About

Mark Ferraguto is a Professor of Musicology and the Associate Director of the School of Music at Penn State's College of Arts & Architecture. His research specializes in the music and culture of 18th- and early 19th-century Europe, with a particular focus on the intersection of musical style with cultural and political history, especially in the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. He is the author of the book Beethoven 1806 and co-editor of Music and Diplomacy from the Early Modern Era to the Present. Ferraguto is a dedicated proponent of historical performance and critical editing, serving as the General Editor of Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era. His recent projects include the first critical editions of works by Beethoven’s contemporaries George Bridgetower and Franz Weiss. In 2024, he received the American Musicological Society’s Noah Greenberg Award for his collaboration with the Eybler Quartet on the premiere and recording of Weiss’s “Razumovsky” string quartets. He holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University and has been recognized with the College of Arts and Architecture’s Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award. His work has been supported by various prestigious organizations, and he actively performs on early and modern keyboards.

Research topics

• Art
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Aesthetics
• Visual arts
• Mathematics
• Literature
• Art history
• Philosophy
• Physics
• History
• Law

Selected publications

• Mozart and/as AI

  Eighteenth Century Music · 2025-03-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  After its launch on 30 November 2022 ChatGPT (or Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) quickly became the fastest-growing app in history, gaining one hundred million users in just two months. Developed by the US-based artificial-intelligence firm OpenAI, ChatGPT is a free, text-based AI system designed to interact with the user in a conversational way. Capable of answering complex questions with sophistication and of conversing in a breezy and impressively human style, ChatGPT can also generate outputs in a seemingly endless variety of formats, from professional memos to Bob Dylan lyrics, HTML code to screenplays and five-alarm chilli recipes to five-paragraph essays. Its remarkable capability relative to earlier chatbots gave rise to both astonishment and concern in the tech sector. On 22 March 2023 a group of more than one thousand scientists and entrepreneurs published an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on further human-competitive AI development – a moratorium that was not observed.

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• Antoine Reicha and the Making of the Nineteenth-Century Composer Fabio Morabito and Louise Bernard de Raymond, eds Bologna: Ut Orpheus, 2021 pp. xxix + 329, ISBN 978 8 881 09522 3

  Eighteenth Century Music · 2023-02-08

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  have aimed to capture Reicha in his 'efforts to navigate a variety of contexts, negotiating at the same time personal, financial, geographical, social, musical, professional and other priorities of self-representation' (xix).Comprising seven essays in English and four in French, the book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the composer, offering many perspectives that will engage scholars of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century music.Morabito (chapter 1) draws attention to Haydn's outsized role in Reicha's autobiography.Central to Reicha's historiographical project, Morabito argues, was his role as a symbolic link between Haydn and later generations of composers.Morabito characterizes Haydn as a modernist, arguing that for Reicha, 'playing [the role of] Haydn' amounted to 'being yourself musically' (19).Reicha's Trente-six fugues composes d'aprs un nouveau systme (1803) were his most systematic and radical attempt to follow 'the unruly Haydn blueprint' ( 19), but the collection was poorly received.These eccentric fugues, Morabito suggests, were off-putting to Reicha's contemporaries because of their didactic pretension as much as their novelty.Reicha's fascination with fugue is further explored by Muriel Boulan (chapter 9), who investigates seven French treatises on 'school fugues' written between 1805 and 1840.These texts, she argues, reflect competing ideologies.While Francois-Joseph Ftis in his Trait du contrepoint et de la fugue (1824) characterized fugue as the summit of tradition, Reicha in his Trait de haute composition musicale (1826) viewed it as the essence of modern composition.Rather than including fugal examples by the likes of Palestrina, Handel and Bach in his treatise, Reicha quoted from works composed by himself and his former students.In so doing, he sought to demonstrate fugue's relevance to the nineteenth-century composer, emphasizing, in his own words, 'the effects produced by the fugal material' rather than 'the insignificant fugues with which students in counterpoint classes busy themselves' (286; my translation).

