Past Events

2018-19

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2018-19
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
21 Sept. Leslie Blasius, University of Wisconsin
Musical Tempo at the Close of the Long 19th Century
5 Oct.
Robert Clarida, Reitler Kailas and Rosenblatt, LLC

Judith Finell, Judith Finell Music Services Inc.
Scales of Justice
26 Oct.
Matthew Mugmon, University of Arizona
Mahler, Bernstein and Jewish Identity
29 March Jennifer Iverson, University of Chicago
Fraught Adjacencies: The Politics of German Electronic Music
5 April
Stephanie Shonekan, University of Massachusetts, Amherst We Insist: Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite
12 April
Datta Ram Purohit, Hemwati nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University
Folk Musicians and the Traditional Theater of Uttarakhand, India

2017-18

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2017-18
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
26 Jan.
Kate Van Orden, Harvard University
Songs in Unexpected Places: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to Music and Mobility
9 Feb.
Douglas Shandle, Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University
Finding Florence Price: On Archives and Spectral Legacies
23 March
Kyle Adams, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music
How Did Chromaticism Become an "-Ism"?

2014-15

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2014-15
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
12 Sept.
Kenneth Kreitner,
Univ. of Memphis
Peñalosa: Some Mysteries

24 Oct.
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis,
Univ. of Arkansas
Repetition, Music and Mind
6 Feb.
Joseph Auner,
Tufts University
The Stopped Clock: Some Moments in Tonality and Technology Since 1950
20 Feb.
Michael Cherlin,
Univ. of Minnesota
Luigi Nono's fragmente-stille, an diotima and the Ineffable
6 Mar.
Annette Richards,
Cornell University
Sensibility Triumphant: C. P. E. Bach and the Art of Feeling
13 Mar.
Loren Schoenberg,
independent scholar
Lester Young: New Discoveries
17 Apr.
Ellen Koskoff,
Eastman School of Music
Is Ethnomusicology Inherently Feminist?

2013-14

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2013-14
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
20 Sept. Susan Neimoyer,
Univ. of Utah
After the Rhapsody: George Gershwin in the Spring of 1924
11 Oct. Anthony Tommasini,
Chief Classical Music Critic for the New York Times
A Critic Reflects on Wagner and Wagner Productions
15 Nov. Gregory Booth,
Univ. of Auckland
"The New Music Establishment" and the "Bollywood Amendments": Globalisation, Copyright and Transformations in India's Culture Industries
21 Feb. Richard Will,
Univ. of Virginia
Don Giovanni in Boots: The Poetics of 'Traditional' Opera Productions
14 Mar. Mark Spicer,
Hunter College
Fragile, Emergent and Absent Tonics in Pop and Rock Songs
28 Mar. Kofi Agawu,
Princeton University
Topic Theory and Music Analysis
4 Apr. Alajandro Enrique Planchart,
Univ. of California Santa Barbara
Guillaume du Fay 'Musicus': The Career and Self-Image of a 15th Century Composer

2012-13

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2012-13
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
14 Sept. Andrew W. Mead,
Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Cultivating an Aire: Natural Imagery and Music Making
21 Sept. James Borders,
Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor
New Perspectives on Old Books: Pontificals and the Study of Medieval Chant
9 Nov. Deborah Campana,
Oberlin College
"A Ping Qualified by a Thud:" Reflections on the Life and Work of John Cage
16 Nov. Kim Kowalke,
Univ. of Rochester
What Makes Weill Weill
22 Feb. Craig A. Monson,
Univ. of Washington in St. Louis
Self Morification and Conflict in Convent Choirlofts
1 Mar. Howard Pollack,
Univ. of Houston
"Oh the Shark Has Pretty Teeth, Dear:" Marc Blitzstein's Historic Adaptation of The Threepenny Opera
8 Mar. David Neumeyer,
Univ. of Texas at Austin
Music Production & Composition Aesthetics in the Classic Hollywood Sound Film
12 Apr. Louise Meintjes,
Duke Univ.
The Digital Homestead: Recording Men's Sociality and Zulu Music

