Links to articles
People are still talking about Everett on the web.
Some Obits
Tim Boudreau’s Blog: Everett Hafner, a belated eulogy
Everett Hafner was an eccentric, brilliant man who left a legacy in the lives of many of his students, and I was one of them. …
Everett Hafner, College Dean, 78
Published: August 6, 1998
Everett Hafner, a founding dean of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., died on Sunday when the plane he was piloting crashed near Worthington, Mass. He was 78 and lived in Williamsburg, Mass.
The cause of the crash was under investigation, the authorities said.
Hampshire College, an experimental college created in 1965, gives its students major responsibility for planning their courses of study. Dr. Hafner, was the college’s first dean of natural science and mathematics, retired in 1976 and pursued other interests, including composing.
Dr. Hafner is survived by two daughters, Sarah Hafner of Conway, Mass., and Katie Hafner of Sonoma, Calif.; three sisters, Marylin Hafner of Cambridge, Mass., Sylvia Sloan of Carlsbad, Calif., and Katherine Gottsegen of Bedford Hills, N.Y., and a granddaughter.
Word has been received from IDRS member David Nielsen that fellow IDRS member, oboist Everett Hafner of Village Road, Mass., died tragically in the crash of his Cessna 150 airplane on August 2, 1998 near Chesterfield, Mass. Everett was a faculty member of the physics department of the University of Rochester, New York, and became Dean of Natural Sciences at Hampshire College in 1968 until his retirement. After his retirement he received a second doctorate from the University of Massachusetts in music theory, and remained active as a composer and oboist. He was particularly interested in electronic music, and maintained a studio in his home. The IDRS mourns the tragic loss of this valued member.
Music, Books
In a 1974 article (Hafner, Everett, “The Forty-Eight Revisited in Thirty-One”, Well Tempered Notes, November 1974, Motorola Scalatron Inc) Everett Hafner makes the fascinating observation that each prelude and fugue in Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, requires only twelve notes in a chain of meantone fifths, and that the tuning for this chain may be defined in a completely regular way. Hafner’s rule is that for each key signature, we start the chain a tone (two fifths) below the major tonic associated to that signature. Hence, for instance, C minor or E flat major, with key signature of three flats, starts the chain at D flat, a tone below E flat.
by Everett Hafner (Author), Marylin Hafner (Illustrator)
This study begins with a review of theoretical approaches to the study of time in musical performance. We ask whether in fact there is, or even can be, a satisfactory theory of performance time — that is, a theory in the scientific sense of the word. The concepts appropriate to the understanding of time in general are summarized. Then, as a step forward in application to music, the problem of time as faced by the orchestral conductor is examined. Detailed measurements are carried out on six short symphonic compositions chosen for variety of period and style, for considerable and frequent change of tempo, and for freedom given to — and sometimes taken by — conductors in setting their own tempo for successive sections of the piece. Conductors are also chosen for variety of style. Analysis of the data bears on a central question: regardless of changes of tempo, which often depart sharply from a composer’s intentions and from each other, to what extent do temporal proportions of a given work exhibit invariance as we pass from one conductor to the next?
Cosmic Electromagnetic Radiation
The sky shine covers an enormous spectrum of frequencies, revealing a cosmic picture in some detail
Mozart’s Oboe Concerto in C Major, K.271k/285d/314
Everett Hafner works in the Department of Music &. Dance at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Example 10. editor. solo. Mvt. II. Mvt. III …
Time Divided: Invariance of Proportion in Orchestral Performance
In the long literature of criticism, we inherit the view that an essential attribute of all excellent conductors is their close attention to tempo, presumably in an attempt to recapture the composers’ original conceptions of their music. I find in this study that it is not unusual for tempi in performances of an orchestral work to vary by as much as forty percent, even when composers provide tempo markings and in some cases with precise timing directions as well. Nevertheless, despite these large differences in total times spent on performances of a given work, and despite wide variety of styles and musical tastes, there often appears to be remarkable consensus on the temporal proportions of a work — the fractions of time spent on its formal divisions. This is of course not surprising in music of constant metronomic tempo as, say, in a Beethoven scherzo. But the question becomes lively when we time performances of works that lend themselves to far greater temporal freedom — the music of Mahler, Wagner, Debussy, Ives, Bartók, Schoenberg, and so on.
(Progress note: So far I have found no orchestral work that shows significant departure from this principle when performed by conductors whom we regard as differing widely in their approach to all other aspects of music. I’d appreciate comment from members with suggestions for pieces and conductors to test, and with reference to other work on this or related aspects of performance.)