Inaugural Lenore Coral Memorial Lecture a success

In addition to Prof. Will’s wide-ranging and thought provoking talk, which I will not try to encapsulate here (except to note that he makes an interesting preliminary stab at problematizing Taruskin’s construction of “modernism” in 20th century performance practice), David Yearsley gave a generous introduction explaining the reasoning behind the Lenore Coral Memorial Lectures. He said that each lecture will feature a distinguished Cornell alumnus, and the lectures were named for Lenore because of her unstinting support for graduate music education at Cornell. She served as an adviser, as director of graduate studies, and for many years as chair of the musicology colloquium series. Yearsley also noted the Lenore Coral Festschrift, “Music, Libraries and the Academy (A-R Editions, 2007) edited by Jim Cassaro. Most flattering for us in the music library (and for her) he described her active role in the redesign of Lincoln Hall, making it into a “music library with a music school around it,”  which Yearsley noted was just fine with him.