Martin Scherzinger
Martin Scherzinger's research specializes in sonic culture, music, media and politics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a particular interest in the music of high modernism, minimalism, post-modernism, transnational musical fusions, electronic dance music (from disco to trance), non-western music, and the economic determinants of globalization. These interests are resolutely interdisciplinary, spanning the fields of ethnomusicology, musicology, and music theory no less than sound studies, performance studies, and critical theory. Other interests include the poetics of copyright law, queer theory in music, censorship, and the politics of mass-mediated music. Scherzinger's published work ranges from aspects of early modernism (Brahms, Mahler, Schoenberg, Webern, Hindemith) to current musical trends, including the trans-Atlantic feedback between African and American concert and popular music (ranging from Thomas Mapfumo to Steve Reich), the cultural effects of corporate media consolidation on popular music (with an emphasis on the music of Madonna, Creed, and the techno/trance music scene), the cultural politics of concert music during and after the Cold War, and the ideology and aesthetics of musical censorship in the United States today. This work represents an attempt to understand what we might call contemporary "modalities of hearing," that is, the economic, political, and technological determinants of both mediated and (what is perceived as) immediate auditory experience under late capitalism.