Books and Special Journal Issues

Co-editor, with Ronit Seter: “Richard Taruskin (1945-2022): A Memorial Colloquy.” This” colloquy” includes reflections on Taruskin by a dozen musicologists from the USA, Canada, Hungary, Russia, and Israel. Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal, issue 6 (February 2025): https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/mmp/vol1/iss6/. Open Access.

Music: A Connected Art / Die Illusion der absoluten Musik: A Festschrift for Jürgen Thym on His 80^th Birthday. Contributing co-editor, with Ulrich J. Blomann, David B. Levy, and Frieder Reininghaus. Baden-Baden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, 2023. Table of contents.

Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists since 1860, contributing co-editor with Cyrilla Barr. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997. Open-access online version: click here.

Selected Articles

“Taruskin’s Great Contributions and a Few Shortcomings.” In “Richard Taruskin Memorial Colloquy,” edited by Ralph P. Locke and Ronit Seter, Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal, issue 6 (February 2025): https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/mmp/vol1/iss6/13/. Open Access.

Co-author with Jürgen Thym: “Who Is Allowed to Compose Catholic Church Music? Ferdinand Hiller’s Insightful Report on the Sacred-Music Competition in Louvain (1866).” Yale Journal of Music & Religion 10, no. 1 (December 2024): https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr/vol10/iss1/4/.

And here is an important primary source, used in the “Who Is Allowed” article: Joseph d’Ortigue, newspaper article on the 1866 Louvain sacred-music competition (in Journal des débats, 31 October 1866), 2 pages.  Full text, page 1   Full Text, page 2

Co-authored with Jürgen Thym: “Ferdinand Hiller and Franz Liszt: A Friendship Built at the Keyboard, Then Sundered and Never Healed.” In Anna Harwell Celenza and Katharina Uhde, eds., Unity in Variety: Essays in Musicology in Honor of R. Larry Todd (Vienna: Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag, 2024), 287-305.

“Leaving alla turca Behind: The Middle East in Opera and Other Musical Genres, 1800-50.” Consists of a greatly expanded version of some sections of the “Cutthroats” article (see further below), exploring additional musical works. In Michael Christoforidis and Ramón Sobrino, eds., Musical Exoticism: The Mediterranean and Beyond in the Long Nineteenth Century (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), 3-23.

Co-authored with Jürgen Thym: “A Comet in the Musical Sky: Ferdinand Hiller on Hector Berlioz.” Chapter for Berlioz and His World, ed. Francesca Brittan and Sarah Hibberd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024), 259-84.

“[Leonard Bernstein’s] Exotic Evocations: Latin America, Polynesia, the Middle East, and Beyond.” In Leonard Bernstein in Context, ed. Elizabeth A. Wells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), 114-22.

“Bernstein and Opera.” In Leonard Bernstein in Context, ed. Elizabeth A. Wells (Cambridge University Press, 2024), 123-30.

“How Reliable Are Nineteenth-Century Reviews of Concerts and Operas?: Félicien David’s Le Désert and His Grand Opera Herculanum.” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 19, no. 2 (August 2022—Special Issue: French Criticism, ed. James Sobaskie): 217-33 and 235 (corrigendum). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409820000488. The corrigendum (two sentences) is DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409822000337.

“André Messager’s Les p’tites Michu and the Marvels of French Light Opera: A Review and Appreciation.” An expanded version of a review published in Nineteenth-Century Music Review. In Musical History as Seen through Contemporary Eyes: Essays in Honor of H. Robert Cohen, ed. Benjamin Knysak and Zdravko Blažeković (Vienna: Hollitzer, 2021), 259-79.

“Music’s Connections: Experiences in the Music-History Classroom and Seminar.” In Music, A Connected Art / Die Illusion der absoluten Musik: A Festschrift for Jürgen Thym on His 80^th Birthday, 237-46 (see Books, above).

“Félicien David’s Grand Opera Herculanum (1859): Rome, Early Christianity, Multiple Exoticisms, Great Tunes—and Satan.” Nineteenth-Century Music Review, forthcoming but already open-access at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409823000216.

Co-authored with Jürgen Thym: “Ferdinand Hiller’s Twelve Trips to Meet Old Friends in Heaven: A Little-Known Essay in Cultural Commentary from 1881.” Musical Quarterly 106, nos. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 2023): 9–75. https://doi.org/10.1093/musqtl/gdad001

“Orientalisme et musique au XIX^e siècle.” Trans. Sabine Le Hir. In Gisèle Séginger and Cécile Reynaud, eds., Berlioz, Flaubert et l’Orient (Paris: Le Passage [Le Passage Paris-New York Editions], 2022), 105-19.

Review of vol. 9 of the Berlioz correspondence (Nouvelles Lettres de Berlioz, de sa famille, de ses contemporains), in Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal, issue 1 (September 2022), online. Open-access (no fee or password).

