SPEC Kit 347: Community-based Collections · 149
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
American Musicological Society records
http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/ead/ead.html?q=american%20musicological%20society&id=EAD_
upenn_rbml_MsColl221&%23ref8
American Musicological Society records, 1934-1992
http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/ead/ead.html?q=american%20musicological%20society&id=EAD_upenn_rbml_MsColl221&%23ref8[6/23/15, 2:33:45 PM]
responsibility to guide young Ph.D.’s into the professional world. These committees
include Academic and Non-Academic Employment, Career Options, Career Related
Issues, and Hiring Procedures. The Committee on Academic and Non-Academic
Employment undertook a project of publishing a handbook of career guidelines,
under the supervision of Cynthia Verba.
Some committees arose from concern over discrimination on the job market, and a
heightened sensitivity to under-represented groups. The Committees on Cultural
Diversity, on Outreach, on the Status of Women, and on Minorities, were all
extremely vocal. While at times they may have encouraged a kind of hysterical
paranoia among some committee members, in general these committees promoted a
more balanced representation of interests among officers and awardees. The
Committee on Committees was responsible for drawing up an explanation of the
functions of each committee, and describing rules of appointment and rotation. The
U.S. Bicentennial Committee designed a project in honor of the American
Bicentennial in 1976. The Committee’s project, the publication of the Complete
Works of William Billings, later blossomed into the Committee on the Publication of
American Music (see Publications). Other miscellaneous committees include the
Committees on the American Institute in Rome, on Automated Bibliography, on a
Central Business Office, the Collegium Committee, the Committee on Editorial Policy,
on the Encyclopedia Project, on the Kennedy Center Festival Conferences, the Ad
Hoc Committee on Local Arrangements, the Committees on Reorganization, on
Reorganization of the Council, on Reprints, on Technology, and on the Translations
Center.
In addition to correspondence among individual committees and reports of those
committees are lists of committee appointments, form letters to committee chairs,
and other miscellaneous material.
Publications
The Publications projects of the AMS are perhaps the most concrete way the Society
exerted its influence in musicological scholarship. The Publications Committee met to
formulate projects, give editorial input, or select projects for their financial support.
This committee initially took on Publications projects of their own, in which
committee members served as a virtual editorial staff. These projects often took
decades and outlived individual editors. Several of the works published by the AMS
are invaluable additions to the field of scholarship, including the Collected works of
Ockeghem, edited by Dragan Plamenac, The Complete Works of John Dunstable,
edited by Manfred Bukofzer, and Joseph Kerman’s Elizabethan Madrigal. The New
Josquin Edition was jointed undertaken with a Dutch Press (the VNM). Hans
Tischler’s Earliest Motets was another project that spanned the terms of several
different committee chairs. The records of the Publications Committee include
correspondence among committee members, editorial comments from the members
to authors, submissions, contracts, and drafts. Page proofs of the Ockeghem work
have been removed to Oversize in Box 120.
The Works of William Billings was undertaken by the U.S. Bicentennial Committee. It
was out of this project that the Committee on the Publication of American Music was
born in 1981. This committee included such prominent Americanists as Richard
Crawford and H. Wiley Hitchcock. Cynthia Hoover of the Smithsonian was another
dedicated member. This committee made grant application to the NEH for a long-
term project to publish monographic studies on American music. The records of
COPAM contain correspondence, proposals, NEH grant applications, and contracts.
Though the Journal of the American Musicological Society often functioned as a
separate body, and though its records are contained in a separate collection, the
AMS Board did make some basic organizational decisions, including the appointment
and dismissal of Editors and the Editorial Board. This sub-series contains
correspondence between the president of the Society and the Journal Editor and
Editorial Board, Reports on the Journal, and papers relating to producing the
Journal’s Index. The Society sent out a Newsletter from as early as 1944 to circulate
news and information to its members. It was initially thought that the Journal would
replace the Newsletter, but it soon became clear that there was material enough for
Previous Page Next Page