Alan Lessem

Lessem, Alan

Alan (Philip) Lessem. Musicologist, teacher, administrator, b Salisbury, Rhodesia (Harare, Zimbabwe), 29 Nov 1940, naturalized Canadian 1981, d Toronto 5 Oct 1991; BA (Cape Town) 1963, B MUS (Cape Town) 1963, M LITT (Cambridge) 1967, PH D (Illinois) 1973. Lessem began teaching at York University in 1970. He was chairman 1975-82 of the Music Dept and associate dean 1985-8 of the Faculty of Fine Arts. Lessem's research interests, among them Schoenberg and 20th century music, were reflected in his publications: a book, articles, and reviews for major musicological publications. He gave papers at conferences in Canada, the USA, and France. Lessem was co-editor 1989-91 of CUMR.

Writings

'"Imitation" and "expression": opposing views in French and British music criticism of the eighteenth century,' J of the American Musicological Society, vol 27, Summer 1974

'Schoenberg and the crisis of expressionism,' Music and Letters, vol 55, Oct 1974

'Music and text in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire,' Current Musicology, vol 19, 1975

Music and Text in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg: The Critical Years, 1908-1922 (Ann Arbor, Mich, 1979)

'Schoenberg, Stravinsky and neo-classicism: the issues re-examined,' MQ, vol 68, Oct 1982

'Social and historical consciousness in music of the 1920s,' Report of the Thirteenth Congress of the IMS, Strasbourg 1982, vol 2 (Strasbourg 1986)

'The refugee composer in America: a topic for twentieth-century music history,' CUMR, vol 6, 1985

'Schumann's arrangements of Bach: a case for reception history,' J of Musicological Research, vol 7, no. 1, 1986

'Bridging the gap: contexts for the reception of Haydn and Bach,' International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, vol 19, Dec 1988

'Teaching Americans music: some emigré composer viewpoints, ca. 1930-1955,' J of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, vol 11, no. 1, 1988

- et al. 'From composer to audience: the production of serious music in Canada,' CUMR, vol 9, no. 2, 1989