Graduate Students
Annelies Andries
Annelies Andries (2011) is a PhD student in music history. After receiving a B.A. in vocal performance at the Conservatory of her native city Antwerp, she studied musicology in Leuven and Berlin. In her Bachelor's thesis, Annelies studied the repertory of Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, the singer that premiered Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte. The research project for her Master's degree concerned the use of recitative and aria/song in Monteverdi's Venetian operas. Her interests include the relationship between text and music, and the influence of performers on compositions especially written for them. During the 2010-2011 season, she enjoyed doing an internship in the dramaturgical department of the Flemish Opera, where she was especially involved in the productions of Rossini's Semiramide and Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse. At present she is an Honorary Fellow of the BAEF (Belgian American Educational Foundation).
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Nick Betson
Nick Betson came to Yale in 2005 after studying in Chicago and Berlin. His research interests include the history of music theory and criticism (especially of the 19th and 20th centuries), hermeneutics, Adorno, Marxes of any kind, the lyric in music, and Mozart's operas.
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Damian Blättler
Damian Blättler (2006) is a Ph.D. candidate in music theory, currently working on a dissertation that integrates voicing into a theory of additive harmony for the French fin-de-siècle repertoire; other research interests include the conceptual underpinnings of historical harmonic theory, links between scale theory and contemporary tonal music, and the music of Louis Andriessen. Originally from Boston, he holds a Bachelor of Arts in music from Harvard University, where he wrote his senior thesis on the relationship of Ravel's music to contemporary currents in French literature. In addition to his academic pursuits, he is active as a performer, educational consultant, and music teacher; Damian performs as a freelance clarinetist in Connecticut and New York states, dabbles as bass guitarist and vocalist in his band GFE, and works for both Yale's Graduate Teaching Center and the Yale School of Music's Music in Schools Initiative.
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Christopher Brody
Christopher Brody has been at Yale since 2007, where he is writing a dissertation on the relationship between formal design and tonal structure in Bach's binary dances and free da capo arias. His research interests include music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Schenker, sonata theory, and twentieth-century tonal music. Before coming to Yale he earned MA (music theory) and DMA (piano performance) degrees from the University of Minnesota and an undergraduate degree in piano from Northwestern University. In 2011, his paper "The V-I Paradigm in Bach's Binary Dances and a New Subject Category for Fugal Gigues" won the Arthur J. Komar Award for outstanding student paper at Music Theory Midwest.
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Jennifer Chu
Jennifer Chu (2009) is a Ph.D. student in music history. Originally from Albuquerque, NM, she received a Bachelor of Arts in history and a Bachelor of Music in piano performance from the University of New Mexico, and she also earned a Master of Music degree in musicology from the University of Texas at Austin where she wrote a thesis on music in an 18th-century New Orleans convent. Her current research interests include musical hybridity, globalization, transnational and diasporic studies, critical theory and 20th c. popular and experimental music, with a particular interest in recent Taiwanese popular music.
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Cristina Cruz-Uribe
Cristina received a B.Mus. in Viola Performance and a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Studies from the Honors College at the University of Oregon in 2007. Her research focuses on intersections between music, literature, and popular culture in Latin America from the colonial period to the present. Current projects examine the voice and mystical experience in nuns' writings from colonial Peru, and music and urban geography in contemporary Brazil. At Yale this research has been supported by a Mac-Millan Center Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant (2008) and a CLAIS Travel Award (2009). Cristina served as Student Representative for the Northeast Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology from 2009-2011.
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Sarah Culpepper
Sarah Culpepper (2011) is a Ph.D student in music theory. She holds an MA in theory from the University of Iowa (2010), an MAT from National-Louis University (2007), and a BA in mathematics, English/creative writing, and music from Kenyon College (2006). Before coming to Yale, Sarah spent three years teaching high school mathematics on the south side of Chicago through Teach For America. Her research interests include various flavors of mathematically-inspired music theory, music-theoretic appropriations of literary critical theory, musical temporality, and rap. Sarah is a native of New Orleans and a lifelong Saints fan.
