Position
Academic Background
Sample Courses    
Teaching Philosophy
Research & Interests   
Notable Academic Appointments & Awards
Publication Highlights
Selected Scholarly Presentations 

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• Associate Professor of Music

Academic Background        

• The University of Michigan:
  • Ph.D. in Musicology, 1994.
  • M.M. in Musicology, 1983.
• Indiana University: M.M. in Harpsichord Performance, 1980.
• Bowling Green State University: B.M. Choral Education and Harpsichord Performance, 1976.
• Harpsichord Studies: Peter Sykes, Boston, MA, 2003-2004; Gustav Leonhardt, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1986-1987; Davitt Moroney, Paris, France, 1986-1987; Edward Parmentier, The University of Michigan; Anthony Newman, Indiana University; Igor Kipnis, Summer Music Festival, Indianapolis, Indiana; Vincent Corrigan, Bowling Green State University.

Sample Courses Taught at Providence College

• Music History and Literature II (Baroque and Classical Music)
• Music History and Literature III (Romantic and Modern Music)
• Seminar: The Life and Works of J.S. Bach
• Seminar: Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas
• Music of the Baroque Era
• An Introduction to Women's Studies

Teaching Philosophy

I often ask myself how I can justify teaching music when there are so many subjects students could study that are seemingly more relevant to today's pressing issues:  widespread discrimination, poverty, political corruption, terrorism, global warming, to name only a few.  And yet, I have come to the conclusion that the study of music is important because it teaches us about the meaning and importance of human civilizations over time.  Music not only represents civilizations at their best, it also serves as documentation, a reflection, or evidence that reveals so much about societies and cultures, near and far, past and present, in a unique manner, a way unlike any other art form.  Music speaks directly to the heart and soul, not with words but with the beauty of sounds masterfully combined.

With this in mind, my goal in the classroom is to stimulate through active learning the students' interest in all aspects of music -- composers, musical compositions, historical, social, aesthetic, and cultural circumstances surrounding the creation of musical works, performers, performance practices, and the make-up of audiences.  I ask my students not only to discern how these aspects intersect and relate, but also to judge and discriminate theoretical and aesthetic issues that apply to this important art form and its relationship to greater social, cultural, and even political issues.

In a more personal way, I believe that spiritual growth goes hand in hand with intellectual growth and that the study of music, through a disciplined pursuit of beauty, leads to this highest level of learning.  "Active" learning is key.  Facts and figures are useless if not applied to broader concepts that students formulate through self-discovery.  Ultimately, I hope that students may develop a profound understanding of music that transcends the intellectual and affords them the opportunity to discover beauty, which throughout history has been recognized as a pathway to self-awareness and God.

Research & Interests

My primary field of scholarship focuses on late seventeenth-century French airs or "courtly" love songs. My dissertation explored rhetoric as the basis for conventional expressions of emotional states in French airs published during the 1660s, and is an interdisciplinary work that incorporates the fields of rhetoric, poetics, aesthetics, social and cultural history, the science and physiology of "the passions of the soul," music theory, and performance practices.

My book, publications, and presentations specifically concern 1) the study of airs as seductive dialogues and the repertory's link to the seventeenth-century French literature, specifically moral and gallant conversations; 2) the stylistic analysis of mid- to late-seventeenth-century serious airs based on gender representation; 3) the study of the manuscript parodies of scenes from Lully's operas as "political erotica"; 4) the stylistic analysis of the allemandes of Louis Couperin as imitations of the mid-century serious air; 5) the study of religious parodies of serious airs and their use by devout female aristocrats; and 5) the study of encoded eroticism, hidden moral, and the influence of salon culture on the mid-seventeenth-century serious air.

I am also a professional harpsichordist and have played in a number of small and large professional ensembles and as a soloist.  Much of my academic work is devoted to the study of performance practice issues relating to Baroque music.

I am currently working on a book entitled Music and the Language of Love in the Late Seventeenth-Century French Air, 1650-1700, to be published by Indiana University Press.

