GLUCK AND THE MAP OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC WESTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY, 17–19 OCTOBER 2014

Abstract

The year 2014 marked the tercentenary of the birth of Christoph Gluck, an anniversary shared with his fellow operatic reformer Niccolò Jommelli and the most famous Bach son, Carl Philipp Emanuel. For most people, the mention of Gluck brings to mind his involvement in the reform of eighteenth-century opera and seminal works such as Orfeo ed Euridice, associations that have had the effect of minimizing Gluck's other accomplishments, including the majority of his dramatic oeuvre. The conference and festival Gluck and the Map of Eighteenth-Century Music, organized by Brian Locke and Anita Hardeman at Western Illinois University, focused less on Gluck's involvement in operatic reform than on the many ways in which he engaged with operatic and balletic traditions. Encompassing studies of genre, performance and reception history, the papers portrayed Gluck as a composer enmeshed in the musical culture of his time, whose works still leave much to be discovered by both scholars and performers.