Steven Plank

  • Andrew B. Meldrum Professor of Musicology
  • Director, Collegium Musicum

Areas of Study

Education

  • BMus with honors, University of Louisville, 1973
  • MMus, University of Louisville, 1974
  • PhD, Washington University in St. Louis, 1980
  • Studies in early music performance with Trevor Pinnock, James Tyler, Edward Tarr, and Bruce Dickey 

Biography

Appointed to the Oberlin faculty in 1980, Steven Plank holds bachelor and master of music degrees from the University of Louisville (1973, 1974), and a PhD from Washington University in St. Louis, where he studied musicology under Sir Curtis Price.

His early music studies in performance and performance practice have been under the direction of Edward Tarr, Trevor Pinnock, James Tyler, and Bruce Dickey.

He received the Thomas Binkley Award from Early Music America in 2009 for distinguished work as the director of the Collegium Musicum.

Plank has written articles that have appeared in various journals, including The Musical Times, Early Music, Music and Letters, Historic Brass Society Journal, Goldberg, and American Music, and in the music encyclopedia Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.

He is the author of two books, The Way to Heavens Doore (1994) and Choral Performance: A Guide to Historical Practice (2004); the coauthor with Charles McGuire of The Historical Dictionary of English Music, ca. 1400-1958 (2011); and the editor of the critical edition of John Eccles’s “dramatick opera” Rinaldo and Armida (2011).

He serves on the editorial boards of the Historic Brass Society and the Riemenschneider Bach Institute.

As a scholar, Plank specializes in the music of England, the study of historical brass instruments, and the relationship of liturgical spirituality and musical style.

Fall 2023

Music in the Baroque Era — MHST 235
Introduction to Music Research and Writing — MHST 301
Graduate Lecture Recital — APST 602
Collegium Musicum — APST 730

Spring 2024

Music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance — MHST 226
Music of Tudors — MHST 303
Music of Tudors — MHST 503
Graduate Lecture Recital — APST 602
Collegium Musicum — APST 730

Notes

Steven Plank Gives Performances and Early Music Presentation

October 24, 2019

In October 2019, musicology professor Steven Plank gave two solo organ recitals in northeast Ohio. He performed a program entitled “Organ Music of the Seventeenth Century” at Cleveland's Trinity Episcopal Cathedral as well as at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights during their month-long Ars Organi Festival. He offered works by Samuel Scheidt, Dieterich Buxtehude, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Louis Couperin. Plank also presented a paper at the graduate historical performance colloquium at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, entitled “Seeking the Historical Listener.”

News

This Week in Photos: Musical Interludes

May 6, 2021

A group of students wearing crimson choir robes standing among tall wild blades of grass serves as inspiration for this week’s photo series.

This Week in Photos: Elections to Mini Pumpkins

November 4, 2020

In this week’s photo series we swing by the voting polls, rub elbows with a professor, linger under a big tent of images, decompress at an outside night concert and faculty recital, pull up a seat at the Cat, head to Finney Chapel for taiko, and pick up a brush to do some mini pumpkin painting.

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