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Angharad Davis
Angharad Davis (2009), originally from Sydney, is a PhD student in music history. She completed her MMus in musicology at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, for which she studied the ramifications of listener interaction with quotations in the music of Berio and PDQ Bach. Prior to this, she gained her BMus (Hons) in musicology at the same institution, winning the university medal for her thesis entitled 'Music, Metaphor, and Meaning: the Symbolism of Birdsong in Contemporary Composition.'
Angharad is interested in the relationship between music and the environment, reception and horizon theories, cultural and social histories of music and the interplay of music and dance. She plays the piano, organ, and tuba, and has recently started to explore the wonderful world of folk harp.
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Julia Doe
Julia Doe (2007) holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Her research focuses on intersections of music and literature in France, with interests ranging from the 'Parisian' chanson and print culture in the early modern period, to Francis Poulenc and Surrealism in the mid-twentieth century. Her dissertation, "French Opera at the Italian Theater (1762-1793): Nationalism, Genre, and Opéra-Comique," has been supported by grants from the Fulbright program and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. She is spending the 2011-2012 academic year doing research in Paris, where she also performs as a violinist in the orchestra utcinquième.
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Stuart Paul Duncan
Stuart Paul Duncan (2010) recently received his doctorate in Composition from Cornell University where he completed his dissertation entitled "The Concept of New Complexity: Notation, Interpretation and Analysis." Prior to his doctorate, he studied with Roger Redgate at Goldsmiths College (MMus) and with Dr. Roderick Watkins at Canterbury Christ Church University (BMus). His research interests include 1980s New Complexity, the role notation plays in the
concept of 'the work,' and multivalent approaches to Sonata Form. Recent publications have appeared in Perspectives of New Music, Search: Journal for New Music and Culture, the conference proceedings
of Beyond the centres: Musical avant gardes since 1950, and the conference proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems. He recently taught music theory and appreciation at Auburn Maximum Security Prison (NY) in 2010, an experience which will feed further research into reformative justice and educational pedagogy. Stuart's compositions have been performed across the US, UK and Continental Europe, and his 501.567nm for 19-division trumpet is due for release in 2010 performed and recorded by Steven Altoft.
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Lauren Holmes Frankel
Lauren Holmes Frankel (2006) is a PhD candidate in musicology. A native of Arizona, she received a Bachelor of Music in Music History from Rice University, where she wrote a senior thesis on music in the works of Virginia Woolf. Her dissertation, which investigates the relationships between Finnish politics, identity, and nationalism and the institutional support of contemporary music in Finland, has been supported by grants from the Fulbright foundation, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and the Lois Roth Endowment. A pianist by training, Lauren is a founding member of Yale's Gamelan Suprabanggo, and can also be heard playing chromatic button accordion in her Nordic folk music band, Linnunrata.
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Daniel Goldberg
Daniel Goldberg (2010) is a PhD student in music theory. Originally from Pennsylvania, Daniel holds a BA in music from Carleton College and an MA in music theory from the University of British Columbia. His recent research concerns meter and rhythm in twentieth-century and contemporary music, examining repertories that range from British art music to Balkan brass band music. Daniel is also a committed euphoniumist.
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Jonathan Guez
Jonathan Guez (2008), originally from Houston, TX, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in piano performance from Texas Tech University (2005), and a Master of Music degree in music theory from Indiana University Bloomington (2008). In addition to his domestic performance education, which culminated in winning a concerto competition at Texas Tech, he also studied piano at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, where he gave several public recitals. Although he has written extensively on the analysis of sonata form movements and on tonal (and formal) analysis from a Schenkerian perspective, his current research interests in music theory include, but are not limited to, emotion and meaning in music, hermeneutic and critical theories, semiotics, and other philosophical trends.