2011-12

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2011-12
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
13 Jan. Sander L. Gilman,
Emory Univ.
"Mark the Music" Jews, Music and Modernity
17 Feb. Steven Rings,
Univ. of Chicago
On Tonal Hearing: Quale And Chroma Revisited
2 Mar. Sarah Fuller,
Stony Brook Univ.
Confronting Dissonance Theory and Practices in 14th-Century French Musical Culture
20 Apr. Beverly Diamond,
Memorial Univ. in Newfoundland
"Re" Thinking: Revitalization, Return and Reconciliation in Contemporary Indigenous Culture
18 May Stefano Mengozzi,
Univ. of Michigan
Sacred Words Through Ordinary Sounds: Rethinking Musical Humanism
25 May Julian Hook,
Indiana Univ.
"Spelled Heptachords"

2010-11

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2010-11
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
22 Oct. Jairo Moreno,
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Music Theory and Technical Being
12 Nov. Edward Nowacki,
Univ. of Cincinnati
Reflections on the Antiphon: Greek and Latin Sacred Music
28 Jan. Yayoi Uno Everett,
Emory Univ.
Faustian Parable in John Adam' Dr. Atomic (2006)
11 Feb. Thomas Turino,
Univ. of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
Peircian Phenomenology and the Study of Music
Lecture by a Distinguished Ethnomusicologist
25 Feb. Lawrence Zbikowski,
Univ. of Chicago
Words, Music, and Song
4 Mar. Charles O. Nussbaum,
Univ. of Texas-Arlington
Sentiment and Sentimentality in Music
8 Apr. Mary Hunter,
Bowdoin Univ.
How Do Performers Imagine the Composer, and Why Does It Matter?
20 May Annie Randall,
Bucknell Univ.
Taking Popular Music Seriously and Why it Matters

2009-10

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2009-10
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
16 Oct. Vincent Colapietro, Pennsylvania State Univ. Conversations Musical and Otherwise
23 Oct. Lewis Rowell, Indiana Univ. Reflections on Tuning: Remarks, Opinions, and Sound Bites from a Skeptic
20 Nov. Kerry McCarthy,
Duke Univ.
From the Library of William Byrd
? Jan. Mark Swed,
Los Angeles Times
TBA
26 Feb. Augusta Read Thomas TBA (in collaboration with Ensemble & Conducting Division and Visiting Composers Series)
5 Mar. Mellonee Burnim, Indiana Univ. Celebrating Life at Death: Funerals of African American Gospel. Lecture by Distinguished Ethnomusicologist
9 Apr. Janna Saslaw, Loyola Univ., New Orleans Teddy Wilson's Advanced Course in Modern Piano Playing and its Contribution to Jazz Theory
30 Apr. Jairo Moreno, Univ. of Pennsylvania Music Theory as a Form of Technical Memory
7 May Howard Pollack, Univ. of Houston Marc Blitzstein's Regina

2008-09

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2008-09
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
10 Oct. Joseph Kraus,
Florida State Univ.
Levels of Nostalgia and Narrative Collapse in the “Pastorale” from Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony
21 Nov. Bastian Clevé,
Filmakad. Baden-Württemberg
The Sound of Eternity: Making a Movie for J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor
30 Jan. Frank Samarotto,
Indiana Univ.
The Drama of the Bridge: Modulation as Process
13 Feb. Bruno Nettl,
Univ. of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
Song Ownership and Control in Native American Traditions: Excursions to Blackfoot Indian Culture
Lecture by a Distinguished Ethnomusicologist
27 Feb. David Ake,
Univ. of Nevada, Reno
Jazz and the Aesthetics of Mistakes
? Apr. Warren Darcy,
Oberlin Conservatory
What Lies Buried under the Linden Tree? Form, Tonal Process, and Meaning in the Funeral March of Mahler’s First Symphony
24 Apr. Marcia J. Citron,
Rice Univ.
Gendered Reception of Brahms: Masculinity, Nationalism, and Musical Politics
15 May. Peter Cariani,
Harvard-MIT
As If Time Really Mattered: Neural Codes and Computations that Subserve Music Perception and Cognition
5 June Lawrence Kramer,
Fordham Univ.
“The Threshold of the Visible World”: Bill Viola’s Tristan

