Eftychia Papanikolaou

Effie Papanikolaou serves as Musicology Coordinator and Graduate Student Advisor in the Musicology/Composition/Theory area. She holds a B.A. in English Philology and Literature from the University of Athens, Greece; Music Theory Degrees from the National Conservatory of Athens; and Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Historical Musicology from Boston University.

She is co-editor of Sacred and Secular Intersections in Music of the Long Nineteenth Century: Church, Stage, and Concert Hall, a collection of 19 essays that explore the interconnections of the sacred and the secular in music and in aesthetic debates of the long nineteenth century. Other writings (from Spontini, Haydn and Schumann to Liszt and Mahler) investigate the relations of music, religion, and politics in the long nineteenth century. Her publications have appeared in musicological and interdisciplinary studies journals, and essays have been published in book collections. She is author of several essays on music for and in film, and forthcoming projects involve choreographic adaptations of large-scale compositions into ballets.

Professor Papanikolaou has presented papers at numerous national and international conferences, both musicological and interdisciplinary in scope. In the past 20 years she has contributed hundreds of program notes to professional ensembles and concert events, and select liner notes for CD publications. She is also a frequent pre-concert presenter on chamber and symphonic music. Since 2015 she has presented the highly popular pre-performance talks at the Toledo Opera, she has appeared as guest lecturer at the Toledo Museum of Art, and as guest on WGTE’s “SymphonyLab,” the podcast of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra.

She has been the recipient of an NEH Summer seminar fellowship for work on opera; a Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship from BGSU’s Institute for the Study of Culture and Society; and a Technology Innovations Course Redevelopment Grant to from the Ohio Learning Network. In 2023 she received the “Distinguished Thesis-Chair Award” from BGSU’s Graduate College for her work as thesis advisor.

She has served as elected Member of the Council of the American Musicological Society (2014-16); Chair of the AMS Committee on Membership and Professional Development (2009-12); Treasurer (2009-13) and member of the Program Committee (2006-2008) of the AMS Midwest; member of the Committee on Career-Related Issues of the AMS (2005-07); and member of the Program Committee/Council Reader of the AMS (2020 and 2021). She has been appointed to serve as full member on the Program Committee of the annual AMS meeting in Chicago (2023-24). Between 2006 and 2009 she was member of the Board and Secretary of the Mozart Society of America. Since 2018 she has been on the Executive Committee and Secretary of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music. She served on the scientific committee of the conference “Music and the Spiritual since the French Revolution,” organized by the Accademia musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy (December 2022), where she also delivered a keynote address. Her previous teaching appointments included Wellesley College, the Longy School of Music, Miami University, and Harvard University (Teaching Fellow).

Select publications

Book editor:

Sacred and Secular Intersections in Music of the Long Nineteenth Century: Church, Stage, and Concert Hall. Edited by Eftychia Papanikolaou and Markus Rathey. Lexington Books, 2022.

Select articles and book essays:

“Consecrating the Stage: Uwe Scholz’s Choreographic Completion of Mozart’s Große Messe” (in press).

“Uwe Scholz’s Choreographic Conception of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.” In Beethoven the European: Transcultural Contexts of Performance, Interpretation and Reception. Edited by Malcolm Miller and William Kinderman, 345-370. Speculum Musicae Series. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2023.

“Hieratic Iconoclasm: Liszt, Hanslick, and the Graner Festmesse.” In Sacred and Secular Intersections in Music of the Long Nineteenth Century: Church, Stage, and Concert Hall, edited by Eftychia Papanikolaou and Markus Rathey, 121-144. Lexington Books, 2022.

“Spontini in città: Bach e la politica musicale a Berlino.” Translated by Chiara Bertoglio and Susanna Bucher. In Bach e l’Italia. Sguardi, scambi, convergenze, edited by Chiara Bertoglio and Maria Borghesi, 61-74. Lucca: Lim, 2022.

“Liszt and Religion.” In Liszt in Context, edited by Joanne Cormac, 163-171. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

“Spontini and the City: Bach and Musical Politics in Berlin.” The German Quarterly (special issue on “Music and German Culture”; edited by Caroline Kita, Francien Markx, and Carl Niekerk) 91, no. 4 (2018): 389-399.

“On the British Reception of Ken Russell’s Mahler.” In Rethinking Mahler. Edited by Jeremy Barham, 163-182. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

“Linking Christian and Faustian Utopias: Mahler’s Setting of the Schlußszene in his Eighth Symphony.” In Music in Goethe’s Faust, Goethe’s Faust in Music. Edited by Lorraine Byrne Bodley, 183-198. Woodbridge, UK and Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2017.

Preface to E. T. A. Hoffmann, Miserere, for chorus, soloists and orchestra (English and German). München: Musikproduktion Höflich, 2015.

Liner notes for Franz Schubert, Die schöne Müllerin, Georg Lehner, baritone and Dino Mastroyiannis, piano. In English and Greek. Sheva Collection, Milan, Italy, 2014.

“Trauma as Memory in Ken Russell’s Mahler.” In After Mahler’s Death. Edited by Gerold W. Gruber, Morten Solvik and Jan Vičar, 72-89. Olomouc, Czech Republic: Palacký University, 2013.

“Ταυτότητα και Εθνικότητα στη Μουσική του Peter Gabriel για την Ταινία του Martin Scorsese Ο Τελευταίος Πειρασμός.” In “The Last Temptation” and Its Transformations. Edited by George Grammatikakis and Antonis Leventis, 141-154. Heraklion, Crete: Kazantzakis Museum, 2011.

“Whose Mourning?: Schumann’s Requiem für Mignon.” Choral Journal (Focus Issue on Robert Schumann) 51, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 18-30.

“The Art of the Ballets Russes Captured: Reconstructed Ballet Performances on Video.” Music Library Association Notes 64, no. 3 (March 2008): 564-585.

“Of Duduks and Dylan: Negotiating Music and the Aural Space.” In Cylons in America: Critical Studies of Battlestar Galactica. Edited by Tiffany Potter and C. W. Marshall, 224-236. New York and London: Continuum, 2007.

“Romanticism as Border Crossing: The Case of the Symphonic Mass.” Prism(s): Essays in Romanticism 13 (2005): 63-80.

“Brahms, Böcklin, and the Gesang der Parzen.” Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography 30, nos. 1-2 (Spring-Fall 2005): 154-165.

“Identity and Ethnicity in Peter Gabriel’s Sound Track for The Last Temptation of Christ.” In Scandalizing Jesus?: Kazantzakis’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” Fifty Years On. Edited by Darren J. N. Middleton, with a contribution by Martin Scorsese, 217-228. New York and London: Continuum, 2005.

“Aestheticism and the City: Gustav Mahler and Musical Politics in Fin-de-siècle Vienna.” Journal of Political and Military Sociology (Music and Politics Issue) 30, no. 2 (Winter 2002): 239-257.