About
Broadly speaking, I work on gossip, anecdote, fiction, and other informal or unreliable sources in the history of musicology and composer biography. My first book, Imagining Musical Pasts, will explore the intersections between fiction, speculation, gossip, and music scholarship in early twentieth-century queer writings on opera and symphonic music. I am currently at work on an online research guide to the self-published musical writings of the music critic and amateur sexologist Edward Prime-Stevenson (1858-1942), whose works include one of the first histories of homosexuality published in English, a queer analysis of Beethoven’s Ninth, and several novels and short stories on musical subjects. I am also in the preliminary stages of a new project on the emergence, development, and repetition of what I call “canonical gossip” in nineteenth-century fiction and biographical writings on Antonio Salieri and his students. This project will consider a range of issues in historicizing musical gossip, including changing notions of pedagogy, collegiality, and canonicity; gender and professionalism (particularly as regards fictional depictions of Franz Schubert and Maria Theresia von Paradis); and the emergence of crime fiction about the arts that reinterprets historical and musicological sources as “evidence.” Education
BA Music (double bass) and Women’s Studies, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
MA Music History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
PhD Musicology, McGill University Publications
Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson. Forthcoming, Clemson University Press, 2023.
Articles
2022 – “‘Everything You’ve Heard is True’: Resonating Musicological Anecdotes in Crime Fiction about Antonio Salieri.”
Journal of Historical Fictions. Special issue on The Sound of the Past. 4, no. 1: 41–60.
http://historicalfictionsjournal.org/pdf/JHF%202022-4.1.pdf
2020 – “Queering Musical Biography in the Writings of Edward Prime-Stevenson and Rosa Newmarch.”
19th-Century Music. Special issue on Biography and Life-Writing. 44, no. 2: 100–118.
https://doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2020.44.2.100
2020 – “‘Onward to the End of the Nineteenth Century’: Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Queer Musicological Nostalgia.”
Music and Letters 100, no. 2: 300–320.
https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcz108.
2019 – “Women’s Musical Agency and Experiences in Vernon Lee’s
Music and its Lovers.”
Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique 18, no. 1: 23–29.
https://doi.org/10.7202/1059791ar.
2014 – “Mälzel and Mechanical Music in Beethoven’s Vienna.”
Keyboard Perspectives 7: 1–20.
Chapters in Edited Collections
2023 – “‘Legendary In-Reading’: Musical Analysis and Biography in Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Music Criticism and Sexology.” Gavin Lee (ed.).
Queer Ear: Remaking Music Theory. Oxford University Press.
2021 – “The Character of the Suffragette and Women’s Listening in Vernon Lee’s
Music and its Lovers.” Christopher Wiley and Lucy Ella Rose (eds.).
Suffrage in Word, Image, Music, and Drama: The Making of a Movement. Routledge Interdisciplinary Research in Gender. 205–223.
Public Scholarship
2023 – “‘Homosexual Hearers’ and Queer Musicality in Xavier Mayne’s The Intersexes (1909).” Blog post for
Notches: (re)marks on the history of sexuality.
https://notchesblog.com/2023/03/21/homosexual-hearers-and-queer-musicality-in-xavier-maynes-the-intersexes-1909/
2023 – “Rosa Newmarch, Musical Gossip, and Identity in Music Theory and History. Blog post for the History of Music Theory SMT Interest Group and AMS Study Group.
Part 1:
https://historyofmusictheory.wordpress.com/2023/01/02/rosa-newmarch-musical-gossip-and-identity-in-music-theory-and-history-part-i/
Part 2:
https://historyofmusictheory.wordpress.com/2023/01/02/rosa-newmarch-musical-gossip-and-identity-in-music-theory-and-history-part-ii/
2022 – “The Song of the Dying Composer.”
Contingent Magazine. https://contingentmagazine.org/2022/12/29/the-song-of-the-dying-composer/
2022 – “Talking with Ghosts: Salieri Horror and the Messiness of Genius.”
VAN Magazine. April 7.
https://van-magazine.com/mag/fiction-about-salieri/
2022 – “Rumor Has It.” Guest segment on
The Classical Gabfest. February 2.
https://cgf.buzzsprout.com/1313269/9995498-75-rumor-has-it
2022 – “The Salieri Rumor and Why Gossip Matters.”
Contingent Magazine. https://contingentmagazine.org/2022/01/16/the-salieri-rumor-and-why-gossip-matters/
2020 – “‘The Old Queer Musicology’: Strategies from the Early Twentieth Century.” Blog post for Bent Notes (blog and podcast of the LGBTQ+ Study Groups of the Royal Musical Association, the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, and the Society for Musicology in Ireland).
https://www.lgbtqmusicstudygroup.com/post/the-old-queer-musicology-strategies-from-the-early-twentieth-century-by-kristin-franseen
2019 – “Exploring Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Repertory: Music, Sexology, and the Art of Listening.” Interactive digital exhibition at Marvin Duchow Music Library. McGill University. May 5–September 30.
2016 – “The Secret Life of Rosa Newmarch: Innuendo and Musical Biography, ca. 1900–1915.” Magazine article for
Musique et pédagogie 30, no. 3: 18–20.
Projects
Ghosts in the Archives: The Queer Knowledge and Public Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson
Memoirs of a Musicologist: Listening, Musical Nostalgia, and Sexuality in Edward Prime-Stevenson’s A Repertory of 100 Symphonic Programmes
Antonio Salieri’s Intriguing Literary Afterlives: Gossip, Fiction, and the Post-Truth in Music Biography Upcoming Talks and Conferences
2023 – “‘The Dark Side of the Art of Music’: Contesting Pedagogical Reputation and Constructing Intrigue in Der Musikfeind and Der Sohn vom Ritter Gluck.” Cultural Intermediaries in the Nineteenth-Century Music Market. University of Bristol, June 23–24.
2023 – “‘Some strange temptation to evil’: Plagiarism and Queering Musical Crime in 19th-Century Short Fiction.” Music and Pleasure Before the Law. University College Dublin. June 28–29.
2023 – “‘Nor was ever divulged its real origins’: Queer Musical Secrets in Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Short Fiction.” Hidden Histories/Recovered Stories. Victorian Popular Fiction Association. Hybrid/Bishop Grosseteste University. Virtual. July 12–14.
Memberships
American Musicological Society
LGBTQ+ Study Group
History of Music Theory Study Group
Société québécoise de recherche en musique
Historical Fictions Research Network
International Crime Fiction Association
Nineteenth-Century Studies Association
