đź“… Date: Friday, April 10, 2026
đź•’ Start Time: 4:00 PM
đź“Ť Location: Harkness Chapel, Classroom
đź‘Ą Who: Free | Open to the public
Our weekly Friday colloquia showcase current research by distinguished visiting scholars alongside our own faculty and graduate students in musicology, historical performance practice, and music education. A brief reception follows each talk to keep the conversation going. All are welcome!
About The Talk
"My Queer Anthem"
Sponsored by the Center for Popular Music Studies
I didn't realize anyone could actively oppose my long-held love of Alban Berg's Lyric Suite until Richard Taruskin and others leveled anti-modernist diatribes in print in the 1990s and beyond. So Taruskin (unintentionally) made this music an anthem: a piece emblematic of my own love of beauty, as well as my particular weaknesses, subjectivities, and passions. And reflective of my own being at odds with the world: to reappropriate the common music-historical insult, I've come to think mine has been an "atonal" life.
Anthems express pride as it faces down opposition. And now, in the U.S., there's an epidemic of opposition for its own sake. A self-satisfied, regressive moralism has overtaken our institutions at every level. At such a time, Berg's music can manifest resistance with its profuse and unorthodox beauties (or beautiful unorthodoxies?). Looking back over more than 30 years in academia, I do like to think I might have discomfited people in the same sorts of ways Berg’s "lurid" and "decadent" compositions have. Theodor Adorno was so right when he said this composer's later work “seeks to restore human dignity to a banished, heretical yearning.” Now that's a cause I'm happy to fight for.
About The Speaker
Arved Ashby is an award-winning musicologist with a Yale PhD in Music History. He has just retired after 30 years of teaching in the School of Music at The Ohio State University. Ashby is the author of five books, including Absolute Music, Mechanical Reproduction (California, 2010) and Experiencing Mahler: A Listener’s Companion (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020). His talk today is adapted from My 1980s Gayboy Playlist (due out in June from Punctum). He's leaving music as a subject with his newest book Shame on Me, an examination of self-contempt and internalized oppression as they're instituted in everyday 21st-century language.
Venue Information
Harkness Classroom, located inside Harkness Chapel, serves as both a lecture hall for large classes and a backstage area during events. It is also the meeting location for the CWRU Music Colloquium Series.
Health + Safety
The health and well-being of our community is important to us as we gather for campus events. University Health and Counseling Services provides up-to-date guidance and resources to help support a safe campus experience. For life-threatening emergencies, please call CWRU Public Safety immediately at 216.368.3333.