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Moira Leanne Hill
Moira Leanne Hill (2007), a Ph.D. student in music history, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from Harvard, where she wrote her senior thesis on the influence of innovations in Italian vocal music on the sacred vocal concerti of Matthias Weckmann (1616-1674). She also holds a Master of Arts degree in Musicology from the University of Minnesota, where she completed a thesis examining the significance of two early seventeenth-century central German organ tablatures in demonstrating the existence of a parallel accompanimental practice to continuo. Her research interests include seventeenth-century German and Italian repertoires, particularly sacred music and keyboard idioms of this period, the intersection of performance practice with musicological research, historical keyboard instruments and their construction, historical tuning systems, organ tablatures, manuscript study, and issues of editing music.
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Mary Horn
Mary Horn (2011) is a Ph.D. student in Music History. She earned a B.A. in Music at Skidmore College, where she studied music history, vocal performance, and studio art. Studies abroad at Oxford University and archival research projects in New York and Washington D.C. piqued her interest in music history, specifically. Her most recent research project, a senior honors thesis completed in Spring 2011, centers on the evolution of Leonard Bernstein's Norton Lectures (1973) and his lasting legacy as a public educator. Her current research interests include 20th century American music and the relationship between music and art, among other things.
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Erin Johnson-Hill
Erin Johnson-Hill (2010, music history) received her Bachelor of Music with Honors from Otago University in New Zealand, where she studied musicology and composition, and wrote a dissertation on the iconography of musical inspiration in the nineteenth century. She then attended Cambridge University, England, where she completed an MPhil in Historical Musicology, focusing on British music criticism and the aesthetics of genius as manifest in early nineteenth-century periodical literature. Erin has published in the area of music iconography, but her broader research interests include music aesthetics, philosophy, music historiography, and more specifically the social reception of Beethoven's music around the time of his death. Before coming to Yale she worked as a lecturer, tutor and research assistant at Otago University, teaching music history and lecturing on topics in music research methodologies. In her spare time she enjoys choral singing and
playing Baroque cello.
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Andrew Jones
Andrew Jones (2010) is a Ph.D. student in music theory and holds an A.B. in Physics from Princeton University. Early interests in cello performance and physics collided during his undergraduate years, producing a love for the formalism of music theory and a socially detrimental addiction to vintage and high-fidelity audio and electronics. His long-term research goals center on the construction of quantitative systems and tools for harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic analysis from a mathematically-inclined perspective.
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Aaron Judd
Aaron Judd (2008) hails from Portland, Oregon and graduated from Oberlin College/Conservatory with degrees in Composition and English literature. His dissertation project addresses space and place as arenas of social imagination in the work of contemporary Chinese composers. He is also interested in the broader history of Western classical music in East Asia (in particular, China), musical titles and programs, and the history and aesthetics of orchestration. During the 2011-12 year he will be based in Hong Kong - specifically in the maze of shopping malls around the Sha Tin MTR station - pursuing his research on a Fulbright grant.
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Allie Kieffer
Allie Kieffer (2008) is a Ph.D. candidate in music history. She holds a B.A. in music from Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, where she wrote a senior thesis on the chamber music of Gabriel Fauré. Her dissertation explores the entanglements of music and representation in fin-de-siècle French musical culture, with a particular focus on the piano music of Debussy and Ravel. Her other interests include philosophical imaginings of the voice in Western culture, music and cultural constructions of gender, and poststructuralism.
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Kevin Koai
Kevin Koai (2009) is a Ph.D. student in music history who holds a B.A. in music (concentration in piano performance) and English from Stanford University. His research interests include late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art song, theories of lyric and narrative in music, early sound recording, historical approaches to the body, and modern pop music. Kevin performs as a collaborative pianist, chamber musician, and choral singer, and he currently sings with Yale Schola Cantorum.
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Megan Kaes Long
Megan Kaes Long (2008), is a Ph.D. candidate in Music Theory. Megan is a native of Littleton, Colorado, and holds a B.A. in Music with an emphasis in piano performance from Pomona College in Claremont, California. Her dissertation explores the relationship between affect and genre in the English madrigal, and situates this repertoire at the forefront of the development of English tonality. Megan's research interests include 16th-century music in England and on the Continent, 20th-century tonal music, music and text, and the history of theory (especially the history of modality and tonality). Megan is an avid singer, pianist, and handbell ringer, and she is a member of Yale's Schola Cantorum.
