PhD Candidates in Music Department Launch Journal of Musicology
May 20, 2017
Simon Goodacre | Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Earlier today, four students from the Music department launched the Brandeis Journal of Musicology. “Historically, Brandeis has had one of the top-tier Musicology programs,” says PhD candidate and co-editor Charles Stratford. “We want to show that Brandeis is making a positive contribution to the community of scholars in our discipline.”
The journal launched with two papers, “New Perspectives on Meter in Webern’s Opp. 5, 11, and 29,” by William van Geest, a PhD student in Music Theory at the University of Michigan, and “The New Virtuosos: Conductors in Paris, 1830–1848,” by Meagan Mason, a PhD candidate in historical musicology at the University of Southern California. Stratford is happy that the first two papers published in the journal partly encompass the breadth of the discipline.
The idea started with a Musicology conference that Brandeis in 2015. “It was the first time we have hosted a Musicology conference here in more than fifteen years,” says Stratford. Three established musicologists provided keynotes at the conference, and six graduate students presented their scholarship. The two papers in the inaugural issue of the journal were drawn from presentations at this conference.
Part of the motivation for this project is promoting collaboration between two disciplines in the Music department: Musicology, and Music Composition and Theory. James Praznik, a PhD candidate in Music Theory and Composition is the other co-editor, and the assistant editors, Jacques Dupuis and Eric Elder, are both PhD candidates in Musicology. Karen Desmond is the faculty advisor for the project. “It is very important to have scholars from across the department participating in this,” says Stratford, “because we bring very different perspectives to the project.”
The project team hopes that putting publication opportunities in the hands of graduate students will help them prepare for the job market. “In this field, publishing is vital when it comes to advancing in your career,” says Stratford. “We want to help students learn how to deal with the process of publication—both preparing a paper and understanding the editorial requirements.” As the journal develops, the team hopes to publish more papers through its website. “The journal is somewhat tethered to the conference at the moment, but the team hopes that more publications will come from other sources.”
Two new faculty members have recently joined the Music department, and Stratford is excited to see how the journal evolves as each new editor brings his or her experiences to the project. “I see the culture of the journal and the conference evolving as our new faculty attract different graduate students,” he says. “I am incredibly happy with my decision to come to Brandeis. When I first came to campus, I was seeking other people who wanted to make Brandeis a better place to study music, and I definitely found them in my collaborators on the conference and now the journal. I hope that the legacy we have in music and musicology will be preserved. It is something we are really proud of.”