Musicologist Tina Frühauf Named Director of the Barry S. Brook Center

Professor Tina Frühauf (Music) has been appointed director of the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at the Graduate Center. Affiliated with the Graduate Center’s Ph.D. Program in Music, the center promotes the study, documentation, and appreciation of music and music theory through publications, events, and exhibitions. Frühauf, a musicologist, writer, and editor, brings extensive experience to her new role.

“I am absolutely delighted to be appointed director of the Barry S. Brook Center,” Frühauf said. “Music research and documentation have been central to my work as a musicologist. For the past 25 years, they have defined my life and accompanied my trajectory as an immigrant and traveler, my activities in various cities and countries throughout the world, and my writings on subjects in the field of Jewish music studies, dance, and most recently migration. Being the director of the Brook Center is an opportunity to impart my many experiences to faculty, independent scholars, visiting scholars, and students who seek an institutional umbrella for their work.”

Learn More About the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation

Educated in Germany, Frühauf specializes in the history of Jewish music in western Europe. She is an award-winning author and editor of several books and monographs, including, most recently, Transcending Dystopia: Music, Mobility, and the Jewish Community in Germany, 1945–1989; Postmodernity’s Musical Pasts; Mapping Jewish Music of Southern Germany; and Experiencing Jewish Music in America: A Listener’s Companion.

She is currently studying Black-Jewish relations from 1870 to 1930 and the historiography of music scholarship and migration. She is focusing on the mass dislocation of peoples in the 20th century and the conditions of globalization, genocide, and exile, as well as musicology and coloniality.

Since 2011, she has edited the Synagogalmusik/Synagogal Music/Musique des Synagogue series of books from the German publisher Verlag Merseburger. Frühauf’s articles on a variety of topics have been published by highly ranked journals, including Cambridge Opera Journal; Early Music; Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook; The Musical Quarterly; and TDR:The Drama Review.

“The Brook Center has been an umbrella and a sponsor for wide-ranging research and documentation activities in music studies in all its breadth and across disciplines, from music theory to music iconography,” Frühauf said. She added that, as director, she seeks to maintain and develop this mission and to ensure that the center remains a resource for the Graduate Center, CUNY, New York City, and all those who seek to visit it.

“Music as oral tradition, as performing art, as social practice, and as ritual, is an intangible cultural heritage whose knowledge and practice ought to be preserved and made accessible through research and documentation,” she said. “The Brook Center will focus on preserving and transmitting this heritage in the years to come.”

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