Written in 2011 and recorded this year by Ligament—Anika Kildegaard (voice) and Will Yager (bass)—University of Iowa Assistant Professor Jean-François Charles’s “Benedictus” is a fitting song to listen to at a time when we are nearing the midnight of the year, to say nothing of midnight on the Doomsday Clock, which has been on the verge of twelve o’clock for so long that crisis seems to be a permanent state of affairs.

The Fall meeting of the Midwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society took place virtually during the last weekend of September. Planning, managing, and hosting the conference brought together colleagues from across many Midwest institutions.

During the summer of 2020, Cody Norling served as an intern with Hancher Auditorium. The partnership was supported through the Humanities for the Public Good program hosted by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. Cody shared reflections on the collaboration at last week’s Obermann showcase.

This past spring, Ph.D. student Alexis Tuttle sat down with Dr. Anabel Maler to learn more about her and her work as a music theorist. Here are Lexy’s highlights from that conversation. 

Earlier this season, Arthur Scoleri successfully defended their musicology master’s thesis, “‘Thus He is Mine’: Reconciling Queerness and English Musical Tradition in Britten’s Canticle I.”

Friday morning features Society for American Music presentations from Iowa graduate students and faculty. At 10:00 a.m. (CDT) you can take in Ph.D. candidate Megan Small’s talk on “Minnesota Mermaids: Exoticism in the Aquatennial’s Aqua Follies Water Ballet.” At 10:30, toggle over to “Rhythmic Techniques in Signed Rap” from Drs. Anabel Maler and Robert Komaniecki. 

Dr. Platte’s most recent book, Making Music in Selznick’s Hollywood, is featured in the Wall Street Journal‘s “Five Best” column, where biographer Steven Smith (Music by Max Steiner) shares his favorite books on film music.

The Society for American Music recently announced that Dr. Wilson Kimber was the recipient of its 2020 Sight and Sound Subvention! “In a Woman’s Voice: Musical Readings by American Women Composers will be a video recording of musical readings for spoken word and piano by women composers, performed by Marian Wilson Kimber, reciter, and Natalie Landowski, piano.

This spring Kelsey McGinnis successfully defended her dissertation and received her Ph.D. in Musicology. Titled “A Captive Enemy Audience: Music and the Reeducation of German POWs in the United States,” Dr. McGinnis’s dissertation draws on research conducted at the U.S. National Archives and the Iowan Camp Algona POW Archive to consider how musical activities in the camps were experienced and valued differently.

Just in time for summer reading, Prof. Marian Wilson Kimber has published two articles: "Miss Austen Plays Pleyel: An Additional Source for the Jane Austen Family Music Collection?" and "Reciting Parsifal: Opera as Spoken Word Performance in America."