Raymond Knapp

Professor
Ph.D., Duke University
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Raymond Knapp came to UCLA in 1989, with degrees from Harvard (BA cum laude in music), Radford (MA in composition), and Duke (PhD in musicology). He has authored four books and co-edited a fifth: Brahms and the Challenge of the Symphony (1997), Symphonic Metamorphoses: Subjectivity and Alienation in Mahler's Re-Cycled Songs (2003), The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity (2005; winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism), The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity (2006), and Musicological Identities: Essays in Honor of Susan McClary (2008, with UCLA alumni Steven Baur and Jacqueline Warwick). His published essays address a wide range of additional interests, including Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, nationalism, musical allusion, music and identity, and film music. His current projects include a book that considers Haydn and American popular music in the context of German Idealism, and a book co-edited with Stacy Wolf and UCLA's Mitchell Morris (forthcoming from Oxford). He has originated courses on Mozart and on the American Musical, and has recently given seminars on nationalism, Mahler, Haydn, Mozart, absolute music, allusion, and the American musical. For a more complete list of his publications, please click here .

Both in his courses and in his publications, Knapp has led the way in providing internet-based supporting resources. Several years ago, with the support of the UCLA Library, he devised online scrolling analyses for his Beethoven course, and more recently developed a website to deliver streaming audio examples for his two books on the musical and Musicological Identities. A recent essay in Nineteenth-Century Music marked the first time that journal has provided similar support for an article, providing not only audio examples online, but also video clips.

Knapp has led many campus-wide committees at UCLA, including the Undergraduate Council's Curriculum Committee (co-chair, 1999-2001), Undergraduate Council (chair, 2001-03), General Education Governance (chair, 2004-07), the College's Faculty Executive Committee (vice chair, 2004-08, chair 2009-20011), and the steering committee to prepare for UCLA's reaccreditation (2004-06). He is currently heading a campus-wide committee to enhance UCLA's offerings of Capstone opportunities for undergraduates, as part of UCLA's Reaccreditation through WASC. He also plays violin and gives pre-concert talks for the Santa Monica Symphony.

Knapp chaired the Department of Musicology from 2006-09, and was elected Chair of the Faculty of the College of Letters and Science for a two-year term beginning September 2009.