The Mills Music Library participated in the recent campus conference entitled "Sounds of Two Worlds: Music as a Mirror of Migration to and from Germany." Hosted by the Max Kade Institute and the Music Library, the two-day event, September 13-14, featured speakers form both the United States and Europe as well as musical performances illustrating the breadth of German-American musical expression. Music Library staff developed a conference exhibit, "The Music of German-Americans in Wisconsin," and also organized an evening concert of little-known classical music featuring three German-American composers with Wisconsin ties. Both the exhibit and the concert drew upon unique resources from the Wisconsin Music Archives. The General Library System generously supplied financial support.
The exhibit, located in the Mills Music Library, will run through the end of the semester and explores the contributions made by people of German and German language heritage to the musical life of Wisconsin. The primary emphasis is placed on the activities of the German immigrants who arrived during the nineteenth century with a secondary look at the succeeding generations of German-Americans in the twentieth-century.
As one might expect, the western classical music tradition is very evident, represented in the exhibit by composers Hugo Kaun, Otto Luening, and Ernst Krenek. Depicted as well are the nineteenth-century singing societies that emerged both locally and nationally giving witness to the strong classical choral tradition in which many German-Americans participated.
Folk and popular traditions brought to this country formed a prominent and ongoing outlet for musical activity. The popular tradition is illustrated through the ubiquitous nineteenth century town band and noteworthy bandleader/composers Christoper Bach and Joseph Clauder. The exhibit also looks at German and Swiss folk musicians who have variously preserved, expanded upon, and carried forward to the present day traditional music from the old world.
Early sound recordings are exhibited which help to interpret and understand the immigrant experience, and contributions by Wisconsin German-Americans to the national culture are represented by music educator Otto Miessner and jazz musician Woody Herman.
Ernest Krenek, Hugo Kaun, and Edna Frida Pietsch were the featured composers in the Friday evening concert. Vartan Manoogian conducted Philomusica in Krenek's Symphonic Elegy for string orchestra; Kathleen Huegel Otterson, mezzo-soprano and Jane Peckham, piano rendered songs of Pietsch and Kaun; Lin Foulk, horn and Beth Wilson, piano performed Pietsch's Canzonetta for horn and piano; and Erin Aldridge, violin and Jean Wynia, piano played Kaun's Fantasiestück for violin and piano.
Each composer has an interesting connection to Wisconsin. Krenek taught at UW-Madison for three summers in the 1940s and was also present for the School of Music Krenek Festival in 1954. Kaun lived in Milwaukee from 1886-1902 and was actively involved in the city's musical life. His music was frequently performed by the Chicago Symphony in the early twentieth century. Pietsch, a life-long Milwaukee resident, has had performances by both the Chicago Symphony and the Milwaukee Symphony.