Review of Peter Bloom’s critical edition of Berlioz’s Mémoires (Paris: J. Vrin, 2019). Journal of the American Musicological Society 74, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 161-65. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2021.74.1.161.

Short essays on Swedish composer Laci Boldemann’s opera Black Is White, Said the Emperor (1967) and Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim’s Sweet Psalmist of Israel (1953). At the open-access Global Musical Modernisms site. Full text here

Reviews of CD recordings, in the recently founded Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal: Beethoven’s Leonore (i.e., the first version of Fidelio) and a collection of French opera arias, 1730-1780 by Rameau and others. Open access (no fee or password).

With co-author Jürgen Thym. “The Dickinson Collection: Adventures in Musicological Research.” Musicology Now (the blog of the American Musicological Society). Full text here

Review of Bizet’s early Italian-language opera Don Procopio and of Hugh Macdonald’s book Bizet in Italy. In Music Library Association Notes 79, no. 1 (September 2022): 96-101. doi:10.1353/not.2022.0080.

Review of three recent books on Bizet’s Carmen. Music Library Associations Notes 78, no. 3 (March 2022): 383-90. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/847159.

Review of Małgorzata Grajter, ed., The Orient in Music—Music of the Orient (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2017). Music & Letters 101, no. 3 (August 2021). doi: 10.1093/ml/gcab071: Full text here

“Leaving alla turca Behind: The Middle East in Opera and Other Musical Genres, 1800-44.” Presentation at the international conference Musical Exoticism in the Long Nineteenth Century (1789-1918), 12-15 May 2022.  Full text here

“The Exotic in Nineteenth-Century French Opera, Part 2: Plots, Characters, and Musical Devices,” Nineteenth-Century Music 45 no. 3 (Spring 2022): 185-203. https://online.ucpress.edu/ncm/article/45/3/185/121636/The-Exotic-in-Nineteenth-Century-French-Opera-Part 2. Full text here

“The Exotic in Nineteenth-Century French Opera, Part 1: Locales and Peoples,” Nineteenth-Century Music 45 no. 2 (Fall 2021): 93-118. https://online.ucpress.edu/ncm/article/45/2/93/119229/The-Exotic-in-Nineteenth-Century-French-Opera-Part 1. Full text here

Review-essay on André Messager: Les p’tites Michu (opérette). With a broader discussion of the Centre de musique romantique française (Palazzetto Bru Zane) and its scholarly editions and recording and performance projects. Available in Nineteenth-Century Music Review 18, no. 2 (August 2021): 327-34. doi:10.1017/S1479409819000454. Full text here: Corrigendum on p. 335 of the same issue, click here.

Three chapters in Histoire de l’opéra français, vol, 2, ed. Hervé Lacombe (Paris: Fayard), 2021. These are “Les territoires de l’exotisme,” “Les formes de l’exotisme: intrigues, personnages, styles musicaux,” and “Exotisme et colonialisme” (pp. 949-68).

“Picking up the ‘Tone’ of an Era: An Interview (2001) with Musicologist Reinhold Brinkmann on Music, Society, Composition, and Scholarship.” (Interview conducted by Max Nyffeler.) Translated and with an introduction by Jürgen Thym and Ralph P. Locke. Musical Quarterly 103, nos. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 2020): 33-61.

“1844: Le désert: Exotismus in der europäischen Musik” and “1856: Gesellschaftlich und national wirkungsmächtig — Programm-Symphonien und Symphonische Dichtung,” trans. Jürgen Thym, in Frieder Reininghaus, Judith Kemp, and Alexandra Ziane, eds.,Musik und Gesellschaft: Marktplätze, Kampfzonen, Elysium (Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen und Neumann, 2020) 2:30-32, 69-73.

“Anti-Virtuosity and Musical Experimentalism: Liszt, Debussy, Marie Jaëll, and Others.” In Robert Doran, ed., Liszt and Virtuosity (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020), 346-86. The first print-run had an erroneous wording on the top of p. 370. Lines 2-4 should read “(m. 23: a diminished-seventh chord on A) and then, after trying again, reach a new dead end (m. 26: an analogous chord on Bb).” And, on p. 371, 6^th line up from the bottom: “E-major” should be “E-minor.”

“Silence, Circumlocution, Honest Words [about and by Musicians of Jewish Origin]—with Remarks by Aaron Copland (1972),” Musica Judaica 22 (2018-19): 116-31.

