Daniel G Barolsky

Professor of Music
Department Chair for Performing and Applied Arts
- Pronouns: he/him/his
- Email: barolskd@beloit.edu
- Phone: +1 608-363-2387
- Office: Hendricks Center for the Arts #217
Description / Biography
I teach courses on music history and theory as well as courses on Music and Psychology, fakes and forgeries, and the history of sound technologies, a.k.a. “Disembodied Sounds.”
I played the double bass and piano growing up in Charlottesville, VA, but after a few years working in the record industry, realized that I didn’t really like to practice but loved to listen and respond to what I heard. This love has led to my current research on the histories and analyses of performers as well as on music history/theory pedagogy.
One of my proudest accomplishments during my time at Beloit has been the co-founding of Open Access Musicology, a resource aimed to bridge relevant scholarship in music with current pedagogical practices in a manner that is accessible (free!) and accessibly written for undergraduate readers.
Since coming to Beloit in 2008, I have had the opportunity to help shape the performing arts curriculum in order to make it accessible to students of all abilities and interests. It has been a stimulating challenge to change what I teach and how I teach, given how many traditions I often confront. But the reward has been immense, especially when I can help give students the opportunity to pursue their own artistic passions.
My life outside of Beloit consists of keeping up with multiple children, animals, while also keeping as involved in the community as possible.
- B.A., History, Swarthmore College
- M.A., Ph.D. Music History and Theory, University of Chicago
- Music, Sound, Space, and Theory
- Music as Creative Practice
- Music as History and the Histories of Western Music
- Beethoven and the Origins of ‘Music’
- Music in the Third Reich
- Music and Psychology
- ‘Keepin’ it Real?’ The Pursuit, Defense and Deconstruction of Authenticity.
The Rite in Concert: Orchestra and Digital Repercussions,” in Cambridge Companion to The Rite of Spring, ed. Davinia Caddy, Cambridge University Press
“The Mistaken Art” Analitica: Rivista online di studi musicali, 16 (2025)
Co-authored with Trudi Wright, “Digital Open Access and Open Educational Resources for the Music History Classroom” Journal of American Musicology Society 77,3 (Fall 2024)
Co-edited with Georgia Volioti, Recorded Music in Creative Practices: Mediation, Performance, Pedagogy, Routledge Press, 2024.
“Afterword: Acknowledging our Cyborg Identities” in Recorded Music in Creative Practices: Mediation, Performance, Pedagogy, eds. Georgia Volioti and Daniel Barolsky. Routledge Press, 2024
Co-edited with Louis Epstein, Open Access Musicology Vol. 2 (Lever Press, 2023)
“Wagner on Conducting: The Aesthetics of Anti-Semitism,” in Open Access Musicology Vol. 2 (Lever Press, 2023)
“For Whom the Berceuse Tolls: Josef Hofmann going beyond the text,” in Leech-Wilkinson,
Daniel (2020). Challenging Performance: Classical Music Performance Norms and How to Escape Them.
“Composing Performances: Ernst Levy, Brahms, and the Handel Variations” in Quodlibet , 76 (2021)
Review of Music in the Classical World: Genre, Culture, History by Bertil Van Boer, Notes, the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association (March 2021)
“The Pianist in the Recording Studio: Reimagining Interpretation,” in Stravinsky in Context, ed. Graham Griffiths (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)
Co-edited with Louis Epstein, Open Access Musicology Vol. 1 (Lever Press, 2020)
“Performers and Performances as Music History: Moving Away from the Margins,” in Norton Guide to Teaching Music History*, ed. Matthew Balensuela (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019). *Winner of the 2020 American Musicological SocietyTeaching Award
“Recordings,” in The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia, eds. Caryl Clark and Sarah Day-O’Connell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Review of Performative Analysis: Reimagining Music Theory for Performance by Jeffrey Swinkin, Notes, the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association , 74,4 (June, 2018).
Review of Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas: A Handbook for Performers by Stewart Gordon, Notes, the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association , 74,3 (March, 2018).
Commentary on Neumann’s “Phenomena, Poiēsis, and Performance Profiling: Temporal-Textual Emphasis and Creative Analysis in Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera” Empirical Musicology Review , 12,3-4 (2017).
Co-authored and co-edited with Edward Klorman, Introduction to “Performance and Analysis Today: New Horizons,” Music Theory Online , 22,2 (2016). (Peer Reviewed)
Co-authored with Sara Gross Ceballos, Rebecca Plack, & Steven Whiting, “Performance as a Master Narrative in Music History,” Journal of Music History Pedagogy , 3,1 (2012).
Co-authored with Peter Martens, “Rendering the Prosaic Persuasive: Gould and the Performance of Bach’s C-minor Prelude (WTC I),” Music Theory Online , 18,1 (2012).
Review of Keeping Score by Michael Tilson Thomas with the San Francisco Symphony, Journal of Music History Pedagogy , 2,1 (2011).
“Embracing Imperfection in Benno Moiseiwitsch’s Prelude to Chopin,” Music Performance Research Journal , 2,1 (2008): 48-60.
“The Performer as Analyst,” Music Theory Online , 13,1 (2007).
“Performing Polishness: The Interpretation of Identity,” in European Meetings in Ethnomusicology 9 (2002): 187-96.
Blog Posts:
- “Analyzing Analytical Limits: Ernst Levy’s Liszt,” January, 2020
- “Reflections on the 5th International Performance Studies Network Conference,” October 31, 2018
- “Reflections on PAIG and SMT,” December 1, 2016
- “Rethinking the Undergraduate Music Curriculum: Where are the Performers and their Performances?” October 21, 2014
- Daniel Barolsky (May 1, 2018)