External links
- 5 October 2012 – Schumann-Preisträger 2013 stehen fest. schumannzwickau.de; Short biography
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Jon W. Finson (born 4 November 1950) is an American musicologist.
Biography
Finson grew up on the North Shore of the Chicago suburbs. He attended New Trier High School West, where he studied contrabass with Harold Siegel. [1] Finson subsequently studied at the University Colorado, Boulder, College of Music, [2] where he took a Bachelor of Music degree, with an emphasis in musicology, graduating with honors in 1973. While at Colorado, he studied orchestral conducting with Abraham Chavez, [3] and voice [4] with Barbara Kinsey Sable, [5] who led him to a passion for American popular song of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as an exploration of Robert Schumann's lieder. In 2016 Finson received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the CU College of Music. [6]
Finson continued his study of musicology (especially its epistemology and ontology) at the University of Wisconsin—Madison with Lawrence Gushee, who served as his advisor for a master's thesis on "The Performance Practice of Four String Quartets Active in the First Twenty-five Years of the Twentieth Century as Documented on Direct-cut Macrogroove Discs" [7] (MA, 1975). While at Wisconsin, he also studied early music and gamba with visiting professor David Fallows. Finson wrote his doctoral dissertation (Ph.D. 1980), "Robert Schumann: The Creation of the Symphonic Works," [8] at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Philip Gossett, with the support of a fellowship from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music. Subvened by the Fund for a year abroad, Finson examined Schumann autographs in Vienna at the Archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and also at the Berlin State Library. While in Berlin, he attended lectures by Carl Dahlhaus on theories of musical form. Finson's work on the philology of music, as well as his interest in early music and viola da gamba, garnered him a position with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he taught musicology and American Studies from 1978 to 2013, [9] also directing the Collegium Musicum instrumental ensemble and choir from 1978 to 1988 (thereafter serving as advisor). [10]
Scholarly Writing
While at UW Madison, Finson wrote his first article for the Galpin Society Journal on "The Violone in Bach's Brandenburg Concerti" (1976). His second article, "Music and Medium: Two Versions of Manilow's 'Could It Be Magic'," exploring the phenomenon of time limits in the radio broadcast of popular songs, appeared in The Musical Quarterly (1979). He contributed many subsequent articles on compositional process in the symphonic works of Robert Schumann to The Musical Quarterly, The Journal of Musicology, and The Journal of the American Musicological Society . Other articles addressed the performing practice of late nineteenth-century music, with particular reference to Brahms, in The Musical Quarterly (1984) and the polito-cultural implications of Gustav Mahler's Wunderhorn lieder in The Journal of Musicology (1987). [11]
Two of his nine books published to date figure prominently in research on Robert Schumann:
His other scholarly books include:
He has lectured and held seminars throughout North America, in Germany, England, and in Hong Kong.
Editions
Finson contributed his first scholarly edition to the series Music of the United States of American in the form of the collected songs of Edward Harrigan and David Braham (1997), 2 vols., AR Editions, Music of the United States of America (publications), for the American Musicological Society. [19] He later published Schumann's Symphony No. 4 (D minor) in a critical edition of the first version for Breitkopf & Härtel in Wiesbaden (2003), [20] which won a "Best Edition Award" (2004, Category 7: miniature and study scores, apart from reductions for piano) [21] from the Association of German Music Publishers. Recordings are available online in the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle, [22] and streaming by the North German Radio Orchestra (Hamburg; Sony) [23] conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock and by the West German Radio Orchestra (Düsseldorf) [24] conducted by Heinz Holliger.
Together with Ulf Wallin, he won the 2013 Robert Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau.
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