Graduate Research Colloquia: Professor Jeremy Yudkin (Boston University)
'The Greatest American Rock Band'
Abstract
Duke Ellington said that there are only two kinds of music: good and bad. My belief is that the difference lies in the honesty of the music making. Does the composer or performer really mean it, or are they just showing off? Does he or she want to communicate genuine feeling or just make a pretense of doing so?
But in order to determine "greatness," I suggest expanding the criteria to include three things: musical interest, originality, and integrity. And this applies to all music: classical music, jazz, popular music - all kinds of music making.
This paper will attempt to show that there was one American rock band that fulfills these criteria in the years around 1967-1972, when there were a large number of contenders for the title.
I shall start by soliciting a vote from audience members as to their choice for "greatest American rock band," and then discuss my own choice and attempt to justify it by playing and discussing examples of this band's work.
At the end we shall tally the audience's votes.
Biography
Jeremy Yudkin is Professor of Music and Director of the Center for Beethoven Research at Boston University, which he founded together with Lewis Lockwood ten years ago. He received his BA and MA in Classics and Modern Languages from Cambridge University and his PhD in Historical Musicology from Stanford University. He has taught at Harvard and for many years served as Visiting Professor of Music at Oxford University. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation Fellowship, the Center for the Humanities, the Camargo Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
At Boston University he teaches classes on Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Bartok, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and jazz. He is the author of ten books on medieval music, Beethoven, and jazz - three of which have won distinguished prizes - and an introductory textbook on music that is used by approximately twenty thousand students every year.
Professor Yudkin has lectured across the United States, and in England, France, Italy, Canada, and Russia. At Tanglewood, the annual summer music festival in Massachusetts, he is well-known for his pre-concert summer Tanglewood Talks, a series he has presented continuously for the last 43 years.