Eastman Musicology Symposium Series: Spring 2025

Each semester, Eastman’s Musicology Department sponsors a Symposium series with prominent guest speakers from other institutions on Thursdays at 4:00 PM in NSL 404 (Sibley Library seminar room), unless otherwise specified.

Musicology Department Chair Michael Anderson shares, “Myrta Leslie Santana and David Burn’s symposia presentations exemplify the immense scholarly breadth of the annual guest series we host in the Musicology Department.” He continues, “We welcome both seasoned and emerging scholars on topics from early to contemporary music, situated in countless contexts from churches to drag performances. The range of presenters, recommended by faculty and graduate students alike, is breathtaking year to year. That the Eastman community has the chance to interact with these distinguished voices in our field is doubly gratifying.”

Spring 2025 Symposium series events:

M. Myrta Leslie Santana (University of California, San Diego)

Thursday, March 20, 2025 at 4:00 PM | NSL 404
Topic: “From Havana to Jupiter: Possibilities of Trans/Queer Performance”

This talk considers the genealogies of trans and queer performance in Cuba and its diaspora and asks what work such performances are doing today in both Miami and Havana. It relies on three sites in particular: the Wigwood drag festival in contemporary Miami, an album recorded by a Chinese Cuban diasporic drag queen in New York City in the 1980s, and the ongoing work of a prominent Black lesbian drag king in Havana. In each context, Santana will discuss the social and aesthetic lineages and contents of the drag performers’ aesthetic choices, focusing on how they might offer insight into the performances’ interventions in dominant LGBT rights discourses in the Americas and the groundswell of political repression of trans and queer people.

M. Myrta Leslie Santana is an ethnomusicologist and performer whose work examines the social and political significance of trans and queer performance in the Americas. Her book Transformismo: Performing Trans/Queer Cuba, an ethnography of drag performance in contemporary Cuba, will be published by the University of Michigan Press in February 2025. In addition to her book, Leslie Santana has essays published or forthcoming in Ethnomusicology, Small Axe, Queer Nightlife (Michigan), and Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (Oxford). Originally from Miami, Florida, Leslie Santana is currently Assistant Professor of Music at UC San Diego.

David Burn (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

Thursday, April 10, 2025 at 4:00 PM | NSL 404
Topic: “New Light on the Anonymous Mass Cycles in Prague, Czech National Library, Ms. 59 R 5117″

In 1994, the Czech National Library acquired a previously unknown sixteenth-century choirbook of central European provenance. Now housed under the shelfmark 59 R 5117, the source contains eight four-voice mass-cycles, as well as choral settings of the mass-responses. Of the masses, three have up to now been considered unique: a Missa Presulem ephebeatum, attributed to Heinrich Isaac; and two anonymous, title-less cycles. This paper evaluates the latter two cycles for what they reveal concerning the source that contains them and the circulation of music in central Europe at the time in which the source was produced. One of the anonymous masses is chant-based. Martin Horyna, the first, and, to date, only scholar to study Ms. 59 R 5117 in any detail, identified this cycle as a Missa dominicalis in a short study from 2002. Since then, the mass has received no further scholarly examination. My paper identifies concordances and a composer for the mass. The other anonymous cycle can be identified as having been modelled on a motet with the text Vulnerasti cor meum. It too turns out not to be unique. The mass bears the hallmarks of having been composed in western Europe, possibly at the French royal court. I assess the piece, its sources, compositional techniques, and model.

David J. Burn studied music at Merton College, University of Oxford. He completed his doctorate in 2002 on Heinrich Isaac’s mass propers under the supervision of Reinhard Strohm. From 2002-2003 he was Guest Researcher at Kyoto City University of Arts. From 2003-2007 he was Junior Research Fellow at St. John’s College, University of Oxford. In 2007 he joined the University of Leuven musicology department as head of the Early Music Research Group. His research focusses on the later 15th and 16th centuries, with particular interest for Heinrich Isaac and his contemporaries, interactions between chant and polyphony, source-studies, and early-music analysis. He has published widely on these topics in leading international peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Musicology, the Revue de musicologie, the Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, the Journal of Music Theory, and Musiktheorie. In 2020 he was Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor at Columbia University in New York City, and in 2023 he held the Pieter Paul Rubens Visiting Professorship at UC Berkeley.

Other upcoming Musicology events:

The Musicale: “Performance Plus” series showcases outstanding young performers from the Eastman School of Music, “plus” lively in-concert commentary provided by the school’s Ph.D. students in Musicology. This series at the George Eastman Museum is made possible in part by Joanna and Michael Grosodonia.