DAVID FERRIS
Associate Professor of Musicology

B. Mus. (1982) New England Conservatory Ph. D. (1993) Brandeis University 1205 Alice Pratt Brown Hall 713-348-2191 ferris@rice.edu

DAVID FERRIS, Associate Professor of Musicology, received a bachelor of music in early music performance from the New England Conservatory and a Ph. D. in music from Brandeis University. He has taught at Amherst College, the University of Houston, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been a member of the Shepherd School faculty since 1998. His research interests include music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, German Romanticism, text/music relationships, the history of music theory and criticism, and musical biography.

Ferris is the author of Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis and the Genre of the Romantic Cycle and has recently had an article published in Music Theory Spectrum. He has presented papers at the national meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Society for Music Theory, and the American Bach Society, as well as at the Texas Society for Music Theory, The New England Chapter of the AMS, the New England Conference of Music Theorists, and the Music Theory Society of New York State. He teaches the graduate history review, Introduction to Historical Studies, and has given seminars on Romantic song and on the classical style. He has also been invited to teach in the Rice University Alumni College and to give several public presentations at the Shepherd School.

Presentations
"C. P. E. Bach's Rondos and the Subversion of Genre," American Musicological Society National Meeting, November 2000

"The Pastoral and the Heroic in Beethoven's Orchestral Music, " pre-concert lecture for Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra, Shepherd School Beethoven Festival, April 2000

"Weak Openings And Open Endings: On Schumann's Romantic Song Forms," Music Theory Society of New York State, April 1998 and Texas Society for Music Theory, February 1998

"C. P. E. Bach's Paragraph on Modulation: A Defense of Improvisational Style," American Musicological Society National Meeting, November 1996

"C. P. E. Bach, Kirnberger, and the Art of 'Strange' Modulation," Society for Music Theory, November 1996

"C. P. E. Bach in His Father's Image," American Bach Society, April 1996

Research
"Public Performance and Private Understanding: Clara Wieck's Concerts in Berlin." An article-length study in which I use evidence from the Schumanns' correspondence about Clara's concert programs to argue that Robert never intended his early piano music for public performance, and to show how the Schumanns' ideas about private music-making reveal the influence of German Romanticism.

C. P. E. Bach and the Forging of an Historical Identity A book-length study that is concerned both with C. P. E. Bach's attempts to influence his historical image through the use of music publishing and journalism, and also with his actual historical reception. My project is focused on biography and reception history, but I also draw on evidence from Bach's compositions and theoretical writings, as well as the writings of contemporary theorists and journalists. I am interested in how he used elements of the style of his day to create an individual musical language, how his theoretical ideas differed from those of his contemporaries, and in his complex relationship with his father's legacy.

Publications
Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis and the Genre of the Romantic Cycle. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000

"C. P. E. Bach and the Art of Strange Modulation" in Music Theory Spectrum Vol. 22/1 (Spring 2000)