Published: October 17, 2024; Aithor: Julia Sonrisa
Address: 42 Washington Mews, New York, NY 10003, United States
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU and Deutsches Haus at NYU present “The Schoenberg-Puccini Connection: A Centennial Celebration in Music and Dialogue,” and an in-depth conversation featuring music historian Harvey Sachs (Schoenberg: Why He Matters) and the musicologist Linda Fairtile (Giacomo Puccini: A Guide to Research), which will be moderated by Michael Beckerman (NYU).
On April 1, 1924, Palazzo Pitti in Florence hosted a “Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music” to present new musical trends to Italian audiences. The highlight of the performance was the Florentine premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, an atonal melodrama for soprano and chamber ensemble composed in 1912 that — by then — was already becoming the Austrian composer’s most celebrated and performed work. The composer himself led the performance from the podium. To his delight, attending in the audience — score in hand — was Italy’s preeminent opera composer, Giacomo Puccini, whom Schoenberg considered one of the innovators of twentieth-century harmonic language, having referred to his works in his 1911 book Theory of Harmony (Harmonielehre).
One hundred years later, as we celebrate two important anniversaries —the 150th anniversary of Schoenberg’s birth, and the centennial of Puccini’s death —Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU and Deutsches Haus at NYU present an evening dedicated to the impact of these two composers, not only on each other, but on the world around them, and on the many composers who have continued to carry the torch of their musical innovation.
Following the panel discussion, audience members are invited to attend a performance of Pierrot Lunaire and selections of works by Puccini at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò (24 West 12th Street) at 8 PM.
Michael Beckerman (moderator) is Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Music at New York University. He has written on Czech topics, film music, Mozart, orientalism, music of the Roma, and composition in the camps. He is the author of several books including New Worlds of DvoЕ™ák, MartinЕЇ’s Mysterious Accident, and JanáДЌek as Theorist. Beckerman has regularly contributed to The New York Times, appeared on Live from Lincoln Center, and lectured internationally. He is been the recipient of many prizes and honors, including honorary doctorates from Palacký and Masaryk Universities in the Czech Republic, and in 2021 he received the Harrison Medal from the Irish Musicological Society 2011-15 He served as a Distinguished Professor of History at Lancaster University in England (2011-15) and was the Leonard Bernstein Scholar of The New York Philharmonic from 2016-18. He is currently completing a book titled “The Doctrine of One,” about individual responses to artworks and editing a collection of essays about Bohuslav MartinЕЇ.
Linda Fairtile is the Head of Parsons Music Library at the University of Richmond (VA), as well as a musicologist who specializes in Italian opera. She was a co-director of the American Institute for Verdi Studies at New York University and has appeared as a panelist on the Texaco Metropolitan Opera Quiz radio broadcasts. Her research focuses on the operas of Verdi and Puccini, and specifically on issues of compositional process. She is preparing critical editions of Puccini’s Edgar (forthcoming from Ricordi) and Verdi’s Otello (forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press).
Harvey Sachs writer and music historian, published his twelfth book in 2023 Schoenberg: Why He Matters, issued by Liveright. His other books include Toscanini, Musician of Conscience, Virtuoso, Music in Fascist Italy, Rubinstein: A Life, Reflections on Toscanini, The Ninth: Beethoven and the Year 1824, and, as co-author, Plácido Domingo’s My First Forty Years and Sir Georg Solti’s Memoirs. He also edited and translated The Letters of Arturo Toscanini. He has written for the New Yorker, New York Times, Times Literary Supplement of London, La Stampa, Il Sole-24 Ore, and many other publications, as well as for radio and television. He is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; gives lectures at universities and cultural institutions worldwide; and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lived in Europe — mainly in Italy — for over thirty years and was Artistic Director of the Società del Quartetto di Milano.
While NYU has ended COVID-19-related restrictions and policies, we continue to remind and recommend to members of the NYU community that they stay up-to-date on their boosters and stay home if they feel sick. Masks are always welcome.
“The Schoenberg-Puccini Connection: A Centennial Celebration in Music and Dialogue” is funded by the DAAD from funds of the German Federal Foreign Office (AA).
Time: 6:00-7:30 pm EDT
Free!
Detailed information and discussion of the event.