Joshua Neumann
Co-Editor, Opera Journal
Dr. Joshua Neumann is a Research Fellow in digital musicology at the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur | Mainz (Germany), having previously taught at the University of Florida and Shenandoah University. He holds both a PhD in Historical Musicology and a Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities from the University of Florida, a MMus in Music History from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, and a BMus in Music Performance (percussion) from Gordon College, in Wenham, MA. In his current position, Dr. Neumann contributes to the Centre for Digital Music Documentation and the National Research Data Infrastructure for Culture in Germany through international, interdisciplinary, and inter-institutional collaboration and consultation. As a musicologist specializing in the development, application, and modification of digital methodologies for various creative processes, he has focused on opera studies, vocal performance studies, the recording industry, historical and theoretical discourse of technology in the arts, sociology of the arts, film music, and pedagogy.
Dr. Neumann is an active presenter at national and international conferences, including the American Musicological Society, the Transnational Opera Studies Conference, Performance Studies Network, Royal Musical Association, and others. As a member of the AMS Committee on Technology, he was responsible for organizing and contributing to three successive panels on digital scholarship and teaching. His publications include an article using data science and interviews to profile performance, a tempo dataset for Turandot as broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera, 1961-2009, and a book chapter with Oxford University Press on music and gender roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). He has also reviewed works on conducting, music data analysis, dance music on film, and 18th vocal music. Additionally, Dr. Neumann is Co-Director for the Vienna Summer Music Festival’s Musicology Colloquium, where he introduces musicology students to the many archives in Vienna, supervises short-term research projects, and organizes a research symposium.
His current projects include editing a pedagogical resource for the Music Encoding Initiative, an online catalog of the works of Joseph Haydn, social network analysis of world premieres at the Metropolitan Opera, and a data-driven creative process and reception analysis of Dietrich Fischer Dieskau’s 40+ years singing Die Winterreise. Future projects include an examination of production and performance practices of Puccini’s operas in Vienna as cultural exchange and reconciliation, developing methodologies for empirically based audiovisual analysis of opera performance, and developing the infrastructure for an online research forum for opera.
Previously, Dr. Neumann served as a high school band director in Philadelphia, where he restarted pep bands for public and charter school athletics, coached lacrosse, and advised the National Honor Society. His indoor marching percussion ensembles performed as pregame entertainment for the Philadelphia 76ers and Temple University women’s basketball teams. While in Philadelphia, Dr. Neumann also served as an associate conductor and chorus master for Center City Opera Theater, offered dramaturgy coachings for the company’s young artist program, and supported grant writing activities. He remains active as a guest conductor, percussionist, and chorister.