David H. Miller

I am a musicologist and performing musician, and I teach in the Department of Music as well as the American Studies program. I hold a B.A. in music from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in musicology from Cornell University.

My research focuses on modernist music, particularly that of Anton Webern, and its performance and reception in the United States. I am also interested in intersections between modernism and early music performance practices. Recent articles include “Forgotten Pasts and Imagined Futures: The First International Webern Festival and the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair,” in Twentieth-Century Music, and “Singing Webern, sounding Webern: Bethany Beardslee, Grace-Lynne Martin, and Marni Nixon, 1950–1957,” in the Journal of the American Musicological Society. I am also underway on a book project centered around Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer, two musicians from Spokane, WA who built a massive collection of modernist music manuscripts during the 1960s and 70s.

As a performer, I play a variety of early bowed bass instruments, including the viola da gamba, violone, and Baroque double bass, focusing on the music of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. I have worked with ensembles such as the Handel and Haydn Society, Trinity Wall Street, New York Baroque Incorporated, and the Arcadia Players, and I collaborate frequently with the Renaissance band Seven Times Salt.

At Berkeley I have taught courses on J.S. Bach, the performance of postwar experimental music, classical music in the United States between the World Wars, American popular music in 1971, and the viola da gamba. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about these courses, my work, or anything else. For more information, including a complete CV and samples of my research and performance, please visit my website: https://www.davidhmiller.com.

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