Faculty: Musicology,
Performance, Piano
Sylvia Kahan
Professor, College of Staten Island
(D.M.A., CUNY)
College of Staten Island
Department of Performing and Creative Arts, 1P-203
2800 Victory Boulevard
Staten Island, New York 10314
(718) 982-2556
skahanpf@aol.com
Sylvia Kahan is Professor of Music at the Graduate Center and
College of Staten Island, CUNY, where she is a member of both the Piano
and Musicology faculties. As a pianist, Dr. Kahan has
performed as concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician in all
of New York’s major halls and in concert venues throughout North America
and Europe. Her recitals have been broadcast on WQXR, WNYC, and National
Public Radio. She has participated in the Tanglewood, Aspen, Waterloo,
Delta, and Nancy (France) summer festivals, and has collaborated with
the English Chamber Orchestra, sopranos Roberta Peters and Shirley
Verrett, and members of the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera
Orchestra.
As a musicologist, Sylvia Kahan specializes in late 19th-century and
20th-century French music and culture. She has written on women’s roles
as music patrons in Paris and New York, Proust and music, Nadia
Boulanger, French opera, and the history of octatonicism. Her book,
Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac
(University of Rochester Press, 2003, 2nd printing 2006) was hailed by the Times
Literary Supplement as an “important new study” and will
appear in French translation in 2007. A second book, Edmond
de Polignac and the Discovery of Octatonicism, is forthcoming from
University of Rochester Press. Sylvia Kahan is a regular lecturer on
French opera at New York City Opera. She serves as Chair of the New York
Chapter of the American Musicological Society.
REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS
Edmond de Polignac and the Discovery of Octatonicism (Rochester, NY:
University of Rochester Press, forthcoming 2008).
Une muse de la musique moderne - Une vie de Winnaretta Singer,
princesse de Polignac (Dijon: Les Presses du réel, forthcoming
2007).
"'Quelque chose de très raffiné et de très musical': la
collaboration entre Nadia Boulanger et Marie-Blanche de Polignac,"
in Nadia Boulanger et Lili Boulanger, témoignages et études,
ed. Alexandra Laederich (Lyon: Symétrie, 2007), 85-98.
"The Whitney Connection: Varèse and His New York Patrons," in
Edgard Varèse: Composer, Sound Sculptor, Visionary, Felix Meyer and
Heidy Zimmerman, eds. (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2006),
92-100. Published in German as "'Mit freundlicher Unterstützung von Mrs.
Gertrude Whitney': Varèse und seine New Yorker Mäzeninnen," trans: Felix
Meyer, in Edgard Varèse: Komponist, Klangforscher, Visionär, Felix
Meyer and Heidy Zimmerman, eds. (Mainz: Schott, 2006), 92-100.
“‘Rien de la tonalité usuelle’: Edmond de Polignac and the Octatonic
Scale in Nineteenth-Century France,” 19th-Century Music 29.2
(Fall 2005), 97-120.
Program notes for Paul Dukas's Ariane et
Barbe-bleue, Playbill, New York City Opera, Lincoln Center
(October 2005).
"The Sorcerer's Accomplice," in New York City Opera 2005-2006 Souvenir
Program, 14-16.
"Brahms the Progressive: A
Retrospective Appreciation,"
program essay for Miller Theater’s “Brahms the Progressive”
concert series (Columbia University, 2005).
“Prokofiev and the Princesse de Polignac,” Three Oranges 7 (May
2004), 5-9.
“Quatre Lettres inédites de Proust au Prince de Polignac,” with Nathalie
Mauriac-Dyer. Bulletin Marcel Proust 53 (December 2003), 9-21.
Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de
Polignac (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester, 2003, 2nd
Printing, 2006), 576 pp.
“Fauré’s Prelude to La Passion (1890): A Re-examination of a Forgotten
Score,” in Regarding Fauré (Newark, NJ: Gordon and Breach,
Newark, 1999), 239-72.
4/3 - Trio for violin, cello, and piano with Mia Wu, violin and Lutz
Rath, cello, on Works of James Dashow, Pro Nova (1992), ISPV 177
CD.
