Lectures in Musicology: Brigid Cohen, New York University

February 24, 2020

4:00PM - 5:30PM

18th Ave. Library, 175 W. 18th, Room 205

Add to Calendar 2020-02-24 17:00:00 2020-02-24 18:30:00 Lectures in Musicology: Brigid Cohen, New York University Brigid Cohen, New York University, presents Sounds of the Cold War Acropolis: Halim El-Dabh at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In 1958, the composers Milton Babbitt, Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (CPEMC) with the support of a massive $175,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant. The studio quickly became a transnational hub for visiting and immigrating composers, fulfilling a Cold War mandate for cultural diplomacy set forth in its founding documents. During this period, Rockefeller-supported projects including the CPEMC transformed Columbia University and its Harlem neighborhood in the quest to create an “acropolis” — a “spiritual, cultural, and intellectual center of the world” that would inherit the mantle of “Western civilization” from the traditional learning centers of Europe. “Acropolis” evokes a crossroads for the world, on the one hand, and a defensive bulwark for restrictive ideas of “Western civilization,” on the other. Drawing on archival research, interviews and interpretive studies of music, this talk focuses on the Egyptian-born visiting composer Halim El-Dabh, whose work and persona embody tensions at the heart of the CPEMC as a Cold War acropolis. The racialized gatekeeping mechanisms of the institution spurred El-Dabh to imagine new ways of being, knowing and translating cross-cultural musical experience as he navigated an uncertain path from “visiting composer” to U.S. citizenship during the Civil Rights era. Brigid Cohen is a historical musicologist who specializes in the historiography of musics and musicians in migration. Her research and teaching examine the mass dislocation of peoples over the last two centuries, addressing conditions of empire, globalization, genocide, exile and minority experience. Her first book, Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora (Cambridge University Press, 2012), won the Lewis Lockwood Prize of the American Musicological Society for best monograph of the year by a scholar at an early career stage. She is currently writing Musical Migration and Imperial New York (under contract with University of Chicago Press), which explores questions of displacement and citizenship through a study of New York concert avant-gardes, jazz, electronic music, and performance art in the 1950s and 1960s. This book trains its focus on the cultural-political dilemmas navigated by uprooted creators in New York as a capital of empire during the Cold War. This lecture is supported by a generous grant from the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme of Migration, Mobility and Immobility. Lectures in Musicology is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries. Lectures are held Mondays at 4 p.m. in the 18th Avenue Library, 175 W. 18th Ave. (Music/Dance Library, second floor, room 205). These events are free and open to the public. Campus visitors, please use either the Tuttle Park Place Garage or the Ohio Union South Garage. All other garages in the vicinity of the 18th Ave. Library are closed to visitors before 4 p.m. Upcoming Musicology Events 18th Ave. Library, 175 W. 18th, Room 205 OSU ASC Drupal 8 ascwebservices@osu.edu America/New_York public

