Robert Fallon is a musicologist who has been on the faculties of Carnegie Mellon University and Bowling Green State University, and who has additionally taught courses at Duquesne University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco. 

 

His research interests include nature and theology in Messiaen’s music and thought, the pressures of globalization and place on musical composition, and aesthetic and social issues affecting contemporary music in France, the United States, and Turkey. He is also interested in how the intention and expressive production both of American classical music organizations, such the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and American and European composers, such as Pierre Boulez, George Crumb, and Derek Bermel, seek to redefine the role of art in contemporary culture.

 

With Christopher Dingle, he has co-edited and contributed to the companion volumes Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences (Ashgate 2013) and Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence, and Reception (Ashgate 2013),  which The Musical Times has said “raises the level of insightful [Messiaen] scholarship to new heights.”

 

His current book project, provisionally titled “Low Mountains, High Culture: Appalachia in Classical Music from the Great Depression to the Great Recession,” examines how geography illuminates the shifting political, racial, class-based, economic, and religious pressures that mediate musical representations of Appalachia and American identity. Featured composers include Copland, Rzewski, Crumb, and Julia Wolfe. A future book will trace the development of theology in Messiaen's music.

 

He holds a PhD and master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and bachelor’s degrees in English and Music Theory/Composition from Northwestern University.

 

Prof. Fallon has published in the periodicals Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of Musicology, Modern Fiction Studies, Tempo, and Notes, and has contributed book chapters to Messiaen the Theologian (Ashgate, 2010), Musique, arts et religion dans l’entre-deux-guerres (Symétrie, 2009), Messiaen Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Olivier Messiaen in Music, Art, and Literature (Ashgate Press, 2007), and Jacques Maritain and the Many Ways of Knowing (Catholic University of America Press, 1999) and he has contributed articles to the Grove Dictionary of American Music.

 

He has delivered papers at the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, the Royal Musicological Society, the International Conference on Music Since 1900, The Ohio State University’s Lectures in Musicology, the University of Pittsburgh Music Department Colloquium Series, the Southbank Centre’s Exquisite Labyrinth: The Music of Pierre Boulez festival (London), Cornell University's Environ Messiaen festival, and other venues. He has also provided the keynote address at the University of Chicago’s Messiaen Festival and at the Southeast Chapter of the American Musicological Society. Fallon co-founded the AMS Ecocritical Musicology Study Group, has served as editor of Ars Lyrica: Journal of the Lyrica Society for Word-Music Relations, and received the 2004 Paul A. Pisk Prize for most outstanding paper by a graduate student read at the annual meeting of the AMS.

 

Prof. Fallon enjoys presenting his research to general audiences, having appeared on radio broadcasts (WFMT, WYEP, WDUQ) and written program notes or delivered pre-concert talks at Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera at Lincoln Center, Pittsburgh Symphony, as well as the Cal Performances and The University of Chicago Presents concert series.

 

He plays the viola and was an early employee of the company now called Pandora.