Background

Barbara R. Barry was born on June 2, 1949, in London, England, to Alfred and Hetty (Pepper) Conick.

Education

Barbara Barry has five degrees in music - two in piano performance from Trinity College of Music, London, and three, including Ph.D., in music history and theory from the University of London.

Career

Prior to coming to the United States, Barbara Barry worked at the music faculty of the Music Department at the University of London Goldsmiths' College and was Chair of Music History at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, one of Europe's foremost conservatories in the Barbican Arts Center in London.

Moving to the United States Barbara was appointed as Chair of Music History at the Longy School of Music, and taught at Clark University, New England Conservatory of Music, and at Harvard University. In 2005 she joined the staff of Lynn University as a Professor of Musicology.

Achievements

• Barbara Barry is known as the author of four books, two in music theory and two fiction books, and many articles on music history. She has been awarded two Fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fran Steinberg Memorial Prize for outstanding non-fiction. She is the first recipient of the Kathleen Cheek-Milby Endowed Faculty Fellowship at Lynn University. Her article on closure in Mahler has been published by the Journal of Musicological Research and her major article on sonata forms in Schubert was published by the Journal of Music and Meaning in spring 2008.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Philosopher's Stone: Essays in the Transformation of Musical Structure

    (The Philosopher's Stone is a collection of case studies i...)

    2000
  • Musical Time: The Sense of Order

    (In order for musical structure to be understood and appre...)

    1990
  • Lebewohl: Reconstructions of Death and Leave-Taking in Music 2013

Views

Barbara has only written about interesting musical works, in fact, great works. She considers that the reason they’re great is that they are rich, complex, and often problematic. Barbara is particularly interested in the relationship between individual works and genres, and how great works transform and modify the normative procedures of genre and structure.

Quotations: "The one reason that I write is that I feel something needs to be said, explained, or viewed in a way which has not been done. I feel that great musical works both engage listeners and also challenge them - and part of writing about them is to, in a way, take up this challenge. This involves trying to explain how they work - the compositional process - and also to convey something of the work’s world, its special totality. When I write fiction, I also try to create a distinctive world."

Membership

Barbara Barry is a member of the American Bach Association.

Interests

• Writers

  Proust, Mann, Nietzsche, Borges, Plato, Schumann, Berlioz

Connections

On February 10, 1974, Barbara married Malcolm Barry, but they divorced on June 25, 1976, and Barbara married Vriel Garritano on August 4, 1984. Vriel died on July 15, 1995. Barbara has two children - Netanya and Avi.

Father:

Alfred Conick

Mother:

Hetty (Pepper) Conick

child:

Netanya Barry

child:

Avi Barry

Ex-husband:

Malcolm Barry

Late Husband:

Vriel Garritano

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010