A festival and conference celebrating the 70th birthday of James Webster, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Music, will be held Oct. 26-28 at Cornell, with 23 musicologists at universities from across the U.S. and institutions in Canada, Germany, Hungary and Italy.

Scholars will convene in Ithaca to present papers in honor of Webster all three days. Two of the presenters, Mary Hunter and Richard Will, have edited a new book dedicated to Webster, "Engaging Haydn: Culture, Context, and Criticism," featuring articles by Neal Zaslaw, the Herbert Gussman Professor of Music, and most of the conference participants.

The first day will close with a performance of Haydn's Mass in B-flat Major ("Harmoniemesse") at 8 p.m. in Sage Chapel, featuring the Cornell University Chorus and Glee Club, the Cornell Chamber Orchestra and alumni as guest soloists, under the baton of Chris Younghoon Kim, director of orchestras.

All events in "The History, Theory and Aesthetics of the Musical Canon: A Festival and Conference Honoring James Webster on his 70th Birthday" are free and open to the public. Most conference sessions will take place in B20 Lincoln Hall.

Webster began teaching in Cornell's Department of Music in 1971. He specializes in the history and theory of music of the 18th and 19th centuries, with a particular focus on Joseph Haydn. His other interests include Mozart (especially his operas), Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms, as well as performance practice, editorial practice and the historiography of music.

Webster was a founding editor of the journal Beethoven Forum, and served as musicological consultant for the recordings of Haydn's symphonies on original instruments by the Academy of Ancient Music, directed by Christopher Hogwood (who was recently named an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell).

Among Webster's honors are the Einstein and Kinkeldey Awards of the American Musicological Society, a Fulbright dissertation grant, two senior research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany.

One of Haydn's final works, the joyful and exuberant Mass in B-flat Major, was written for the birthday celebrations of the Esterhazy Princess in 1802, so its selection for the Oct. 26 performance is fitting. The work was given the secondary title "Harmoniemesse" due to the prominence of the winds ("harmonie" being the 18th century German term for a small wind band). In addition to the string orchestra, the score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons and two horns, as well as timpani, organ and choir. Arsenia Soto (soprano), Toby Newman (mezzo-soprano), Nathaniel McEwen (tenor) and Brian Chu (baritone) will perform as soloists.

Loralyn Light is events manager for the Department of Music.