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HISTORY OF KEYBOARD STUDIES AT CORNELL

The Cornell Doctorate of Musical Arts (DMA) program in Performance Practice was launched in 1985. Led by Malcolm Bilson, it focused on 18th-century piano performance practice. Owing to the program’s early successes – which culminated in 1993 with the first ever complete cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas on period instruments – it soon was jointly led by multiple members of the faculty and included specializations in stringed instruments and the organ. In the late 2000s, the program re-focused as a Keyboard Studies Program and broadened to embrace keyboard performance practices of the last fifty years. Today it continues in its traditional spirit of enquiry and integration of scholarship with performance, and has added a sizable parallel body of work that have pushed forward the area of contemporary keyboard studies.

In the middle of the Beethoven-sonata cycle in 1993.
Back, left to right: Bart van Oort, David Breitman, Zvi Meniker, Andrew Willis, Malcolm Bilson. Front: Tom Beghin, Ursula Dütschler.
HereNowHear (Ryan MacEvoy McCullough and Andrew Zhou) rehearsing Stockhausen's Mantra

The program boasts a diverse body of original research as well as an illustrious roster of alumni who hold and have held full-time positions across the globe at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, the Royal College of Music, the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag, Stanford University, the Orpheus Instituut, the Australian National University, among others. More recent graduates have been participants with the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the Lucerne Festival Academy.

Today, the DMA program embraces three areas of specialization:

  1. 17th through early-20th century historical piano performance practice—Malcolm Bilson (professor emeritus), Mike Lee (artist-in-residence)
  1. 16th through 19th century historical organ, clavichord, and harpsichord performance practice—Annette Richards (professor, university organist), David Yeasley (professor)
  1. 20th through 21st century contemporary keyboard performance practice—Xak Bjerken (professor) and Miri Yampolsky (artist-in-residence)

 

Interested applicants should visit: music.cornell.edu for more information