Dr. James R. Briscoe, music history
Professor James Briscoe's teaching emphasizes music history in
America and in the European 18th, 19th, and 20th
centuries. His highest recognition, in his opinion, came at
Butler when students named him Outstanding Teacher of the Year at
the University. He mentors the groups Common Worship and Grace
Unlimited for traditional Protestant students, and advises a campus
group interested in politics.
In Venice in summer 2009, he presented a lecture-recital with
Anna Briscoe on "'Earthian Music' for Piano by Tania León: A
Transnational Arc," remarking the significant cultural statement of
that Cuban American composer at the International Conference on
Music in Society. He spoke by invitation at The Juilliard
School of Music in 2008 on "Vitalizing Music History Teaching," at
the International Musicological Society in Osaka, Japan, on "Music
at the 1889 Paris Exposition" and on Franck's relation to Debussy
at the International Symposium on César Franck in Liège, Belgium,
commemorating the centenary of Franck's death.
In 2010 Dr. Briscoe's writing "Debussy in Daleville: Toward
Modernist Hearing in the U.S." will appear in the Debussy
Perspectives through Oxford University Press. A national
leader and scholar in pedagogy, in fall 2009 he edited and
published the collection Vitalizing Music History Teaching
through the College Music Society and Pendragon Press. The
book stems from his three years leading the Music History area of
the College Music Society, from the 2006 CMS "Institute on Music
History Teaching" at Butler, and from the 2008 Institute at
Juilliard. In 2004 the New Historical Anthology of Music
by Women appeared through Indiana University Press, and was
hailed internationally: "Through Briscoe's efforts, we have seen
the last generation of music majors without training in
contributions by women composers. His was a heroic venture."
He also has written Claude Debussy: A Guide to Research
(Garland), and prepared critical performance editions of Debussy's
Twenty-Four Preludes for Piano (Schirmer) and the
two-volume critical score of Claude Debussy: 62 Songs
(Hall Leonard), called by the front-running Notes of the Music
Library Association "...essential to anyone with a stake in
Debussy's songs."
His Contemporary Anthology of Music by Women, also
through Indiana University Press, was reviewed in a major music
history journal as "the first of its kind...a valuable resource for
students and teachers, men and women." Another fundamental study
and a first, Debussy in Performance (Yale Press), was
praised by the London Times for its "abundant documentation and
sensitive readings," and by the American Music Teacher as
"scholarly and well-documented.... It will change the way you view
Debussy's scores." Articles on women composers and on Debussy
have appeared in 19th-Century Music, The College Music
Symposium, Musical Quarterly, Music and Letters, the Journal of
Musicology, Fontes Artis Musicae (International Music Library
Association), and La Revue belge de
musicology. Briscoe wrote 11 entries in the New Grove
Dictionary of Music.
Dr. Briscoe graduated with a BMus degree in Cello from the
University of Alabama, and earned both Master of Arts and PhD
degrees in Historical Musicology from the University of North
Carolina. He has received research and teaching grants from the
Government of France, the National Endowment for the Humanities,
the Danforth Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, Butler University,
the International Research and Exchange Fund, and the Indiana
Humanities Council.
Anna Briscoe, his wife, is Adjunct Professor of Piano at Butler
and pianist for the Indianapolis Children's Choir, and she has
recitalized on every continent but Antarctica. Their daughters
are the pride of their lives: Madeleine (Butler '07) is
Associate Director of Development at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory
School in Indianapolis, and Rochelle is a junior in Social Work at
Xavier University in Cincinnati.
(317) 940-9248
jbriscoe@butler.edu