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Interdisciplinary Humanities

Marianne Pfau

Professor, Music History

Marianne Pfau, PhD, heads the music history and literature program at USD, offers international Early Music Festivals, and directs the concert series Angelus: Sacred Early Music in Founders Chapel.   Since 2006, she also teaches graduate seminars at the Musicological Institute of the University of Hamburg, Germany.

Pfau also has an active performance career as baroque oboist.  She performs and records with American Bach Soloists, Jubilate Baroque Orchestra and California Bach Society in San Francisco; Corona del Mar Baroque Festival in Los Angeles; Trinity Consort in Oregon, and Ensemble Rebel in New York. In Europe she appears with Musica Alta Ripa, L’Arco Baroque Orchestra Hannover, Corona Musica Kassel, Cythara Ensemble Hamburg, and Accademia dell’Arcadia Poznan.

Education

Ph.D., Stony Brook University, Historical Musicology
Graduate degree, Musikhochschule Hamburg, Historical Performance Practices
Graduate Degree, Musikhochschule Hamburg, Early Wind Instruments
Licentiate, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London; Music Therapy

 

Scholarly and Creative Work

Pfau’s career embraces both musicological scholarship and performance of Early Music, with a special interest in the connections between both.  The monograph entitled Hildegard von Bingen: Der Klang des Himmels with Stefan Morent (Cologne: Boehlau 2005) has garnered enthusiastic reviews on both sides of the Atlantic; her complete edition of Hildegard’s Symphonia chants (Bryn Mawr: HPC, 1993-98) is widely used in the U.S. and licensed internationally.  Her recent recordings with her ensemble toutes suites of music for baroque oboe by Sebastian Bodinus (Leipzig: GENUIN 2009) and Jean Michel Muller (Leipzig: 2008) which she discovered in European archives have received fervent notices in Europe, the UK, and in Japan. Following the motto of her ensemble, toutes suites: music from page to stage, it is her goal to make Baroque music for oboe hidden in libraries available in performances, recordings, and in scholarly editions.

Teaching Interests

Pfau teaches the gamut of western music history for the Music department at USD; joint interdisciplinary courses for the USD’s Honors and Social Issues Programs with faculty from the literature, theology, philosophy, and political science departments; and graduate seminars at the University of Hamburg on Hildegard von Bingen and on Musical Rhetoric in J. S. Bach’s Sacred Cantatas.