Gordon Spice to Give Morris Professorship Inaugural Lecture
Gordon P. Spice, professor of music at Washington and Lee University, will give the Edwin A. Morris Professorship Inaugural Lecture on Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 7:30 p.m. in the concert hall of Wilson Hall.
The title of Spice’s talk, which is free and open to the public, is “Words and Music: Creating a Synthesis.”
During his lecture, using recordings and video examples, Spice intends to “show how composers of the Middle Ages to the present have created the text-music synthesis, the result of which can be greater than the sum of the component parts.” He continues, “What roles do melody, harmony, rhythm and other building blocks of music play in creating such a synthesis?”
Spice joined W&L’s faculty in 1973 and will retire at the end of June. He has been head of the music department for 20 years. He has served as the conductor of the Washington and Lee Chamber Singers, the W&L Glee Club and the W&L University Chorus. He also has conducted the Rockbridge Community Chorus and the Rockbridge Community Orchestra.
Spice’s areas of specialization include Moravian music, choral literature, Baroque music, Renaissance music, music history survey and music appreciation.
Spice received a B.B.A. from the University of Toledo, B.A. and M.A. degrees in music history from Ohio State University and his Ph. D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina.
The Edwin A. Morris Professorship was established in 1993 by a grant from Edwin A. Morris, of Greensboro, N.C., W&L class of 1926. Morris was the chairman and chief executive officer of Blue Bell Inc., of Greensboro. H. Thomas Williams, who retired in 2011, is the Morris Professor of Physics Emeritus.
News Contact:
Julie Cline
News Writer
jcline@wlu.edu
540-458-8954
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