Katharina Clausius

Areas of research

Eighteenth-century opera, Enlightenment aesthetics, critical theory, musical historicism, Word and Music studies, modernist music and visual art, interdisciplinary studies.

Courses

• MUS 220A Western Music from 1750-1885
• MUS 220B Western Music from 1885-1952
• MUS 323 Forms and Genres of Music. Topics include: “Multimedia Opera,” “Enlightenment Opera and the Political”
• MUS 503 Introduction to Graduate Study and Music Bibliography
• MUS 532 Comparative Topics in Musicology. Topics include: “Avant-Garde Modernism in Music and Art”

Brief biography

Katharina Clausius joined the School of Music in 2018 after receiving her BMus (Honours) from Western University, MA from Columbia University, and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Cambridge Trusts, and St John’s College.

Dr. Clausius’s research focuses on the tangled relationships between music and other arts, and in particular how notions of history filter through different artistic media. Her interest in musical historicism has led to an eclectic range of interdisciplinary projects on the poetics of Enlightenment opera, aesthetics of influence in modernist art and music, and pedagogy in Jacques Rancière’s political philosophy.

She serves on the board of the Mozart Society of America as Reviews Editor and member of the Membership Committee and has contributed articles to the “The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project” (ARTFL Online) as a volunteer translator.

Selected publications

Monographs:

In preparation: Opera after Poetry: Enlightenment Dramma per musica amid the Arts 

Book Chapters:

Forthcoming: “Rancière on Music; Rancière’s Non Music.” In The Emancipated Listener: Rancière and Music. Edited by João Pedro Cachopo, Patrick Nickleson, and Chris Stover. Afterword by Jacques Rancière. University of Edinburgh Press.

Articles:

“Translation ~ Politics.” Philosophy Today 61/1 (Winter 2017): 249-266.

“Mit(h)ridate’s Poisoned Roots: Racine, Prose Tragedy, and Opera.” The Opera Quarterly 32/1 (Winter 2016): 1-33.

“Historical Mirroring, Mirroring History: An Aesthetics of Collaboration in Pulcinella.” Journal of Musicology 30/2 (Spring 2013): 215-251.

“John Cage’s ‘Whiteness:’ Cheap Imitation.” Tempo 65/258 (October 2011): 11-19.

“Structural Narratives of Musical Space and Pacing in Mozart’s String Quartets and Quintets.” KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time 9/1-2 (2009): 61-80.