Jason Geary

Profile

Assistant Professor, Musicology

Jason Geary joined the UM faculty after completing his Ph.D. at Yale University in  2004.  His dissertation focused on Mendelssohn’s incidental music to Sophocles’s Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus and the relationship of these works to German culture and politics of the nineteenth century.   His research and teaching interests center primarily on nineteenth-century Europe, in particular the music of Mendelssohn and the piano repertory of the period.  He is currently at work on a book that explores the legacy of ancient Greece and the German musical tradition of the mid nineteenth century. Prof. Geary, who is also an accomplished pianist, has presented his work at conferences in the United States and abroad and has spent extensive periods of time conducting research in Germany, most recently as a Fulbright scholar in Berlin.  In addition to his teaching duties at UM, he currently serves as the advisor to undergraduate music students in the School of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

Memberships

American Musicological Society

Society for Music Theory

College Music Society

Publications

“Reinventing the Past: Mendelssohn’s Antigone and the Creation of an Ancient Greek Musical Language.”  Journal of Musicology (forthcoming).  

“Mendelssohn’s Antigone and the Ancient Greek Polis,” in Music Research: New  Directions for a New Century, eds. Michael Ewans, Rosalind Halton, and John Philips (London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2004), 230-40.

“Mendelssohn, Wagner, and the German Revival of Greek Tragedy.” (under review)

Papers and Presentations

“The Rise of Wagnerism and the Reception of Mendelssohn’s Antigone,”  International Conference on Mendelssohn in the Long Nineteenth Century, Dublin, 2005.

“Greek Tragedy as German Drama: From Mendelssohn to Wagner,” Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Seattle, 2004.

“The Sounds of Antiquity: Meaning and Orchestration in Mendelssohn’s Incidental Music to Antigone,” Colloquium at the Freie Universität, Berlin, 2003.

“Mendelssohn’s Antigone and the German Appropriation of the Ancient Greek Civic Ideal,” Musicological Society of Australia, Newcastle, 2003. 

“Of Modern and Ancient Festivals: Mendelssohn’s Antigone and the Music of German Commemoration,” Colloquium at Yale University, 2001.

Teaching at the University of Michigan

History of Western Music, 1750-1945 (Musicology 240)

History of 19th- and 20th-Century Opera (Musicology 414/514)

History of the Symphony (Musicology 411/511)

The Chamber Music of Mendelssohn and Schumann

Chamber Music, ca. 1770-1900

Music and National Identity in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Contact Information

Professor Jason Geary

University of Michigan

602 Burton Memorial Tower

Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1270

Office Telephone: (734) 763-5634

Fax: (734) 647-1897

jgeary@umich.edu