UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Distinguished Professor of Music Maureen Carr will present a public lecture titled "The Collaboration between Igor Stravinsky and Michel Fokine for the 'Firebird' ballet (1910)" at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 26, in 110 Music Building I. Admission is free. Carr is a guest of the School of Music's "Freshman Experience," a series of events throughout the year designed to broaden the backgrounds of freshman music majors.
The lecture will explore the cultural context that set the stage for Stravinsky's "Firebird" ballet using slides and audio/visual clips. Both the composer and Michel Fokine, the choreographer, were experimenting with modern techniques in 1910. While Stravinsky was building upon the musical paradigms that he learned from his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov, choreographer Fokine was developing principles that would eventually guide "the new Russian ballet."
Carr's presentation is given in preparation for the Penn State Philharmonic Orchestra's performance of "Firebird Suite" at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 28, in Eisenhower Auditorium. For more information and ticket availability, please click here.
Carr's lecture is given in conjunction with the 2015-16 School of Music theme "Music & Dance: Exploring Connections Between Two Art Forms," a yearlong series of performances, classes and presentations that focus on the unique relationship between music and human movement.
Carr teaches undergraduate and graduate music theory. A scholar of the music of Igor Stravinsky, she has studied his manuscripts and other documents extensively at the Stravinsky Archive of the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland, as well as at archives in Paris and London. She received a Citation of Special Merit for "Stravinsky’s Pulcinella" from the Society for Music Theory (SMT) at its national meeting in Minneapolis in October 2011. This publication award recognizes Carr as editor of and contributor to "Stravinsky’s Pulcinella: A Facsimile of the Sources and Sketches" (A-R Editions, 2010).
In addition to the musical sources and sketches for "Stravinsky’s Pulcinella," she has authored several books, including "Multiple Masks: Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism in His Dramatic Works in Greek Studies" (University of Nebraska Press, 2002), and a facsimile edition of the musical sketches for Stravinsky’s "Histoire du Soldat" (2005, with commentary and invited essays). She is currently under contract with Oxford University Press for a book to be titled "After the Rite: Stravinsky's Path to Neoclassicism from 1914 to 1925." She is also co-author and contributor with Tamara Levitz (UCLA) to "Stravinsky and His World," to be published by Princeton University Press.
She has lectured on Stravinsky at a wide range of venues, including the Music Since 1900/Music Analysis Conference at the University of Lancaster, England (2011); 100th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Ballets Russes in Boston (2009); and the French Society for Music Analysis, University of Strasbourg (2009). In March 2010, she participated as an external reviewer for the School of Drama, Film and Music at Trinity College, Dublin. In 2012, she lectured at conferences in Cardiff, Chapel Hill, Rome and Moscow.
Carr is author with Bruce Benward of the fifth, sixth and seventh editions of the book "Sight Singing Complete," the most recent version published by McGraw-Hill, 2007.
Carr holds a bachelor of arts from Marywood College, a master of fine arts from Rutgers University, and a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She received an Outstanding Teaching Award from the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture in 1995; the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for the Arts and Humanities in 2005; and was named Penn State Distinguished Professor in 2008, which recognizes exceptional teaching, research, creativity and service to the University community. She was named a Distinguished Alumna by the Rutgers University Graduate School in 2009 and the University of Wisconsin at Madison School of Music in 1998, and she was a recipient of the Marywood University Alumni Association’s Business/Professional Achievement Award in 2004.