Notable Academic Appointments and Awards

• Recipient, The Noah Greenberg Award, along with Elisabeth Belgrano, soprano, and Stephen Stubbs, lute, theorbo, and guitar, for my project entitled "The Lyric Art of Bénigne de Bacilly:  From Drinking Songs to Spiritual Airs," a commercial recording of serious airs, drinking songs, dance airs, and spiritual airs composed by Bénigne de Bacilly (c1626-1690), using a variety of instrumental/vocal accompaniments, 2005.
• National Secretary, The Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, 2005-present.
• Chapter Representative to the National Organization, The American Musicological Society New England Chapter, 2005-present.
• Chapter President, The American Musicological Society New England Chapter, 2002-2004.
• Recipient, Grant from the Providence College Committee on Aid to Faculty Research, Summer, 2002.
• Recipient, Research Fellowship awarded by the French government (CNRS) through the Centre Musique Baroque de Versailles, Summer, 2001.

Publication Highlights

• Book in Progress:  Music and the Language of Love in the Seventeenth-Century French Airs, 1650-1700.  Indiana University Press, forthcoming.
• Review : "Michel Lambert: Airs from Airs de différents autheurs." Edited by Robert Green. Middletown, WI : A-R Editions, Inc., 2005."  In Early Music, forthcoming in August, 2006.
• "From Impurity to Piety: Mid 17th-Century French Devotional Airs and the Spiritual Conversion of Women."  The Journal of Musicology 22/2 (2005): 268-291.
• "Strong Men -- Weak Women:  Gender Representation and the Influence of Lully's 'Operatic Style' on French Airs Sérieux (1650-1700)" In Musical Voices of Early Modern Women: Many-Headed Melodies.  Edited by Thomasin LaMay, 135-167. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005, 135-167.
• "Lambert, Michel." In Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG), Biographical Encyclopedia. Volume 13. Bärenreiter und Metzler, 2004, 1092-1094.
• "The Heroism Undone: The Erotic Manuscript Parodies of Lully/Quinault Tragédies Lyriques."  In Music, Sensation, and Sensuality.   Edited by Linda Austern, 137-166. Garland Press, 2001.
• Review:  "Jean-Noël Marchand. Cantiques spirituels (facsimile edition). Introduction by Thierry Favier. La Musique française classique de 1650 à 1800, 5648. Courlay: Fuzeau, 1999. 4 fascicles." In The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 6/2, 2000.
  http://sscm-jscm.press.uiuc.edu/jscm/v6no2.html
• "'La Réplique Galante': Sébastien de Brossard's Airs as Conversation."  In Sébastien Brossard, Musicien.   Edited by Jean Duron, 181-201.  Versailles:  Editions du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles (Editions Klincksieck), 1998.

Selected Scholarly Presentations and Activities

• "Rhetoric and Expression in the Mid-Seventeenth-Century French Air: A Rationale for  Compositional Style and Performance." Lecture-Recital. The Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill, April, 2005.  Also presented as part of The International Baroque Institution at Longy, The Longy Conservatory of Music, Boston, MA, July 2005.
• "'Precious' Eroticism and Hidden Morality: Salon Culture and the Mid-Seventeenth-Century French Air." The American Musicological Society Conference, Seattle, Washington, 2004.  Also presented at The International Baroque Music Conference, Manchester, England, July, 2004; and at Eros and Euterpe: Music and Pornography.  Indiana University,  Bloomington, IN, February, 2004.
• "From Impurity to Piety:  Mid-Seventeenth-Century Devotional Airs and the Spiritual Conversion of Women." The American Musicological Society Conference, Columbus, OH, 2002.  Also presented at The International Baroque Music Conference, Logrono, Spain, 2002.
• "The Allemandes of Louis Couperin:  Songs Without Words." The Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society Conference, The University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, May, 2000.  Also presented at the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music Conference, The University of Virginia, Virginia, April, 1999.
• "Heroism Undone in the Erotic Manuscript Parodies of Jean-Baptiste Lully's Tragédie Lyriques."   The International Baroque Music Conference, Dublin, Ireland, July, 2000.  Also presented at The American Musicological Society Conference, Kansas City, Missouri, November, 1999.
• "Seductive Dialogues: Late Seventeenth-Century French Airs and the Salon." Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, Wellesley College, Massachusetts, 1996.

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