2007-08

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2007-08
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
12 Oct. Guerino Mazzola,
Univ. of Minnesota
A Mathematical Theory of Gesture in Music
26 Oct. Susan Youens,
Univ. of Notre Dame
Schubert’s Pantheist Songs
7 Nov. Philip Bohlman,
Univ. of Chicago
Music of the Mediterranean Metropole and the Making of Modern Europe
29 Feb. Allan Keiler,
Brandeis Univ.
Thoroughbass and Rameau in Their Historical Perspective
7 Mar. James Schmidt,
Boston Univ.
‘I Cannot Remember Ev’rything’: Catastrophe, Lamentation and the Musical Memorial
4 Apr. Christopher Hasty,
Harvard Univ.
Changing the Subject of Music in Theory
5 Apr. Richard Taruskin,
Univ. of Calif., Berkeley
Shall We Change the Subject? A Music Historian Reflects
16 May Rebecca Maloy,
Univ. of Colorado
Limmata interdum de industria cantibus inseruntur: Reexamining the Nondiatonic Plainsong Tradition
23 May Gretchen Horlacher,
Indiana Univ.
Stravinsky’s Stutter: Modeling Melodic Development and Repetition

2006-07

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2006-07
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
6 Oct. Mary Frandsen,
Univ. of Notre Dame
Contemplatio Christi: Music and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Lutheranism
20 Oct. Patrick Macey,
Eastman School of Music
Josquin's Celestial Vision in the Motet "Ave nobilissima creatura"
17 Nov. Roy Howat,
Royal Academy of Music
Russian Imprints in French Piano Music from 1880 to 1915
19 Jan. Kay Knittel,
Univ. of Texas, Austin
Taking Beethoven Heiligenstadt-Testament Seriously
9 Feb. William Rothstein,
CUNY Graduate Center
How Non-German Repertories Can Affect Our Theories of Nineteenth-Century Music
2 Mar. Martha Feldman,
Univ. of Chicago
The Castrato in Nature and as Myth
13 Apr. Leeman Perkins,
Columbia Univ.
Problems of Style and Voice in Josquin's Psalm Motets
4 May Kevin Korsyn,
Univ. of Michigan
The Aging of the New Musicology
25 May Gage Averill,
Univ. of Toronto
[Annual Lecture by a Distinguished Ethnomusicologist]

2005-06

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2005-06
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
4 Oct. Massimo Ossi,
Indiana Univ.
Petrarchan Themes in Monteverdi's Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi
4 Nov. David Lidov,
York Univ.
Musical Meter and Musical Gesture as Representations of Bodily Movement
18 Nov. Alan Walker,
McMaster Univ.
Liszt as Cultural Ambassador
20 Jan. Paul von Hippel,
Ohio State Univ.
Rules of Melodic Expectation: Innate Laws or Learned Heuristics?
3 Feb. Anna Celenza,
Johns Hopkins Univ.
Kampf ums Dasein: The Impact of Popular Darwinism on Musical Aesthetics in Fin-de-siècle Vienna
17 Feb. Jeff Titon,
Brown Univ.
Music and Identity Construction: The "Good Old Boy" in Country Music
21 Apr. Elizabeth West Marvin,
Eastman School of Music
The Mystery and Science of Absolute Pitch
5 May Alex Ross,
The New Yorker
Inside Notes on Music Criticism: History and Current Practice
19 May Walter Everett,
Univ. of Michigan
Good Vibrations: The Foundations of Rock

2004-05

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2004-05
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
1 Oct. Bonnie Wade,
Univ. of California, Berkeley
Keeping Composers Connected: A Perspective on the Vitality of Contemporary Japanese Musical Life
15 Oct. Philip Gossett,
Univ. of Chicago
"Edizioni distrutte" and the Significance of Operatic Choruses during the Risorgimento
29 Oct. Rose Subotnik,
Brown Univ.
Did Tin Pan Alley Make Faulty Equipment For Living? Confronting Some Old Critical Canards
28 Jan. Charles Atkinson,
Ohio State Univ.
Alia via in Aliam musicam
18 Feb. Lev Koblyakov,
Parkland College
On Boulez's Marteau sans maître
4 Mar. Laurel Fay Thinking about Shostakovich
8 Apr. Honey Meconi,
Univ. of Rochester
On Hildegard of Bingen
13 May Rebecca Leydon,
Oberlin College
On Music and Modern Art
27 May Charles Smith,
SUNY Buffalo
The Trials and Transformations of Tristan Chords

2003-04

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2003-04
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
17 Oct. Harold S. Powers,
Princeton Univ.
The Structure of Musical Discourse: A View from Madras
31 Oct. Jenefer Robinson,
Univ. of Cincinnati
Listening with Emotion: How Our Emotions Help Us to Understand Music
21 Nov. Steven Feld,
Univ. of New Mexico
Guitars in the Rain Forest: The Birth of a New Music in New Guinea
23 Jan. Judith Lochhead,
SUNY Stony Brook
Visualizing the Musical Object
6 Feb. Lee Rothfarb,
Univ. of Calif., Santa Barbara
The Music of August Halm: Originality, Imitation, Innovation
23 Apr. Richard Crawford,
Univ. of Michigan
A Foggy Day: Problems in Gershwin Biography
7 May Richard Kramer,
CUNY Graduate Center
Probestück
21 May Ruth Solie,
Smith College
On Railroads, Beethoven, and Victorian Modernity

