RESEARCH & CREATIVE ACTIVITIES

The responsory verses of early chant (Gregorian, Old Roman, Ambrosian, Beneventan, and Old Hispanic) were sung to recitation tones more elaborate than the tones of antiphonal psalmody. Eight standard responsory verse tones were in use in the ninth century on the Continent, but new melodies gradually replaced them. At first, these retained some characteristics of the old tones, then later abandoned them. Comparison of responsory verse melodies from offices for Irish, Anglo-Saxon, and selected Continental saints shows similar changes in the melodies over time, but also distinct stylistic characteristics in the treatment of text and in the development of melody within the prescribed tonal space. Cantors often sang responsory verses on the Continent in the earlier Middle Ages. This study reveals the musicianship of the corresponding medieval Irish and Insular singer-composers.

Justin Drew was named a national finalist in the professional division of the 2022 American Prize in Instrumental Performance for his first solo album, “The Corno D'Amore,” released under the Tonsehen label. The "nation's most comprehensive series of contests in the performing arts," the American Prize is "designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, directors, ensembles and composers in the United States."

The purpose of this study was to examine the demographic characteristics and music achievement of eighth-grade students in the United States using evidence from the 2016 National Assessment of Educational Progress in the Arts (NAEP). Analyzing NAEP data from a nationally representative sample of 4,340 eighth graders attending public and private middle schools in the United States in 2016, The author estimated enrollment percentages in various kinds of music classes and compared Music NAEP scores across various individual characteristics. Results showed that 64% of eighth graders enrolled in a school music class, with 24% of eighth graders enrolling in an ensemble class. Among ensemble students, there was underrepresentation of Black and Latinx students and underrepresentation of students of lower socioeconomic status. Students who were enrolled in general music and not an ensemble did not follow this pattern: Black and Latinx students and students of lower socioeconomic means were overrepresented among general music students. Controlling for contextual and demographic characteristics, ensemble music students significantly outscored nonmusic students on the Music NAEP, but students enrolled in general music as their only music course scored statistically indistinguishably from their nonmusic peers. 

Ji Su Jung (percussion) is a 2022 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant. Administered by Lincoln Center, honorees receive an award of $25,000 to be used towards furthering their careers. Up to five awards are given each year, and Jung is the first percussionist to receive the honor.

"Transparent Waves," an album featuring selected compositions by Thomas DeLio, has been released by Neuma Records. The CD is part of a series of DeLio’s collected compositions, which includes four CDs and two DVDs over the past two decades. "Transparent Waves" includes more than a dozen electroacoustic and instrumental works written between 1995 and 2021.

Barbara Haggh-Huglo, professor of musicology in the University of Maryland School of Music, was elected an honorary member of the American Musicological Society (AMS), the largest musicological organization in the world. Honorary members are those scholars “who have made outstanding contributions to furthering its stated object and whom the Society wishes to honor.” The award is the highest honor of the AMS, reserved for the most esteemed of scholars. Read more about this honor.

Published in October 2021 with the University of Chicago Press, Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citizenship, and Jazz Manouche in France shows how relationships between racial identities, jazz, and national belonging become entangled in France.

Jazz manouche—a genre known best for its energetic, guitar-centric swing tunes—is among France’s most celebrated musical practices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It centers on the recorded work of famed guitarist Django Reinhardt and is named for the ethnoracial subgroup of Romanies (also known, often pejoratively, as “Gypsies”) to which Reinhardt belonged. French Manouches are publicly lauded as bearers of this jazz tradition, and many take pleasure and pride in the practice while at the same time facing pervasive discrimination. Jazz manouche uncovers a contradiction at the heart of France’s assimilationist republican ideals: the music is portrayed as quintessentially French even as Manouches themselves endure treatment as racial others.

In this book, Siv B. Lie explores how this music is used to construct divergent ethnoracial and national identities in a context where discussions of race are otherwise censured. Weaving together ethnographic and historical analysis, Lie shows that jazz manouche becomes a source of profound ambivalence as it generates ethnoracial difference and socioeconomic exclusion. As the first full-length ethnographic study of French jazz to be published in English, this book enriches anthropological, ethnomusicological, and historical scholarship on global jazz, race and ethnicity, and citizenship while showing how music can be an important but insufficient tool in struggles for racial and economic justice.

Visit the book's multimedia companion website.

Larissa Dedova (piano) released a solo CD, "Schubert: Piano Sonatas," on Oct. 15, 2021 with Centaur Records. The album, which includes all of Franz Schubert's completed piano sonatas, follows Dedova's previous acclaimed recordings of the complete piano works of Debussy and Ravel, also with Centaur Records.

Muresanu teams up with pianist Valentina Sandu-Dediu for this album, which features music for violin and piano and for solo violin by Romanian composer Dan Dediu (b. 1967). Dediu's compositions feature a process he calls ‘hybridisation,' in which he combines pieces of existing music to create a new and individual work. On this album, Don Giovanni/Juan "SonatOpera," op. 53 is an example of this, combining elements of Mozart and Strauss. Both the "SonatOpera" and "A Mythological Bestiary" were written for and premiered by Muresanu and Sandu-Dediu.

Chris Gekker (trumpet) was awarded second place in the solo instrumentalist category by The American Prize for 2021 for his CD, “Moon Marked” (2020, Divine Art Recordings). This project featured faculty members Mark Hill (oboe), Katherine Murdock (viola) and Rita Sloan (piano) as well as Gekker's children and alumni Lianna Gekker ’15 (B.M. jazz piano) and Jason Gekker ’20 (M.M. double bass). The album includes compositions by Richard Auldon Clark, Alistair Coleman, Carson Cooman, Eric Ewazen, Lance Hulme and Franklin Kiermyer.