David Warren Steel

Curriculum Vitae

Experience

1987-present   Associate Professor of Music and Southern 
                   Culture, University of Mississippi.
1980-1987      Assistant Professor of Music and Southern 
                   Culture, University of Mississippi.
1974-1980      Assistant Director, Stearns Collection of 
                   Musical Instruments, University of Michigan; 
                   Teaching Assistant, University of Michigan 
                   School of Music.

Education

1973-1982      University of Michigan, Ph.D. in musicology, 
                   December 1982; A.M. in musicology, May 1976; 
                   harpsichord study with Edward Parmentier.
1969-1971      Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, 
                   Massachusetts, special student.
1964-1968      Harvard College, A.B. cum laude in general 
                   studies (linguistics and Germanic languages 
                   and literature), June 1968; harpsichord 
                   study with James Weaver and John Fesperman.

Awards and Fellowships

1992           Society of Pi Kappa Lambda
1987-1988      National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship 
1984           National Endowment for the Humanities Summer 
                   Seminar for College Teachers
1979           Rackham Dissertation Grant, University of Michigan
1978           Fred Harris Daniels Fellowship, American 
                   Antiquarian Society
1968           Phi Beta Kappa
1967           Harvard College Scholarship

Memberships and Offices Held

American Musicological Society, American Musical Instrument Society, Association of Anglican Musicians, Early Music America, Society for Ethnomusicology (local arrangements co-chair, 1993 meeting), Sonneck Society.

Personal Data

Born September 20, 1947, Evanston, Illinois.

Publications

• Belknap, Daniel, The Collected Works, ed. David Warren Steel, Music of the New American Nation 14 (New York: Garland, 1999).
• Jenks, Stephen, Collected Works, ed. David Warren Steel, Recent Researches in American Music 18 (Madison: A-R Editions, 1995).
• "Foster, Stephen," "Revival Songs," and "Shape-Note Singing Schools," in Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).
• "L. J. Jones and The Southern Minstrel (1849)," American Music 6 (Summer 1988), pp. 123-157.
• "John Wyeth and the Development of Southern Folk Hymnody" in Music from the Middle Ages Through the 20th Century: Essays in Honor of Gwynn McPeek (London: Gordon & Breach, 1988), pp. 357-374.
• "Jenks, Stephen," and (with Richard Crawford) "Singing School," in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music (London: Macmillan, 1986).
• "Stephen Jenks (1772-1856): American Composer and Tunebook Compiler" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1982).
• "Truman S. Wetmore and His 'Republican Harmony,'" The Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 45 (July 1980), pp. 75-89.
• "Sacred Music in Early Winchester," The Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 45 (April 1980), pp. 33-44.
• Missa Toletana, in Congregational Music for Eucharist, Church Hymnal Series 5 (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1980). Excerpts in The Hymnal 1982 (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1985).

Guest Lectures and Conference Papers

• "Early Shape-Note Singing in the Shenandoah Valley," Singers Glen Music and Heritage Festival, Singers Glen, Virginia, 1997.
• "Herman Mann of Dedham, Music Printer," Sonneck Society, Washington, D.C., 1996.
• "The Sacred Harp Singing Tradition in Mississippi," Mississippi Historical Society, Tupelo, Mississippi, 1996.
• "Stephen Jenks and Psalmody in the Middle States," guest lecture and workshop, New York State Sacred Harp Singing Convention, Ithaca, New York, 1994.
• "Creolization and European Elements in the Afro-American Traditional Chorus," Conference on Contemporary Black American Congregational Song and Worship Traditions, Smithsonian Institution, 1989.
• "Sacred Harp Singing Today: A Cultural Geography," guest lecture, Church Music Symposium, Mercer University, Atlanta, Georgia, 1988.
• "Men of Rough Exteriors: The Biographies of Southern Tunebook Compilers," The Sonneck Society, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1987.
• "Shetland Sea-Words and Old Norse Poetic Diction," Mississippi Folklore Society, Oxford, Mississippi, 1986.
• "Lazarus J. Jones (1816-1897): Mississippi's First Folksong Collector," Society for Ethnomusicology, Southeast and Caribbean Chapter and Mississippi Folklore Society, Biloxi, Mississippi, 1985.
• "Sacred Harp Singers: A Musical Subculture," American Folklore Society, Nashville, Tennessee, 1983.
• "Secular Shape-Note Songsters," Society for Ethnomusicology, Southeast and Caribbean Chapter, Tallahassee, Florida, 1981.
• "The Invention and Development of the Bow and Bowed Instruments," guest lecture, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, 1977.
• "The Hammered Dulcimer in America," American Musical Instrument Society, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1977.
• Two papers on early American choral music, Midwest Church Music Conference, East Lansing, Michigan, 1975.

