FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 9, 2014
Richard Taruskin
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Lecture Series will present "Resisting the Rite" by noted musicologist and Igor Stravinsky scholar Richard Taruskin at 4 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 13, in Room 040 of the Musical Arts Center.
The lecture exploring the cultural roots of Stravinsky’s iconic "Rite of Spring" ballet is the final event in a curriculum preparing the IU Symphony Orchestra for its performance of the "Rite" at 8 p.m. on Oct. 22 in the Musical Arts Center, conducted by guest Grzegorz Nowak.
Both events are free and open to the public and part of the Jacobs "Behind the Score" series directed by Jorja Fleezanis, Jacobs professor of violin and Henry A. Upper Chair in Orchestral Studies.
Taruskin’s extensive 1996 study "Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works through Mavra" shows that Stravinsky drew more heavily on Russian folk material than has previously been recognized and analyzes the historical trends that caused Stravinsky not to be forthcoming about some of these borrowings.
Taruskin, born in 1945 in New York, is an American musicologist, music historian, and critic who has written about the theory of performance, Russian music, 15th-century music, 20th-century music, nationalism, the theory of modernism and analysis. As a choral conductor, he directed the Columbia University Collegium Musicum. He played the viola da gamba with the Aulos Ensemble from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. He received his B.A. degree magna cum laude in 1965, his M.A. degree in 1968 and his Ph.D. in historical musicology in 1976, all from Columbia University.
He has received various awards for his scholarship, including the Noah Greenberg Prize from the American Musicological Society in 1978, Alfred Einstein Award in 1980, Dent Medal in 1987, ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award in 1988 and 2005, and Kinkeldey Prize from the American Musicological Society in 1997 and 2006. On the faculty of Columbia University until 1986, he is now professor of musicology at the University of California, Berkeley, holding the Class of 1955 Chair.
Taruskin has also written extensively for lay readers, including numerous articles in The New York Times, many of which have been collected in "Text and Act"—in which he is an influential critic of the premises of the early music movement in classical music performance—"The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays" and "On Russian Music."