Is That You, Mr. Berlioz?

In my large lecture courses, I often introduce musical examples by displaying a portrait of the composer in question. For composers who lived up through the early nineteenth century, I show paintings. For the more recent composers, I show photographs. The oldest of these photographs are (unavoidably) grainy, black-and-white affairs. They are an excellent meansContinue reading “Is That You, Mr. Berlioz?”

American Musicological Society, Boston 2019

I am very pleased to be presenting a paper entitled “Sounding the Interrogative: Cadential Attenuation as Syntactic Device in the Madrigals of Sigismondo d’India” on Friday, November 1, at the 85th annual meeting of the American Musicological Society. The session, to be chaired by my friend and colleague Joel Schwindt (Boston Conservatory), is entitled “RhetoricalContinue reading “American Musicological Society, Boston 2019”

Teaching and Learning Philosophy

While participating in Maggie O’Rourke’s recent “Designing Experiences” faculty academy at the UB Center for Educational Innovation, we were asked to dig out our teaching statements and transform them into “teaching and learning philosophies.” Mine still sounds a bit stuffy, but here’s what I came up with: My purpose as a teacher is to exposeContinue reading “Teaching and Learning Philosophy”

Conference on the Italian Madrigal

On the weekend of September 15–16, I will be traveling to Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, to give a presentation at the Third Annual Conference on the Italian Madrigal. My talk is entitled, “Hearing the Interrogative in the Polyphonic Madrigals of Sigismondo d’India: A Quantitative Analysis.” The talk is scheduled for a Saturday morningContinue reading “Conference on the Italian Madrigal”