Martha Feldman (musicologist) explained

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. 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]

Scholarship

Feldman’s scholarship has centered on vernacular vocal genres and performances, often Italian, from the sixteenth century through the present. Her first monograph, City Culture and 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. 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

• 2001: Dent Medal, awarded by the Royal Musical Association in collaboration with the Directorium of the International Musicological Society^{[17] [18]}
• 2009: Faculty Award (University of Chicago) for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring^[19]
• 2012: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences^{[20] [21]}
• 2017-18: President, American Musicological Society^[22]
• 2020: Honorary Membership, American Musicological Society^{[23] [24]}

Major publications and projects

Monographs

• The Castrato Phantom: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome (book-in-progress)^[25]
• The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds. Ernest Bloch Lectures, no. 16. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. (Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society)
• Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. (Laing Award from the University of Chicago Press)^[26]
• City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. (Bainton Prize of the Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference and the Center for Reformation Research)

Edited volumes and journal issues

• The Voice as Something More: Essays toward Materiality. Co-edited with Judith T. Zeitlin, with afterword by Mladen Dolar. In New Material Histories of Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.
• The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-cultural Perspectives. Co-edited with Bonnie Gordon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. (Solie Award from the American Musicological Society)^[27]
• “Music and Sound at the Edges of History.” Co-edited with Nicholas Mathew. Special issue of Representations 154, no. 1 (Spring 2021).^[28]

Select journal articles

• “Music Histories from the Edge,” co-authored with Nicholas Mathew, Representations, special issue on “Music and Sound at the Edges of History,” vol. 154, issue 1 (Spring 2021): 1-9, coedited with Nicholas Mathew.
• “Fugitive Voice,” Representations 154, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 10-22.
• “Love, Race, and Resistance: The Fugitive Voice of Nina Simone,” in The Female Voice in the Twentieth Century: Material, Symbolic, and Aesthetic Dimensions, edited by Serena Facci and Michela Garda (New York and London: Routledge, 2021), Chap. 6, pp. 83–101.^[29]
• “Voice Gap Crack Break,” in The Voice as Something More: Essays toward Materiality, coedited by Martha Feldman and Judith T. Zeitlin (University of Chicago Press, 2019), 188-208.
• “The Castrato as a Rhetorical Figure,” in Rhetoric and Drama, edited by D.S. Mayfield (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), pp. 71–96.^[30]
• “Castrato Acts,” The Oxford Handbook of Opera, ed. Helen M. Greenwald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 395–418.
• “Denaturing the Castrato,” Opera Quarterly 24/3-4 (fall 2008): 178-199.^[31]
• “The Courtesan’s Voice: Petrarchan Lovers, Pop Philosophy, and Oral Traditions,” in The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-cultural Perspectives, co-ed. with Bonnie Gordon (Oxford University Press, 2006), 103-23, 354-56.^[15]
• "Authors and Anonyms: Recovering the Anonymous Subject in Cinquecento Vernacular Objects," in Music and the Cultures of Print, ed. Kate van Orden (Garland Publishing Inc., 2000), 166-99.^[32]
• "Magic Mirrors and the Seria Stage: Thoughts toward a Ritual View," Journal of the American Musicological Society 48 (1995): 423-84.^[33]

Notes and References

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