Kristin Franseen
Office: TC432
Email: kfransee@uwo.ca
Kristin M. Franseen is a postdoctoral associate in musicology. She previously was a postdoctoral fellow in history at Concordia University (where her research was supported by postdoctoral and knowledge mobilization grants from the Fonds de recherche du Québec) and taught courses in music history and research methods at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. She received a BA in music and women’s studies from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, an MA in music history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a PhD in musicology from McGill University.
Her research and teaching focus on questions of identity, canon formation, and critical biography studies in writings on 18th- and 19th-century Western art music, with particular emphases on queer and feminist histories, the (un)reliability of gossip and anecdote as historical sources, and the widespread appeal of fiction on musical subjects. Her book Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson (Clemson University Press, 2023; see the companion website here) considers the strategies used by late 19th- and early 20th-century musicologists, critics, and others to discuss sexuality and gender several decades before the advent of queer and feminist musicological methods. This project received additional financial support from the Ora Frishberg Saloman Fund of the American Musicological Society and an AMS 75 PAYS subvention. She also has secondary research interests in the depiction of female philosophers in 18th-century comic opera, celebrity endorsements in early metronome advertising, and women in the history of music theory.
Franseen’s current project, “The Intriguing Afterlives of Antonio Salieri: Gossip, Fiction, and the Post-Truth in Musical Biography,” explores the interactions between fact, fiction, and semi-fictions in Antonio Salieri’s popular reception from his widely reported (and misreported) hospitalization in 1823 through the upcoming 200th anniversary of his death in 2025. It considers how notions of historical evidence, anecdotal and speculative claims, and biographical readings of musical works emerge, spread, and change with the passage of time and across different critical, literary, and artistic contexts. Preliminary research for this project has led to multiple shorter pieces for online magazines and podcasts, an article on depictions of Salieri in mid-20th-century crime fiction for the Journal of Historical Fictions, an updated and expanded version of the Grove Music Online article on Constanze Mozart, and forthcoming book chapters on German Gothic fictions inspired by Salieri’s teaching career and the place of the post-truth in 21st-century productions of Amadeus.
Selected Publications:
Book
2023
Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson. Clemson University Press, 2023.
Articles
2024
“‘An autobiographical interest for which there is no real warranty’: Gossip and Biography in Rosa Newmarch’s Public Music Theory and Musicology.” Theoria 28: 163–179.
2022
“‘Everything You’ve Heard is True’: Resonating Musicological Anecdotes in Crime Fiction about Antonio Salieri.” Journal of Historical Fictions 4, no. 1: 41–60. http://historicalfictionsjournal.org/pdf/JHF%202022-4.1.pdf
2020
“Queering Musical Biography in the Writings of Edward Prime-Stevenson and Rosa Newmarch.” 19th-Century Music 44, no. 2: 100–118. https://doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2020.44.2.100
“‘Onward to the End of the Nineteenth Century’: Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Queer Musicological Nostalgia.” Music and Letters 100, no. 2: 300–320. https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcz108
2019
“Women’s Musical Agency and Experiences in Vernon Lee’s Music and its Lovers.” Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique 18, no. 1: 23–29. https://doi.org/10.7202/1059791ar
Chapters in Edited Collections
2023
“‘Legendary In-Reading’: Musical Analysis and Biography in Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Music Criticism and Sexology.” Gavin Lee (ed.). Queer Ear: Remaking Music Theory. Oxford University Press. 266–293.
2021
“The Character of the Suffragette and Women’s Listening in Vernon Lee’s Music and its Lovers.” Christopher Wiley and Lucy Ella Rose (eds.). Suffrage in Word, Image, Music, and Drama: The Making of a Movement. Routledge Interdisciplinary Research in Gender. 205-223.
Reference Works
2024
“Prime-Stevenson, Edward.” Original article. Grove Music Online.
"Newmarch [née Jeaffreson], Rosa." Revised and updated article. Grove Music Online.
2023
“Mozart, (Maria) Constanze (Caecilia Josepha Johanna Aloisia).” Revised and updated article. Grove Music Online.
Public Scholarship
2024
“Melodies of Myth: Decoding Mozart and Salieri's Historical Tune with Kristin Franseen.” Guest on History Rage podcast. Sept. 8. https://www.historyrage.com/episodes/episode/bb273f6f/melodies-of-myth-decoding-mozart-and-salieris-historical-tune-with-kristin-franseen
“Constanze Mozart.” Guest on Vulgar History podcast. May 22. https://vulgarhistory.com/2024/05/22/constanze-mozart-with-kristin-franseen/
“Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson (Clemson UP, 2023).” Guest on New Books in Music podcast. April 27. https://newbooksnetwork.com/imagining-musical-pasts
2023
“The Mozart-Salieri Feud: Did Amadeus Tell the Real Story?” Guest on Professor Buzzkill podcast. December 19. https://professorbuzzkill.com/the-mozart-saleri-feud-did-amadeus-tell-the-real-story/
“‘However little he or we may now understand it’: Historicizing Queer Musical Gossip.” Liverpool University Press blog. https://liverpooluniversitypress.blog/2023/11/06/however-little-he-or-we-may-now-understand-it-historicizing-queer-musical-gossip/
“‘That Queer Secret of Theirs’: Edward Prime-Stevenson, Authorship, and Queer Musicology at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century.” Queer Nineteen". https://www.queernineteen.com/post/that-queer-secret-of-theirs
“‘Homosexual Hearers’ and Queer Musicality in Xavier Mayne’s The Intersexes (1909).” Blog post for Notches: (re)marks on the history of sexuality. https://notchesblog.com/2023/03/21/homosexual-hearers-and-queer-musicality-in-xavier-maynes-the-intersexes-1909/
“Rosa Newmarch, Musical Gossip, and Identity in Music Theory and History. Blog post for the History of Music Theory SMT Interest Group and AMS Study Group.
Part 1: https://historyofmusictheory.wordpress.com/2023/01/02/rosa-newmarch-musical-gossip-and-identity-in-music-theory-and-history-part-i/
Part 2: https://historyofmusictheory.wordpress.com/2023/01/02/rosa-newmarch-musical-gossip-and-identity-in-music-theory-and-history-part-ii/
2022
“The Song of the Dying Composer.” Contingent Magazine. https://contingentmagazine.org/2022/12/29/the-song-of-the-dying-composer/
“Talking with Ghosts: Salieri Horror and the Messiness of Genius.” VAN Magazine. April 7. https://van-magazine.com/mag/fiction-about-salieri/
“Rumor Has It.” Guest segment on The Classical Gabfest. February 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxbbH3kiOdw
“The Salieri Rumor and Why Gossip Matters.” Contingent Magazine.
https://contingentmagazine.org/2022/01/16/the-salieri-rumor-and-why-gossip-matters/
