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Faith Lanam

Continuing Lecturer in Music

Dr. Faith Lanam is a musicologist, performer, pedagogue, and continuing lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on the music and women of the Colegio de San Miguel de Belem, Mexico’s first female music conservatory. She has collected and edited numerous musical manuscripts, performance scores, partbooks, and archival documents from the Archivo Histórico del Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola, Vizcaínas, in Mexico City. Drawing on secondary sources in historical musicology, music education, and studies in colonialism and gender, Dr. Lanam’s research increases our understanding of historically underrepresented foci in musicology, specifically eighteenth-century music pedagogy and the professional training of female musicians, situated within the greater context of the musical and social life of colonial Mexico City.

 

Dr. Lanam has presented her research on the Colegio de San Miguel de Belem at the international conferences of the American Musicological Society; Galant Schema Studies; American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies; Society for Eighteenth-Century Music/Royal Swedish Academy of Music; Ignacio Jerusalem 250: Galant Musics in Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and the New World; and Ignacio Jerusalem, Chapelmaster of the Mexico City Cathedral: Music and Art in New Spain during the Eighteenth Century. Her work has been cited by Pedrone Persone in The Cambridge Companion to the Harpsichord (2019), Javier Marín-Lopez and Drew Edward Davies in Ignacio Jerusalem (1707–1769): Cronología biográfica y lista de obras (2019), Nicholas Baragwanath in The Solfeggio Tradition: A Forgotten Art of Melody in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2020), and Cesar Favila in Immaculate Sounds: The Musical Lives of Nuns in New Spain, among others.

 

Dr. Lanam serves as the organist at Saint Ann Chapel in Palo Alto, California, where she performs weekly liturgical services and specializes in hymnody, early keyboard literature, and the accompaniment of 18th- through 20th-century sacred vocal literature. As a percussionist, she performs orchestral and chamber works and collaborates with local composers in the performance of new works. Her editions of Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger's Libro terzo d’intavolatura di chitarrone facilitate the study of early baroque performance practice and performance of archlute repertoire by marimbists.

 

With extensive experience in the field of music education, Dr. Lanam applies her knowledge of pedagogy and educational psychology to foster an engaging and positive learning environment for students of diverse backgrounds. Access and inclusion are at the forefront of her in-person, hybrid, and online course design. Since 2020, she has developed seven online and hybrid courses. In both her applied and academic classes, she seeks to create well-rounded curricula interweaving relevant aspects of performance practice, music history, social and cultural context, music theory, and critical listening skills. 

 

Dr. Lanam invites UCSC students who are interested in her courses to visit her class websites:

Research Interests: 
  • Music of Mexico City in the 17th through 19th Centuries
  • Women Musicians of the Baroque and Early Classical Periods
  • 18th- and 19th-Century Music Pedagogy
  • Editing Early Music
  • Liturgical Organ Performance Practice
Office: 
Music Center 126
Selected Publications: 
  • “El Colegio de San Miguel de Belem: Mexico's First Female Music Conservatory.” PhD Dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2018.
  • “The Folías of Santiago de Murcia: Performance and Pedagogical Opportunities for All Guitarists.” Soundboard 41 (2015): 18-22.
Selected Performances: 
Selected Presentations: 
  • Bound in Calf Skin: The Solfeggi that Travelled 2000 Miles.” Keynote address presented to the international conference of the Galant Schema Studies, online, 2023.

  • "Glimpses Behind Closed Doors," PANdemonium4 Artist-in-Residence pre-concert talk, Capital University Bexley, Ohio, 2023.

  • “Fling Wide the Gates: Navigating Life After Conservatory.” Artist-in-Residence address presented to the Capital University Conservatory of Music, Bexley, Ohio, 2023.
  • “A Neapolitan Conservatory in New Spain: A Contextual Analysis of the Contributions of Italian Pedagogues to a Mexican Girls’ School.” Paper presented at the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music/Royal Swedish Academy of Music’s International Conference Global Intersections in the Music of the 18thCentury, remote, 2021. 
  • “Dichotomies of Privilege: Lifting Up and Holding Down Women in New Spain through Music Education.” Paper presented at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, remote, 2021.

  • “Behind Closed Doors: Illuminating the life of María Micaela Jerusalem—músico, rectora, y criolla.” Presented at the International Conference Ignacio Jerusalem, Chapelmaster of the Mexico City Cathedral: Music and Art in New Spain during the Eighteenth Century, Miami, Florida, 2020.

  • “Family Legacies, Criollo Identity, and the Galant Style: Ignacio Jerusalem’s Compositions for his Daughters.” Paper to be presented at the international conference Ignacio Jerusalem 250: Galant Musics in Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and the New World, Baeza, Spain, 2019.
  • “Marian Devotion and Musical Practice in a Novohispanic Girls’ School.” Presented at the concert “Spanish Roots—Mexican Flowerings,” Santa Cruz Baroque Festival, Santa Cruz, California, 2020.
  • “What’s a Girl to Do? Educational and Professional Paths of Colonial Mexico City’s Criolla Musicians.” Colloquium paper presented at the University of California, Santa Cruz, 2019.
  • “Mothers, Sisters, Niñas, and Nuns: The Training of Young Female Musicians of Colonial Mexico.” Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Musicological Society, Vancouver, Canada, 2016. 
  • “The Transcription and Performance of Baroque Chitarrone Literature on Marimba.” Paper presented at the University of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, 2010.
Honors and Awards: 
  • Teaching Fellowship, University of California, Santa Cruz (2014-2017)
  • Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship, University of California, Santa Cruz (2011-2013)
  • Herbert Thompson International Scholarship Competition Winner, University of Leeds, England (2009)
Education and Training: 
PhD in Music, University of California, Santa Cruz
MM in Musicology, University of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England
BM in Music Education and Percussion Performance, Conservatory of Music, Capital University, Columbus, Ohio
Teaching Interests: 
  • Music and Empire
  • Western Music History and Literature
  • Music Theory and Musicianship
  • Women in Music
  • Applied Keyboards
  • Music in the Americas, 1500–1850
  • Editing Early Music
  • Music, Church, and the Monarchy in England, 1200–1900
  • Performance Practice of Liturgical Music 
  • Early Music Performance Practice
  • Strategies in Music Education and Pedagogy
  • Practice, Rehearsal, and Performance Strategies