James Parakilas settles at the piano. He begins to play. The notes, composed about 180 years ago, not been played — or heard — by anyone since.

Hearing the music, too, is English professor Lillian Nayder. She rediscovered the music in the archives of Britain’s Royal Academy of Music while researching the life of the composer, Fanny Dickens, elder sister of Charles.

As English professor Lillian Nayder continues researching the Dickens family, she’s finding that Fanny’s got talent. Image courtesy of the Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia.

Parakilas, the Moody Family Professor of Performing Arts, transcribed the music for piano and brought it back to life.

Parakilas plays on: an anthem for four voices in F major, a single chant in D minor and a canon in F major. None takes longer than one minute to perform. “Fanny’s timing and use of intervals in these pieces is quite sophisticated, and she handles multiple voices in different ranges quite well,” Parakilas tells Nayder.

Today, the pieces are as forgotten as their composer.

Nayder is the author of The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth, a look at Charles’ poor treatment of his estranged wife (Fall 2011 Bates Magazine). She is now turning to other women in Dickens’ life, as she drafts a historical novel that examines the complex relations among his sisters and sisters-in-law.

As Nayder listens to Parakilas play, she envisions a young woman with considerable musical talent, with her own strong power of expression. She is getting to know her a little better.

A Great IDea

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Five former John Kelsey students flash their Bates pedigree — in the form of their Bates student IDs — at a May 19, 2012, event honoring John Kelsey’s retirement as psychology professor and chair of the neuroscience program. The 2010 grads honoring Kelsey are, from left, Rebecca Lange, Lauren Shapiro, Tom Berry, Alexia Zhang and John Bladon.

Academics Facts

“Stimulus from association with a superior mind” is the founding mission of Bates honors program.

Seniors didn’t “hand in” their honors theses this year — they uploaded digital versions.

New English course: “Literary Imagination and Neuroscience,” by Sanford Freedman.

Great teachers “kindle fire in another soul because [their] own souls were first aflame,” said President Gray.

Aspiring railroad systems engineer Joanna Moody ’I4 won a Goldwater Scholarship.

Honoring John Cole

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

John Cole, the Reynolds Professor of History, and daughter Elizabeth acknowledge warm applause at the surprise April 27 reception honoring the conclusion of his teaching career after 45 years on the Bates faculty.

Six Professorships Appointed

And a few words about the Bates names behind the endowed chairs recently assumed by senior Bates professors.

Marcus Bruce ’77

Marcus Bruce ’77: Benjamin E. Mays Professor of Religious Studies

Mays ’20 is considered the “schoolmaster of the civil rights movement.” Established by trustee emeritus James Orr P’94.

Jane Costlow

Jane Costlow: Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies

Griffith ’53 is a Massachusetts cranberry farmer with the Ocean Spray cooperative.

Rebecca Herzig

Rebecca Herzig: Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies

Johnson was a Swedish immigrant turned NYC industrialist who created a philanthropic foundation.

Glen Lawson

Glen Lawson: Charles A. Dana Professor of Chemistry

Dana professorships honor Bates’ preeminent teacher scholars.

Lynne Lewis

Lynne Lewis: Elmer W. Campbell Professor of Economics

Campbell ’27 rose from clerk to VP at a local bank. His first gift was $100 in 1954.

Erica Rand

Erica Rand: Whitehouse Professor of Art and Visual Culture and Women and Gender Studies

David Whitehouse ’36 was an executive with Container Corp. in Caracas, Venezuela.

What’s Your Major?

An accounting of all academic majors for the Class of 2011:

134 Humanities Majors

Art and Visual Culture 28
Chinese 4
East Asian Studies 4
English 32
French 11
German 2
Japanese 3
Music 7
Philosophy 10
Religious Studies 4
Rhetoric 8
Russian 2
Spanish 10
Theater 9

210 Social Sciences Majors

Anthropology 13
Economics 50
History 34
Politics 44
Psychology 47
Sociology 22

70 Natural Sciences Majors

Biology 24
Chemistry 12
Geology 7
Mathematics 19
Physics 8

83 Interdisciplinary Majors

African American Studies 1
American Cultural Studies 7
Biological Chemistry 21
Classical and Medieval Studies 4
Environmental Studies 27
Interdisciplinary Self-Designed 6
Women and Gender Studies 10
Neuroscience 7

But his older sister Fanny, whose birth bicentennial passed in October 2010, definitely does need an introduction, though she was well-known in certain circles in her own time — considerably before Charles became, well, Dickens.

Lillian Nayder, professor of English at Bates College.

