Musical Ideas of Sympathy and Sensibility in the Scottish Enlightenment
583 Selborne Rd
Riverside, IL 60546
Martha Feldman
The Scottish Enlightenment is commonly understood as an intellectual awakening in fields such as philosophy, political economy, and human history, with little consideration of music and the arts. This dissertation situates music (eighteenth-century Scots songs in particular) within the Scottish Enlightenment but also explores how music profoundly shaped seminal Scottish ideas such as sympathy, sensibility, and stadial theory. The dissertation contains case studies from the songs of Allan Ramsay, Robert Burns, and musical arrangements by Haydn and Beethoven. Thus a related objective of this dissertation is to evaluate the relationship between the Scottish Enlightenment and the Western art music tradition.
Intro to Western Art Music (Instructed twice)
Music in Western Civilization I/II (TA)
History of Western Music I/II/III for Music Majors (TA)
Media Aesthetics: Text, Image, Sound (Writing Intern)
Human Being and Citizen I/II (Writing Intern)
“Progression from Pastoral to Commercial Society: Allan Ramsay’s Scots Songs as ‘Test Case’ for the Stadial Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment”, Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society, Aberdeen, Scotland, 10 July 2011.
“Performance of Contagion: Conceiving Sympathy as a Musical Idea in the Scottish Enlightenment”, Perspectives on Performance: Stony Brook Graduate Music Symposium, 12 February 2011.
“Handel’s Orlando as Ritual Performance: Zoroastro’s Magic, Singers, and the Triumph of Reason”, American Handel Festival, Center College, Danville, KY, 27 February, 2009.
“Hearing the Voice and Human Expression: Rethinking Music and the Origins of Language, 1746-1780”, Midwest Graduate Music Consortium, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 23 February 2008.
Respondent Paper to Professor Martha Feldman’s “Strange Births and Comic Kin”, Medicine, Practice, and the Body: An Interdisciplinary Workshop, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, 22 February 2007.
“Human Expression in Herder’s 18th-century Aesthetics of Folksong and settings by Brahms”, Invited Colloquium Paper, National Institute of the Arts, ANU, Summer 2006.
“You Can’t Come from Mars: Adorno’s Theory of Music and Immanent Critique”. Invited Colloquium Paper, Department of Music, University of Sydney, Summer 2004.
“Australian Albums: ‘All New–All Colonial’” in National Library of Australia News, vol. 7, no. 9 (June 2002), 15-18.
Nicholson Center for British Studies Fellowship and Graduate Initiative Grant; Stuart Tave Teaching Fellowship; Music Department Wadmond Award; Humanities Division Fellowship
Early Music Ensemble Coordinator, University of Chicago, 2009-11; Reading Competencies in Scots Language, German, and French