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Inside
This Issue: Inside This Issue I.S.A.M. Matters [1992] by H.W.H. Mail from Wiley by Richard Crawford Everbest: Remembering H. Wiley Hitchcock by Susan Feder H.W.H., Cowell, and New Music by David Nicholls |
Further Reflections on H.W.H. by Ellie Hisama and Nancy Hager
Brooklyn College President Christoph Kimmich,
composer Tania León, Professor Nancy Hager, and H. Wiley Hitchcock, As a long-time admirer of the Institute, first as a graduate student and then as a young assistant professor in the Midwest, I was both thrilled and terrified when Nancy Hager telephoned me in 1999 to offer me the position of Director. Wiley’s and Carol’s directorships were tough acts to follow, and the prospect of being handed the primary responsibility for the Institute was admittedly daunting. Here was an internationally recognized research center whose founder managed to edit over 5,000 Amerigrove articles (on a bumpy subway, no less), a lively biannual newsletter, and over thirty richly informative monographs that I had pored over in graduate school, while he also organized groundbreaking conferences with an all-star lineup of musicians and scholars and continued to produce his own impeccable research. The triple challenge of writing, teaching, and directing the Institute nearly sent me back to the comforting rhythm of teaching chromatic harmony and post-tonal theory to music majors year after year. But I needn’t have worried. Although I knew
Wiley only in passing from conferences, soon after I moved to Popular music, cultural and critical theory, and
feminist studies all had a place at I.S.A.M. Reading through some thirty
years of the Institute’s history recorded in hundreds of fascinating
documents provided a fast education. As I soon discovered, Wiley had already
begun to think about what I assumed were new directions for the Institute,
such as studies of American women composers and current rock and pop. Once he
sent me a tape of the Pointer Sisters’ bouncy “American
Music” which he thought could be the Institute’s theme song.
Though he wasn’t eager to resume the trek to The last time I saw Wiley at Brooklyn College was in the spring of 2005, when he came to hear his former student and I.S.A.M. assistant Jason Stanyek (now on the faculty of NYU) give a talk on the Brazilian musical diaspora in the U.S. Wiley’s voice was barely audible, and he would soon begin receiving treatment for what he initially thought might be an extended case of laryngitis. I told him that rather than to call his voice “small and gravelly,” he should think of it as a “sexy whisper,” a characterization he gleefully said he could dine out on. He delighted in the successes of his friends, students, and colleagues, and enjoyed sending warm and humorous notes and emails. (One of the last files he gave me, labeled Humor, is a playful assortment of New Yorker cartoons, slightly off-color jokes that he had collected, and doctored photos of Cheshire-like cats outfitted with dentures.) For so many of us whose work was shaped by his inclusive, democratic, and eclectic vision of American music, our memories of Wiley will continue to encourage and inspire. —Ellie M. Hisama * *
* The last time I saw Wiley was
in February 2006, at the ceremony where Tania León was officially inducted as
a distinguished professor. When asked to
provide a short guest list, I immediately thought of Wiley, another
distinguished professor during most of his career at —Nancy Hager Conservatory
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