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Elizabeth Medina-Gray
Elizabeth Medina-Gray (2008) holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in music and chemistry from Swarthmore College, and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in music theory at Yale. Her interests include mathematical musical models, 20th century tonal music, and music in modern multimedia, and her dissertation-in-progress is entitled "Modular Structure and Function in Early 21st-century Video Game Music."
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Esther Morgan-Ellis
Esther Morgan-Ellis (2006) grew up in Port Angeles, WA, and holds a Bachelor of Music in cello performance from the University of Puget Sound. Her dissertation, currently entitled "Community Singing in the Movie Palace," is about community singing in the movie palace. She knows more about the live entertainment offerings in urban movie theaters of the 1920s and '30s than anyone else in the department, but probably less about everything else. On her own time, she collects snakes and plays with her parrot Ruckous, in addition to singing with the Yale Schola Cantorum and freelancing as a cellist. A highlight of her Yale experience has been singing Speranza in the Yale Baroque Opera Project production of Monteverdi's Orfeo, headed by professor Ellen Rosand. She advises prospective musicologists to choose dissertation topics that will take them to Europe or Las Vegas instead of the Yale Microform Reading Room.
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Amy Morris
Amy Morris (2007) holds a bachelors degree in history from Yale University, where she wrote a senior thesis on political broadside ballads and their influence in late seventeenth century England. She is pursuing a joint Ph.D. program in history, music history and Renaissance studies. Her dissertation will examine the reception of the Baroque style in seventeenth-century England.
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Tahirih Motazedian
Tahirih Motazedian (2011) is a PhD student in music theory. She has a B.S. in geophysics from University of Oregon and a B.A. in music theory from University of Arizona. She spent several years working as a planetary scientist for NASA before deciding to return to the music world. As a scientist she published a theory about water on Mars which garnered widespread international attention. Thus far as a music theorist she has given conference presentations about her research on Stravinsky's Serenade sketches, and what they reveal about his compositional process. Her musical interests are centered around the music of Rachmaninoff and Wagner.
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John Muniz
John Muniz (2009) is a Ph.D. student in music theory. Originally from New Jersey, he holds a BA in Music with Highest Honors from The College of William & Mary, and an MM in Composition from Boston University. His research interests include tonal chromaticism, transformational theory, phenomenology, analytical methodology, musical narrative, aesthetics, 20th-to 21st-century music, and the music of Scriabin. John is an avid composer and pianist, performing both solo and chamber repertoire.
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James Park
James Park (2008) received his A.B. in Music from Princeton University, where he wrote his senior thesis on Samuel Barber's Symphony in One Movement. His dissertation investigates the notion of musical modernism(s) in the early 20th
century and explores the roles of traditions and institutions as agents of modernism, with a particular focus on Samuel Barber and his works of the 1930s. He is also a violinist in the Yale Symphony Orchestra and an avid chamber musician.
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Lynda Paul
Lynda Paul is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology. Her dissertation, "Sonic Vegas: Live Virtuality and the Cirque du Soleil," brings together her training in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and performance studies to investigate Cirque du Soleil's Las Vegas productions. More broadly, Lynda's research centers on music in theater, performance studies, media theory, and popular culture. She has presented her work at international and national conferences, and recently published a review of a Balinese production of Oedipus Rex (William Maranda's Raja Edepus), a project that drew upon her extensive experience with Balinese music, dance, and drama. As a vocalist, she is an enthusiastic performer of Baroque opera and classical Western song, as well as the ensemble repertoires of Bulgaria, Corsica, Georgia, and the Sacred Harp. In addition to her research and performance pursuits, Lynda holds a keen interest in teaching, especially in the area of academic writing; she currently works with students at both the Yale College Writing Center and the Yale Graduate Writing Center. She holds degrees from Yale University, the University of Chicago, the University of Rochester, and the Eastman School of Music.
