BURLINGTON – Music and Dance faculty member Wayne Schneider was among the 30 retiring faculty named to the rank of Emeritus Monday night by President Thomas Sullivan and Provost David Rosowsky.
Each emeritus faculty member was given an official citation that was read at the ceremony. Prof. Schneider’s citation follows:
Wayne Schneider, having earned your doctorate at Cornell (via a Masters degree at Harvard), you arrived at ̽̽ from Brown, where you were University Organist and the Executive Editor of Music in the United States of America, a series of critical editions of American music published by the American Musicological Society.
You joined ̽̽ in 1993 and immediately put your stamp on the department’s music history curriculum, creating courses in popular and American music, as well as seminars with titles that reflect your personal flair: “Romantic Alchemy: Word and Tone in Nineteenth-Century Music,” “Beethoven and the Revolution of Time,” and “You Call That Music?” An innovator to the end, you taught your latest new class, “Green Music,” just last Fall. Your dedication to teaching and your students was recognized by the University in 2006 when you became the first department faculty member to win a Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award.
You are a noted expert on American music, particularly that of George Gershwin. In addition to your book, The Gershwin Style (published by Oxford University Press), your articles on American music have appeared in a broad spectrum of publications, including Musical Quarterly, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Grove Dictionary of American Music, Grove Dictionary of Jazz, and Harvard Dictionary of Music.
One of your students in an introductory class summed it up best for us: “Prof. Schneider shows so much passion for what he teaches - that vibe is infectious. Always witty and entertaining, …[he] makes me want to be a musicologist.” Thank you for your professionalism, your passion, and your commitment to your craft. You will be deeply missed.