Layers of Meaning: Teaching Instrumentation and Texture
Friday, May 3, 2024 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Music schools across the English-speaking world are attempting to become more broadly inclusive of different types of musics and students. This talk considers why theorists should—and how we can—incorporate timbre analysis into an undergraduate theory curriculum, and how this can contribute to a more equitable theory curriculum. I present some practical lessons and assessments and identify areas where timbre might fit most easily into a traditional or a modular curriculum. Timbre...
Where is the Beat in That Note? How Musical Expertise Affects Music Perception
Friday, March 1, 2024 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Two experiments in rhythmic perception show how music psychology and performance science can add to our knowledge of human perception and cognition.
Mark Rheaume, That’s the Way the Railroad Went: Music as a Collective Memorial
Friday, February 23, 2024 1:30pm to 2:30pm
In 1973, the newest railroad in the United States brought its first cargo into Iowa City. Born from the ashes of the Rock Island, the businessmen and farmers of the Central Iowa Railway Company (CIRC) made a valiant, if futile, attempt to keep the towns in the Amish heartland of Iowa connected to each other and the world beyond.
Mark Rheaume’s composition, titled That’s the Way the Railroad Went (2023), seeks to rekindle those connections by unearthing and preserving the multiplicitous...
Critical Collaborations: On Editing The Gershwins & Songbooks in the 21st Century
Friday, February 16, 2024 1:30pm to 2:30pm
A conversation about the George and Ira Critical Edition Series, Sounding Spirit scholarly editions of U.S. vernacular sacred songbooks, and the critical editing of music in the 21st Century. We will be joined by Dr. Andrew S. Kohler, the Alfred and Jane Wolin Managing Editor of "The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition," and Dr. Jesse P. Karlsberg, Editor-in-Chief and Project Director of the Sounding Spirit Collaborative and Senior Digital Scholarship Strategist at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship.
Todd Decker, Genre and Race in the Broadway Musical (1970-2020): A Quantitative, Performer-Centered Approach
Friday, February 9, 2024 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Prof. Todd Decker (Washington University in St. Louis) will speak about his quantitative study, which accounts for the racial casting practices evident in every musical production mounted in a Broadway theater between 1970 and 2020. This data reveals the shifting opportunities for performers of color as found in the production history of three central subgenres of the commercial musical stage: jukebox musicals, film adaptations, and revivals. The digital humanities methods behind this paper are...
A Mother’s Anthem for a Troubled Nation
Friday, February 2, 2024 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Abstract
Music serves as a tool to promote National unity in Nigeria. One notable figure at the forefront of this endeavor is Onyeka Onwenu, a renowned Nigerian singer and activist. Her role as a “mother” who reaches out to different ethnic groups affords her merit to create a song to commemorate Nigeria’s centenary since its inception. Through the song, Onwenu assumes the role of the mother in reflecting on the country and encapsulating its present circumstances while offering a vision for a...
Guest Lecture: Against Instrumental Reason
Friday, January 26, 2024 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Analysis and interpretation of Richard Strauss, Caroline Shaw, and J. S. Bach.
Musicology / Music Theory Colloquium: Panel on working at a smaller school
Friday, December 1, 2023 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Panel on working at a smaller school, featuring Joshua Albrecht (Assistant Professor of Music Theory, the University of Iowa), Kati Meyer (Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Theory, the University of Iowa), and Jama Stilwell (Professor of Music, Cornell College).
Music Theory / Musicology Colloquium: Miguel Quintero
Friday, November 3, 2023 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Fugal Realization and the Pedagogical Implications of Bernardo Pasquini’s Sessanta Versetti
Musicology / Music Theory Colloquium: Research through Gestures at the Edges and Margins
Friday, October 27, 2023 1:30pm to 2:30pm
How do amateur musicians carry out research in the day-to-day and ordinary things they do to make their music?
Zane Larson, Thriving in a WWII Margaritaville: Musical Ecology, Leonard Bernstein, and Key West in 1941
Friday, October 20, 2023 1:30pm to 2:30pm
A less-than-fortunate failing relationship, pending unemployment, fear of enlistment in the army, and sinus issues brought Leonard Bernstein to Key West in late August of 1941 for a 10-day vacation that changed the trajectory of his compositional career. While Bernstein’s successes with his “Clarinet Sonata for Piano,” Fancy Free, On the Town, and West Side Story are tied to his positionality in New England, the sunny and sailor-filled paradise of Key West, Florida, also played a monumental role...
Zane Cupec: "Matriarchism in a Santería Musical Healing: Melvis Santa’s Afro-Cuban Voice Therapy School"
Friday, October 13, 2023 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Melvis Santa is a female African Cuban pianist and vocalist who moved from Havana to New York City in 2014 where she runs a studio program called Afro-Cuban Voice Therapy (ACVT). She combines elements of Santería song, dance, and sacred stories, her formal classical training at the Cuban conservatory in piano and voice, and elements of neo-spiritual movements increasingly common in the United States like kinesthetic and vocalization exercises drawn from Yoga and Hinduism. Collectively, these...
Marian Wilson Kimber: Mrs. Wardwell’s Plan of Study: the Women’s Club Movement and the Historiography of American Music
Friday, September 15, 2023 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Between 1898 and 1925, Linda Bell Free Wardwell sold 30,000 booklets entitled Plan of Study on Musical History. Designed to facilitate programming by members of the National Federation of Music Clubs, Wardwell’s pamphlets were adopted by women’s organizations from Magnolia, Arkansas; to Silver City, New Mexico. Her offerings contributed to the canonization of European music in the United States, but they also supported the Federation’s advocacy of American composers. This talk positions Wardwell...
Ramin Roshandel and Jean-François Charles demonstrate sētar and electronics
Friday, September 8, 2023 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Ramin Roshandel and Jean-François Charles demonstrate sētar and electronics