from Elaine Sisman
Past President, American Musicological Society

The kick-off banquet to launch the OPUS Campaign (Seattle, 2004) seemed to mark an historic moment as well as an historic opportunity. Optimism, camaraderie, and energy promised good things for this new venture: Opening Paths to Unlimited Scholarship. The campaign literature describes the AMS as a “work in progress, seeking to support excellence in the work of its members.” By calling the AMS itself an opus-in-formation, we link its existence and rationale to the work of its members, and thus put both on the same side of a crucial distinction, that between what I like to call “My Own Work” and “Other People's Work.” Recognizing the AMS as a forum for the same kinds of behaviors, pursuits, and criteria for excellence that we follow in our scholarship, we can consider it to be part of our own work, something in which we participate readily. Helvetius said “Happy is the man who loves his work,” and, mutatis mutandis, I feel that way about the AMS as well as MOW.

from JAMES LADEWIG | RICH CRAWFORD
from LOIS ROSOW & ANDREW DELL'ANTONIO | DAVID GRAMIT
from GREG BLOCH | SARAH EYERLY
from our student co-chairs:
ANA ALONSO-MINUTTI, ERICKA HONISCH, ROB PEARSON