Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

June 18, 2019

Simon Goodacre | Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

PhD candidate Matthew Heck first fell in love with Shostakovich as a young violinist. He has spent his time at Brandeis investigating the nuts and bolts of Shostakovich's musical language and attempting to bring together the existing scholarship from Russian and Anglophone theorists.

Transcript

Simon:                   

Hello and welcome to the Highlights Podcast. I am Simon Goodacre, the Associate Director of Communications and Marketing for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Brandeis University, and today I'll be speaking with Matthew Heck, a sixth year PhD candidate in Musicology. Welcome to the podcast, Matt.

Matt:                      

Thanks for having me, Simon.

Simon:                   

I understand you recently became a father this…

Matt:                      

I did.

Simon:                   

Congratulations!

Matt:                      

Thank you very much.

Simon:                   

Are you getting any sleep or…

Matt:                      

Knock on wood, I am. No, it's going really well, so…

Simon:                   

Fantastic.

Matt:                      

Thank you.

Simon:                   

Congratulations!

Matt:                      

Thank you.

Simon:                   

Let me ask you, how did you come to study musicology at Brandeis?

Matt:                      

Well, I took a little bit of a circuitous route. I did my undergrad at Oberlin College. I studied violin when I was young. I wanted to be a performance major, and then right around the time when I was a senior in high school, I injured my arm from playing. This sort of started a whole kind of soul searching operation. I went through with some of my auditions, but I decided that—and I got in some spots—but I decided that I should, instead of doing the conservatory route, go to college because I wasn't going to be able to count on my physical body to be able to handle the amount of playing a professional would take. I went to Oberlin. That's when I really started to study musicology seriously, but then, after that, I did not go straight into a PhD program. I worked at Tanglewood for a couple of years. Tanglewood is the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. And then I was lucky enough to get a job with the BSO, which I had for six years. I worked about eight years at Tanglewood, six years with the BSO, and then just decided that I wanted to challenge myself a little bit and do the degree and then come out of that with some more options. I figured this was the time to do it. This was six years ago, so this was before I was married, before I had children, so I took the plunge.

Simon:                   

And could you tell me a little bit about your dissertation work?

Matt:                      

Sure. Yeah. So I'm working on the music of Shostakovitch, and I'm looking at the sort of nuts and bolts of his musical language, which is something that Anglophone theorists and musicologists have generally steered away from. Russian theorists have addressed Shostakovich's musical language, but in ways that I think could use a fresh perspective. Then also British and American musicologists have focused on some other aspects of his music form and motivic and thematic transformation, ways in which it can be understood in dialogue with critical theory. Both sides of these have some incredible insights, but I think that there is a space where they can be brought together there. A lot of the British and American writers come at their sort of discussions of Shostakovich from a musicological perspective, so they're talking about ways in which his forms and these thematic transformations and things relate to not necessarily extra musical issues. Sometimes yes, but just how they sort of relate to Shostakovich's aesthetic in general and how that connects to his worldview and how it sort of relates to other arts in the time. That's the kind of perspective that I'd like to bring to his musical language. Sort of combine some of the efforts of these of the Russian theorists and some of the American, British musicologists. Ultimately, I think that his music is very, very rich in a kind of ambiguity and a kind of multi-valence, and this goes right down to—other writers have written about this in terms of form—but I think this goes right down to this, the very materials that he uses to compose.

I think that there's a connection to not just the sort of satirical writers of the early 20th century in Russia, but before that too, Dostoevsky, that's kind of under explored. There are a few, Carol Emerson of course has written about this and also Lavan Hakobian in Russia. He's really the only one that's really emphasized this connection with Dostoevsky, but again, when he writes about it, it's from a musicological perspective, so he doesn't sort of speculate the ways in which the language itself, the nuts and bolts kind of reflect this connection to Dostoevsky. That's where I'm headed.

Simon:                   

And what drew you to Shostakovich?

Matt:

Just from playing his music.

Simon:                   

Really?

Matt:                      

When I was- yeah, absolutely. I think like a lot of kids playing violin, I fell in love with his music when I was a teenager. People talk about this a lot, and I think Shostakovich gets a bad rap this way, where teenagers love Shostakovitch because they've got crazy emotions and all kinds of things are going on, and they can't express themselves and they have all this. It's a music that the aesthetic kind of lends itself to the adolescent experience, but there's so much more to this music. I feel the same way about the way that it has traditionally been viewed through the lens of politics, which is almost inevitable with Shostakovitch composing in the Soviet Union and all of the horrible repression that he experienced. His career is just a yo-yo sort of between extreme success and extreme official rejection, but I've always felt that there's something more to Shostakovitch's music than I think this kind of political story and this kind of Shostakovich is for young kids kind of idea, and it just never left me. I came to Brandeis and I studied other music, and especially the quartets, I've just always been in love with these pieces, so I've always come back to it, and here I am back again.

Simon:                   

Let's switch gears a little bit.

Matt:                      

Sure.

Simon:                   

I wanted to ask you a little bit about the Brandeis experience. Having been here for six years, how would you describe the faculty at Brandeis?

Matt:                      

Well, the faculty here are just incredible. The experience generally has really been amazing for me, and it's been in flux. The musicology department has changed quite a bit since I've come in. When I came in it was a primarily a department run by Dr. Chafe and Dr. Keiler, and now especially with Karen Desmond coming in, that has really shifted the department, which has been wonderful. But studying with Dr. Chafe and Dr. Keiler has really been an incredible experience.

Matt:                      

First of all, they complement each other really, really wonderfully. Keiler is much more of a kind of, he likes considering the perspectives of other scholars, and he likes to use that as a way to explore music. Also, his deep interest in the history of theory and sort of the ways in which analysis and interpretation kind of collide with semiotics and things like that. These are topics that Dr. Chafe is not really particularly connected with, however, Chafe has this wonderful, wonderful, deep, deep, deep understanding of the repertoire, and it just seems as though there's no piece of music that Dr. Chafe doesn't know, doesn't have something to say about it, and doesn't have something sort of insightful to say about its place in music history. It's really been wonderful to work with both of them out.

Like I said, Karen Desmond, who came in recently, has been wonderful and really has given the department a lot of energy, and we have more of a presence in some of the national conferences and things like that. However, I was done with most of my work when she came in, so she has really, really helped me think about my career and how I'm going to wrap up this degree logistically pragmatically. That's been really, really helpful, and I've seen the way that she's affected the department in terms of really sort of mentoring folks coming up. But Dr. Chafe and Dr. Keiler have been amazing to work with.

Simon:                   

Well, my final question for you then. What advice would you have for students considering a graduate education in musicology?

Matt:                      

All of this time is available, and just my advice would be to just use it wisely. If you can't think of ways to use it wisely, because that can be extremely overwhelming to think, "Okay, I have all this time. I have to use it well," and to just explore. Just keep reading and keep working and keep listening, and if for some reason you seem to hit a wall, just read something. Just read an article. Stay active. Read and write. It's particularly true of the humanities, but I'm sure it's true in the sciences. Everyone hits a kind of a wall and a place where they feel the paralysis of having so much time. Just stay interested, and if you're not interested, if you're stuck, then you need to read something else. Just move on and keep moving intellectually.

Simon:                   

Well, thank you very much, Matt.

Matt:                      

Yes.

Simon:

I appreciate the time today. Listeners, I hope you'll join us next time on the Highlights Podcast.