Robert Paul Kolt, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Musicology
Dr. Robert Paul Kolt, Associate Professor of Musicology at Indiana University South Bend, received his Bachelor of Arts degree (summa cum laude) in conducting from Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Virginia; his Master of Arts degree in historical musicology from Radford University, Radford, Virginia; and his Ph.D. in historical musicology from the University of Maryland.
Dr. Kolt’s research activities and interests include American art music, American opera, opera taxonomy, musical aesthetics, semiotics and nationalism. At regional meetings before the American Musicological Society and other guest appearances, he has presented lectures on Theodore Thomas and the aesthetics of American music, aspects of American operatic nationalism, and Robert Ward’s Opera, The Crucible. In Volume II of Piper’s Enzyklopadie des Musiktheaters, Dr. Kolt has authored articles on William Henry Fry’s Leonora; Henry K. Hadley’s Azora, Daughter of Montezuma and Louis Gruenberg’s The Emperor Jones. Dr. Kolt’s examination of the syntactic relationship between text and music in Robert Ward’s opera The Crucible will be published by Scarecrow Press in 2007. Future works will include a complete, critical biography and catalog of Robert Ward and his oeuvere, and examinations of the aesthetic premises and semiotic properties of American opera.
Dr. Kolt began conducting while a member of the United States Air Force Band (Tactical Air Command), and since then has conducted the Old Dominion University Summer Symphony Orchestra and Opera; the Northern Virginia Symphony; the Mary Washington College Wind Ensemble; the Omaha Symphony Orchestra; the Radford University Symphony Orchestra and numerous vocal ensembles.
Click on the video to view a selection of a music history lecture conducted by Dr. Kolt
