Robert Fallon, guest lecturer
Robert Fallon is Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His research interests include nature and theology in Messiaen’s music and thought, the pressures of globalization and place on musical composition, and aesthetic and social issues affecting contemporary music in France, the United States, and Turkey. He is also interested in how the intention and expressive production both of American classical music organizations, such the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and American and European composers, such as Pierre Boulez, George Crumb, and Derek Bermel, seek to redefine the role of art in contemporary culture.
With Christopher Dingle, he has co-edited and contributed to the pair of volumes called Messiaen Perspectives (Ashgate, 2013), which The Musical Times has said “raises the level of insightful [Messiaen] scholarship to new heights.” His current book project, provisionally titled Low Mountains, High Culture: Appalachia in Classical Music Since 1940, examines how geography illuminates the shifting political, racial, class-based, economic, and religious pressures that mediate musical representations of Appalachia and American identity.
His book chapters appear in Messiaen the Theologian (Ashgate, 2010), Musique, arts et religion dans l’entre-deux-guerres (Symétrie, 2009), Messiaen Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Olivier Messiaen in Music, Art and Literature (Ashgate, 2007), and Jacques Maritain and the Many Ways of Knowing (Catholic University of America Press, 1999). He was the first to publish on Messiaen in the Journal of the American Musicological Society. He has contributed articles to the Grove Dictionary of American Music and has published in the Journal of the Society for American Music, the Journal of Musicology, Modern Fiction Studies, Tempo, and Notes. He has provided program notes or pre-concert talks for the Pittsburgh Symphony, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and bachelor’s degrees in English and Music Theory/Composition from Northwestern University.
Mr. Fallon will kick off the festival with a lecture about Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux on Thursday, March 5.
With Christopher Dingle, he has co-edited and contributed to the pair of volumes called Messiaen Perspectives (Ashgate, 2013), which The Musical Times has said “raises the level of insightful [Messiaen] scholarship to new heights.” His current book project, provisionally titled Low Mountains, High Culture: Appalachia in Classical Music Since 1940, examines how geography illuminates the shifting political, racial, class-based, economic, and religious pressures that mediate musical representations of Appalachia and American identity.
His book chapters appear in Messiaen the Theologian (Ashgate, 2010), Musique, arts et religion dans l’entre-deux-guerres (Symétrie, 2009), Messiaen Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Olivier Messiaen in Music, Art and Literature (Ashgate, 2007), and Jacques Maritain and the Many Ways of Knowing (Catholic University of America Press, 1999). He was the first to publish on Messiaen in the Journal of the American Musicological Society. He has contributed articles to the Grove Dictionary of American Music and has published in the Journal of the Society for American Music, the Journal of Musicology, Modern Fiction Studies, Tempo, and Notes. He has provided program notes or pre-concert talks for the Pittsburgh Symphony, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and bachelor’s degrees in English and Music Theory/Composition from Northwestern University.
Mr. Fallon will kick off the festival with a lecture about Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux on Thursday, March 5.
