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The 1957 launch of Sputnik and the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk shifted national education policy. Music educators promoted an “intrinsic value” of music philosophy following Sputnik and music advocacy through politics and public performances following A Nation at Risk. Examining the history of both the intrinsic value philosophy and advocacy reveals that music educators responded to Sputnik and A Nation at Risk by continuing to work within their existing language and practices rather than reacting to and transforming after either event. The political, social, and cultural contexts of these events may explain music educators’ responses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hailed as a critical and popular success since its premiere in December 1944, Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra is most often discussed as the accessible masterpiece that helped launch a posthumous resurgence of the composer's earlier musical output. Yet the historical and aesthetic significance of this work in relation to American orchestral life—and Serge Koussevitzky's Boston Symphony Orchestra in particular—remains largely ignored. The Concerto for Orchestra can be viewed through the lens of what might be called “collective virtuosity”: a concept that describes the performance of a work whose challenging musical language requires a heightened level of artistic teamwork. Described through musical analysis and strengthened by archival research and management theory, this phenomenon reflects a multitude of historical and social developments that are particularly salient to the story surrounding Bartók's Concerto, thus serving as a useful analytic tool that reveals new insights concerning the work and its popular success in America. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A community of hybridity is evolving at Gambier, Ohio-based Kenyon College. Both internationalist and regional, the group maintains concerns for cultural respect and independence, without censorship, while appreciating that context informs the relevance and nature of this 'free' expression. To create links, but to respect the integrity of the individual and other groups that individual might 'represent' in the moment of collaboration. Theory classes, prosody classes and so-called creative writing classes are inseparable, becoming increasingly blurred. Who can separate music and musicology, art and architecture from the experience of poetry?