The Case Western Reserve University Department of Music had a significant presence at the annual American Musicological Society (AMS) meeting Nov. 12-15.
Three members of the department were honored at the society’s awards ceremony:
- Susan McClary, professor of music and head of musicology, was awarded honorary membership in the society. This is the highest honor of the AMS, reserved for the most senior of scholars “who have made outstanding contributions to furthering its stated object and whom the Society wishes to honor.”
- Brian MacGilvray, a fifth-year PhD student, was awarded an Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation Fellowship, a competitive fellowship that provides funding for the final year of dissertation work. This is the most prestigious and competitive dissertation fellowship in the field of musicology.
- John Romey, a fifth-year PhD student, received a grant from the William Holmes/Frank D’Accone Endowment for travel and research in the history of opera.
Daniel Goldmark, professor of music and director of the Center for Popular Music Studies, chaired the program committee, which was charged with putting together the entire programming for the conference. Georgia Cowart, professor of music and coordinator of Graduate Studies in Musicology, David Rothenberg, associate professor and chair of the Department of Music, and Goldmark each chaired a session during the event.
In addition to that many members of the musicology program presented papers:
- Francesca Brittan, assistant professor: “The Electrician, the Magician, and the Nervous Conductor”
- McClary: “Kaija Saariaho and Peter Sellars: Staging Feminism”
- Brian F. Wright, third-year PhD student: “‘A Bastard Instrument’: The Electric Bass, Jazz, and the Stigmatization of Musical Practice”
- Michael Bane, sixth-year PhD student: “The Art of Singing Well: Bertrand de Bacilly and Amateur Performance Practice in Seventeenth-Century France”
- Peter Graff, third-year PhD student: “Portal to the Orient: Lobby Spectacles and The Thief of Bagdad”
- John Romey, fifth-year PhD student: “Bellérophon in Vaudevilles: Appropriation of Street Culture by the Comédie-Italienne”
- Devin Burke, PhD expected December 2015; just appointed assistant professor at University of Louisville), “The Veiled Art of Musical Adaptation: Jean-Philippe Rameau and Le Triomphe des arts (1700)”
- Daniel Batchelder, fourth-year PhD student: “With a Smile and a Song: Audiovisual Synchronization in Disney’s Early Animation”
- Mandy Smith, fifth-year PhD student: gave a presentation as part of the panel “Getting ‘Into the Groove’: Teaching Students How to Listen to Temporality in Popular Music”