Reading Matter

The American Musicological Society awards publication subventions for books and editions in all fields of music scholarship. Twenty-eight books were recently granted $44,000 in funds to support publication expenses during the first of two rounds for 2014. In spring and fall 2013 some 43 books were funded; covers and links for all books published over the history of the program are given HERE. Altogether the Society currently spends some $100,000 a year on the initiative.

Bequests from Manfred Bukofzer, Otto Kinkeldey, Gustave Reese, Dragan Plamenac, Paul Pisk, and Lloyd Hibberd formed the nucleus of an endowment established in 1971 to support the publication of books and editions of music. These funds were considerably augmented by the OPUS capital campaign in 2002–09, which funded AMS 75 Publication Awards for Younger Scholars (AMS PAYS), a program providing for members in the early stages of their careers to be able to count on subventions for their first books.

Here a few recent examples, chosen more or less randomly from the exhaustive lists cited above:

John H. Baron Concert Life in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans Louisiana St. Univ. Press, 2013	Gurminder Kaur Bhogal Details of Consequence: Ornament, Music, and Art in Paris, 1890–1925 Oxford UP, 2014	William Cheng Soundplay: Video Games and the Musical Imagination Oxford UP, 2014
Martha Feldman The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds Univ. of California Press, 2015	Nalini Ghuman Resonances of the Raj: India in the English Musical Imagination, 1897-1947 Oxford UP, 2014	Nadine Hubbs Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music Univ. of California Press, 2014
Drew Massey John Kirkpatrick, American Music, and the Printed Page Univ. of Rochester Press, 2013	Catherine Saucier A Paradise of Priests: Singing the Civic and Episcopal Hagiography of Medieval Liege Univ. of Rochester Press, 2014	Alexandra Vazquez Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music Duke Univ. Press, 2013