Bates College Professor of English Lillian Nayder, with the help of Bates music faculty colleague James P. Parakilas, is about to give Fanny that introduction, or reintroduction, through the voice Fanny was known for in her day: the music, both vocal and instrumental, that she composed and performed for admiring (and often paying) audiences.

Nayder has a strong academic interest in the generally forgotten lives of the women in Dickens’ life, and his sometimes difficult relationships with those women. She is author of The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth (Cornell University Press, 2011), the first comprehensive portrait of the woman whom Charles Dickens married, with whom he had 10 children, and from whom he separated in 1858 (after 22 years of marriage), claiming she was an unfit wife and mother and pursuing a relationship with 18-year-old actress Ellen Ternan instead.

The book presents a very different picture of Catherine that has won wide media attention from outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The London Review of Books and the BBC. The book inspired a BBC2 television special entitled Mrs. Dickens’ Family Christmas, which aired in the UK at the end of December 2011.

Nayder has now turned her attention to Fanny, as she drafts an historical novel that examines the relations among Fanny, Letitia Austin (another of Charles’ siblings) and their sisters-in-law Catherine and Harriet.

Fanny died of tuberculosis in 1848 at age 38, leaving a husband and two sons. But during that short life she gained some renown among lovers of both secular and sacred music. She sang and played in churches and concert halls in England, and also gave private lessons to students at the Royal Academy and elsewhere.

In fact, the way in which she is best known today is through an autobiographical fragment Charles Dickens wrote as an adult, recalling the pain that Fanny’s teenage success at the Royal Academy caused him. With his parents in 1824, he watched as Fanny was awarded medals for her musical efforts and success— during the very time their parents “threw away” his talents by consigning him to work at Warren’s Blacking factory in London, where he pasted labels on jars of shoe blacking. Charles loved his sister but at this time in his boyhood he contrasted what he perceived as Fanny’s privilege with his own deprivation and “felt as if [his] heart were rent.”

James Parakilas, the Moody Family Professor of Performing Arts at Bates College.

Researching Fanny’s life in the archives of the Royal Academy, Nayder found within the last year manuscripts of six short pieces that Fanny composed while she was a student there in the 1820s, all written between 1825 and 1827; pieces never recorded and now as forgotten as the composer has been. They include an Anthem for four voices in F major, a single chant in D minor, and a canon in F major. None takes longer than one minute to perform.

Recognizing the significance of this find, Nayder shared copies of the manuscripts with Parakilas, Bates’ James L. Moody Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts, who transcribed the parts into piano scores and performed them for Nayder.

Nayder will share her findings with other Dickens scholars on Feb. 6 in Chatham, England, where Charles and Fanny spent some of their growing up, as part of a presentation about Fanny’s life and the ways in which she has been represented. The talk will be part of a week-long “traveling conference” on the world of Dickens that will take place in areas of England and France where he spent various parts of his life.

Nayder does not yet have permission to make recordings available to the general public, but the transcription and performance process has put her in a position to describe them very fully and explain the musical skills Fanny displayed during her brief life.

“These are student compositions, none too elaborate, but I was struck by how interesting they are,” Nayder says. “As Jim [Parakilas] pointed out, Fanny’s timing and use of intervals in these pieces is quite sophisticated, and she handles multiple voices in different ranges quite well.

“No one has heard these pieces in probably 180 years, and they demonstrate that Fanny possessed considerable musical talent, and that she had her own strong power of expression.”

The concert by pianist James Parakilas, violinist Mary Hunter and cellist Steve Witkin is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Parakilas chairs the Bates music department. A piano student of Robert Miller, John Kirkpatrick and Leonard Seeber, he has given solo and chamber performances throughout Maine, including in the clarinet-violin-piano trio Penumbra and with the dancers Carol Dilley and Jill Eng.

Parakilas has also performed as soloist with the Bates College Orchestra, and coaches chamber music at Bates. He is the editor of the acclaimed social history “Piano Roles: 300 Years of Life with the Piano” (Yale University Press, 2000).

Hunter chairs the music department and coaches chamber musicians at Bowdoin. She studied violin at the Guildhall School of Music in London, and more recently with Rowan Smith and Eva Gruesser. She is a member of the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra.

Witkin is principal cellist with the Colby College Symphony Orchestra and former principal cellist of the Bach Chamber Orchestra of Milwaukee. He plays frequently throughout Maine, and has performed in orchestras and at chamber music recitals in Florida, New York and Italy. He studied with Kermit Moore, David Soyer, Lowell Creitz and George Sopkin. He is an ophthalmologist with Maine Eye Care Associates in Waterville.

