Carolyn Abbate

About

Carolyn Abbate writes about and teaches classes centered on opera as it has evolved over the past four centuries, with special emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her work ranges widely, drawing from disciplines including linguistics and semiotics, philosophy, film sound and film music, and the history of science. Outside academia, she has worked as a dramaturge and director, and as a translator. Forthcoming projects include essays on microphonics in past historical eras, on musical efficacy, and on Richard Wagner’s entanglements with nineteenth-century organic chemistry.

Research topics

• Art
• Philosophy
• Humanities
• Aesthetics
• Visual arts
• Literature
• Art history
• Epistemology

Selected publications

• Music—Drastic or Gnostic?

  Critical Inquiry · 2004-03-01 · 511 citations

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• A History of Opera: The Last Four Hundred Years

  2015-05-26 · 68 citations

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  Abbate and Parker's A History of Opera is the first full new history of opera in sixty years - now in paperback in an updated second edition. The best single volume ever written on the subject. (The Times Literary Supplement). Why has opera transfixed and fascinated audiences for centuries? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their scrupulous and provocative retelling of the history of opera, examining its development, the means by which it communicates, and its societal role…

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• Sound Object Lessons

  Journal of the American Musicological Society · 2016-01-01 · 34 citations

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  Two brief film sequences, in which paper blowing down a street (The Informer, 1935) and a candle passed along a table (The Old Dark House, 1931) make sounds. Next to them lies an antique microphone. This article charts the genealogies, cultural resonances, and interactions of these sound objects, drawing on the history of sound and acoustic technologies, film music aesthetics, and music philosophy. The sound objects give expression to fables about hearing in the machine age (1870–1930), and they…

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• Music – Drastic or Gnostic?

  Bärenreiter-Verlag eBooks · 2022 · 32 citations

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  Der mit polemischem Impetus verfasste Aufsatz entstand als Postskriptum zu Carolyn Abbates Übersetzung von Vladimir Jankélévitchs Schrift La Musique et l’Ineffable (Paris 1961; engl. Übs.: Jankélévitch 2003). Es handelt sich um einen besonders häufig und kontrovers diskutierten Beitrag zum performative turn in der Musikforschung, der zugleich eine im selben Zeitraum vielfach ausformulierte Ästhetik der Präsenz- und Ereigniskultur (vgl. u. a. Gumbrecht 1996; Mersch 2002) auf den Musikdiskurs über…

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• Overlooking the Ephemeral

  New Literary History · 2017-01-01 · 26 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This essay considers philosophical and aesthetic issues at stake in dealing with ephemeral arts such as performed music and exhibited film. Taking inspiration from Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s writings on presence culture and meaning culture, it explores possible stances towards beautiful objects – stances that precisely do not treat them as texts to be explained – including extreme attitudes such as silence and reticence. Refusing to regret the ephemeral is proposed as a form of cultural optimism, o…

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Frequent coauthors

• Roger Parker

  388 shared

• Arthur Groos

  Cornell University

  381 shared

• Ellen Rosand

  380 shared

• D. G. Charlton

  380 shared

• Reinhard Strohm

  379 shared

• Philip Gossett

  377 shared

• Hugh Macdonald

  377 shared

• Julian Budden

  377 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Musicology

  Harvard University

  1984

• M.A., Musicology

  Harvard University

  1980

• B.A., Music

  Harvard University

  1976

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Kee-Hyun Kimh-69
• Richard Wolfh-66
• Daniel Chongh-22