Carolyn Abbate (born November 20, 1956) is an American musicologist, described by the ''
Harvard Gazette
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
'' as "one of the world’s most accomplished and admired music historians".
[
She is currently Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor at Harvard University.]["Abbate named University Professor"]
''Harvard Gazette'', November 20, 2013. Accessed 10 December 2014 From her earliest essays she has questioned familiar approaches to well-known works, reaching beyond their printed scores and composer intentions, to explore the particular, physical impact of the medium upon performer and audience alike. Her research focuses primarily on the opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...
tic repertory of the 19th century, offering creative and innovative approaches to understanding these works critically and historically. Some of her more recent work has addressed topics such as film studies
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies.
...
and performance studies more generally.
Early life and education
Abbate was born to Dolores R. (Kollmeyer) and Russell V. Abbate; she has two sisters. Abbate completed her BA at Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
in 1977. While still an undergraduate at Yale, she reconstructed the score of Claude Debussy’s '' La chute de la maison Usher'' (''The Fall of the House of Usher'') – a work long regarded as unsalvageably incomplete. She continued her studies in Munich and Princeton, completing her PhD at Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
under J. Merrill Knapp in 1984.[
]
Career
She took a position in the Music Department at Princeton that year, and was named full professor in 1991, becoming at that time the youngest humanities faculty member appointed to that rank. She was awarded the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association in 1993, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994. In 2005, she accepted an appointment at Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
and from 2008 to 2012 taught in the Music Department at the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
as the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Music. In 2013, she returned to Harvard, where she was named Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor in 2014. She has also held appointments at the University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, and the Freie Universität in Berlin, and has been a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...
, and the Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...
in Princeton.
In February 2022, Abbate was one of 38 Harvard faculty to sign a letter to the Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson are the intercollegiate athletic teams of Harvard College. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2013, there were 42 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than ...
defending Professor John Comaroff
John L. Comaroff (born 1 January 1945) is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. He is recognised for his study of African and African-American soci ...
, who had been found to have violated the university's sexual and professional conduct policies. The letter defended Comaroff as "an excellent colleague, advisor and committed university citizen" and expressed dismay over his being sanctioned by the university. After students filed a lawsuit with detailed allegations of Comaroff's actions and the university's failure to respond, Abbate was one of several signatories to say that she wished to retract her signature.
Musicological work
Abbate's dissertation, entitled ''The "Parisian" Tannhäuser'', addressed historical and aesthetic issues related to the Parisian premiere of Richard Wagner's opera in 1861. A significant excerpt from this work was published in the ''Journal of the American Musicological Society'' in 1983. In 1990, she published a translation of Jean-Jacques Nattiez's ''Musicologie générale et sémiologie'' under the title ''Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music''.
Her first monograph, ''Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century'', was published by Princeton University Press in 1991. In this book, Abbate explores the metaphor of musical "narrative" in six extended case studies. She describes her work as follows:
Her second monograph, ''In Search of Opera'', reflects a close engagement with the aesthetic philosophy of Vladimir Jankélévitch
Vladimir Jankélévitch (; 31 August 1903 – 6 June 1985) was a French philosopher and musicologist.
Biography
Jankélévitch was the son of Russian Jewish parents, who had emigrated to France.
In 1922 he started studying philosophy at the Éco ...
, resulting in an exploration of the intersections of the ineffable and the performative aspects of opera. As in ''Unsung Voices'', Abbate proceeds through a series of case studies, this time exploring works ranging from Mozart's ''Magic Flute'' to Wagner's ''Parsifal'' and Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
's ''Pelleas et Melisande''.
Personal life
Abbate was married to Lee Clark Mitchell
Lee Clark Mitchell (born 1947) is an American author and professor American studies and literature. He is the Holmes Professor of Belles-Lettres at Princeton University and the former chair of the English Department and director of the program in ...
. She has 2 sons.
Select publications
* "Tristan in the Composition of Pelleas," ''19th Century Music'', v (1981–2), 117–40
* "Der junge Wagner malgre lui: die frühen Tannhäuser-Entwurfe und Wagners 'übliche Nummern …'" ''Wagnerliteratur – Wagnerforschung'': Munich 1983, 59–68
* "The Parisian Vénus and the Paris Tannhäuser," ''Journal of the American Musicological Society'', xxxvi (1983), 73–123
* With Roger Parker
Roger Parker (born London United Kingdom, 2 August 1951) is an English musicologist and, since January 2007, has been Thurston Dart Professor of Music at King's College London.
His work has centred on opera. Between 2006 and 2010, while Profess ...
: ''Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner''. Ithaca, NY, 1984 ncl. "Introduction: On Analyzing Opera," pp. 1–26 [with Parker "Opera as Symphony: a Wagnerian Myth," pp. 92–124.
* ''The Parisian Tannhäuser'' (diss., Princeton U., 1984)
* "Erik's Dream and Tannhäuser's Journey," in ''Reading Opera''. Ithaca, NY, 1986, pp. 129–67
* "What the Sorcerer Said," in ''19th Century Music'', xii (1988–9),pp. 221–30
* "Elektra's Voice: Music and Language in Strauss's Opera," in ''Richard Strauss: Elektra'', ed. D. Puffett (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 107–27
* "Wagner, 'On Modulation', and Tristan" in ''Cambridge Opera Journal'', i (1989), pp. 33–58
* "Dismembering Mozart" in ''Cambridge Opera Journal'', ii (1990), pp. 187–95
* ''Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music'' (Princeton, NJ, 1990) [trans. of J.-J. Nattiez: ''Musicologie générale et sémiologie'' (Paris, 1987)]
* ''Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century'' (Princeton, NJ, 1991, 2/1996)
* "Opera, or The Envoicing of Women," ''Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship'', ed. R.A. Solie (Berkeley, 1993), 225–58
* "Mythische Stimmen, sterbliche Körper," ''Richard Wagner: “Der Ring des Nibelungen”: Ansichten des Mythos'', ed. U. Bermbach und D. Borchmeyer (Stuttgart, 1995), 75–86
* ''In Search of Opera'' (Princeton, 2001)
* ''Music and the Ineffable'' (Princeton, 2003) rans of. V. Jankélévitch: L''a musique et l'ineffable'' (Paris, 1961)* "Music--Drastic or Gnostic?" ''Critical Inquiry'', xxx (2004), 505-536
* "Das Ephemere Übersehen," in ''Latenz: blinde Passagiere in den Geisteswissenschaften'' (Göttingen, 2011), 24-50.
* With Roger Parker: ''A History of Opera''. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Abbate, Carolyn
1956 births
Yale College alumni
Princeton University alumni
Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars
Harvard University faculty
University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty
University of Pennsylvania faculty
Living people
20th-century American women writers
21st-century American writers
21st-century American women writers
Women writers about music
Writers from New York (state)
Princeton University faculty
Fellows of King's College, Cambridge
American women musicologists