The Calder Quartet, a string ensemble praised for its bold programs and technical excellence, will be joined by leading Maine pianist Frank Glazer for a concert spanning 140 years of music at 8 p.m. Friday, May 4, in Bates College’s Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The concert is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

The Calder Quartet will perform Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, premiered in 1904; String Quartet No. 1 by Christopher Rouse, completed in 1982; and, with Glazer, Johannes Brahms’ dynamic Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, completed in 1866.

The Calder Quartet takes a cue from its namesake, the great visual artist Alexander Calder, by boldly seeking new ways to stretch the capabilities and definition of a string quartet. Praised for its “splendor and substance” by an LA Weekly reviewer, the foursome deftly balances the best of traditional repertoire with avant-garde music.

The 92-year-old Glazer, a pianist of international renown, has been an artist in residence at Bates since 1980. In a era whose pianists often strive for the gloss of mechanical precision and a big sound, Glazer instead makes all else secondary to the music’s own message.

“He has thought everything through and tried to get at the core of what the music is about. Everything he does is about that,” says colleague James Parakilas, a pianist himself and the James L. Moody Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts at Bates. “And he has a wonderful way of making a line sing.”

This season, the Calder Quartet has served as The Juilliard School’s graduate resident quartet, one of the school’s highest distinctions. The group also continues a relationship with the Colburn School in Los Angeles, where they participate in the Colburn Chamber Artists Series, and with the Carlsbad Music Festival, an alternative classical music festival in Carlsbad, Calif., that the Calders co-founded with composer Matt McBane.

The group has performed debuts with the Washington Performing Arts Society’s Kreeger String Series at the Kennedy Center, the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and San Francisco Performances. Last season, at the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Minimalist Jukebox” festival, the Calders worked with composer Terry Riley, offering performances of his early string chamber that led Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed to call the ensemble “stunning.”

Guest artists who have appeared with the quartet include pianists Claude Frank and Anne-Marie McDermott, two-time Grammy Award-winning guitarist Sharon Isbin, flutist Ransom Wilson, harpist Nancy Allen, violinist Robert McDuffie and mandolinist Mike Marshall.

A Topsham resident, Glazer brings to the concert stage a long and highly distinguished career that includes numerous recordings, solo recitals and performances with orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the New England Piano Quartette, of which he was a founder.

In October 2006, Glazer celebrated the 70th anniversary of his 1936 New York City debut by performing the same program at Bates.

He taught at the Eastman School of Music for 15 years before coming to Maine with his wife, Ruth, in 1980. The couple founded the Saco River Festival, held in Cornish every summer. Ruth Glazer passed away in 2006.

The Bates College Choir performs operatic choruses by some of the genre’s greatest composers in 8 p.m. concerts on Friday, Dec. 1, and Saturday, Dec. 2, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The concerts are free and open to the public, but tickets are required. For reservations or more information, please call 207-786-6135.

With some 70 students participating, the choir is directed by John Corrie, lecturer in music and a member of the Bates faculty since 1982. Pianist James Parakilas, James L. Moody Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts at Bates, will accompany the singers.

Eschewing more-typical long choral works in favor of varied short operatic pieces, Corrie’s program reaches back to the 17th century and English composer Henry Purcell. Other composers on the program include the Italian operatic giants Verdi and Puccini; Charles Gounod, who composed the opera Faust, and Georges Bizet, of Carmen fame; Mozart, represented by choruses from Idomeneo and The Magic Flute; and Wagner, whose “Bridal Chorus” from the opera Lohengrin is often heard at weddings but seldom associated with this composer.

“We’re singing opera choruses this fall to provide music that compliments the course that Jim Parakilas is teaching this semester, ‘Music and Opera,’ ” Corrie explains, pointing out that Parakilas is currently writing a textbook history of opera.

“From a choral point of view,” Corrie adds, “the choir is singing more in French and Italian than we ever have in the past. Previous concerts with choruses in German and in English are many.”

Sopranos all, students featured as soloists are Amy Lareau, a sophomore from Westborough, Mass.; Sidney Walker, a senior from Minneapolis; Alexandra Conroy, a junior from Windham; and Marsha Larned, a senior from Thornton, Pa., who will join tenor Corrie in a duet from Verdi’s La Traviata.

In addition to directing the college choir, Corrie teaches harpsichord, organ, voice and musicianship at Bates. He is organist and choir director of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin (Episcopal) in Falmouth, and artistic director of the popular Maine Music Society, which includes the Androscoggin Chorale and the Maine Chamber Ensemble. He performs throughout New England as a singer and on harpsichord and organ.