2002-03

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2002-03
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
4 Oct. Thomas L. Riis,
Univ. of Colorado
The Life and Works of Frank Loesser, Broadway Giant
25 Oct. Robert Clarida,
Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C.
Scales of Justice: Music as a Legal Construct
15 Nov. James Hepokoski,
Yale Univ.
Reflections in Beethoven’s Brook
17 Jan. Wye J. Allanbrook,
Univ. of California, Berkeley
Reading the Viennese “Classic” Style
7 Feb. Mary S. Lewis,
Univ. of Pittsburgh
Before and After Music Printing: Ideas of Ownership of Music in the Sixteenth Century
28 Feb. L. Poundie Burstein,
Hunter College
Parties, Tonics, and the Dangerous “Is”
11 Apr. Jane Fulcher,
Indiana Univ.
The Politics of Transcendence: Ideology in the Music of Messiaen in the Thirties
2 May Judith Becker,
Univ. of Michigan
Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Religious Trancing
30 May Robert Hatten,
Indiana Univ.
From Synthetic Interpretation to Emergent Meaning: Toward a Theory of Musical Gesture

2001-02

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2001-02
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
12 Oct. David Huron,
Ohio State Univ.
How Music Evokes Human Emotions
26 Oct. Laurence Libin,
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Progress, Adaptation, and the Evolution of Musical Instruments
9 Nov. Ethan Haimo,
Univ. of Notre Dame
Schoenberg, Bach, and BACH
11 Jan. Dane Heuchemer,
Kenyon College
In the Village: Music in Electoral Saxony, ca. 1550-ca. 1610
15 Feb. David Cohen,
Harvard Univ.
"The First Foundations of Song": The Concept of the Note as the Element of Music
1 Mar. J. Peter Burkholder,
Indiana Univ.
A Simple Comprehensive Model for Musical Meaning
Apr. Kay Shelemay,
Harvard Univ.
Hearing Silent Voices: Women in the Syrian Jewish Musical Tradition
19 Apr. Robert O. Gjerdingen,
Northwestern Univ.
A Music Theorist in Dot-Com Land
17 May Hugh Macdonald,
Washington Univ.
Beethoven's Game of Cat and Mouse

2000-01

Thinking About Music Lectures in 2000-01
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
6 Oct. Brian Hyer,
Univ. of Wisconsin
Hagen's Dream
13 Oct. Luitgard Schader,
Paul-Hindemith-Institut
Gestalt Psychology in Music Theory: The Reception of Ernst Kurth's Foundation of Linear Counterpoint
17 Nov. Lewis Rowell,
Indiana Univ.
Musical "Icons" and the Aesthetics of Familiarity
19 Jan. Daniel Melamed,
Indiana Univ.
The Small Dramatic Roles in Bach's Passion Repertory and Problems of Performance Practice
2 Feb. Graeme Boone,
Ohio State Univ.
Is the French Language Anti-Musical?: Text Setting from Dufay to Bizet
2 Mar. Harald Krebs,
Univ. of Victoria
Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Chopin
6 Apr. Paul Berliner,
Northwestern Univ.
Shona Music and the Role of Music in Zimbabwe's War of Liberation
4 May Beth Glixon,
Univ. of Kentucky
The Lives and Careers of Barbara Strozzi and other Venetian Women of the Operatic Stage
18 May Warren Darcy,
Oberlin College
Rotational Form, Teleological Genesis, and Fantasy-Projection in the Slow Movement of Mahler's 6th Symphony