CD review of mezzo Tora Augestad in works of Weill (Die sieben Todsünden), Marcus Paus, and Charles Ives, in Kurt Weill Newsletter (Spring 2019), p. 18. Full text

“Enlightened and Exotic: Ralph Locke Takes Rameau’s World Tour in ‘Les Indes galantes’,” Opera [UK magazine], September 2019, pp. 1104-9.Full text

“Music, Horses, and Exotic Others: Early-Modern Processions, Tournaments, and Pageants.” In the online journal Music and Politics 11, no. 1 (Winter 2017). Full text

“Alexander the Great and the Indian Rajah Puru: Exoticism in a Metastasio Libretto As Set by Hasse and by Handel,” Revue de musicologie 102 (2016), no. 2, pp. 275-318. Shortened versions, without illustrations or musical examples, have also appeared in German and in Italian. Full Text

“Alexander der Grosse und der indische Raja Puru: Exotik in einem Libretto Metastasios und in darauf basierenden Opern von Hasse und von Händel,” translated by Michelle Miles and Ingo Maerker, in Achim Aurnhammer and Barbara Korte, eds., Fremde Helden auf europäischen Bühnen 1600-1900, vol. 5 in the series Helden—Heroisierungen—Heroismen (Würzburg: Ergon, 2016), 127-44. Full Text

“Alessandro Magno e il Ragià indiano Puru: Esotismo in un libretto di Metastasio nelle realizzazioni di Hasse e Handel,” translated by Luana Salvarni, Musica/Realtà, no. 110 (July 2016), pp. 99-123.

“Exotic Elements in Kapsberger’s Jesuit Opera (Rome, 1622) Honoring Saints Ignatius and Francis Xavier,” in an online Festschrift for Prof. Kerala J. Snyder, ed. Joel Speerstra and Johan Norrback (University of Gothenburg, 2016). 28 pages long. Full text

“Exotic Reflections” (an essay I wrote about my two most recent books, listed above), in Musicology Now, the blog of the American Musicological Society.  Contains links to videos and sound recordings, plus a short bibliography.

“Félicien David: Not Satellite but Star.” Essay (pp. 58-63) in a book accompanying the 2-CD world-premiere recording of David’s four-act grand opera Herculanum (Paris Opéra, 1859). Madrid: Ediciones Singulares, 2015.

“Aida” and related entries (e.g., for Cairo and for the opera’s librettist Ghislanzoni), in Cambridge Verdi Encyclopedia, ed. Roberta Montemorra Marvin.  Cambridge University Press, 2014.

“The Eastman Studies” (an essay about Eastman Studies in Music, the book series that I edit for University of Rochester Press). This appears as a post at Musicology Now, the blog of the American Musicological Society.  Contains links to books in the series.

“Ferdinand Hiller and the Saint-Simonians,” in Peter Ackermann, et al., eds., Ferdinand Hiller (1811–1885): Komponist – Interpret – Musikvermittler, 55-71.  Kassel: Merseburger, 2014.

Article on Tchaikovsky, by Scott Smith from Investor’s Business Daily, incorporating comments from Ralph Locke (about how Tchaikovsky honed his skills and enriched existing genres) Full Text

“Exoticism [in American Music],” Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed.

“On Exoticism, Western Art Music, and the Words We Use,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 69 (2012), 318-28.

“Orientalism in Music,” in the Dictionary of Literary Biography’s volume entitled Orientalism Writers (Gale/Cengage/BCL), 2012.

“Editorial: Music in Community, and the Interpretation of Evidence,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 64 (2011): 255-58.

“Alien Adventures: Exoticism in Italian-Language Baroque Opera,” Musical Times, vol.150 no. 1909 (Winter 2009), pp. 53–69.

“Spanish Local Color in Bizet’s Carmen: Unexplored Borrowings and Transformations,” in Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer: Paris 1830 to 1914, ed. A. Fauser and M. Everist, 316-60.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

“Doing the Impossible: On the Musically Exotic.” Journal of Musicological Research 27 (2008): 334-58. Full Text

“Unacknowledged Exoticism in Debussy: The Incidental Music for Le martyre de saint Sébastien (1911).”  Musical Quarterly 90 (2007): 371-415.

“A Broader View of Musical Exoticism,” Journal of Musicology 24 (2007): 477-521. Full Text

“Liszt on the Artist in Society,” in Franz Liszt and His World, ed. C. H. Gibbs and D. Gooley, 291-302. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.

“Aida and Nine Readings of Empire.” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 3 (2006): 45-72.

“Aaron Copland: Two Interviews (1970, 1972) & Three Letters” Journal of the American Liszt Society 14-16 (2003-05): 201-17.

“Beyond the Exotic: How ‘Eastern’ Is Aida?” Cambridge Opera Journal 17 (2005): 105-39. Winner of the H. Colin Slim Award (American Musicological Society) in 2006.

“The Border Territory between Classical and Broadway: A Voyage around and about Four Saints in Three Acts and West Side Story,” in Liber Amicorum Isabelle Cazeaux: Symbols, Parallels and Discoveries in her Honor, ed., P.-A. Bempéchat, 179-226. Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2005.

