John Koegel

John Koegel, Professor of Musicology, serves as Graduate Advisor for the School of Music, and Coordinator of Music History and Coordinator of Music in General Education. He teaches courses and conducts research in American, Mexican, and European musical topics, particularly musical theater and opera, and music in the context of ethnicity and immigration. His book Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York City, 1840-1940 (University of Rochester Press, 2009) was given the Irving Lowens Book Award of the Society for American Music in 2011, and was a Finalist for the Theater Library Association’s 2010 Freedley Award. Opera News (Metropolitan Opera Guild) described it as “Deep-delving. . . . Readable and entertaining. . . . A tour guide down a forgotten byway of the American immigrant experience.”

Koegel’s article “Mexican Musical Theater and Movie Palaces in Downtown Los Angeles Before 1950” will appear in 2017 in The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles (University of California Press), edited by Josh Kun. He is currently working on the scholarly musical edition Mexican-American Music from Southern California, circa 1840-1920: The Lummis Cylinder Collection and Other Sources for the Music of the United States of America series (A-R Editions and American Musicological Society). And in 2013-14, Koegel was the recipient of a year-long Research Fellowship given by the National Endowment for the Humanities for work on his in-progress book Mexican Musical Theater in Los Angeles, 1850-1950.

In 2013, he served as Chair of the Cátedra Jesús C. Romero, of the Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical Carlos Chávez, in Mexico City. His articles and reviews appear in journals and dictionaries in the United States, Mexico, Spain, and Britain, such as the Journal of the American Musicological Society, American Music, Latin-American Music Review, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Historia Mexicana, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana.

Koegel holds degrees from Claremont Graduate University (Ph.D. Musicology), Cambridge University (M.Phil. Ethnomusicology), and California State University, Northridge (B.A. Music Education and Spanish). He has served as Book Review Editor for the Journal of the Society for American Music (2010-14), Member-at-large of the Board of Trustees of the Society for American Music (2013-16), Board Member for Musicology for the College Music Society (2011-13), and Member of the National Council of the American Musicological Society (2009-2011). Koegel was also a contributing editor for the Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed. (2013).

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

“Mexican Musical Theater and Movie Palaces in Downtown Los Angeles Before 1950.” In The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles, edited by Josh Kun. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2017.

“The Early Sound of Mexican Musical Life in Los Angeles.” In Songs in the Key of Los Angeles, edited by Josh Kun, 142-49. Santa Monica, CA: Angel City Press, 2013.

“Chapter 3. Mexico.” In Musics of Latin America, edited by Robin Moore and Walter Clark, 76-123. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012.

Music, American Made: Essays in Honor of John Graziano, edited by John Koegel. Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2011.

“Beethoven and Beer: Orchestral Music in German Beer Gardens in 19th-Century New York City.” In American Orchestras in the Nineteenth Century, edited by John Spitzer, 130-55. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

“Hacia un catálogo unificado nacional de impresos de música mexicana decimonónica.”Heterofonía 142 (January-June 2010): 9-53.

Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York City, 1840-1940. Eastman Studies in Music, 62. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009; with accompanying compact disc.

“Grabaciones tempranas de música y músicos mexicanos.” Discanto: Ensayos de Investigación Musical 2 (2009): 63-83.

“Music and Christianization on the Northern Frontier of New Spain.” In Conversion to Christianity from Late Antiquity to the Modern Age: Considering the Process in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, edited by Calvin B. Kendall, Oliver Nicholson, William D. Phillips, Jr., and Marguerite Ragnow, 293-332. Minneapolis, MN: Center for Early Modern History, University of Minnesota, 2008.

“Non-English Language Musical Theater in the United States.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, edited by Paul Laird and William Everett, 29-53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

“Rural Musical Life in the French Villages in Upper Louisiana.” In On Bunker’s Hill: Essays on Music in Honor of J. Bunker Clark, edited by Paul Laird and William Everett, 13-25. Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2007.

“Adolf Philipp and Ethnic Musical Comedy in New York’s Little Germany.” American Music 24, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 267-319.

“The Development of the German-American Musical Theater in New York, 1840-1890.” InEuropean Music and Musicians in New York City, 1840-1900, edited by John Graziano, 149-81.Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006.

“Mexican Musicians in California and the United States, 1910–1950.” California History 84, no. 1 (Fall 2006): 7-29, 64-69.

“Músicos mexicanos y cubanos en Nueva York, c. 1880-1920.” Historia Mexicana 222 (October-December 2006): 533-612.

“La vida musical mexicana del siglo XIX vista por los extranjeros.” Discanto: Ensayos de Investigación Musical 1 (2005): 79-108.

“Crossing Borders: Mexicana, Tejana, and Chicana Musicians in the United States and Mexico.” In From Tejano to Tango: Latin American Popular Music, edited by Walter Aaron Clark, 97-125. New York: Routledge, 2002.

“Spanish and French Mission Music in Colonial North America.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 126, no. 1 (2001): 1-53.

“Canciones del país: Mexican Musical Life in California after the Gold Rush.” California History 78, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 160-87, 215-19.

“New Sources of Music from Spain and Colonial Mexico at the Sutro Library.” Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 55, no. 3 (March 1999): 583-613.

“Preserving the Sounds of the ‘Old’ Southwest: Charles Lummis and his Cylinder Collection of Mexican-American and Indian Music.” Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal 29, no. 1 (April 1998): 1-29.

Music in Performance and Society: Essays in Honor of Roland Jackson, edited by Malcolm Cole and John Koegel. Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 1997.

“Village Musical Life along the Río Grande: Tomé, New Mexico since 1739.” Latin-American Music Review 18, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 1997): 171-248.