Michael Haydn Festival and International Conference 1987. University of Missouri-Columbia 5-8 November 1987

Abstract

I stuck my head into the restaurant, a little college-student hangout, in search of a group of East Coast musicologists with whom I had planned to eat lunch. They were not there, but I spied Jens Peter Larsen-seemingly inexhaustible at age eighty-five-dining by himself, and in a moment we were catching up on four years' worth of news over the special of the day. 528 That encounter sums up the most vivid impression left by the Michael Haydn Festival and International Conference held at the University of Missouri-Columbia on 5-8 November 1987: for a few days twenty specialists on the brothers Haydn, from Europe and North America, seemed to have the place almost to ourselves, giving us a chance to meet in a relaxed and informal way that is not possible at a meeting of one of our large professional societies. This happy situation led to many lively and stimulating discussions, both in the formal sessions of the conference and outside them.