Professor

Contact:
mroth1@naz.edu
585-389-2686
Office: Music House 23

Departmental Responsibilities:
Music History & Literature
Women's Studies
Applied Flute

Education:
Eastman School of Music, Ph.D.
Eastman School of Music, DMA
Eastman School of Music, MA
Eastman School of Music, MM
University of Wisconsin, BA

Biography:
Dr. Marjorie A. Roth is Associate Professor of Music History & Studio Flute, and the Director of the Honors Program at Nazareth College. She received her Bachelor's degree in Flute Performance from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside (1981), and studied flute at the graduate level with Bonita Boyd at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, earning Master's (MM, 1986) and Doctoral degrees (DMA, 1998) in Performance & Literature. She completed a Master of Arts in Musicology at Eastman in 1990, and worked as a research assistant at the Gesellschaft für Musikfreunde in Vienna, Austria (June, 1996). Her PhD in Musicology was in part supported by a Fulbright scholarship grant for study in Vienna, Austria (1998-99), and the Eastman Musicology Department’s Elsa T. Johnson dissertation-writers fellowship (1999-2000). She completed her Ph.D. in Musicology in 2005 with a dissertation entitled “The Voice of Prophecy: Orlando di Lasso’s Sibyls and Italian Humanism.” An active scholar and pedagogue, Marjorie Roth has presented scholarly papers at national and regional meetings of the American Musicological Society (Hamilton, Ontario, 2003; Cornell University, 2004; Washington D.C., 2005), and the College Music Society (Quebec City, 2005). In 2006 she presented a plenary session (“A Musical Mystery of the Renaissance Explored”) at an international conference entitled An Esoteric Quest in Central Europe: From Renaissance Bohemia to Goethe’s Weimar, in Germany and the Czech Republic. In 2008 she was the only North American scholar participating in an interdisciplinary international conference devoted to Music & Esotericism sponsored by the Belgian Academy in Rome, Italy. Her paper from that conference (“Prophecy, Harmony, and the Alchemical Transformation of the Soul: The Key to Lasso’s Chromatic Sibyls”) will appear in a collection of essays on Music and Esotericism (Brill, ARIES series, 2010). In August of 2009 she read a paper at the Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls, NY (“The Ancient Oracles Revived: Spiritualism & Women’s Rights in 19th-Century Upstate New York”) as part of a New York Open Center conference entitled An Esoteric Quest for Inner America. In May of 2010 Dr. Roth will return to Italy to present a paper at a conference devoted to Early Modern Rome, 1341-1667, sponsored by Association of American College and University Programs in Italy and the University of California, in Rome (“Opportunity Lost: Christian Prophecy, Musical Magic, and the Road Not Taken in Counter-Reformation Rome”). She has been invited to present a paper (“The First Ladies of Alexandria: Cleopatra and Hypatia”) at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, as part of an event co-sponsored by the New York Open Center and the Library of Alexandria in June, 2010. Other publications include an essay in a collection of writings devoted to Music History pedagogy (“The Why of Music: Variations on A Cosmic Theme” in M. Natvig, ed., Teaching Music History, Ashgate Press, 2002), concert and master class reviews in the Newsletter of the Rochester Flute Association, as well as concert previews in Rochester’s City Newspaper. Dr. Roth is devoted to promoting study abroad opportunities for her music students and Honors Program students. During the summer of 2007, Dr. Roth taught a music history course for Nazareth students through the College’s summer study abroad program based in Pescara, Italy. She continues to perform as a free-lance flutist and to serve as coordinator of the Rochester Flute Association’s Flute Fair committee. She also sings in Rochester’s only women’s Medieval chant ensemble, Schola Feminarum.