
Sarah Day-O’Connell
Professor
Office: Zankel Music Center 121
Phone: (518) 580-5343
Email: sdayocon@skidmore.edu
DEGREES:
- Ph.D., Musicology, with Minor in Gender Studies, Cornell University
- B.Mus., Music History and Piano Performance, Oberlin College
RESEARCH INTERESTS
In my research I combine musical analysis with interpretation of literary, visual, and material culture in order to explore how musical activity, especially singing, reflects and shapes broader social concerns – in particular, about gender and politics. I also examine transcriptions, “covers,� recordings, theories of performance, criticism, and listener reception because I’m interested in how music, through performance, changes meaning across times and cultures.
TEACHING INTERESTS
Music history and historiography; music and culture; late eighteenth-century music
and aesthetics, gender and music; translation studies; music and medicine, faith,
and healing; musical authorship/borrowing/plagiarism/copyright; opera; flamenco; Caribbean
steelband; Japanese taiko drumming; American shape-note singing; music about trains.
PUBLICATIONS
Edited Book
- , co-edited with Caryl Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Articles and Chapters
- "Haydn in Plain Sight: A Reception History of Matisse's The Music Lesson," in Nancy November, ed. Haydn Studies 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025): 127-154.
- The Smart Set (June 2023).
- Review of Richard Kramer. Cherubino’s Leap: In Search of the Enlightenment Moment.(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2016.) Journal of the American Musicological Society 72/1 (2019): 245-251.
- "Seminar as Schubertiad: Or, a New Journey for Schubert's Winterreise" Accelerate 2 (Fall 2018): 32-35.
- Review of Richard Chesser and David Wyn Jones, eds. Land of Opportunity: Joseph Haydn and Britain. (London: British Library, 2014.) Eighteenth-Century Music 12/2 (2015): 231-233.
- “The Singing Style,� in Danuta Mirka, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014): 238-258.
- “â¶Ä˜The Clock Points its Moral to the Heart’: Time and Memory in Haydn’s English Canzonettas,â€� in Marie-Agnes Dittrich, Marin Eybl, Reinhard Kapp, eds., Zyklus und Prozess: Joseph Haydn und die Zeit (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2012): 153-178.
- “The Composer, the Surgeon, His Wife, and Her Poems: Haydn and the Anatomy of the English Canzonetta,� Eighteenth-Century Music 6/1 (2009): 77-112. Winner of the Pauline Alderman Award for Outstanding Scholarship on Women and Music, International Alliance for Women in Music, 2011
- “Watches Without Pockets: Singing ߣ¶ÌÊÓÆµ Minutes in a London Drawing Room, circa 1800,â€� in Cliff Eisen, ed., Coll’ astuzia, col giudizio: Essays in Honor of Neal Zaslaw (Ann Arbor: Steglein, 2009): 268-285.
- Review of Andreas Friesenhagen and Egbert Hiller, eds. Volksliedbearbeitungen, Nr. 365-429, Schottische Lieder Für William Whyte in Joseph Haydn Werke, Reihe XXXII, Band 5 (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 2005) Eighteenth-Century Music 5/2 (2008): 257-260.
AWARDS
- Pauline Alderman Award for Outstanding Scholarship on Women and Music, International Alliance for Women in Music, 2011
- Alternate, Postdoctoral Fellowship, American Association of University Women (AAUW), 2010-2011
- Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, Fall 2009 and Fall 2010
- Winner, Innovative Course Design Competition, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2009
- Edison Fellowship, Sound Archive, British Library, London, 2007-2008
- Dissertation Prize, Gender Studies Program, Cornell University, 2002
- Buttrick-Crippen Fellowship, John S. Knight Writing Program, Cornell University, 2000-2001
RECENT INVITED LECTURES AND CONFERENCE PAPERS
- “I Say Symphony Rather Than Cacophony: In the Music History Classroom When Your Students
Would Rather Be Protesting, Organizing, and Advocating.� Teaching Music History, Pedagogy
Study Group of the American Musicological Society, Berklee College of Music, Boston,
June 2017.
- “Faculty-Student Collaborative Research in Musicology: What, Why, How.� Teaching Music History, Pedagogy Study Group of the American Musicological Society, Metropolitan State University, Denver, June 2016.
- “Creative Fidelity: Insights on Musical Performance via Translation Theory.� Performance Studies Network Third International Conference, University of Cambridge, July 2014.
- “Singing as Translation: A ‘New Fidelity’ Approach to Performance and Meaning in Joseph Haydn’s Canzonettas.� American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Williamsburg (Virginia), March 2014.
- “Origins and Journeys of Haydn’s English Canzonetta ‘The Wanderer.’� American Musicological Society, San Francisco, November 2011.
- “â¶Ä˜Daughter of Sorrow’: Feminine Exile and Joseph Haydn’s ‘The Wanderer.’â€� American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vancouver, March 2011.
- “â¶Ä˜Lost in the Past, Disregarding Tomorrow’: Journeys and Destinations of Haydn’s ‘The Wanderer.’â€� Works-in-Progress Series, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, October 2010.
- “Four Fidelities: Musicology Meets Translation Studies.� Seminar series in “Translations, Adaptations, and Modalities,� Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, November 2009.
- “Time and Pastime in Songs of Haydn’s London.� Institute of Musical Research, University of London School of Advanced Study, January 2009.
- “Haydn’s Canzonettas on Record.� Studies in Recorded Music Seminar Series, British Library, London, January 2009.
- “â¶Ä˜The Clock Points its Moral to the Heart’: Time and Memory in Haydn’s English Canzonettas,â€�
Zyklus und Prozess: Haydn und die Zeit, held at Institut für Analyse, Theorie und
Geschichte der Musik, University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, January 2009.