“Nineteenth-Century Music: Quantity, Quality, Qualities.” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 1 (2004): 3-41.

“What Chopin (and Mozart and Others) Heard: Folk, Popular, ‘Functional’ and Non-Western Musics in the Classic-Romantic Survey Course,” in Teaching Music History, ed. M. Natvig, 25-42. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2002. Awarded the 2003 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award.

“The Juice of Life: Getting Romantic with Romantic Music.” Pendragon Review: A Journal of Musical Romanticism 1 (2001): 45-60.

“Exoticism and Orientalism in Music: Problems for the Worldly Critic,” in Edward Said and the Work of the Critic, ed. P. A. Bové, 257-81. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2000.

“[Berlioz:] The Religious Works,” in The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz, ed. P. Bloom, 96-108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

“Aesthetic Aspects of Social Phenomena in Music,” in Musicology and Sister Disciplines, ed. D. Greer et al., 209-17. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

“Musicology and/as Social Concern: Imagining the Relevant Musicologist,” in Rethinking Music, ed. N. Cook and M. Everist, 499-530. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

“Cutthroats and Casbah Dancers, Muezzins and Timeless Sands: Musical Images of the Middle East.” Nineteenth-Century Music 22 (1998-99): 20-53. Awarded the 1999 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. Also published in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. J. Bellman, 104-36. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.

“The Political Chansons of Béranger: Artistry for Progressive Social Change,” in Musik/Revolution: Festschrift für Georg Knepler zum 90. Geburtstag, ed. H.-W. Heister, 2:115-32. Hamburg: Von Bockel, 1997.

“The French Symphony: David, Gounod, and Bizet to Saint-Saëns, Franck, and Their Followers,” in The Nineteenth-Century Symphony, ed. D. K. Holoman, 163-94. New York: Schirmer, 1997.

“What Are These Women Doing in Opera?” in En travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera, ed. C. Blackmer and P. J. Smith, 59-98. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

“Paradoxes of the Woman Music Patron in America.” Musical Quarterly 78 (1994): 798-825. Awarded the 1996 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award.

“Women in American Musical Life: Facts and Questions about Patronage.” repercussions 3 (1994): 81-95; repercussions 4 (1995): 102.

“Music Lovers, Patrons, and the ‘Sacralization’ of Culture in America.” Nineteenth-Century Music 17 (1993-94): 149-73; 18 (1994-95): 83-84.

“Reflections on Orientalism in Opera and Musical Theater.” Opera Quarterly 10 (1993): 48-64.

“Constructing the Oriental ‘Other’: Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila.” Cambridge Opera Journal 3 (1991): 261-302. Awarded the 1992 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. A much shorter version is contained in the program book for the 2020-21 season of the Bilbao [Spain] Opera Festival, 189-201. For the Spanish program book, click here: Full text here 

“Paris: Centre of Intellectual Ferment [1789-1852],” in Man and Music: The Early Romantic Era, ed. A. L. Ringer, 32-83. London: Macmillan, 1990. (Released in the US under the series title Music and Society.) Awarded the 1992 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award.

“Félicien David: compositeur saint-simonien et orientalisant,” in Les saint-simoniens et l’Orient: vers la modernité, ed. M. Morsy, 135-53. Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1990.

“The Music of the French Political Chanson, 1810-50,” in Music in Paris in the Eighteen-Thirties, ed. P. Bloom, 431-56. Stuyvesant NY: Pendragon Press, 1987.

“Musique engagée? The Experience of the Saint-Simonians at Ménilmontant,” in La Musique et le rite,ed. M. Honegger and C. Meyer, 145-55. Strasbourg: Université de Strasbourg, 1986.

“Mendelssohn’s Collision with the Saint-Simonians,” in J. Finson and R. L. Todd, eds. Mendelssohn and Schumann: Essays on Their Music and Its Context, 109-22, 176-80. (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1984.

“Liszt’s Saint-Simonian Adventure.” Nineteenth-Century Music 4 (1980-81), 209-27, and 5 (1981-82), 281.

“New Schumann Materials in Upstate New York: A First Report on the Dickinson Collection, with Catalogues of its Manuscript Holdings.” Fontes artis musicae 27 (1980), 137-61. Co-author Jürgen Thym.

“Autour de la lettre à Duveyrier: Berlioz et les saint-simoniens.” Revue de musicologie 63 (1977), 55-77, and 64 (1978), 287.

“New Letters of Berlioz.” Nineteenth-Century Music 1 (1977): 71-85.

Reference Books

Entries in New Grove Dictionary of Music, Encyclopedia of New England Culture, American National Biography, The American Historical Association’s Guide to Historical Literature, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Dictionnaire de la musique en France au xixe siècle, and Dictionnaire Berlioz.