David Kasunic has been an Assistant Professor of Music History at Occidental College since 2008, having first taught at Haverford College, upon receiving his doctorate from Princeton in 2004. His dissertation is on Fryderyk Chopin’s compositional and commercial relationship to vocal music, played against the background of the aesthetic, scientific, literary, and philosophical reception of singing in 1830s and ‘40s Paris. He has published several related articles, and more recently has written on the legacy and reception of Chopin's keyboard technique, specifically as they relate to both 19th-century ballet and the theoretical work and editorial practice of Heinrich Schenker, who studied piano with Chopin’s pupil, Karol Mikuli. His other primary research interests are opera, the history of aesthetics, and Mahler. His current projects include an article, on Mahler’s compositional relationship to opera, and two book projects, one on the history of the relationship of music and food, and the other on Chopin, for which he received a 2011 research fellowship from the University of California Humanities Research Institute.
Articles
Book Chapters
On Jewishness and Genre: Eduard Hanslick’s Reception of Gustav Mahler, Eduard Hanslick: Aesthetic, Critical, and Cultural Contexts (2013)
Playing Opera at the Piano: Chopin and the Piano-Vocal Score, The Sources of Chopin’s Creative Style: Inspirations and Contexts (2010)
“The Case for Expressiveness: How How Fryderyk Chopin Made Frederick Niecks Reevaluate Programme Music, After Chopin:
The Influence of the Chopin's Music on European Composers till the First World War (2009)
Tuberculosis, Music, and Diagnostic Pathology in 1840s France, Chopin in Paris: The Last Decade (2008)
Reviews
Review of Jonathan Bellman’s Chopin’s Polish Ballade: Op. 38 as Narrative of National Martyrdom, Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association (2010)
Thesis
Chopin and the Singing Voice, From the Romantic to the Real (2004)
This study projects Chopin's wordless piano art onto the background of the practice and reception...