Year End Summary
2008-2009
The members of the Boston University Music Society organized and held their second annual graduate student conference on March 28, 2009. The keynote speaker was Dr. Kiri Miller from Brown University, whose address was titled, “Virtual Virtuosity and Mediated Musicality: Why Guitar Hero Players Don't Just Play Real Guitars.” Six students papers were chosen for presentation, and among those was our own Anaar Desai-Stephens (see below). The program abstracts are available here. Read a review of our conference here. The conference committee included Paula Bishop, Basil Considine, Anaar Desai-Stephens, Lauren Hastings, Nate Meneer, and Andrew Shryock.
BUMS hosted a student paper session on April 29, 2009. Students were given ten minutes to present with a five-minute question-and-answer period. The papers presented that day were:
- Anaar Desai-Stephens, “The Journey of the Violin to North India”
- Lauren Hastings, “Rahim Alhaj: Arabic Music in a Global Context”
- Luke Berryman, “Two Questions”
- Basil Considine, “A Music Book for Lowinsky: a Reexamination of London RCM 1070, the so called Anne Boleyn Choirbook”
- Andrew Shryock, “Hip-Hop Messiahs”
- Paula Bishop, “Some Observations on Duets in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Musical Theater”
Individual accomplishments among our students for this academic year include:
Luke Berryman (MM-Musicology) presented a paper at the winter meeting of AMS-Greater New York earlier this semester, entitled “’Der Ton des Affirmativen’: Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Aged Music’ and Karlheinz Stockhausen.” He will be presenting a paper at a conference on nineteenth-century English music at the University of Bristol in July, titled “C. Hubert H. Parry and the Birth of Music as a University Subject (Or, ‘A Plea Made on Music’s Behalf’).” In the fall Luke will begin a PhD course at King’s College, London. His thesis will be on Liszt and Wagner, and will be supervised by John Deathridge.
Paula Bishop (PhD-Musicology) presented a paper at the annual SEM conference at Wesleyan College titled “Recontextualizing for and by a Global Audience: An Online Community for Hawaiian Music.” She also served on a career panel at Wheaton College in Norton, MA, co-sponsored by the college’s Filene Center for Academic Advising and Career Services and the Department of Music.
Brian Patrick Byrne (MA-Theory) completed his master’s thesis entitled “An Analytical Exploration of the Cyclic Themes in Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie.”
Anaar Desai-Stephens (MM-Ethnomusicology) presented “Playing Their Part: The Changing Role of Professional Female Musicians in North India” at the BUMS conference, as well as at the NECSEM conference at Yale. At the latter, she was awarded the Koetting Prize for the best graduate student paper. She will be graduating in August; her thesis focuses on the Hindustani violin and gender roles in North Indian music, using her Hindustani violin teacher, Kala Ramnath, as a nexus for investigation. Anaar also received a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship to participate in an intensive two-month Hindi course at the South
Asia Summer Language Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She will enter the PhD program in Musicology at Cornell in the fall.
Andrew Shryock (PhD-Musicology) read a paper titled “The Faithful Text: Oratorio Word-books and Handel’s Audience” at the AMS Greater New York chapter meeting. He received a Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship from the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. In the fall, he will be studying Handel autographs and related manuscripts and print materials in London. Andrew was also appointed as student representative for the New England chapter of the AMS to the National Council.