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Rebecca Perry
Rebecca Perry (2010) is a Ph.D. student in music history. A native of Rolla, Missouri, Becky hails most recently from Brigham Young University, where she completed undergraduate work in piano performance (B.M.) and political science (B.A.). Broadly, Becky's research focuses on intersections between literary theory, aesthetic philosophy, and music analysis. Most recently, Becky has been occupied with the so-called "ancient quarrel" between poetry and philosophy, American intellectual history, and questions of narrativity in 1960s film music.
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Carmel Raz
Carmel holds degrees in violin performance from the Hochschule fuer Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin, Germany, and in composition from the University of Chicago. More information about her can be found at http://www.carmelraz.com
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André Redwood
André Redwood is a Ph.D. candidate in music theory. He holds M.Phil. and M.A. degrees from Yale and a B.M. in Music Theory from the Eastman School of Music. His research centers on the history of music theory, particularly on the interrelationships between music, rhetoric, science, and theology in the early modern period. These interests converge in his dissertation, "The Eloquent Science of Music: Marin Mersenne's Uses of Rhetoric in the Harmonie Universelle (1636)." Now in its final year of preparation, his dissertation is being supported by a 2011-2012 Dissertation Completion Fellowship, part of the Andrew W. Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Early Career Fellowship Program. He will be presenting portions of his research at the 2011 meeting of the Society for Music Theory in Minneapolis. In addition, he is preparing an article on musical collage and copyright law. Further interests include the analysis of twentieth-century tonal music and music and culture in Brazil. He maintains an active interest in performance: in 2010, he played the tastiera per luce part for a fully-lit performance of Scriabin's Prometheus: Poem of Fire, and has studied percussion, piano, and harpsichord.
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Valerie Rogotzke
Valerie Rogotzke (2007) studies Music History at Yale. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree in vocal performance from the Peabody Conservatory and a Master of Music degree from Rice University, where she studied voice and musicology, and has completed additional coursework at the Universiteti Oslo. Her research interests range from Medieval and Renaissance music to vocal music of all kinds to Scandinavian folk music and nationalism. She has performed in a wide variety of operas, recitals, and early music ensembles, most recently as a hen in Janácek's The Cunning Little Vixen with Houston Grand Opera, and currently sings with Yale's Schola Cantorum.
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Joseph Salem
Joseph Salem (2007) is originally from Cincinnati, OH, where he studied piano at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He holds a BM in Piano from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA in Music Theory from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a lover of new and old traditions, Joe pursues topics at the boundaries of the musicological discourse: musical/intellectual history, analytical studies of post-Wagnerian music and writings, semiotics, music aesthetics, and marxist, modernist, and postmodernist criticism. His dissertation is a study of the diachronic development of Pierre Boulez's musical style through a close examination of his manuscript sources; previous studies have focused on the manuscripts of Francesco Cavalli and WA Mozart. He's also a cat lover and silly for culinary delights.
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Andrew Schartmann
Andrew Schartmann (2011) recently completed his MA at McGill University under the tutelage of William E. Caplin. His thesis, entitled "A Study of Thematic Introduction in Beethoven's Music," grapples with the composer's highly
original deployment of pre-thematic (i.e., before the onset of the main theme) ideas. Prior to his work in music theory, Andrew studied composition with Jean Lesage (McGill) and Alan Belkin (l'Université de Montréal). His current research interests include differing approaches to sonata form, orchestrational paradigms and their relationship to formal functions, and novel approaches to
music pedagogy.
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Matthew Schullman
Matthew Schullman (2008) is a graduate student in Music Theory and comes to Yale from Boston, MA, where he earned a B.A. and an M.A. in Music from Boston University. His analytic interests vary; thus far, however, his work has focused on music of the twentieth century, especially that of György Ligeti. In his copious free time, Matt works with the artistic staff of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, practices the piano, and spends time honing his culinary skills.
