In this recent video, musicologist W. Anthony Sheppard (editor of the Journal of the American Musicological Society and department chair at Williams College) investigates how the musical, poetic, and cinematic elements work together to create the powerful impact of “Let It Go” in the Oscar-winning movie Frozen. The song was… Read More
by W. Anthony Sheppard NOTE: Here we post Tony Sheppard’s recent TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talk “Pop Orientalism: Tin Pan Alley to Taiwan Today.” (Wikipedia entry on TED and TEDx HERE.) The talk considers musical representations of East Asians and of Asian music from the late nineteenth… Read More
Editor’s Note: W. Anthony Sheppard’s solution of a “musicological mystery many decades old”–a Swiss music box that plays Chinese tunes heard in Turandot and Madama Butterfly–made the headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. Sheppard says he stumbled onto it, but as the great musicologist Oliver Strunk was fond of… Read More