FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music is pleased to announce the appointments of Jennifer Saltzstein and Jacquelyn Sholes to its musicology faculty, effective Aug. 1.
Saltzstein has been named professor of music in musicology, pending approval of the IU Board of Trustees. She is currently professor of musicology at the University of Oklahoma School of Music, where she has served as faculty since 2007.
Sholes has been appointed assistant professor of music in musicology and is currently lecturer in music at the University of Rochester.
“Jennifer Saltzstein is an extremely accomplished and award-winning researcher, author and pedagogue, while Jacquelyn Sholes boasts a strong research and teaching background,” said Abra Bush, David Henry Jacobs Bicentennial Dean. “We are very happy to welcome each of them and look forward to working with our new colleagues as they enrich the musical and scholarly communities at Jacobs.”
Saltzstein’s scholarship on the music of medieval France has engaged issues such as identity, the environment, relationships between music and literature, citation and quotation, gender, sexuality and violence.
She is the author of “The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Music and Poetry” (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013) and editor of “Musical Culture in the World of Adam de la Halle” (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Her latest book, “Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France: Toward an Environmental History,” was published in 2023 by Oxford University Press.
In 2018, Saltzstein’s article “Rape and Repentance in Two Medieval Motets” (Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2017) was honored with the H. Colin Slim Award of the American Musicological Society, which is awarded each year to a musicological article of exceptional merit, in any language and in any country by a scholar who is past the early stages of their career.
Sholes’ work explores narratives composers create in or about their music as a means of constructing identities and situating themselves historically and culturally. Her research focuses on how composers position themselves through references to music of others and through their marketing of their work and themselves.
Her first book, “Allusion as Narrative Premise in Brahms’s Instrumental Music” (Indiana University Press, 2018), argues that the allusions by Brahms to music of predecessors articulate movement-spanning narratives reflecting his struggles to define his historical position. Her current book project focuses on Leonard Bernstein.
Sholes has held visiting faculty appointments at the University of Rochester, Central Connecticut State University, Boston University, Brown University, Wellesley College and Williams College.
“We are delighted to welcome two new faculty members to our ranks this fall,” said Ayana Smith, Musicology Department chair. “Jennifer Saltzstein and Jacquelyn Sholes each bring considerable research and teaching experience to our department, enabling us to expand the depth and breadth of our current offerings.
“Dr. Saltzstein’s expertise in medieval French music and poetry will enrich our existing strengths in early music, while her new research on music and human enhancement will support new avenues of exploration for doctoral students in our field.
“Dr. Sholes is similarly positioned as a multitalented scholar; her work on Brahms expands our present expertise in nineteenth-century music, while her latest project on Leonard Bernstein addresses issues of identity, modernity and blurred boundaries between serious and popular discourses in twentieth-century music.”
