Martha Feldman (musicologist)

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Martha Feldman (born October 1954) [1] is an American musicologist and cultural historian. Since 1990 she has taught at the University of Chicago where she is Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Music and the College. [2] [3] [4] Feldman also holds appointments to the faculty of Theater and Performance Studies and serves as affiliated faculty in Romance Languages and Literatures and at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. [2] Born in Philadelphia to a family of artists, [5] she studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her doctorate in Music History and Theory in 1987. [6] She is married to composer and jazz musician Patricia Barber. [7]

Contents

Scholarship

Feldman’s scholarship has centered on vernacular vocal genres and performances, often Italian, from the sixteenth through the present. Her first monograph, City Cultureand the Madrigal at Venice (University of California Press, 1995) is, in the words of Laura Buch, "an interdisciplinary study whose dense multilayering constructs a labyrinthine hall of mirrors that chronicles patterns of Venetian literary, musical, and political thought at mid-sixteenth century." [8] Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2007), her second book, "fills a notable void" by capturing opera seria's "cultural-historical breadth" and explaining its "remarkable popularity and versatility" while also exploring the new territory of "the multifarious technologies through whish opera seria engaged with the ideological horizon of absolutism." [9] In fall 2007 she gave the Ernest Bloch Lectures at the University of California at Berkeley; [10] these talks culminated in The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds (University of California Press, 2015), which went on to win the American Musicological Society's Kindeldey Award. [11] Of this contribution to the castrato literature, Uta Protz writes,

"What Feldman's meticulously researched, beautifully written and richly illustrated work achieves is to finally shed light on the contradictory rise, voices and eventual demise of the castrati, and, moreover, to convincingly show that these castrated males were produced not as non-men but as idealized men. To this end, the author draws on social history and gender studies as well as on musicology, literary critique and psychology." [12]

Feldman's recent work considers how voices are entangled with race, bodies, and memory, including essays on fugitive voice and the collection The Voice as Something More: Essays toward Materiality, coedited with Judith T. Zeitlin (University of Chicago Press, 2019). [13] [14]

A number of Feldman’s projects involve scholarly exchange. The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, coedited with Bonnie Gordon (Oxford University Press, 2006, winner of the Ruth A. Solie Award of the American Musicological Society), included essays on early modern courtesans’ music by Feldman’s graduate students. [15] Feldman’s faculty seminar “The Voice Project,” an interdisciplinary faculty initiative sponsored by UChicago’s Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society for which she was co-principal investigator with David Levin and Judith Zeitlin, led to The Voice as Something More. [14] And the colloquy “Why Voice Now?” (Journal of the American Musicological Society 2015), emerged from a joint session of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory. [16] The project “Errant Voices: Performances beyond Measure,” co-organized with Bonnie Gordon and Kara Keeling, explores insurgent and resilient voices comparatively across trans, raced, and castrato cases.

