Tyrants or Gods? Orchestral Conductors and Their Orchestra Performance Styles

Dr. Drew Edward Davies, Associate Professor of Musicology at Northwestern University, will speak on the topic, Tyrants or Gods? Orchestral Conductors and Their Orchestra Performance Styles.  Tyrants or Gods? In the orchestral world, the orchestral conductor is a powerful, paradoxical figure who is shaped by autocratic leadership yet also by Romantic expression.  This discourse looks at three types of conductors: Wagnerian Romantics, Modernists, and Historical Performance practitioners including Arturo Toscanini, Leonard Bernstein, Herbert van Karajan, and Riccardo Muti.

Drew Edward Davies is also Chair of the Music Studies Department. His research focuses on music in eighteenth-century Latin America, but his interests and teaching cover broad areas in music ranging from historical performance practice to church music to opera. He is the President of the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music.  Davies received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.