Excerpts from a Conversation with Elizabeth Hoffman

EXCERPTS FROM A CONVERSATION WITH ELIZABETH HOFFMAN ELIZABETH HOFFMAN WITH RACHEL S. VANDAGRIFF RACHEL S. VANDAGRIFF: Thank you for sending me your text. This first question is probably based on my own interest in getting to know you better, or coming to understand you better, rather than about PNM directly, but I would like to ask you more is about your personal relationships with people involved in PNM. Have there been any particular conversations have had with “Perspectives” people, in and or around the journal, that contributed to your sense of this being a congenial “club” and/or a “conversation”? This would help me, I think, flesh out the whole picture of you in the PNM world. ELIZABETH HOFFMAN: The PNM people with whom I have had personal contact since living in NYC include Christopher Shultis and Martin Scherzinger, Ellie Hisama and Anton Vishio, and, of course, 168 History of Perspectives Ben Boretz. My exchanges with them are always energizing, productive , and intellectually charged. I am sure I am leaving lots of people out in this attempted summary though. Beyond this, PNM has occasionally led me to connect with composers of a younger generation. For example, I just bumped into Dean Rosenthal last week, randomly, at a concert. He is the Open Space online editor, and so naturally also a reader of PNM. We had a followup breakfast the next day before he left town; and I think that this instinctive camaraderie was a nice instance of a PNM effect. Recently, I have had brief online exchanges with/introductions to Matthew Barber and Jon Forshee regarding their reactions to the Milton Babbitt memorial project. And, I hugely admire the professional work of Joe Dubiel, Marion Guck, and Judy Lochhead. Since living in NYC I have had infrequent but always meaningful professional and personal contact with them. Finally, to return to Ben Boretz: having him as a local friend and resource for conversations about all manner of musical resonances is a real privilege. ([N.B., 3/2013]: [written addition]: It was not until a recent presentation of Ben’s to a class of mine that I realized what a remarkable listener and psychoanalyst he is, as well as thinker. His insights on language usage caught me off guard in their virtuosity. He, and his thematic foci, have become points of reference for virtually all the students in the seminar.) And, a very important theme to me that I mostly left out of the essay I sent you, is women’s involvement in the field of theory and composition, inside and outside of academia. PNM led directly to my familiarity with the work of theorists I later met personally, including Marianne Kielian-Gilbert and Elaine Barkin, both at least as charming and funny and sharp in person as in their writings. I actually think that “In Response” [Perspectives of New Music 20/1–2: 288–329] [which includes thoughts by Ruth Anderson, Anonymous I, Sandra Cotton, Anne E. Deane, Emma Lou Diemer, Pozzi Escot, Vivian Fine, Miriam Gideon, Anne LeBaron, Annea Lockwood, Priscilla McLean, Shulamit Ran, Anna Rubin, Kathleen St. John, Sheila Silver, Laurie Spiegel, Diane Thome, Elizabeth Vercoe, and Marilyn Ziffrin] may have been the very first PNM piece I read. This “Response” had a profound impact on me, as it demonstrated PNM’s commitment to affirmative action for women in academia and in the professional composing world. It also led me to think hard about what ‘feminism’ meant to me at that moment. I recall being startled that the women interviewed held such varied views about how to practice feminism. VANDAGRIFF: Many people I have interviewed have brought up that Elizabeth Hoffman 169 piece and the other feminist panels and colloquy as among the articles that they return to or that made a big impact on them. HOFFMAN: Including men? VANDAGRIFF: Yes. HOFFMAN: That is nice to hear. I think that finding men who are supportive of feminism is an invaluable strategy—and often the only real political recourse for women in institutions. The discriminatory behaviors I have encountered professionally have unsettled me acutely —partly, I think, because they were absent, delightfully, during my graduate studies. To me, PNM always...