Highlights of special honors

Major publications and projects

Monographs

Edited volumes and journal issues

Select journal articles

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. ↑ "Feldman, Martha". Virtual International Authority File.
  2. 1 2 3 "Martha Feldman". The University of Chicago Department of Music. Retrieved 18 January 2021.
  3. ↑ "Martha Feldman and Lawrence Zbikowski receive named, distinguished service professorships | Music Department". music.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2022-01-06.
  4. ↑ "21 UChicago faculty receive named, distinguished service professorships | University of Chicago News". news.uchicago.edu. July 2021. Retrieved 2022-01-11.
  5. ↑ Sanders, Seth (21 November 2002). "Feldman, scholar of opera seria, garners Dent Medal". The University of Chicago Chronicle. 22/5.
  6. ↑ "Martha Feldman | Romance Languages & Literatures". rll.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2022-01-06.
  7. ↑ Velez, Andrew (7 November 2000). "Totally Jazzed". The Advocate: 81–82.
  8. ↑ Buch, Laura (1999-04-01). "Review: City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice by Martha Feldman". Journal of the American Musicological Society. 52 (1): 183–193. doi:10.2307/832031. ISSN   0003-0139. JSTOR   832031.
  9. ↑ Forment, Bruno (2009). "Review of Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy". Notes. 66 (1): 69–72. doi:10.1353/not.0.0202. ISSN   0027-4380. JSTOR   40539423. S2CID   194086354.
  10. 1 2 Feldman, Martha (2015-02-20). The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds. University of California Press. doi:10.1525/california/9780520279490.001.0001. ISBN   978-0-520-27949-0.
  11. ↑ "Otto Kinkeldey Award Winners". American Musicological Society. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
  12. ↑ Protz, Uta (2016-04-01). "Martha Feldman, The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds". Cultural History. 5 (1): 103–105. doi:10.3366/cult.2016.0115. ISSN   2045-290X.
  13. 1 2 3 The voice as something more : essays toward materiality. Martha Feldman, Judith T. Zeitlin, Mladen Dolar. Chicago. 2019. ISBN   978-0-226-65639-7. OCLC   1085638153.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  14. 1 2 "Giving Voice | Tableau". tableau.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2022-01-06.
  15. 1 2 3 The courtesan's arts : cross-cultural perspectives. Martha Feldman, Bonnie Gordon. New York: Oxford University Press. 2006. ISBN   978-0-19-977508-8. OCLC   710992964.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  16. ↑ Feldman, Martha (convener and contributor) (2015-12-01). "Why Voice Now?". Journal of the American Musicological Society. 68 (3): 653–685. doi:10.1525/jams.2015.68.3.653. ISSN   0003-0139.{{cite journal}}: |first= has generic name (help)
  17. ↑ "The Dent Medal/Previous Recipients". Royal Musical Association. Retrieved 18 January 2021.
  18. ↑ "The Dent Medal". Journal of the Royal Musical Association. 127: 147–48. 2002. doi:10.1093/jrma/127.1.147.
  19. ↑ "Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring". The University of Chicago. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  20. ↑ Friedman, Allan (17 April 2012). "Eight UChicago Faculty Members Named American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows". UChicago News.
  21. ↑ "Professor Martha Feldman [member profile]". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 18 January 2021.
  22. ↑ "AMS Administration". American Musicological Society.
  23. ↑ "Honorary and Corresponding Members". American Musicological Society. Retrieved 18 January 2021.
  24. ↑ "2020 AMS Award Winners". American Musicological Society. 20 November 2020.
  25. ↑ "Sounding the Edges of History". UC Press Blog (University of California Press). 21 July 2021.
  26. ↑ Feldman, Martha (2007). Opera and sovereignty : transforming myths in eighteenth-century Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN   978-0-226-04454-5. OCLC   710995108.
  27. ↑ "Ruth A. Solie Award Winners". American Musicological Society. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  28. 1 2 3 "Volume 154 Issue 1 | Representations | University of California Press". online.ucpress.edu. Retrieved 2022-01-06.
  29. ↑ The female voice in the twentieth century : material, symbolic and aesthetic dimensions. Serena Facci, M. Garda. London. 2021. ISBN   978-0-367-81657-5. OCLC   1243162301.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  30. ↑ Feldman, Martha (2017-03-06). "The Castrato as a Rhetorical Figure". Rhetoric and Drama. De Gruyter. pp. 71–96. doi:10.1515/9783110484663-004. ISBN   978-3-11-048466-3.
  31. ↑ Feldman, Martha (2014-11-05), Greenwald, Helen M. (ed.), "Castrato Acts", The Oxford Handbook of Opera, Oxford University Press, pp. 394–418, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195335538.013.018, ISBN   978-0-19-533553-8 , retrieved 2022-01-06
  32. ↑ Feldman, Martha (2008-07-01). "Denaturing the Castrato". The Opera Quarterly. 24 (3–4): 178–199. doi:10.1093/oq/kbp021. ISSN   0736-0053.
  33. ↑ Music and the cultures of print. Kate Van Orden. New York: Garland Pub. 2000. ISBN   0-8153-2574-6. OCLC   42649814.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  34. ↑ Feldman, Martha (1995-10-01). "Magic Mirrors and the Seria Stage: Thoughts toward a Ritual View". Journal of the American Musicological Society. 48 (3): 423–484. doi:10.2307/3519834. ISSN   0003-0139. JSTOR   3519834.
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