Sponsored by the Center for German and European Studies, and the Mead-Witter School of Music.
Dörte Schmidt, Professor of Musicology, University of the Arts-Berlin and Reinhard Kapp, Professor Emeritus of Musicology, University of Music and Performing Arts-Vienna.
The German composer and musicologist Michael Kopfermann (1936-2010) spent his student years on a scholarship that brought him to Madison in 1966-67 to study with Pro Arte violinist and School of Music faculty member Rudolf Kolisch. Musicologists Dörte Schmidt (Berlin) and Reinhard Kapp (Vienna) have uncovered a large cache of Kopfermann’s letters to his family, in which he offers a rare and detailed account of the cultural and intellectual life in Madison in the 1960s and the vibrancy of the community of German émigrés who made Madison their home after World War II. Profs. Schmidt and Kapp will be visiting UW to conduct research to learn more about the places, people, and experiences Kopfermann describes in his letters: his interactions with music faculty and students, the seminars and concerts he attended, the music he studied, and the members of Madison’s vibrant intellectual community of German émigrés with whom he came into contact. Schmidt and Kapp will discuss the collection, highlight Kopfermann’s impressions of Madison and the campus, and shed light on the climate in 1960s Madison from the perspective of a young German music student visiting the United States for the first time.