Heather Platt
Sursa Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts and Professor of Music
Heather Platt joined the Ball State University School of Music faculty in the Autumn of 1994. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from the Canberra School of Music, a Master of Music from the University of Adelaide, and a Ph. D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
A musicologist whose primary areas of interest are Brahms, 19th-century lieder, 19th-century American concert life, the digital humanities and Schenkerian analysis. Her latest book,
Lieder in America: On Stages and in Parlors, traces the American dissemination of Lieder through performances during the 19th century. Articles related to this topic have appeared in
American Music,
German Song on Stage, and
The Lied at the Crossroads of Performance and Musicology. Her publications on Brahms’s lieder concern their text-music relationships, musical structure, links to contemporary arts, and critical reception. With Peter H. Smith she coedited
Expressive Intersections in Brahms: Essays in Analysis and Meaning (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012). Her chapter in this volume is “Brahms’s Mädchenlieder and Their Cultural Context.” The revised edition of her annotated Brahms bibliography appeared in 2011 as
Johannes Brahms: A Research and Information Guide; it is part of the Routledge Music Bibliographies series. Her articles have appeared in
Brahms and the Shaping of Time,
Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall,
Brahms Studies,
The Journal of Musicology,
The Compleat Brahms,
Newsletter of the American Brahms Society,
Intégral, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, and
Indiana Theory Review. Review articles have appeared in
The Journal of Music Theory,
Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and
The Pendragon Review. Her dissertation on Brahms’s lieder won the inaugural Karl Geiringer Award for Dissertation Research, sponsored by the American Brahms Society.
Dr. Platt has presented papers at national and international music theory and musicology conferences in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. She served as managing editor of RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and
Theory and Practice, and on committees of the American Musicological Society. She is currently the Digital Reviews Editor of
Nineteenth Century Music Review, and previously served as Co-Reviews Editor of
Music Theory Online. She served as the President of the Board of Directors of the American Brahms Society from 2007 to 2011, and is currently a member of the Board. She has served on numerous conference program committees and is currently a member of the program committee for the 2019 North American Conference on Nineteenth Century Music.