Instructors Complementary Examination : Ideas and Styles in the Western Musical Tradition

This text, designed for a one or two term course in the history of the Western classical tradition in music, discusses the cultural and historical forces that have shaped music and explores the history of musical styles.

Douglass Seaton, Warren D. Allen Professor of Music at The Florida State University, holds the M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. His principal research interests are in the music of Felix Mendelssohn, the Classic/Romantic period, and relationships of literature and music. Dr. Seaton's dissertation dealt with Mendelssohn's compositional processes. He is the author of Ideas and Styles in the Western Musical Tradition and The Art Song: A Research and Information Guide, and editor of The Mendelssohn Companion; and he prepared the scholarly edition of Mendelssohn's Lobgesang (Symphony No. 2) published by Carus-Verlag in Stuttgart. His articles have appeared in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, The Musical Quarterly, The Music Review, College Music Symposium, Ars lyrica, and The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, among others. Professor Seaton is former President of The College Music Society and has also served on the Council of the American Musicological Society.

Douglass Seaton grew up in India and received his higher education at The College of Wooster and Columbia University. He has served on the music history faculty at The Florida State University since 1978, teaching courses for general students, music majors, graduate students in historical musicology, and advanced students in the humanities. He has received several awards for teaching and for research, and he was named Warren D. Allen Professor of Music in 2002. His former students have gone on to advanced studies and teaching positions throughout the United States. Professor Seaton’s wide interests in music history include music aesthetics, particularly focusing on how musicians in different times and places have understood how music works. He has written extensively on the relationships that musicians have explored between music and words.