Dora A. Hanninen, Associate Professor and Chair of Music Theory and Composition in the School of Music at the University of Maryland College Park, will deliver the second of the John Cage Centennial Lectures at the Eastman School of Music at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 28, in Room 404 of the School. Hanninen, who received her Ph.D. in Music Theory in 1996 at Eastman, will discuss “Asking Questions / Making Music.”
The recipient of the Society for Music Theory’s Outstanding Publication Award for “Associative Sets, Categories, and Music Analysis” (Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 48, No. 1), Hanninen is the author of the book A Theory of Music Analysis: On Segmentation and Associative Organization (University of Rochester Press, 2012) and a tribute to Milton Babbitt titled “What Words Cannot Express (Music Does),” published in the spring 2012 issue of Music Theory Spectrum.
John Cage was among most influential and innovative composers and musical thinkers of the 20th-century. This year is Cage’s Centennial year, and his life and work is being celebrated throughout America and in Europe in concerts, festivals, and colloquia. Eastman’s Cage Centennial Lecture Series focuses on aspects of the scholarly reception of Cage—how his music and words have enriched and changed the thinking and understanding of aesthetics in general, and music in particular.
The Lecture Series is supported by the Composition, Musicology, and Music Theory Departments of the Eastman School with additional help from the Eastman administration. It is open the general public and is featured in a video that can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiMxgLeVVgE . Christopher Shultis, Professor of Composition, Percussion and Music Theory, Emeritus at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque presented the first lecture of the series in November of 2012.
The next lecture of the series will be presented on April 18 by Rob Haskins, Associate Professor of Musicology and Graduate Program Coordinator in the Department of Music at the University of New Hampshire. It is titled “John Cage and Zen: What Did He Know, When Did He Know It, How We Find Out, and Why We Should Care.”
# # #