Horace Maxile

Horace Maxile
Baylor University, Texas

Horace J. Maxile, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Baylor University.  Prior to his appointment at Baylor he taught at UNC-Asheville and served at the Center for Black Music Research as Associate Director of Research.  His primary research interests include musical semiotics, jazz analysis, and concert music by African-American composers.  These interests and others are explored in articles in Journal of the Society for American Music, Annual Review of Jazz Studies, and Journal of Black Studies.

Talk Title: On Movements, Moments and Cultural Emblems in Works by African-American Composers

In explanations of the creative output by black composers in the middle decades of the 20th century, Eileen Southern noted that some composers who emerged during those years moved beyond the overt black-nationalist tenets of earlier generations. She also noted that black composers coped with “understanding of being a creative black artist in a basically hostile white society.”

While some composers responded by eschewing musical emblems that would signify influences from the vernacular, others chose to utilize black cultural emblems in fresh and inventive ways. By exploring historical, cultural and analytical perspectives as they relate to selected works by African-American composers, Prof. Maxile will offer interpretations that provide insight into: the idea of black nationalism, connections and counterpoints between composers and historical moments/movements (Civil Rights Movement, Black Arts Movement, etc.) and the wider-reaching implications of analyses that involve both the structural and expressive domains of music.

In an effort to expand the current body of scholarship on African-American composers to artists who were active during the Civil Rights Movement and the latter decades of the twentieth century, works of David N. Baker, Olly Wilson, Mary D. Watkins and Frederick Tillis are among those that are covered in this study.

WEB LINK: http://www.baylor.edu/music/theory/index.php?id=90114