NEWS & NOTES
School of Music’s Chang-Barnes receives Fulbright
T
he U.S. State Department Foreign Scholarship Board has selected Ann Chang-Barnes, School of Music artist-in-residence in piano, as Fulbright Scholar to Belgium. During the summer months of 2009, she will be doing research on advancement of keyboard curriculum models and performing in concerts at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels, Belgium. “The keyboard works of the late 18th and early 19th centuries by the great masters Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, are a standard part of the modern pianists repertoire. To achieve proper understanding and performance of these pieces, pianists would be well served by referring to the early pianos for which they were written,” ChangBarnes said. That early piano, the fortepiano (in use from 1770’s-1850’s), has a wooden frame on which the strings are strung, and the strings are strung with less tension than the modern piano. “Unlike the Harpsichord, it is truly an early piano in that the strings are struck by hammers to generate sound. The sound decays faster than the modern piano, and the tone is more pure and clean,” ChangBarnes said. Composers of the day, including Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, wrote in a manner suitable for its unique sound, but as the modern piano, especially in the U.S., became the standard instrument, the music had to be more or less “transcribed” for the modern piano. “The unfortunate result is that we give piano students only one kind of piano for vastly different kinds of repertoire,” she said. Chang-Barnes hopes American schools will begin to offer a similar kind of study for piano students that their European counterparts are receiving, where they still have the option to study and perform on both fortepianos and modern pianos interchangeably, depending on the repertoire. “When a student, or professional pianist for that matter, begins work on a Mozart
Sonata, for example, the ideal process is to at least have the fortepiano available for reference, as a pedagogical tool to hear exactly what the composer had intended.” The University of Nebraska–Lincoln is one of only a few schools in the United States that owns a fortepiano. UNL’s early Mozart keyboard instrument, a replica of a circa 1780 Anton Walter fortepiano, was purchased more than 25 years ago under
‘Our university is well poised to be a leader in offering a unique and important area of study of serious musicians’ Ann Chang-Barnes the leadership of Professor Emeriti Raymond Haggh, Audun Ravnan and Thomas Fritz. Chang-Barnes received a UNL Research Council grant two years ago to renovate it. It resides in her studio, and she now has students utilizing it in critical thinking, and in many cases, also in performance. Chang-Barnes said she learned several years back, that the School of Music had a fortepiano, but it was stored and neglected in the basement of Westbrook Music Building. Professor Emeritus Quentin Faulkner showed it to her, and she instantly saw its potential. “I asked for it to be moved to my studio. Then I dusted it off, and started exploring,” she said. “At first, the students just walked around it, almost like it was a piece of furniture. By the end of the semester, they started playing a note or two, and soon, some were eager to try it in earnest. It was gratifying to see their faces light up as troublesome passages or questionable markings in the score seem to finally fall into place. We were
Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts
walking down the path of discovery!” Chang-Barnes said having the fortepiano positions the School of Music to be a leader in this field. “Our piano majors, as well as guest artists and School of Music faculty have this extremely valuable, historical instrument available for use,” she said. “Our university is well poised to be a leader in offering a unique and important area of study for serious musicians. The goal of my Fulbright research is to identify a suitable curriculum model to meet our needs for success, using the European models as a reference.” Chang-Barnes notes that the piano is fortunate to have a wide range of repertoire, from Renaissance to Modern. “Many of us feel, however, that our objective is to play it all with the same level of perfection or we have failed in some way,” she said. “That’s not done in law or medicine or even in music theory or history.” She said it’s time for pianists to think about specializing. “It’s becoming too big not to,” she said. “And with the growing movement in this country for authentic performance practice, the future of the fortepiano, either in the studio as a pedagogical tool, or on stage as performance instrument, is a timely and exciting topic to explore.” Chang-Barnes joined the music faculty at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1995 as modern pianist, and recently added the fortepiano, historical instruments and classic performance practice to her areas of specialty. In addition to her active career as modern pianist, she will perform numerous fortepiano concerts as soloist and with orchestra during the upcoming season, and a recording project is underway, featuring the Walter fortepiano in performances of Sonatas and Fantasies by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. In July 2008, with grant support by the Hixson-Lied Creative Activity Travel Grant, Chang-Barnes performed at the International Fortepiano Conference in Middelburg, the Netherlands, as one of the conference’s featured artists.
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