1999-2000

Thinking About Music Lectures in 1999-2000
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
1 Oct. Peggy Seeger A Feminist View of Anglo-American Traditional Songs
19 Nov. Leonora Saavedra,
Univ. of Pittsburgh
Carlos Chávez and the Construction of the Strategic Otherness
21 Jan. Steven Zohn,
Temple Univ.
The Sonate auf Concertenart Revisited
4 Feb. Allan Keiler,
Brandeis Univ.
The Many Voices of Marian Anderson
11 Feb. Stephen Hinton, Kim Kowalke, Michael von der Linn Opera -- Where to? Kurt Weill and Topical Opera [Symposium]
25 Feb. William Caplin,
McGill Univ.
Why Harmonic Analysis?
28 Apr. Susan Boynton,
Univ. of Oregon
Orality, Literacy, and Hymn Transmission before 1100
12 May Severine Neff,
Univ. of North Carolina
Schoenberg as Theorist: Three Forms of Presentation
26 May Carl Schachter,
CUNY
Elephants, Crocodiles, & Beethoven: Schenker's Political Ideology & the Pedagogy of Schenkerian Analysis

1998-99

Thinking About Music Lectures in 1998-99
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
2 Oct. William P. Malm,
Univ. of Michigan
Time, Space, and Relativity in Japanese Music
13 Nov. Michael Marissen,
Swarthmore College
On the Musically Theological in J. S. Bach's Church Cantatas
15 Jan. Anthony Seeger,
Smithsonian Institution
Running the World's Craziest Record Company: Folkway Records and 20th-Century Music
29 Jan. Wendy Heller,
Princeton Univ.
Images of the Courtesan in Monteverdi's Poppea
12 Feb. Kevin Korsyn,
Univ. of Michigan
History and Theory: Rethinking the Opposition
26 Feb. Joel Lester,
Mannes College of Music
J. S. Bach's Parallel Section Constructions
9 Apr. Michael Cherlin,
Univ. of Minnesota
Dialectical Opposition in Schoenberg's Music and Thought
23 Apr. Allen Cadwallader,
Oberlin College
Strategies for Teaching Schenkerian Analysis
7 May Hedi Siegel,
CUNY
Looking at the Urlinie
14 May Nola Reed Knouse,
Moravian Music Foundation
Researching the Music of the American Moravians
28 May James Webster,
Cornell Univ.
Haydn's Aesthetics

1997-98

Thinking About Music Lectures in 1997-98
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
17 Oct. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.,
Center for Black Music Research
Reflections on His Book: The Power of Black Music
24 Oct. Candace Brower,
Northwestern Univ.
Music as Motion: Towards a New Theory of Rhythmic Grouping
30 Jan. Joseph Kraus,
Univ. of Nebraska
Voices of "The Other" in Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony
13 Feb. Scott Burnham,
Princeton Univ.
Rehearing Music: On Listening to the Mozart String Quintets
10 Apr. Gerard Behague,
Univ. of Texas
The Ethnomusicology of Latin-American Music
17 Apr. Susan Cook,
Univ. of Wisconsin
Gender in the Social Dance of the Ragtime Era
1 May Richard Cohn,
Univ. of Chicago
The Over-Determined Triad: A Group-Theoretic Approach to Romantic Harmony
15 May Leo Treitler,
CUNY
Beethoven’s "Expressive" Marks
29 May Peter Schubert,
McGill Univ.
Motive and Opportunity: The Mystery of Renaissance Music

1996-97

Thinking About Music Lectures in 1996-97
Date Speaker Lecture Topic
17 Jan. David McAllester,
Connecticut Wesleyan Univ.
Traditional and Contemporary Navajo Music
24 Jan. Malcolm Brown,
Indiana Univ.
Shostakovich Appropriated and Exploited
7 Feb. Taylor Greer,
Pennsylvania State Univ.
Philosophy in an Ultramodern Key: New Perspectives on Charles Seeger's Thought
14 Feb. Dennis Slavin,
CUNY
The Binchois Game: Tonal Coherence and Compositional Style
21 Feb. Justin London,
Carlton College
Meter Casts No Shadows
28 Feb. Guthrie Ramsey,
Tufts Univ.
Toward a Cultural Poetics of Race Music: Memory, Meaning, and the "Practice of Blackness"
1 Apr. Barbara Haggh,
Alamire Institute
Elite and Popular Music in Late Medieval Ghent
25 Apr. Ellen Koskoff,
Eastman School of Music
Gender and Music among the Hassidim
2 May James Zychowicz,
A-R Editions
Mahler's Die Drei Pintos and the Taboo against Posthumous Collaboration
9 May Peter H. Smith,
Univ. of Notre Dame
Brahms & the Shifting Barline: Metric Displacemen & Formal Process in the Trios with Wind Instrumentst
23 May Thomas Christensen,
Univ. of Iowa
C.P.E. Bach and Traditions of Thorough-Bass Pedagogy