Sound Recordings (Editorial Assistance)

• Wade in the Water (1993)
• Pleasure Tunes My Tongue, 1988 (also liner notes).
• Mississippi Folk Voices, 1983.
• Highway 61 Blues, 1983.
• Fannie Bell Chapman, 1983.
• Bothered All the Time, 1983.

Film and Video (Music Arranged and Performed)

• The Democratic Spirit in American Art, 20 min., 1988.
• Painting in the South: Artists and Regional Heritage, 28 min., 1983.

Online Publications (documents written or edited)

• University of Mississippi, Department of Music World Wide Web site, approximately fifty documents.
• University of Mississippi, College of Liberal Arts World Wide Web site, approximately seven documents.
• Sacred Harp Singing World Wide Web site, approximately sixty documents.
• David Warren Steel, personal World Wide Web site, five documents.
• Four articles in online journal Ethnomusicology Research Digest 94 (October 1992), 124 (August 1993), 128 (October 1993), and 176 (August 1994).
• Member of editorial board of Ethnomusicology Online.

Reviews and Interviews

• Review of The Colored Sacred Harp, in American Music 14 (Spring 1996), pp. 127-28.
• Review of Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology 8: Issues in Organology, in Asian Music 25 (1993-94), pp. 213-17.
• Review of Deborah Carlton Loftis, "Big Singing Day in Benton, Kentucky: A Study of the History, Ethnic Identity and Musical Style of Southern Harmony Singers," Southern Baptist Church Music Journal vol. 9 (1990), pp. 76-78.
• Review of Mai Hogan Kelton, "Analysis of the Music Curriculum of Sacred Harp (American Tune-Book, 1971 Edition) and Its Continuing Traditions," in CRME Bulletin 103 (Winter 1990), pp. 39-43.
• Review of William Walker, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, ed. by Glenn C. Wilcox, in Ethnomusicology 33 (Spring/Summer 1989), pp. 343-45.
• Review of R. Gerald Alvey, Dulcimer Maker: The Craft of Homer Ledford, in Western Folklore 45 (July 1986), pp. 223-224.
• Review of Norman Cazden, Herbert Haufrecht and Norman Studer, Folk Songs of the Catskills, in Journal of Musicological Research 5 (November 1984), pp. 260-264.
• Review, with Richard Crawford, of Buell E. Cobb, Jr., The Sacred Harp: A Tradition and Its Music, in American Historical Review 84 (October 1979), p. 1154.
• Interview with B. B. King (with Suzanne Flandreau and Bill Ferris), Living Blues 68 (1986), pp. 12-14.

Grants and Consultantships

1990           Consultant for State Board of Education, 
                  Wrote Mississippi Culture Curriculum 
                  for Ninth Grade Social Studies 
1987-1991      Consultant Specialist, Sacred Harp Publishing 
                  Company, Carrollton, Georgia, for new 
                  edition of The Sacred Harp.
1985           Instructor, Regional Heritage Project, 
                  Booneville, Mississippi, supported by 
                  Mississippi Council for the Humanities.
1984           Folklife Presenter, Louisiana Folklife Festival, 
                  Louisiana World Exposition.
1983           Instructor, Sacred Harp Singing School, 
                  Pittsboro, Mississippi, supported by 
                  National Endowment for the Arts.
1983           Instructor, Mississippi Culture Summer Seminar, 
                  Jackson State University.
1981-1984      Director, Oxford Folklife Festival, supported 
                  by National Endowment for the Arts and 
                  Mississippi Arts Commission.
        

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