Deep Focus: Enriching the Aspen Experience
An array of micro-essays by accomplished musicologists, curated to enhance and enrich your historical and aesthetic engagement with the musical programming offered at Aspen’s 2022 Season.
Rebecca Clarke in World War II

In all of Clarke’s war works, there’s a tension between modern and traditional. For most of her life Clarke had been at the forefront of modern music, hailed by the Daily Telegraph as “a frank disciple of modernity” in 1922. But she was not prepared to embrace atonality, which was becoming increasingly dominant in the U.S. thanks to the arrival of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. In many of her war pieces, this friction is absolutely central.
(Continue Reading)Gabriela Lena Frank: From Ivory Tower to Redwood Country

Gabriela Lena Frank writes music for a wide range of audiences, from seasoned concertgoers to neophytes, in concert halls, community centers, hospitals, schools, prisons, and even less traditional venues. Now she is engaged in an extraordinary educational project.
(Continue Reading)Illuminations of the Art Songs of Margaret Allison Bonds (1913-1972)

Dr. Alethea Kilgore brings us a deep dive into Songs of the Seasons, a soon-to-be-published song cycle by Margaret Allison Bonds. Dr. Kilgore’s song-by-song analysis highlights the newfound attention Bonds enjoys from both performers and historians.
(Continue Reading)Florence B. Price: A Biographical Vignette

Dr. Samantha Ege provides an orientation to an American masters of compositional craft with a resurgent historical profile: Florence Beatrice Price.
(Continue Reading)Fiddling “In the Barn” with Charles Ives

Charles Ives loved a good, old-fashioned, rural barn dance. At least, he thought he did. Ives readily admits that his musical representations of the barn dance—as heard in pieces like “Washington’s...
(Continue Reading)