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RESEARCH

Currently, my research projects fall primarily into two areas.  The first, which includes my dissertation and an ongoing project on music at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, examines notions of the highbrow, the middlebrow, and the lowbrow in twentieth-century British and American music.  The second area is film music, and I intend to concentrate more on this area after the completion of my dissertation.  Through my activities as a pianist and conductor, I have also done some research on 19th-century performance practice, 19th-century French music and Robert Schumann.  What follows is a more detailed description of my two main areas of research.

The "Three Brows" in Twentieth-century British and American Music
My two main questions in this area are:  (1) how have the concepts of "highbrow," "middlebrow," and "lowbrow" been developed, maintained, contested and deconstructed over the course of the twentieth century?  and (2) how have our changing conceptions of the "three brows" affected (or reflected) contemporary social thought?
In attempting to answer these questions, I use a wide variety of methodologies and source materials.  My dissertation, which examines how the concept of the "highbrow" was contested and deconstructed by British musicians and critics during the 1960s and 1970s, includes the use of traditional music-analytical tools (e.g., to understand how ELP transforms a piece from the symphonic repertory into a rock album and to show how Tippett uses the blues), critical and postcolonial theory (e.g., to examine the social implications of Tippett’s blues and to unpack the racial implications of the evolutionist history constructed by a small number of prominent progressive rock musicians), archival materials and reception theory (e.g., to trace how the increasing prominence of "Modernist" criticism affected the image of Elgar and his music), aesthetic theories (e.g., to show how Bryars was doing the equivalent in music of what Duchamp did in art), and so on.  It is my belief that different methodologies and source materials can—when applied appropriately—yield different insights, and it is my hope that the use of a number of divergent approaches allows me to produce more nuanced answers to the questions that I ask.
My other project in this area is a two-part study of music at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.  Carrying the slogan "Building the World of Tomorrow," the fair contains numerous exhibits that purported to show  "average/middlebrow Americans" how they will live, travel, cook, work and entertain themselves in the future.  The first part of this study, which is mainly archival and analytical, examines the music that is used in the major exhibits of the fair.  The second part will explore issues raised by the highly unsuccessful music festival that was put on as a part of the World’s Fair.  Specifically, I argue that this festival, which consisted mainly of Classical and Romantic European art music, was part of the burgeoning music appreciation movement in the United States—a movement that was dedicated to making Western Art music more accessible and "middlebrow."

Film Music
What concerns me is the gap that exists between the study of visual aspects of film and the study of film music.  This is of course a long-recognized issue:  film scholars often include apologies for not discussing the aural component of films in their publications, and film music books frequently contain such titles or subtitles as Unheard Melodies and A Neglected Art.
One might say that this gap in scholarship is a reflection of the film production process.  Countless numbers of films are shot and edited with little consideration of the music that will eventually be incorporated.  The composer comes in only after the visual component of the film is completed.  S/he will watch the "silent" film, and then—with varying degrees of directorial involvement—compose appropriate music for it.  This process puts the composer in an ambiguous position; s/he is not only an important contributor to the film, but also the first interpreter of the visual component of the film.  Given this process and ambiguity, one can say that film music is inevitably somewhat apart from the visual aspects of a film, and that the aforementioned gap in scholarship is unavoidable.
While I recognize (or perhaps because I recognize) the essential "separateness" of film music, I believe that there is much to be gained from attempting to bridge the gap between the study of a film’s visual components and the field of film music.  A film score often underscores what is happening on the screen, but it can also subvert the action and render a scene’s (or even an entire film’s) meanings ambiguous.  It is my belief that we can uncover more nuance and meaning into our examination of film texts.  In recent years, a few scholars such as Robynn Stillwell, Krin Gabbard, and James Naremore have begun bridging this gap with extremely interesting results.
In my forthcoming research, I would like to continue bridging the aforementioned gap.  Currently, I have done some preliminary work on three projects.  The first involves a comparison of images of East Asians portrayed on screen and in the music in recent Hollywood Orientalist films.  The second is an examination of the genealogy of recent film musicals, and the third is a history of the theory of film music.

TEACHING

I have taught music history/music appreciation courses in popular music and Western art music of all periods for non-majors and majors, beginning and intermediate music theory courses, piano and seminars for majors and graduate students in Opera, Research Methods, Keyboard Literature, Western and Non-Western Popular Musics, and the Renaissance Mass.  Detailed information about courses I taught in the past will be uploaded by the end of January.
In the future, I would like to teach teaching core courses and non-major courses in music history/music appreciation, American music, and world music.  I would also like to teach more specialized courses in opera, 19th- and 20th-century Western Art Music, popular musics of the world, film music, research methods in musicology and ethnomusicology, and East Asian music.  Proposed syllabi for the following courses are available :  20th-century Chinese and Chinese-American Music, Films and Fiction about Music, and the Politics and Sociology of Music.

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