Douglas Shadle

Associate Professor of Musicology Vanderbilt University

  • Nashville TN

Expert in historically marginalized composers and the role of symphony orchestras and orchestral music in American life.

Contact

Vanderbilt University

View more experts managed by Vanderbilt University

Biography

As an advocate of historically marginalized composers, musicologist Douglas Shadle is a leading voice in public discussions about the role of symphony orchestras and orchestral music in American life.

His first book, Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise (Oxford, 2016), explores the volatile relationships between composers, performers, critics, and audiences throughout the 19th century and demonstrates why American composers rarely find a home on concert programs today. Several major press venues, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe, have covered Shadle’s work on 19th-century American orchestral music.

Shadle is also a highly-regarded expert on fellow Little Rock native Florence Price (1887–1953), the first African American woman to win international acclaim as a composer. His research on Price has been featured in The New Yorker, New York Times, and NewMusicBox, as well as on radio broadcasts and podcasts around the world.

Shadle’s second book, now under contract with Oxford University Press, recontextualizes Antonín Dvořák’s iconic New World Symphony within the complex landscape of American culture at the end of the nineteenth century. In December 2018, he wrote a teaser for the New York Times to mark the 125th anniversary of the symphony’s Carnegie Hall premiere.

Shadle edited a collection writings and radio broadcasts by Chicago Sun-Times critic Andrew Partner called A Portrait in Four Movements: The Chicago Symphony under Barenboim, Boulez, Haitink and Muti (Chicago, 2019). Featuring a foreword by New Yorker critic Alex Ross, the book is co-edited by John R. Schmidt, former Associate Attorney General under President Bill Clinton and CSO lifetime trustee. Shadle’s contributions include the first published history of the CSO’s inaugural century (1891–1991).

Shadle’s publications have won two ASCAP Deems/Taylor Virgil Thomson Awards (2015, 2017), the Society for American Music Irving Lowens Article Award (2016), the inaugural American Musicological Society H. Robert Cohen/RIPM Award (2018), and the Vanderbilt Chancellor’s Award for Research (2018).

Shadle joined the Blair School faculty in 2014 and has served as the chair of the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology since 2019.

Areas of Expertise

Composers
Classical Music
Musicology
Orchestral Music

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Ph.D.

Musicology

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Musicology

M.A.

University of Houston

B.M.

Viola Performance

Selected Media Appearances

Let’s Make the Future That the ‘New World’ Symphony Predicted

New York Times  online

2021-03-17

The last live performance I attended before the lockdown last year featured excerpts from Nkeiru Okoye’s gripping 2014 opera “Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom.” The score takes listeners on a journey through Black musical styles, including spirituals, jazz, blues and gospel.

View More

When the New York Philharmonic Fought Over Santa Claus

New York Times  online

2020-05-13

The premieres of new works by Olga Neuwirth and Sarah Kirkland Snider were among the most crushing losses of the canceled final months of the New York Philharmonic’s season this year.

View More

In a rare concert, the return of Amy Beach

Boston Globe  online

2019-07-31

In December 1893, Amy Beach, a pianist and composer living in Boston, heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra play Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony. She was not a fan. In a journal entry, Beach complained that the symphony was too light and cheery, lacking the emotional weight to fully convey “the negro character and life” that had inspired Dvorak. He could have added so much more, she wrote, “of the dark, tragic, side!”

View More

Show All +