Graduate seminar: Romantic Artifacts

Roger Moseley (Cornell University)

Roger Moseley’s current research explores how the concept of play has informed keyboard music as sonic practice and cultural technique. His first book, Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo, was published by the University of California Press in print and open-access digital formats in October 2016. Featuring rich multimedia content, including footage of digital games and music by Mozart, Beethoven, Bizet, and others recorded by Moseley and his Cornell colleagues, the book is available as a free download in a variety of formats.

Moseley has published essays on topics ranging from the music of Brahms (on which he wrote his PhD dissertation at UC Berkeley) to music-themed digital games, and from eighteenth-century keyboard improvisation to contemporary technologies of musical (re)creation. He is also active as a collaborative pianist on both modern and historical instruments.