Joseph Kerman Fund

supporting publication expenses for musicologists

 


The fund was established in conjunction with the OPUS campaign by the Board of Directors of the American Musicological Society to honor one of the most brilliant essayists of the Society’s first 75 years. The goal is to endow a source of income to support the expenses incurred by musicologists in conjunction with the publication of their work in book form.

Joseph Kerman (b. 1924) studied with Oliver Strunk at Princeton and came to Berkeley in 1952. He left to become Heather Professor of Music at Oxford in 1972 but returned in 1974, retiring in 1994. He likes you to begin with Write All These Down (1994), an essay collection sampling his several fields of activity: Elizabethan music (The Elizabethan Madrigal, 1962, The Masses and Motets of William Byrd, 1980), Beethoven (The Beethoven Quartets, 1967, The Kafka Sketchbook, 1970, The New Grove Beethoven, 1983, with Alan Tyson), opera (Opera as Drama, 1956/1988), and criticism. An influential commentator on musicology (see Contemplating Music, 1986), he was an early champion of criticism within the discipline. He writes for general readers in the Hudson Review (1948-62) and New York Review of Books (19770-- ). Other books are Concerto Conversations (1998) and The Art of Fugue: Bach Fugues for Keyboard, 1715-1750 (2005). He is also author, with Gary Tomlinson, of the textbook Listen.

Ruth Solie describes Kerman as “a kind of bellwether for musicological writing, one who has offered the discipline various kinds of programmatic challenges and then shown us how to meet them: . . . graceful, insightful, humane, even funny ways to get 'out of analysis' and into understanding musical meaning.” 

as of 1 November 2009:

Balance: $49,705

Donors (74):


Carolyn Abbate
Wye J. Allanbrook
Joan Applegate
Lawrence Archbold
Robert Bailey
Michael Beckerman
Jane A. Bernstein & James L. Ladewig
David Breckbill
Alessandra Campana
Molly R. Cryderman
John Deathridge
Jonathan & Mickey Elkus
Martha Feldman
Robert Fink
Charles Fisk
Danielle Fosler-Lussier
Michael Grace
James F. Green
Marian Green-LaRue
Thomas Grey
John Hajdu Heyer
D. Kern Holoman
Mary Hunter and James Parakilas
Owen Jander
Joseph Kerman*
Frank E. Kirby
Roberto Kolb
Thomas Koster
Lawrence Kramer
James Ladewig and
Edward Lerner*
Louise Litterick
Ralph P. Locke
Suzanne Macahilig
Patrick Macey*
Paul Machlin
William Pl Mahrt
Victor R. Markiw
Roberta M. Marvin
James McCalla
Kerry McCarthy
Susan McClary
Mairta P. McClymonds
Ann Dhu McLucas
Craig A. Monson
Robert P. Morgan
Anthony Newcomb**
Jeremy Noble
Roger Parker
Jann Pasler
Marcello Baruira Pedroso
Leon Plantinga
Keith Polk
Andrew Porter*
Emily Richmond
John H. Roberts*
Ellen Rosand*
David B. Rosen
Edward Rothstein
Julian Rushton
David E. Schneider
Ann B. Scott
Elaine Sisman
Mary Ann Smart
Ruth Solie**
Maynard Solomon*
Ruth Steiner
Gary Tomlinson*
Leo Treitler
Robert Walser
Andrew Weaver
Robert Weidner
Robert Winter
Lynne Withey

** = $5,000 or more
  * = $1,000 or more