Society for Musicology at Florida State University

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Society for Musicology at Florida State University

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The Society for Musicology is a student-run organization within the musicology department at FSU.

Like this page for updates on the latest SfM events, student and faculty achievements, and other news. Our official Facebook group, which provides a space for communication between our current students, alumni, and faculty, may be found here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/187995264581088

10/24/2026

Thank you to everyone who helped us with our Pumpkin Fundraiser! Enjoy some pretty (and goofy) photos of our event!🎃🧡🎨

10/21/2026

Our infamous pumpkin decorating fundraiser is back! Stop by the HMU Breezeway tomorrow to take home a mini pumpkin to add to your fall decor🎃🖤🍂

Paint markers will be available if you want to decorate your pumpkin as well! Hope to see you there🖤🧡

10/09/2026

This Wednesday, check out Dr. Elizabeth Craft’s presentation on “In the Heights!”

Elizabeth Craft is an Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Utah. Her research areas include performance studies, musical theatre, and national identity. Her interdisciplinary work has led to multiple publications and presentations involving the intersection of broadway musicals and national identity, specifically “Hamilton” and “In the Heights.”

If you you are an “In the Heights” fan, a musical theatre enthusiast, or simply want to hear what interesting interdisciplinary work is currently happening in the musicology field, this is not a presentation to miss!

10/03/2026

Next up in our Summer Research Series is Elise Ruggiero!

Elise is a second-year master’s student who studies accessibility and music making in special music education and therapy settings. Previously, she has worked with autistic children and developed a sensory-friendly music listening experience with a modular music device, uCue.

This summer, however, she started fieldwork for her master’s thesis, which explores how music therapists trained in different clinical models use rhythm to help children with ADHD with executive function, time management, and motor control. This summer, she went to the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy at New York University (Nordoff-Robbins Digital) to look at video archives of sessions and interact with music therapists and music therapy students. Elise is also exploring music therapy rhythmic techniques used in the Tallahassee area, where the therapists were trained in a different clinical model.

In addition, Elise presented her bachelor’s thesis, which compares and contrasts sound preferences autistic and nonautistic children have, at the International Society for Music Education, Special Music Education and Music Therapy Pre-Conference, in Ottawa, Canada (ISME Special Music Education and Music Therapy).

10/01/2026

Thank you to Dr. Sarah Fahmy for a lovely presentation on music, language, and identity in music performance with Egyptian teenage girls!

And thank you to our FSU Visiting Scholar Coordinator for the Society for Musicology, Arisha Jones, for organizing her visit!

09/28/2026

This Wednesday, Dr. Sarah Fahmy from the theatre department is coming to give her presentation, “Decolonial Language Play and Feminist Praxis in Egypt,” at 2:30 in KMU 2:30. This isn’t a presentation to miss!

09/24/2026

Thank you to Dr. Principi for a fun and informative presentation on jazz improvisation!

Stay tuned for next week, where Dr. Sarah Fahmy from the theatre department will give a presentation!

09/23/2026

TODAY! *note title change
Dr. Dylan Principi of the Music Theory Department will be presenting at the weekly Society for Musicology meeting! All are welcome! The abstract for the presentation can be found below:

“In 1958, Gunther Schuller published an analysis of “Blue 7,” the final recording on Sonny Rollins’s album Saxophone Colossus. He claimed the track was the exemplar of an important new development in jazz, which he called thematic improvisation. Though Schuller’s argument proved influential, it was bound up with his own advocacy for “third stream” music, and with his progressive yet problematic claim that jazz was evolving rationally, just like Western art music, and thus merited serious consideration. To address these problems, Benjamin Givan published a rebuttal almost sixty years later focusing on two counterarguments: that Rollins did not intend to improvise thematically, and that his solo on “Blue 7” cannot be thematic because it is instead formulaic. In the decades between Schuller and Givan, however, scholars have openly doubted whether intention can determine whether an improvisation is truly thematic. They have also rejected a mutually exclusive distinction between thematic and formulaic improvisation. Not wanting to dismiss an analytical approach categorically, this article seeks to add further nuance to Givan’s compelling arguments while salvaging the concept of thematic improvisation from Schuller’s original excesses.
It is possible to find thematicity in Rollins’s solo on “Blue 7” by following a motive different from the one selected by Schuller. Although this novel motive appears as a formula in other recordings on Saxophone Colossus, this does not the prevent the motive from behaving thematically within a single improvisation. Additionally, errors on the recording of “Blue 7” undermine Schuller’s claims about the deliberateness of the performance, suggesting that the interpretation of thematicity takes place independently of the question of intention. In the end, the distinction between formulaic and thematic improvisation comes down to the degree of motivic development, and interpretation rather than intention is the determining factor.“

