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Faculty & Staff > History & Theory >Ryan Minor |
Ryan Minor, Assistant Professor;
Music History and Theory
Email Ryan Minor at: Ryan.minor[at]stonybrook.edu
Ryan Minor's research and teaching focus primarily on the musical and political culture of nineteenth-century Germany, with special emphasis on opera, choral music, and music's participation in the public sphere; his interests also encompass analysis and hermeneutics, opera and dramaturgy, and nationalism. He is currently finishing a book exploring the musical and political resonance of the chorus in nineteenth-century Germany. His seminars thus far have focused on music and art-religion; Wagner’s Ring cycle; Brahms; and new approaches to analyzing 19th-century music.Upcoming projects and seminars include: the intersections of Wagnerism and mass culture; the growth of musical institutions in the nineteenth century; Mozart operas; and the role of the mob and theories of vitalism in the music of fin-de-siècle Europe.
Before coming to Stony Brook, Minor taught at Williams College and the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. He has received grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago. In 2007-2008 he was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.
Minor currently serves as an Associate Editor at Opera Quarterly and on the Board of Directors of the American Brahms Society.
Education
Ph.D., Musicology, University of Chicago, 2005
Dissertation: “National Memory, Public Music: Commemoration and Consecration in Nineteenth-Century German Choral Music”
B.M., Music History, Rice University, 1996
Thesis: “Narrating Brahms: Op. 34 and the Principles of Developing Variation”
Academic Appointments
Assistant Professor, SUNY Stony Brook, 2005- present
Visiting Assistant Professor, Williams College, 2004-2005
Doctoral Fellow, Franke Institute for the Humanities, University of Chicago, 2003-2004
Instructor, University of Chicago, 2000-2003
Awards and Fellowships
Research Fellowship, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, 2007-2008
Invited Participant, Cornell University / DAAD Summer Faculty Seminar “Operatic States,” 2007
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Michigan, 2005-2006 (declined)
Dissertation Fellowship, Franke Institute for the Humanities, University of Chicago, 2003-2004
Geiringer Award, American Brahms Society, 2002
Tave Teaching Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2002-2003
Katschins Dissertation Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2002-2003
Melvin Gray Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2001-2002
Bundeskanzler Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, 2000-2001
Research Grant, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, 2000-2001 (declined)
Summer Language Grant, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, 1999
Century Fellowship, University of Chicago, 1996-2000
Shepherd Society Scholar, Rice University, 1992-1996
Monograph
Choral Fantasies: Festivity, Nationhood, and the Chorus in Nineteenth-Century Germany (under contract, Cambridge University Press)
“When did German Music Lose its Innocence?” Review essay, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 133/2 (2008)
“Parsifal’s Promise or Parsifal’s Reality? On the Politics of Voice Exchange in Wagner’s Grail Operas,” Opera Quarterly 22/2 (2007)
“Occasions and Nations in Brahms’s Fest- und Gedenksprüche,” 19th-Century Music 29/3 (2006)
“Prophet and Populace in Liszt’s ‘Beethoven’ Cantatas,” Franz Liszt and his World, ed. Christopher Gibbs and Dana Gooley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)
“Wagner’s Last Chorus: Consecrating Space and Spectatorship in Parsifal,” Cambridge Opera Journal 17/1 (2005)
Shorter Pieces
Introduction to Lars von Trier’s Stage Notes to Der Ring des Nibelungen and his Bayreuth “Deed of Conveyance,” Opera Quarterly 23/1 (2008)
“Voice,” “Hermeneutics,” “Nationalism,” and “Modernism” entries, New Harvard Dictionary of Music, second edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003)
Program Notes
“Wagner and the Choral Tradition,” in program book for the 2009 Bard Music Festival “Wagner and his World”
“Music and German National Identity,” in program book for the 2009 Bard Music Festival “Wagner and his World”
“Zemlinsky und das Kollektiv,” in program book to accompany Der Traumgörge at the Deutsche Oper Berlin (2007)
Editorial Work