2020-02-24 16:00:00 2020-02-24 17:30:00 Lectures in Musicology: Brigid Cohen, New York University Brigid Cohen, New York University, presents Sounds of the Cold War Acropolis: Halim El-Dabh at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In 1958, the composers Milton Babbitt, Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (CPEMC) with the support of a massive $175,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant. The studio quickly became a transnational hub for visiting and immigrating composers, fulfilling a Cold War mandate for cultural diplomacy set forth in its founding documents. During this period, Rockefeller-supported projects including the CPEMC transformed Columbia University and its Harlem neighborhood in the quest to create an “acropolis” — a “spiritual, cultural, and intellectual center of the world” that would inherit the mantle of “Western civilization” from the traditional learning centers of Europe. “Acropolis” evokes a crossroads for the world, on the one hand, and a defensive bulwark for restrictive ideas of “Western civilization,” on the other. Drawing on archival research, interviews and interpretive studies of music, this talk focuses on the Egyptian-born visiting composer Halim El-Dabh, whose work and persona embody tensions at the heart of the CPEMC as a Cold War acropolis. The racialized gatekeeping mechanisms of the institution spurred El-Dabh to imagine new ways of being, knowing and translating cross-cultural musical experience as he navigated an uncertain path from “visiting composer” to U.S. citizenship during the Civil Rights era. Brigid Cohen is a historical musicologist who specializes in the historiography of musics and musicians in migration. Her research and teaching examine the mass dislocation of peoples over the last two centuries, addressing conditions of empire, globalization, genocide, exile and minority experience. Her first book, Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora (Cambridge University Press, 2012), won the Lewis Lockwood Prize of the American Musicological Society for best monograph of the year by a scholar at an early career stage. She is currently writing Musical Migration and Imperial New York (under contract with University of Chicago Press), which explores questions of displacement and citizenship through a study of New York concert avant-gardes, jazz, electronic music, and performance art in the 1950s and 1960s. This book trains its focus on the cultural-political dilemmas navigated by uprooted creators in New York as a capital of empire during the Cold War. This lecture is supported by a generous grant from the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme of Migration, Mobility and Immobility. Lectures in Musicology is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries. Lectures are held Mondays at 4 p.m. in the 18th Avenue Library, 175 W. 18th Ave. (Music/Dance Library, second floor, room 205). These events are free and open to the public. Campus visitors, please use either the Tuttle Park Place Garage or the Ohio Union South Garage. All other garages in the vicinity of the 18th Ave. Library are closed to visitors before 4 p.m. Upcoming Musicology Events   18th Ave. Library, 175 W. 18th, Room 205 School of Music music@osu.edu America/New_York public

Brigid Cohen, New York University, presents Sounds of the Cold War Acropolis: Halim El-Dabh at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.

In 1958, the composers Milton Babbitt, Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (CPEMC) with the support of a massive $175,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant. The studio quickly became a transnational hub for visiting and immigrating composers, fulfilling a Cold War mandate for cultural diplomacy set forth in its founding documents. During this period, Rockefeller-supported projects including the CPEMC transformed Columbia University and its Harlem neighborhood in the quest to create an “acropolis” — a “spiritual, cultural, and intellectual center of the world” that would inherit the mantle of “Western civilization” from the traditional learning centers of Europe. “Acropolis” evokes a crossroads for the world, on the one hand, and a defensive bulwark for restrictive ideas of “Western civilization,” on the other. Drawing on archival research, interviews and interpretive studies of music, this talk focuses on the Egyptian-born visiting composer Halim El-Dabh, whose work and persona embody tensions at the heart of the CPEMC as a Cold War acropolis. The racialized gatekeeping mechanisms of the institution spurred El-Dabh to imagine new ways of being, knowing and translating cross-cultural musical experience as he navigated an uncertain path from “visiting composer” to U.S. citizenship during the Civil Rights era.

Brigid Cohen is a historical musicologist who specializes in the historiography of musics and musicians in migration. Her research and teaching examine the mass dislocation of peoples over the last two centuries, addressing conditions of empire, globalization, genocide, exile and minority experience. Her first book, Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora (Cambridge University Press, 2012), won the Lewis Lockwood Prize of the American Musicological Society for best monograph of the year by a scholar at an early career stage. She is currently writing Musical Migration and Imperial New York (under contract with University of Chicago Press), which explores questions of displacement and citizenship through a study of New York concert avant-gardes, jazz, electronic music, and performance art in the 1950s and 1960s. This book trains its focus on the cultural-political dilemmas navigated by uprooted creators in New York as a capital of empire during the Cold War.

This lecture is supported by a generous grant from the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme of Migration, Mobility and Immobility. Lectures in Musicology is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries.

Lectures are held Mondays at 4 p.m. in the 18th Avenue Library, 175 W. 18th Ave. (Music/Dance Library, second floor, room 205). These events are free and open to the public.

Campus visitors, please use either the Tuttle Park Place Garage or the Ohio Union South Garage. All other garages in the vicinity of the 18th Ave. Library are closed to visitors before 4 p.m.

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