CCM's 'Thinking About Music' series presents virtual lecture by Katherine Preston on March 12

Each semester, UC's College-Conservatory of Music welcomes distinguished experts for a series of free musical discussions and lectures. This semester's Thinking About Music series continues at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, March 12, with a presentation by Katherine Preston, an emerita faculty member from the College of William and Mary.

The title of Preston's talk is “‘Completely Enthralled and Spellbound’: Audiences for English-Language Opera in 1880s Cincinnati.”

Katherine K. Preston is the Bottoms Professor of Music, Emerita at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. She has long been interested in the musical culture of nineteenth-century America, especially orchestral music and musical theatre (including opera). Preston has written four books and edited three volumes; her most recent publication (released in November 2020) is a biography the mid-nineteenth century American composer George F. Bristow. Her previous book, Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2017), is the inspiration for her paper today. The recipient of many fellowships, Preston is Past-President of the Society for American Music. She is also a native of Hamilton, Ohio, and attended the University of Cincinnati in the early 1970s.

Since its inception in 1997, CCM's Thinking About Music Series has presented nearly 130 lectures and one symposium by guests from a number of different colleges, universities, schools of music, foundations, institutes, museums and publications. The series is co-directed by Professor of Music Theory Steven Cahn and Associate Professor of Musicology Jeongwon Joe.

The subjects of the lectures have covered historical musicology, music theory and ethnomusicology, along with the ancillary fields of organology, dance, music business and law, cognitive psychology, and the philosophy, theology and sociology of music.

Sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, these music theory and history discussions feature diverse topics presented by distinguished experts from all over the United States and are designed to engage participants’ imaginations and to consider music in new ways.

This spring's Thinking About Music series will also feature lectures by Michael Haas (Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien) on March 19 and Danuta Mirka (Northwestern University) on April 16.

CCM’s Thinking About Music Series is sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, Ritter & Randolph, LLC, Corporate Counsel; along with support from the Dean's Office, the Graduate Student Association and the Division of Composition, Musicology and Theory at CCM.