American Music Review
Vol. XLI, No. 2, Spring 2012
By Jeff Taylor, The H. Wiley Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music
This past March, at the annual meeting of the Society for American Music in Charlotte, NC, the staff of the Institute met with several members of our Advisory Board to discuss the future of our organization. In 1971, when Wiley Hitchcock established the Institute, very little attention was being paid to the rich history of music in the United States. In the intervening years the topic has inspired the foundation of several other institutes, societies, and performing organizations, and influenced the curriculum of colleges and universities across the country and world. The central question becomes how the Hitchcock Institute can maintain its individuality in the current academic climate, especially when faced with today’s boom in technology.
Thus, much of the conversation revolved around the Institute’s new move to a primarily online presence. For some time now we have alerted our readers to the fact that American Music Review is “going green” and now the time has come: this is the last issue of AMR that will appear in print. Though it is true that the move will save trees and cut down on production and mailing costs, our discussion in Charlotte dealt mainly with the exciting new array of possibilities, including links and embedded music and video that will enhance the experience of our readers. We remain convinced that online journals have ceased to be viewed as poor cousins of print publications, and are now respected academic resources in their own right.
The Institute’s website www.hisam.org (if you haven’t visited us lately, please do so—we are constantly making improvements!) will also provide a focal point in this new phase of our history: from online orders for monographs, to a mechanism for donation, to the creation of new American music blogs, to an online catalog of our book, recording, and sheet music collections, the possibilities are remarkable. Jennifer CHJ Wilson will continue to serve as our webmaster, and she has already brainstormed a series of new possibilities for our online presence. As all of you know, technology changes almost daily, and we can only guess at the ways our site may be used in the future by scholars, students, composers, and other American music enthusiasts.
We understand, too, that there are many subscribers who prefer to read our publications off-line. Printing of AMR from our website will remain simple. Though we can’t guarantee the availability of all our publications in hardcopy, we will be happy to hear from those of you who are not computer-savvy, and we may be able to work out a compromise. We hope the move online will gain us readers, but we would hate to lose any current subscribers in the process! Wish us luck as we make the plunge into cyberspace, and we will see you again in the fall.
Finally, a staffing note: the Institute family has been joined by Rachel Caldari, a Masters student in voice at Brooklyn College. As our new College Assistant, it is her cheery voice that will greet you if you call the office.
