Gayle Magee

Bio

Gayle Magee’s scholarship and teaching focus on the music of North America since the late nineteenth century, as well as issues of gender in music history and pedagogy. Currently she serves as Secretary of the American Musicological Society, and as Program Chair for the Society for American Music’s conference in Detroit, Michigan in March, 2024.

Recent publications include two articles on music in Canada:

• “‘To Explore the World of Sound’: Music, Silence, and Nation-Building in Bing Bang Boom (1969),” forthcoming in Organised Sound (August 2024), which places the work of R. Murray Schafer and the National Film Board within the larger context of English-Canadian nationalism of the late 1960s; and
• “‘She’s a Dear Old Lady’: English-Canadian Popular Songs from World War I” (American Music, 2016), which received the Irving Lowens Article Award for 2016 from the Society for American Music.

Magee is the author and co-editor of four books:

• Over Here, Over There: Transatlantic Conversations on the Music of World War I, co-edited collection with William Brooks and Christina Bashford (University of Illinois Press, 2019)
• Robert Altman’s Soundtracks: Film, Music, and Sound from M*A*S*H to A Prairie Home Companion (Oxford University Press, Music/Media Series, 2014)
• Charles Ives: A Research and Information Guide, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2010)
• Charles Ives Reconsidered (University of Illinois Press, Music in American Life Series, 2008)

Other publications ince 2011 include:

• “‘Every Man in New York’: Charles Ives and the First World War.” Chap. in Over Here, Over There (2019)
• “Revisiting Gosford Park: Downtown Abbey, American Audiences, and the British Heritage Genre.” Chap. in Exploring Downton Abbey: Critical Essays on the Television Series, edited by Scott Stoddart (McFarland, 2018)
• “Austen, Music, and Masculinity in the British Heritage Film.” Chap. in Jane Austen and Masculinity, edited by Michael Kramp (Bucknell University Press, 2018)
• “Compromises and Creativity: Altman, Copyright, and the Musical Soundtrack.” Chap. in The Robert Altman Companion, ed. Adrian Danks (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)
• “Songwriting, Advertising, and Mythmaking in the New Hollywood: The Case of Nashville (1975),” Music and the Moving Image, 2012
• “Rethinking Social Class and American Music,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2011

Awards and Honors:

• National Arts Associate Distinguished Member, Sigma Alpha Iota
• NEH Summer Stipend for Robert Altman’s Soundtracks (2012)
• AMS Publication Subvention Award for Charles Ives Reconsidered (2007)
• NEH Summer Stipend for Charles Ives Reconsidered (2000)​

Administrative and Leadership Positions:

• Faculty Affairs Coordinator, School of Music (2021-23)
• Editor, American Music (2017-19)
• Co-Editor-in-Chief, Music in the United States of America (MUSA) (2014-16)
• Charles Ives Society Board of Directors (1999-), President (2010-16), and Chair of the Board (2017-)

Book 1

Charles Ives Reconsidered

Book 2

Robert Altman’s Soundtracks

Book 3

Charles Ives