Performance as a Master Narrative in Music History

Daniel Barolsky Beloit College
Sara Gross Ceballos Lawrence University
Rebecca Plack San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Steven M. Whiting University of Michigan, School of Music, Theatre & Dance

Abstract

The Editors invited a collection of musicologists from various institutions to engage in an e-mail discussion with Daniel Barolsky over the summer of 2012 on the topic of how music historians engage students with issues of performance in their classes. As Barolsky states in his opening essay, “The music in our existing histories is restricted to past compositions, as mere museum artifacts. Yet the identities of the wonderful performers who brought these pieces to life (and many of whom we can still see and hear today!) are relegated to the liner notes, their presence and interpretive contribution repressed and ignored.” Included in this exchange are Sara Gross Ceballos (Lawrence University), Rebecca Plack (San Francisco Conservatory), and Steven M. Whiting (University of Michigan).

Author Biographies

Daniel Barolsky, Beloit College

Daniel Barolsky is an Assistant Professor of Music at Beloit College where he teaches music history and theory. He has presented at numerous conferences including SMT, the annual symposium for the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM), and recently at CMS where he explored the tension between performers and the 20th-century musical canon. His primary research demonstrates how musical recordings have enabled performers and their interpretations to shape the musical perception, aesthetics, analysis, and conceptions of the musical work. He has published articles for Music Theory Online, Music Performance Research, and European Meetings in Ethnomusicology.

Sara Gross Ceballos, Lawrence University

Sara Gross Ceballos is Assistant Professor of Music at Lawrence University. She received her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles with dissertation titled “Keyboard Portraits: Performing Character in the Eighteenth Century.” Her research continues to focus on keyboard music of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, with particular focus on the kinaesthetics of performance and the intersections of literature and music. She has presented talks on Couperin and C. P. E. Bach and published on Scarlatti in Domenico Scarlatti Adventures (Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 2008).

Rebecca Plack, San Francisco Conservatory of Music

Rebecca Plack is Professor of Music History at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she also teaches Vocal Pedagogy. She earned her BA in Music from Princeton University, her MM in Voice from the Manhattan School of Music, and her PhD in Musicology from Cornell University. She was also an Edison Fellow at the British Library and, since 2011, has served on the faculty of the Vancouver International Song Festival. She has lectured and performed at local and national meetings of the American Musicological Society. Her research involves historic recordings, German Lieder, performance practice and the relationship between vocal technique and musical style, and directly affects both her singing and her teaching.

Steven M. Whiting, University of Michigan, School of Music, Theatre & Dance

Steven M. Whiting is Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Professor of Musicology at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, where he teaches courses in eighteenth-century music and American musical theatre. His publications have concerned Beethoven and Erik Satie.

Published

2012-09-11

Issue

Vol 3 No 1: (Fall 2012)

Section

Roundtable

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