Larry Hamberlin
Professor of Music, Retired June 2023
- lhamberl@middlebury.edu
Larry Hamberlin retired in June 2023. He taught courses in Western classical music, American music, jazz, and popular music. His publications include:
- An Introduction to America’s Music, 2d ed., with Richard Crawford (W. W. Norton, 2013)
- Tin Pan Opera: Operatic Novelties in the Ragtime Era (Oxford University Press, 2011)
- “The Beethoven Allusions in ‘Auf dem Strom’ (D.928),” in Unknown Schubert, ed. Barbara Reul (Ashgate, 2008)
- “Visions of Salome: The Femme Fatale in American Popular Songs before 1920,” Journal of the American Musicological Society (2006)
- “National Identity in Snyder and Berlin’s ‘That Opera Rag,’” American Music (2004)
The Society of American Music awarded the Mark Tucker Prize to his paper “Caruso and His Cousins: Portraits of Italian Americans in the Operatic Novelty Songs of Edwards and Madden” and a Lowens Book Award honorable mention to his book Tin Pan Opera. He has presented several papers, on topics ranging from music at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair to Puccini’s influence on American popular song, at meetings of the International and American Musicological Societies, the Society for American Music, and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (U.S. branch), and has been an invited speaker at the universities of Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, and Columbia and at the College of William and Mary.
Prof. Hamberlin has taught as a visiting professor at Harvard University, Williams College, and Tufts University. He holds a Ph.D. in historical musicology from Brandeis University.
Courses Taught
MUSC 0101
Introduction to Music
Course Description
Introduction to Music
In this course we will develop critical listening skills through guided study of selected works of Western classical, popular, and folk music, as well as a sampling of music from non-Western cultures, from the Middle Ages to the present. Students will learn to listen actively, to identify how music uses basic sound materials— such as rhythm, melody, timbre, texture, and harmony—to create meaning and expression, and to draw connections between music and its social and historical context. Previous musical training is not required.
Terms Taught
Requirements
MUSC 0333
Music in Western Cultures
Course Description
Music in Western Cultures
In this course we will develop skills for assessing music’s social, economic, and political importance in Western societies. Through a series of units focusing on various aspects of music (such as composition, performance, dissemination, and reception) and on various eras from ancient Greece to the present, students will engage with the principal questions and methods of historical musicology. Students will learn to interpret musical works’ formal, stylistic, and performative characteristics through close engagement with scores and recordings, and draw connections between musical works and the institutions and wider socio-cultural conditions that have shaped and continue to shape music-making. (MUSC 0101) 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
MUSC 0500
Independent Study
Course Description
Independent Study
Admission by approval. Please consult published departmental guidelines and paragraph below.
Terms Taught
MUSC 0704
Senior Work
Course Description
Senior Work
Senior work is not required of all music majors and joint majors. However, students interested in and eligible for departmental honors (see guideline above, in "Departmental Honors" section) may propose one or two-semester Senior Work projects. Projects may be in history, composition, theory, ethnomusicology, performance, or electronic music, and should culminate in a written presentation, a public performance, or a combination of the two. MUSC0704 does not count as a course toward fulfillment of the music major.
Project and budget proposals for Independent Study and Senior Work should be submitted by the previous April 1 for fall and winter term projects, and the previous October 15 for spring term projects. Budget proposals will not be considered after those dates. Project proposals will be considered after the deadline but are more likely not to be approved due to previous commitments of faculty advisors or other scheduling reasons.
Terms Taught
MUSC 1008
Bob Dylan's America
Course Description
Bob Dylan's America
Few figures in American music have had the far-ranging influence of Bob Dylan, who, willingly or not, personified the social turmoil of the 1960s. In this course we will examine the musical and literary traditions on which Dylan draws (rock 'n' roll, country music, the urban folk revival, and the Beat poets), assess his art of crafting songs, and survey the principal phases of his career. Drawing on a range of biographical and historical materials, we will also consider the relationship between the social movements of the post-1960s and the carefully crafted public persona that Robert Zimmerman named Bob Dylan.
Terms Taught
Requirements
MUSC 1055
Music in the United States
Course Description
Music in the United States
In this course we will examine folk, classical, and popular music in the United States from the 17th century to the present. We will use historical and analytical approaches to gain insight into the music, the musicians, and the social and cultural forces that have shaped them. Students will explore music’s relation to historical events, other artistic movements, technological changes, and questions of national identity and ethnicity. Topics will include music in the British colonies, minstrelsy, American opera and orchestras, jazz, popular music, and the experimentalist composers of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Terms Taught
Requirements