A Message from the President

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, "Music is the universal language of mankind." Music has also been called "the literature of the heart" (Alphonse de Lamartine), "the speech of angels" (Thomas Carlyle), and "a higher revelation than philosophy" (Ludwig van Beethoven). An endeavor that has inspired these descriptions deserves a central place within the academy, and music has such a place at The Graduate Center. This issue of Folio looks at the work of several members of our Music Program's outstanding faculty. More >

A Life on the Concert Stage

Distinguished Professor Ursula Oppens can play the piano sonatas of Beethoven and Schumann with the best, but she's probably had her greatest impact performing music composed by her friends, mentors, and contemporaries.

"Before college, when I was asked what I wanted to be, I said 'I have no idea, but I'm certain I don't want to be a pianist.'" Many would find this a surprising statement, considering that it comes from one of the world's most renowned concert pianists, Ursula Oppens, who currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Music at The Graduate Center and Brooklyn College. Oppens could read music by the time she was three years old. More >

The Musical Angle on Disability

For Distinguished Professor Joseph Straus, a chance conversation on a train opened the door to a new area of scholarship—one that he finds both intellectually stimulating and personally meaningful.

Sometimes the spark that ignites a new area of scholarship happens in the classroom, sometimes it happens in the field where research is conducted, and sometimes it happens at an academic conference or symposium. In the case of "music and disability"—an emerging subfield of musicology and music theory—it happened on a train. More >

Music in Gotham, 1863—1875

Thanks to the scholarship of Professor Emeritus John Graziano and the late music historian Adrienne Fried Block, new insights are emerging about the musical life of New York City during the Civil War and in the decade that followed.

In the 1850s, anyone who asked which city in the United States had the most to offer in the way of cultural life would almost certainly have been told to head for Boston; this New England city was, at the time, considered "the Athens of America." But just a few years into the 1860s, the answer might have been different. By then, New York had become a thriving metropolis of 800,000 and, unlike either Boston or Philadelphia, it was growing. More >