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• Modern Premiere of Franz Weiss's ‘Razumovsky’ Quartets

  Eighteenth Century Music · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Art
  • Computer Science

  Franz Weiss (1778-1830) is best known as the violist of the Schuppanzigh Quartet, the ensemble that premiered and popularized many of Beethoven's string quartets.But he was also a celebrated composer in his own right, one whose 'ingenious compositions, related to Beethoven's spirit, have long received the loudest and most deserved approval both at home and abroad' ('dessen geniale mit Beethovens Geist verwandte Compositionen im In-und Auslande lngst die lauteste und gerechteste Anerkennung gefunden haben').So wrote a Viennese critic in the Allgemeine Theaterzeitung und Unterhaltungsblatt fr Freunde der Kunst, Literatur und des geselligen Lebens of 4 December 1828 (582).Fortunately, many of Weiss's compositions have survived, but most are preserved only in rare archival manuscripts or early nineteenth-century performing editions.As a result, his music remains unfamiliar to scholars, performers and audiences.In the autumn of 2019 I began working on the first modern edition of Weiss's Op. 8, a set of two string quartets dedicated to Andrey Razumovsky, the Ukrainian-born Russian diplomat to whom Beethoven famously dedicated his Op.59 quartets.As my edition neared completion in early 2022, I contacted the Toronto-based Eybler Quartet about a possible collaboration.Through a supreme stroke of luck, my email landed in the inbox of the group's violist, Patrick Jordan.Patrick proved to be as enthusiastic as I was to bring Weiss's quartetsalmost certainly unheard since the 1820sback to life.We set a date of 31 January 2023 for Op.8's 'modern premiere' at the Pennsylvania State University.Over the nine months that followed, the members of the Eybler Quartet were extremely generous with their time and expertise, playing through the edited parts, suggesting emendations, making and discussing recordings and more.We haggled over accidentals, debated slurs and ties and often struggled to reach a consensus about Weiss's intentions.The erratic nature of Op. 8's only surviving sourcea set of parts printed by the Vienna firm S. A. Steiner in 1814posed a significant challenge.Ultimately, this collaborative effort enriched both my edition and (if I might say so) the ensemble's approach to Weiss's virtuosic but intricate quartets.It is our hope that this exciting concert will have served as a springboard for generating interest in this underappreciated contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert.The concert was held in the School of Music's new recital hall, a 420-seat, acoustically superb venue.It was also live-streamed.I introduced Weiss and his quartets in a pre-concert lecture, after which the Eybler Quartet performed Op. 8 No. 1 in the first half and the longer Op. 8 No. 2 in the second half.The first quartet, in G major, opens with a cello drone on G and D, evoking a pastoral topic that provides a touchstone for the Allegro ma non troppo.But the first movementlike the rest of Op. 8is also replete with bravura passagework.Indeed, both quartets make considerable demands on the performers, especially the first violinist; in this movement, as elsewhere, violinist Julia Wedman led the charge with skill and aplomb.In the second movementan E minor Andante with dance-like sections in the parallel majorcellist Margaret Gay stole the show through her sharply profiled bass lines and expressive, concerto-like solos.The Menuetto, the most modestly scaled movement in Op. 8, was delivered with elegance and grace.Full of harmonic surprises and irrepressible humour, the finale of Op. 8 No. 1 was the crowd-pleaser of the evening; violinist

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• Musical Topics, Quotations, and References

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-11-02

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• 5. The Other “Razumovsky” Quartets: Franz Weiss’s Op. 8 and the Formation of Vienna’s Kennerpublikum

  Academic Studies Press eBooks · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Art
  • Philosophy
  PublisherDOI

• The Other “Razumovsky” Quartets:

  Academic Studies Press eBooks · 2022-04-02

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• Echoes behaving badly? Rhetorical and acoustic experimentalism in the echo fantasias of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and his contemporaries

  Early Music · 2022-08-01

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  Abstract The 17th-century ‘echo fantasia’ for keyboard has long posed problems of classification and attribution. This article focuses on a particularly problematic example of the genre, the Echo Fantasia in d attributed to Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (d4). Once expurgated from the Sweelinck canon, d4 differs substantially from its compatriots, most notably in its erratic echo scheme in which some echoes are marked louder than their antecedents, and others take the shape of improvisatory variants. Viewing d4 from a wider perspective, this article positions the echo fantasia at the intersection of early 17th-century rhetorical and acoustic experimentalism. On the one hand, literary portrayals of the figure of Echo relied on rhetorical devices—such as anadiplosis—that also characterize d4. On the other hand, d4’s misbehaving echoes evoke the playful experimentalism of early scientists investigating echoes, including Francis Bacon, Isaac Beeckman and Marin Mersenne. Akin to a miniature musical laboratory, the echo fantasia was a genre in which the strangest echo effects could be replicated at the organ.