Parakilas is the chair of the Bates music department. As pianist, he performs in chamber groups with students and colleagues, and coaches student chamber groups. He is the editor of the acclaimed social history Piano Roles: 300 Years of Life with the Piano (Yale University Press, 2000).

Costlow, professor of Russian and East Asian languages and literature, is the inaugural Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies. Parakilas, professor of music, is the inaugural James L. Moody Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts.The Johnson Professorship is funded through a $1.2-million grant from the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation of New York City. As Harward says, “it recognizes the ever-increasing connections among academic disciplines. It brings a new level of visibility and confidence in the value of taking research and teaching wherever they lead, even when beyond the boundaries of established fields of study.” The Johnson Professorship in Interdisciplinary Studies is held for a four-year term. The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation was incorporated in 1952 in New York with funds donated by Christian A. Johnson, a Swedish immigrant who eventually became a prominent financier and industrialist.

A member of the Bates faculty for 15 years, Costlow has been a full professor since 1999. She is the author of two books on Russian literature and was recently awarded a Phillips Faculty Fellowship funding her studies in Russia.

Costlow graduated summa cum laude from Duke University in 1976 and received her doctorate in Slavic languages and literatures from Yale University in 1987. She is the author of Worlds Within Worlds: The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (Princeton University Press 1990) and co-editor of Representations of the Body and Sexuality in Russian Culture (Stanford University Press 1998).

Costlow’s research includes examining the significance of the forest in Russian culture, as a source of legend and an economic resource, as well as an historic place of refuge and resistance. She is studying the role and representation of the forest in Soviet and World War II-era partisan activity in Bryansk Forest and in current projects to create a national park in a Taiga forest area of central Russia.

Her translation of The Tragic Menagerie, a recently rediscovered piece of Russian literature, received critical acclaim from both The New York Times and the New Yorker and garnered a 1999 prize for best translation from Russian/East European languages by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. Costlow’s introduction won the 1997 Heldt Prize for best essay in Slavic women’s studies. The Johnson Professorship is the only chair at Bates specifically devoted to interdisciplinary studies.

The Moody Professorship was established through a $1.5-million endowment gift from James L. Moody ’53, chair of the Board of Fellows at Bates and retired CEO and chairman of Hannaford Bros. Co. The professorship reflects the Moody family’s interest in the performing arts. James Parakilas has taught at Bates since 1979. He was chair of the Humanities division from 1996 through 2000 and is currently the chair of the department of Music. He graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College in 1970, received his master’s degree in music history from the University of Connecticut in 1975 and his doctorate in musicology from Cornell University in 1979.

Parakilas is the author of many articles and four books on music, including Ballads Without Words: Chopin and the Tradition of the Instrumental Ballade (Amadeus Press 1992). Most recently, in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the piano, Parakilas co-wrote and edited Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano, (Yale University Press 1999).

An exploration of the musical and social roles played by the piano in its long history, Piano Roles received glowing praise from the New Yorker, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Parakilas, who teaches a Bates course “The Piano as a Culture Machine,” writes in the introduction to his book: “The piano is the instrument, the product, around which the modern entertainment industry was created.”

Parakilas’ essay “Nuit plus belle qu’un beau jour’: Piano, Song and the Voice in the Piano Nocturne received the 1999 Wilk Prize, awarded annually by the Center for Polish Music Studies at the University of Southern California.

There are more than 21 endowed professorships at Bates, recognizing the academic qualities of its faculty and the generosity of donors to the College.

James Parakilas, fortepiano, will performs works from the classical period Feb. 1. Vocalists Carmen Nadeau and Paul Jalbert will present a program of popular songs and show tunes Feb 8. Bates senior Sarah Teillon, alto, assisted by John Corrie, piano, will present Sea Pictures, a song cycle by British composer Edward Elgar, Feb. 15. There will be no concert Feb. 22 when the college is in winter recess. Joshua Fix, Bates class of 1999, will present a program of original compositions Feb. 29.

Additional information about the Bates Noonday Concert Series is available by calling the Olin Arts Center at 207-786-6l35.

The free concerts, open to the public, will be held on Tuesdays from 12:30 to 1 p.m. at the college’s Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Three other Noonday concerts are scheduled for the month of September. On Sept. 16, Jeffery Pelletier, flute, and pianist Mark Howard will perform Handel sonatas. Soprano Atsuko Hirai and pianist Frank Glazer will perform operatic arias by Verdi on Sept. 23. The artist for the Sept. 30 concert will be announced.

More information on the Bates Noonday Concert Series is available from Olin Arts at 207-786-6l35.