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Jay Summach
Jay Summach (2005) is a Ph.D. candidate in music theory at Yale. His dissertation models the formal conventions in mainstream rock music from 1955 to 1989 and explores how the evocation and suppression of those conventions contribute to meaning in individual songs. He holds M.A. and M.Phil. degrees from Yale University and B.A. and M.A. degrees in music from the University of Alberta, where his work focused on harmonic dualism -- specifically, Hugo Riemann's Schritt and Wechsel transformations. Jay has taught courses on music theory, popular music, and music/multimedia technology. His enthusiasm for innovative and effective teaching informs his work as coordinator and consultant with the Yale Graduate Teaching Center. In addition to research and teaching, Jay is an active performer and songwriter in rock and folk-rock lineups, where he sings and plays guitar, mandolin, and fiddle.
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Christy Thomas
Christy Thomas (2009) is a Ph.D. student in music history. Originally from Baltimore, MD, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music, Art History, and History from McDaniel College. Her broad research interests include the history and theory of opera, reception studies, cultural history, and the theoretical and conceptual issues of performance and mediation. She is also interested in the history of jazz, with a particular focus on vocal jazz and women in jazz. As a classically trained singer, she has a passion for the performance of art song, has been involved with several professional opera performances in Baltimore, and especially enjoys performing and recording little known pieces from within her research.
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Benjamin Thorburn
Ben Thorburn is a Ph.D. candidate in music history. His dissertation, "Recomposing Monteverdi," examines the twentieth-century reception of Monteverdi's operas in adaptations by Vincent d'Indy, Ernst Krenek, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Alexander Goehr. He presented part of this research at AMS in 2009. His interests encompass various genres of texted music, including Baroque vocal music and opera, American musical theater and art song, and sacred music, as well as vocal pedagogy. As a singer, Ben performs and teaches in the New Haven area and has sung with Yale Schola Cantorum, the Yale Baroque Opera Project, and the New Haven Oratorio Choir. Originally from Maynard, MA, he received a B.A. in music from the University of Rochester.
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Danielle Ward-Griffin
Danielle Ward-Griffin is a PhD candidate in musicology. She received her Bachelor of Music from McGill University and has been a visiting student at the University of Nottingham and King's College London. Her dissertation, "'The Wrong Piece in the Wrong Place:' Relocating the Operas of Benjamin Britten," explores the intersections between on- and offstage places in the operas of Benjamin Britten. Supported by a MacMillan Dissertation Research Grant and the Paul Mellon Center for British Art, she spent the 2010-2011 academic year conducting archival research in the UK. She has presented her work at national and international conferences in the US and the UK, and was awarded the 2010 Temperley Prize for the Best Student Paper at the Biennial Conference of the North American British Music Studies Association. Other research interests include female vocal performance, opera and multimedia, and popular music, especially that of Björk.
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Christopher White
Christopher White (2007) is a Ph.D. candidate in Music Theory. Chris holds a B.A. and B.Mus. from Oberlin College/Conservatory of Music where he studied organ with James David Christie and Haskell Thompson. He also received an M.A. in Music Theory from Queens College, CUNY. His interests include late Romanticism (especially the musical shift from the late 19th to the early 20th century), Schenker, pop music analysis, and theories of embodiment. He also is interested in Marxism and computationally-based language theories. His dissertation creates a robot that learns to hear tonal centers in Wagner, Mahler and Strauss after prolonged exposure to their music, after which he unleashes the robot on the music of the Second Viennese school and sees what happens.
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Kara Yoo
Kara Yoo (2006) holds a Master of Arts in music theory from Queens College, CUNY and an A.B. in economics from Harvard College. Her research interests include music theory and analysis, theory pedagogy, American music history, and dance studies.
Kirill Zikanov
Kirill Zikanov (2011) is a Ph.D. student in music history and holds a B.S. in economics and an A.B. in music from Duke University. His undergraduate thesis provided a source catalog and transcriptions of compositions by Samuel Rüling, a close acquaintance of Heinrich Schütz.
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