RogerEvansOnline.com

Alex Ross retails the “top ten titles” for papers at this fall’s Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society:

Francesco Dalla Vecchia, “Sopranos Gone Wild: Flashing in Seventeenth-Century Venetian Opera”

Craig Monson, “‘How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?’ — ‘They Would Claw Each Other’s Flesh If They Could’: Conflicting Conformities in Convent Music”

David Kasunic, “Beethoven in the Background: Music and Fine Dining in Nineteenth-Century France”

Amanda Eubanks Winkler, “High School Musicals: Understanding Seventeenth-Century English Pedagogical Masques”

Rachel Cowgill, “Filling the Void: Theosophy, Modernity, and the Rituals of Armistice Day in the Reception of John Foulds’s A World Requiem”

Jessica Wood, “An Old World Instrument for Cold War Diplomacy: The Touring Harpsichord in 1950s Asia”

Elaine Kelly, “Late Beethoven and Late Socialism in the German Democratic Republic”

John Howland, “Nobrow Pop in the New Millennium?: Nico Muhly and Post-2000 Chamber Pop”

Paula Higgins, “Josquin and the Dormouse: Aesthetic Excess, Masculinity, and Homoeroticism in the Reception of Planxit autem David”

Joseph Auner, “Weighing, Measuring, Embalming Tonality”

It happens that this year is the first time I’ve ever had a paper proposal turned down for the Annual Meeting. Clearly I have not kept up with the times in terms of sexy, provocative titles! (Compare the list above with the title in the illustrated 1986 Journal.)

UPDATE: My notifying the AMS List of Alex Ross’s Top Ten List brought on correspondence that caused him to make an addendum to the Ten.