Guest editor, together with Brian Hyer, of special “Parsifal” issue of Opera Quarterly 22/2 (2007)
Reviews
Review, Cambridge Opera Journal 18/1 (2006), of: Dieter Borchmeyer, Drama and the World of Richard Wagner, trans. Daphne Ellis, and James Treadwell, Interpreting Wagner
Review of Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, eds., Music and German National Identity (H-NET Liste für Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte; available at http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/2003-1-088.pdf)
Work in Progress
“The Chorus,” forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Opera, ed. Helen Greenwald (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)
“Choral Music and Choral Singing in Germany: An Overview,” forthcoming in 19th-Century Choral Music, ed. Donna Di Grazia (London: Routledge, 2010)
Mobs, Masses, and Music in Wilhelmine Germany (monograph)
“In Search of the (Opera) Chorus,” keynote address at the symposium “The Choir,” Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, May 2010
“The Schlusschoral and the End of Irony: History and Meaning in Ullmann and Weill,” talk at conference “Recovered Voices: Staging Suppressed Opera of the Early 20th Century,” UCLA and LA Opera, April 2010
“Die Meistersinger, Indoors and Out,” International Musicological Society, Amsterdam, July 2009
“Memory and Multiplicity in Felix Mendelssohn’s ‘Gutenberg’ Works,” talk at the conference “Purcell, Haydn, Handel, and Mendelssohn,” OxfordUniversity, March 2009
“The Birth of Germany out of the Spirit of Song: Brahms, Memory, and Nationhood,” talk at the conference “Brahms and Memory,” University of New Hampshire, April 2008
“Music and Liberalism in Germany, c. 1840,” presentation at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, December 2007
“Zemlinsky and the Collective,” talk at the symposium “Alexander von Zemlinsky und die Moderne,” Deutsche Oper Berlin, June 2007
“Nuremberg Reimagined: Die Meistersinger in the Parlor,” colloquium at Rice University, March 2007
“The Birth of Germany out of the Spirit of Song, or Music’s Crisis c. 1871,” colloquium at Stony Brook University History Department, December 2006
“Choral Fantasies: Beethoven, von Schwind, and the Aesthetics of Participation,” American Musicological Society, Los Angeles, November 2006, and the 14th International Conference on 19th-Century Music, Manchester, England, July 2006
“Genre, History, and Disciplinarity in Recent Opera Studies,” Modern Language Association, Washington, D.C., December 2005
“‘Dich nur besingen wir’: Lohengrin, Parsifal, and the Politics of Voice Exchange,” talk for the conference “Wagner’s Parsifal and the Performance of Culture,” University of Chicago, October 2005
“Brahms, the Triumphlied Op. 55, and the Space of Song,” 11th Annual International Conference on Romanticism, Texas A&M University, October 2004
“‘Heil ihm! Heil uns!’: Choral Participation in Occasional Works of Felix Mendelssohn,” Symposium on the Composers and Compositions of the Berliner Sing-Akademie, Rhodes College, November 2003
“‘Solch ein Fest hat uns verbunden’: Music, Festivity and the Chorus in Liszt’s 1845 ‘Beethoven’ Cantata,” colloquium at Washington University in St. Louis, October 2002
“Occasions, Nations, and Disseminations in Brahms’s Op. 109 Fest- und Gedenksprüche,” American Musicological Society, Midwest chapter meeting, Chicago, September 2002
“Sublimating the Sublime: Communal Passions and the Founding of the German Choral Movement,” “Music and the Passions” conference, University of Chicago, March 2000
“‘without a center to surround’: Wagner, Die Meistersinger, and the Fantasm of the Chorus,” Lyrica Society conference “Dramaturgy On Stage/In Theory,” Flagstaff, September 1998
“Opera and Austerity” conference, University of Virginia, February 2009
“Brahms at 175” session, American Musicological Society, Nashville, November 2008
“Wagner and Scandal” conference, Brown University, March 2008
Conference Organization
“Wagner’s Parsifal and the Performance of Culture,” University of Chicago, October 2005 (co-organized with Brian Hyer)
Research and Teaching Interests
Nineteenth-century music
Music and the public sphere
Music and religion
Nationalism
Opera and dramaturgy
Professional Service
Academic boards:
Editorial Board and Associate Editor, Opera Quarterly
Board of Directors, American Brahms Society
Outside referee:
Journal of the American Musicological Society
Journal of Musicological Research
Acta Musicologica