Department of Music, Division of the Arts, University of California, Santa Cruz

Amy C. Beal, Assistant Professor of Music

B.M., M.M., University of Kansas

M.A., Ph.D., University of Michigan

In 2001 music historian and pianist Amy C. Beal accepted an appointment at UCSC where she now teaches American and twentieth-century music history and performance practice. Before joining the UCSC music faculty she taught western and non-western music at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine (1999-2001). Her primary research explores the history of American experimental music and she is currently completing a book on American music in West Germany between 1945 and 1990. In 2001 she was honored with the American Musicological Society’s Alfred Einstein Award (for an article titled "Negotiating Cultural Allies") and the Society for American Music’s Wiley Housewright Dissertation Award (for her dissertation titled "Patronage and Reception History of American Experimental Music in West Germany, 1945-1986").

PUBLICATIONS:

• Book in Progress: From the Zero Hour to Reunification: American Experimental Music in West Germany, 1945-1990.
• Forthcoming article: "The Army, the Airwaves, and the Avant-Garde: American Classical Music in West Germany," American Music Volume 21, No. 4 (winter 2003).
• Forthcoming article: "A Place to Ply Their Wares With Dignity: American Composer-Performers in West Germany, 1972," Musical Quarterly Volume 86, No. 2 (summer 2002).
• "Time Canvasses: Morton Feldman and the Painters of the New York School," in Music and Modern Art (Border Crossings). James Leggio, ed. (New York: Routledge Publishing, 2002), 227-245.
• Review: Writings through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art, edited by David W. Bernstein and Christopher Hatch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association (December 2002), 337-339.
• Review: Perspectives on American Music, 1900-1950. Michael Saffle, ed. (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000), in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 58/1 (September 2001): 101-103.
• "Negotiating Cultural Allies: American Music in Darmstadt, 1946-1956," in Journal of the American Musicological Society, Volume 53, No. 1 (spring 2000): 105-139.
• "Muhal Richard Abrams" (Vol. 1), "Roque Cordero" (Vol. 1), and "Tania León" (Vol. 2), in The International Dictionary of Black Composers. Samuel A. Floyd, ed. (Chicago, London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999): 4-7 (Abrams); 306-310 (Cordero); 717-19 (León).

PRESENTATIONS

• 2002: "A Place to Ply Their Wares With Dignity: American Composer-Performers in West Germany, 1972," Colloquium Series in Musicology, University of California, Berkeley
• 2001: "Ambassador of the American Avant-Garde: David Tudor in West Germany, 1954-1972," Symposium: "The Art of David Tudor: Indeterminacy and Performance in Postwar Culture," Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
• 2001: "John Cage In West Germany, 1952-1954: A Contextual Reevaluation," American Musicological Society National Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia
• 2000: "1972, A Case Study: German Support of American Experimental Music," Society for American Music Annual Meeting, Charleston
• 1998: "Negotiating Cultural Allies: American Music in Darmstadt, 1946-1956," American Musicological Society National Meeting, Boston
• 1997: "Experimental Music in the United States; "Presentation for Symposium: "Amerikanische Musik im 20. Jahrhundert," Universität Halle/Wittenberg, Germany
• 1997: "Morton Feldman’s Beckett Trilogy," Michigan Music Theory Society Meeting, Ann Arbor
• 1997: "Words and Music in the Shadows of Non-Understanding: Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett;" Sonneck Society for American Music Annual Meeting, Seattle
• 1995: "And In the Beginning There Were Words: Harry Partch’s Genesis," Midwest Popular Culture/Midwest American Culture Associations Meeting, Indianapolis, Indiana