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• <i>Beethoven Studies 4</i> Keith Chapin and David Wyn Jones

  Music and Letters · 2021-06-15

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  Beethoven Studies 4 revives a ‘brand’ that has lain dormant for almost four decades. Established by the British musicologist Alan Tyson, the original three-volume Beethoven Studies series (published in 1973/1974, 1977, and 1982) was principally devoted to the investigation of source materials for Beethoven’s life and music, notably his sketches. Containing valuable documentary insights and thought-provoking criticism, these volumes remain indispensable resources in Beethoven research; however, they necessarily reflect the era in which they were written. The range of methodologies, broad for the time, seems narrow by today’s standards. So, too, does the roster of contributors, which comprised just twelve scholars (all men, nearly all Anglo-American) across a total of twenty-three chapters. In music studies, as elsewhere, the horizon of the possible has widened drastically since the early 1980s. Accordingly, the editors of the newest instalment in the series have set out to produce a book that not only resuscitates but also reimagines the Beethoven Studies endeavour.

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• The Cambridge Companion to the &lt;I&gt;Eroica&lt;/I&gt; Symphony

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2020 · 21 citations

  • Political Science
  • Art
  • Literature

  This Companion provides orientation for those embarking on the study of Beethoven's much-discussed Eroica Symphony, as well as providing fresh insights that will appeal to scholars, performers and listeners more generally. The book addresses the symphony in three thematic sections, on genesis, analysis and reception history, and covers key topics including political context, dedication, sources of the Symphony's inspiration, 'heroism' and the idea of a 'watershed' work. Critical studies of writings and analyses from Beethoven's day to ours are included, as well as a range of other relevant responses to the work, including compositions, recordings, images and film. The Companion draws on previous literature but also illuminates the work from new angles, based on new evidence and a range of approaches by twelve leading scholars in Beethoven research.

  DOI

• Beethoven’s ‘Watershed’?<i>Eroica</i>’s Contexts and Periodisation

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2020-06-08 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Critics have often described Beethoven's Eroica Symphony as a 'watershed' work, not only within his career and oeuvre, but also within the histories of music, art and ideas. However, the concept of the 'watershed' work needs to be understood both as an aesthetic construct and as a literary device that helps to shape a narrative of triumph over adversity. Investigating this concept means disentangling the Eroica from the many stories that have been told about it since Beethoven's death. While modern critics have made compelling claims about the Eroica's departures from generic and stylistic norms, for instance, these claims are complicated by close engagement with the music of Beethoven's predecessors. Carl Friedrich Michaelis's 1805 interpretation of the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven as 'heroic epics' 'Heldengedichte' offers further evidence that the Eroica reaffirmed and reimagined 'rather than overturned' an existing aesthetic paradigm. The Beethoven myth has strongly shaped the way the Eroica has been understood, so that beginning in the 1830s, the symphony's extraordinary reputation has been closely bound up with the periodisation of Beethoven's life and works. Recent scholarship on Beethoven's 'middle' or 'heroic' period opens up alternate ways of thinking about the Eroica's 'watershed' status.

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Frequent coauthors

• Nancy November

  4 shared

• Rebekah Ahrendt

  3 shared

• Damien Mahiet

  Providence College

  3 shared

• Vasili Byros

  Northwestern University

  1 shared

• William Drabkin

  University of Southampton

  1 shared

• Beate Angelika Kraus

  1 shared

• Federica Rovelli

  University of Pavia

  1 shared

• Erica Buurman

  San Jose State University

  1 shared

Labs

• MusicologyPI

Awards & honors

• American Musicological Society’s Noah Greenberg Award (2024)
• AAGO Prize