Dr Keith Chapin
BA and MMus (Yale), PhD (Stanford)
Senior Lecturer, Senior Undergraduate Admissions Tutor
- chapink@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2087 0925
- 1.11, 37 Corbett Road
- Siarad Cymraeg
- Sylwebydd y cyfryngau
I research on issues of aesthetics and analysis in eighteenth-through-twentieth century France and Germany, focusing on changing conceptions of sublimity and their different musical manifestations, the relationship between music and literature, and the aesthetics of counterpoint.
Through this work, I seek to articulate how musicians and listeners channel music towards various social ends. I also have a strong interest in performance studies, and perform on the viola. I have served as co-editor of Eighteenth-Century Music and associate editor of 19th-Century Music.
I am from Fairbanks, Alaska originally and have worked in the USA, New Zealand, and the UK.
2017
- Chapin, K. 2017. The visual traces of a discourse of ineffability: Late Eighteenth-Century German published writings on music. In: Eisen, C. and Davison, A. eds. Late Eighteenth-Century Music and Visual Culture. Music and Visual Cultures Turnhout: Brepols
2016
- Chapin, K. 2016. The Secular Commedia: Comic Mimesis in Late Eighteenth-Century Music.By Wye Jamison Allanbrook [Book Review]. Music and Letters 97(1), pp. 165-167. (10.1093/ml/gcv111)
2015
- Chapin, K. 2015. Sublime néoclassique et sublime rhétorique: La réception musicale des Odes et mélodies spirituelles (1757) de Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. In: Hachie, S. and Favier, T. eds. À la croisée des arts: Sublime et musique religieuse en Europe (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles). Paris: Classiques Garnier, pp. 165-185.
- Chapin, K. 2015. Antoine Reicha and the three identities of the learned musician. In: Raymond, L. B. d., Bartoli, J. and Schneider, H. eds. Antoine Reicha, compositeur et theoricien: Actes du colloque international tenu à Paris du 18 au 20 avril 2013. George Olms Verlag, pp. 109-118.
2014
- Chapin, K. 2014. Classicism/neo-classicism. In: Downes, S. ed. Aesthetics of Music: Musicological perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 144-169.
- Chapin, K. 2014. Learned style and learned styles. In: Mirka, D. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory. Oxford Handbooks Online Oxford University Press, (10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199841578.013.0012)
- Chapin, K. 2014. Temporal modes and symbolic stakes: strict composition in early Nineteenth-Century Europe. Musurgia 21(1), pp. 29-41. (10.3917/musur.141.0029)
2013
- Chapin, K. 2013. Bach's silence, Mattheson's words: professional and humanist ways of speaking of music. In: Chapin, K. and Clark, A. H. eds. Speaking of Music: Addressing the Sonorous. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 74-111.
- Chapin, K. and Clark, A. H. 2013. Speaking of music: a view across disciplines and a lexicon of topoi. In: Chapin, K. and Clark, A. H. eds. Speaking of Music: Addressing the Sonorous. New York: Fordham University Press
- Chapin, K. and Clark, A. H. eds. 2013. Speaking of music: addressing the sonorous. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press.
- Chapin, K. 2013. Le contrepoint et ses logiques tonales au tournant du dix-neuvième siècle. In: Gonnard, H. ed. Regards sur la tonalité / Perspectives on Tonality. Sampzon: Editions Delatour, pp. 197-210.
2011
- Chapin, K. 2011. Counterpoint: From the bees or for the birds? Telemann and early eighteenth-century quarrels with tradition. Music and Letters 92(3), pp. 377-409. (10.1093/ml/gcr036)
- Chapin, K. 2011. 'A harmony or concord of several and diverse voices': Autonomy in 17th-Century German music theory and practice. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music (IRASM) 42(2), pp. 219-255.
2010
- Chapin, K. 2010. Time and the keyboard fugue. 19th-Century Music 34(2), pp. 186-207. (10.1525/ncm.2010.34.2.186)
- Chapin, K. 2010. John T. Hamilton, Music, madness and the unworking of language. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008 pp. xviii + 252, ISBN 978023142205 [Book Review]. Eighteenth-Century Music 7(1), pp. 114-117. (10.1017/S1478570609990510)
2009
- Chapin, K. 2009. Sublime experience and ironic action: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the use of music for life. In: Chapin, K. and Kramer, L. eds. Musical Meaning and Human Values. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 32-58.
- Chapin, K. 2009. Alexandre Pierre François Boëly (1785-1858), ses contemporains et le style sévère, conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Paris, 4-5 décembre 2008 [Conference report]. Eighteenth-Century Music 6(2), pp. 306-309. (10.1017/S1478570609990340)
2008
- Chapin, K. 2008. Scheibe’s mistake: sublime simplicity and the criteria of classicism. Eighteenth-Century Music 5(2), pp. 165-177. (10.1017/S1478570608001474)
2006
- Chapin, K. 2006. Strict and free reversed: the law of counterpoint in Koch's Musikalisches Lexikon and Mozart's Zauberflöte. Eighteenth-Century Music 3(1), pp. 91-107. (10.1017/S1478570606000509)
- Chapin, K. 2006. Classicist terms of sublimity: Christian Friedrich Michaelis, fugue, and fantasy. Ad Parnassum 4(8), pp. 115-139.
- Chapin, K. 2006. Lost in quotation: the nuances behind E. T. A. Hoffmann's programmatic statements. 19th-Century Music 30(1), pp. 44-64. (10.1525/ncm.2006.30.1.044)
- Chapin, K. 2006. Labor and metaphysics in Hindemith's and Adorno's statements on counterpoint. In: Hoeckner, B. ed. Apparitions: New Perspectives on Adorno and Twentieth-Century Music. Studies in Contemporary Music and Culture London: Routledge, pp. 19-40.
My classes address the various ways that societies channel their musical activities according to various aesthetic, political, and other ideological systems. For example, one undergraduate class (Style Wars in Baroque Music) looks at two ideals of music (ethical and spectacular) and their influence on musical production and reception.
Postgraduate teaching examines fine points of ideological systems by looking at changes in key concepts (sublimity, classicism, etc.) and considering their musical manifestations.
In performance coaching, I seek to help students to realize musically the aesthetic sensibility behind different styles and genres.
I am currently working on a book on different conceptions of sublimity in the long eighteenth century and their musical manifestations. It recuperates the diversity of approaches to the concept, long obscured by the shadows of Burke and Kant, as well as the variety of ways that musicians sought to achieve transport.
Other research examines 17th-century French literary classicism’s transmission to and adaptation by 18th-century German musicians. I work on the aesthetics of music theoretical categories, such as counterpoint and melody.