Valentina Konen's Early Years in America: An Excerpt from "100 Years of Musical Impressions"

Abstract

Valentina Dzhozefovna Konen (1909–91) was one of the most distinguished and wide-ranging Russian musicologists of the twentieth century, whose bibliography of nearly 150 items includes books, articles, and monographs on subjects ranging from Purcell, Schütz, and Vaughan Williams to American jazz and rock.2 Although this introduction concerns itself primarily with Konen's scholarship about American music, a few words about her historical approach and her legacy are in order. Konen approached musicology by combining theoretical and aesthetic analyses of music with a careful consideration of its cultural history. Her independent philosophy, her scholarly principles, and her contemporary way of thinking did more than establish Konen's reputation as a musicologist: they enhanced the prestige of the discipline in Russia and inspired many young Soviet and Russian musicologists to build on her example. Her Istoriya zarubezhnoy muzïki, vol. 3: Germaniya, Avstriya, Italiya, Frantsiya, Pol'sha s 1789 goda do seredinï XIX veka (A History of Foreign Music, vol. 3: Germany, Austria, Italy, France, and Poland, from 1789 to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1958) went through seven editions, the last in 1989.