09/22/2026

TOMORROW, Dr. Dylan Principi of the Music Theory Department will be presenting at the weekly Society for Musicology meeting! All are welcome! The abstract for the presentation can be found below:

“In 1958, Gunther Schuller published an analysis of “Blue 7,” the final recording on Sonny Rollins’s album Saxophone Colossus. He claimed the track was the exemplar of an important new development in jazz, which he called thematic improvisation. Though Schuller’s argument proved influential, it was bound up with his own advocacy for “third stream” music, and with his progressive yet problematic claim that jazz was evolving rationally, just like Western art music, and thus merited serious consideration. To address these problems, Benjamin Givan published a rebuttal almost sixty years later focusing on two counterarguments: that Rollins did not intend to improvise thematically, and that his solo on “Blue 7” cannot be thematic because it is instead formulaic. In the decades between Schuller and Givan, however, scholars have openly doubted whether intention can determine whether an improvisation is truly thematic. They have also rejected a mutually exclusive distinction between thematic and formulaic improvisation. Not wanting to dismiss an analytical approach categorically, this article seeks to add further nuance to Givan’s compelling arguments while salvaging the concept of thematic improvisation from Schuller’s original excesses.
It is possible to find thematicity in Rollins’s solo on “Blue 7” by following a motive different from the one selected by Schuller. Although this novel motive appears as a formula in other recordings on Saxophone Colossus, this does not the prevent the motive from behaving thematically within a single improvisation. Additionally, errors on the recording of “Blue 7” undermine Schuller’s claims about the deliberateness of the performance, suggesting that the interpretation of thematicity takes place independently of the question of intention. In the end, the distinction between formulaic and thematic improvisation comes down to the degree of motivic development, and interpretation rather than intention is the determining factor.“

09/20/2026

Rose is a 5th year PhD candidate in Musicology. Her research focuses on how incompleteness manifests in musical theatre, from indeterminacy to revision to death. This past August, she spent the entire month in Washington, D.C. at the Music Division of the Library of Congress doing archival research for her dissertation chapter on revision. Her focus was the Stephen Sondheim collection, containing the composer-lyricist’s lyric sketches and drafts, handwritten sheet music, notes, and much more. In particular, she was looking at the musicals Company, Follies, The Frogs, Merrily We Roll Along, and the Sondheim-Wiedman musical project of many names: Wise Guys/Bounce/Road Show. Beyond that, she was able to explore the city with her research assistant and oldest friend Shoe (Shoe). And just like the character of Hollis Bessemer from Bounce/Road Show she spent her days “filling my mind, flooding my heart with art!”

1: Rose & Shoe outside of the National Gallery, which also the site where president James Garfeild, was shot
2: First page of Sondheim’s handwritten score for “Broadway Baby” from Follies
3: Lyric sketch for an early version of what would become “Getting Married Today” from Company
4: Lyric sketch of “Can That Boy Foxtrot,” a cut song from Follies
5: Ajax by John Steuart Curry
6: A page of important events written by Sondheim during the creation of Merrily We Roll Along
7: Lyric sketch of “The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened” from Bounce (when it was still about a straight couple)
8: Statue of president James Madison in the Library of Congress’s Madison building
9: Portrait and quote of John Cage, painted by Laurie Anderson as part of her room sized work Four Talks at the Hirshhorn Museum
10: First page of the title song from Merrily We Roll Along
11: Advertisement for The Frogs in a Yale program
12: Page of notes written by Burt Shevelove for Sondheim about Dionysos in The Frogs with Sondheim’s annotations
13: Russian futurist painting by Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné titled Capriccio musicale (1913)
14: List of travel related words written by Sondheim during the creation of The Frogs
15: Joanne’s iconic line from “Ladies Who Lunch”

Address

Tallahassee, FL

Website

https://fsumusicology.weebly.com/, http://www.music.fsu.edu/Areas-of-Study/Musicology

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