YSU Dana professor to lecture at Library of Congress

Randall Goldberg, director of the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University, presents “The Kishineff Massacre and Domestic Musical Practice in America” at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 24.

The presentation is part of the Library of Congress’ Lecture Series sponsored by the American Musicology Society and the Music Division of the Library of Congress. Past lecturers have included Dominic Hugh from the University of Sheffield, R. Larry Todd of Duke University, Ryan Raul Banagale of Colorado College and Paul Laird of the University of Kansas.

Goldberg is associate professor of Musicology at YSU. His current research focuses on the music of Jewish immigrants in America, and he has presented on this topic at public and academic forums, including the Conference on Jewish Music and Jewish Identity, which he hosted in Youngstown in 2014. He has published in Musica Judaica, Journal of Jewish Identities, and Notes. In addition to Jewish musical studies, Goldberg is a contributor to C. P. E. Bach: The Complete Works and The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages.

Goldberg’s presentation at the Library of Congress focuses on the Kishineff (Chişinău) Pogrom, which Goldberg said had a great influence on Jewish activism, even for those who had already immigrated to America. Goldberg said Jewish artists were quick to provide musical works that reacted to the event. Herman Shapiro composed his Kishineff Massacre for solo piano (1904) to bring the horrors of the pogrom into the living rooms of Jewish families.