📅&Բ;Date: Friday, September 5, 2025
🕒&Բ;Start Time: 4:00 PM
📍&Բ;Location: Harkness Chapel, Classroom
👥&Բ;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. All are welcome!
A brief reception follows each talk to keep the conversation going.
About The Talk
"Henry George Farmer and the Invention of 'Arabian' Music"
Much of what musicologists know about medieval Middle Eastern music still relies on the work of a handful of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century European scholars. Of these, Henry George Farmer (1882-1965) remains among the most respected pioneers of the field. Yet, no full-length biography and study of Farmer’s work has been written. One reason is his wide-ranging areas of interest, which crossed multiple disciplines and languages. Henry George Farmer wasn’t just an expert in what was then called “Arabian music,” he was an authority on socialism, Scottish music, military music, and medieval Jewish influences on Arabian and European music. What makes his output even more astonishing is that Farmer accomplished all of this while working full-time as a music hall conductor in Glasgow. When he retired from conducting, Farmer worked in the University of Glasgow library, leaving his extensive collection of personal papers to the library on his death.
Farmer is the subject of my next book, and last summer, a Janet Levy award enabled me to visit the Farmer Collection at the University of Glasgow. In this talk, I share some of what I learned about Farmer’s life, work, and friendships, and discuss his continuing influence on musicology.
About The Speaker
Lisa Nielson is a historical musicologist whose areas of research include music and musicians in the medieval Islamicate world and systems of enslavement. She joined CWRU in 2011 as the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf SAGES Fellow and was appointed as a Lecturer in Music. Currently, she is the Executive Director for the Experimental Humanities program. Nielson has won multiple teaching awards, published several articles, and her first book Music and Musicians in the Medieval Islamic World: A Social History was published in 2021 with Bloomsbury Press and featured in a New Books Network podcast in November, 2024.
Venue
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
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