Semester Reflections

Last year in our survey class I struggled with how to react to the traditional telling of music history–one that too often focuses on, and thereby values, the output of a select group of mostly dead white male composers to the dismissal of the music of composers...

Drawing interpretive lines

Dorf’s and Moore’s readings of Satie’s Socrate and Poulenc’s Les Biches and Aubade as works influenced by a queer aesthetic do seem justified to me. The blatant de-sexualization of the text that Satie set (“Great care [is] taken to...

Negro”philia”?

“These blacks, who are grotesque caricatures, have rhythm not only in their legs, but in their skin, which shudders from their heels to the roots of their hair. They sing with a very sure sense of harmony, making us think that they remember their native...

Women Composers in 1920s Paris

For my first paper, I’m hoping to learn more about the influential yet under-represented contributions of women–especially women composers–to the musical life of 1920s Paris. I came upon this website and, making note of all names with “France” and dates...