
Harmonia Mundi
Harmonia Mundi is an independent music record label founded in 1958 by Bernard Coutaz in Arles . The Latin phrase means "world harmony"....
, Glossa, and Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...
records and for BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, German, and Italian television.
Books
- Gesualdo: The Man and His Music. 2nd edition. Oxford, 1991. ISBN 0-19-816197-2 National Book Award Nominee, 1974
- Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century, 1988, 1995. ISBN 0-028-73290-1
- Pyramids at the Louvre. Music, Culture, and Collage from Stravinsky to the Postmodernists, 1994. ISBN 0-674-74083-9
- Proof through the Night: Music and the Great War, 2002. ISBN 0-520-23158-9
- The Gesualdo Hex, 2010. ISBN 978-0393071023