Current Students in the History of Music

Bratt, Suzanne
(5th year)
sbratt@sas.upenn.edu

In the past, I have written about Verdi, Machaut, the Aeolian Harp and Al Green. Currently, my interests include instrumental virtuosity in the Baroque era, opera seria, film music, and the intersections of music, religious belief and warfare in Europe from the 16th to mid-17th centuries. In my spare time, I enjoy singing, playing chamber music with friends, and attending the opera.

Casadei, Delia
(3rd year)
dcasadei@sas.upenn.edu

I am mainly interested in twentieth-century music, particularly, but not exclusively, Poulenc, Ravel, Satie, Milhaud, Cowell, Nancarrow and Ives. My philosophical angle is that of ‘funny’ and grotesque music, and also the very presence of laughter in a piece of music, with detours into mechanical music and repetition. I am also taken with impossibly broad subjects such as the historical-anthropological study of the concept and act of musical composition in Western Europe, and the aesthetics of musical time.

Gray, Myron
(4th year)
graym@sas.upenn.edu

I am a doctoral candidate, currently researching French music in Federal Philadelphia. My work is supported by Penn and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Hammel, Stephan
(4th year)
shammel@sas.upenn.edu

Stephan Hammel's research centers on literate music in and of Latin America with an emphasis on the Southern Cone at the turn of the last century. His approach reflects his interest in nineteenth-century musicology, especially the work of Guido Adler. Other favored topics include the life and séances of Rosemary Brown, musical mystic, and the history of the rock musical.

Jennings, Lauren
(6yh year)
laurenje@sas.upenn.edu

I am interested in music and manuscript culture in Medieval and Renaissance Italy.  My dissertation will deal with various intersections between music and literature in 14th-century Tuscany, focusing especially on poesia per musica transmitted in text-only poetic sources.  My other research interests include musical life in 18th and early 19th century Pennsylvania and historical performance practice.  When not working on my dissertation, I enjoy singing early music, playing recorder, and choral conducting.

Kass, Lily
(1st year)
lilykass@sas.upenn.edu

I am interested in operatic dramaturgy and issues of translation in vocal music. I care deeply about the future of opera as a living art form, and I hope to examine the role that scholarship can play in opera performance and education today. Originally drawn to music as a performer, I continue to sing in my free time.

McCorkle, Brooke
(4th year)
brookemc@sas.upenn.edu

Having earned bachelors degrees in Japanese studies and music performance from the University of Oklahoma, I am pursuing a dissertation that combines these topics. My work follows the reception of Wagner in modern Japan and his influences on Japanese composers. Other interests include German opera, Post-Meiji Japanese music, traditional Japanese music, film music, and nationalism in music.

Owens, Evelyn
(3rd year)
eowens@sas.upenn.edu

I’m interested in blues and jazz historiography, the reception and canonization of American black music, nostalgia, and historical imagination toward the South. Other academic pastimes of mine include studying the American expatriates in early twentieth-century Paris and applying the rhetoric of Southern gothic literature to music. As a classically trained pianist, I hold late Romantic piano music close to heart, as well as nineteenth-century artistic context in Europe.

Patteson, Thomas
(5th year)
patteson@sas.upenn.edu

My primary focuses are 20th-century European-American music and technologies of sound. In my dissertation I intend to investigate the connections between technology, composition, and listening in the early history of electronic music (roughly 1900-1960). Some of my other research interests are aesthetics, modernism and the avant-garde, the history of musical timbre, and cinema.

Pooley, Thomas
(4th year)
tpooley@sas.upenn.edu

My research interests include Western art music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and African music. My dissertation is a cognitive study of melody and song prosody in Nguni music. I also work on cross-cultural art music in South Africa, the evolution of music, and Chopin studies.

Zazulia, Emily
(6th year)
zazulia@sas.upenn.edu

I work primarily on medieval and early modern music, with a particular emphasis on music of the fifteenth century. My dissertation, tentatively titled, “Verbal canons and notational complexity in fifteenth century music,” addresses the relationship between notation and its intellectual and cultural environments, with a particular focus on material culture and the visual appearance of musical notation. I remain active both as a singer and a choral conductor, and I run a group that sings from original notation.