Ralph Locke Interview (Emeritus Professor of Musicology)
Ralph Locke is Emeritus Professor of Musicology at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, and a research affiliate at the University of Maryland, College Park. Over the course of his illustrious career, six of his articles have won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. One of his main concerns? Musical exoticism. (He’s written two books about the subject.)
Can you please briefly describe yourself and what you do?
I am a musicologist—retired, yet in a way not retired—and music critic. I retired from my faculty position in the Musicology Department at the Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester) in 2015. Forty years as a teacher—with plenty of administrative responsibilities and committee work—was enough for me. I wanted to have more time for family and to focus on my scholarly projects.
In addition, I have increased the number of projects I take on as a music critic. I have written program-book essays for important opera companies, in, for example, Santa Fe, Wexford (Ireland), Glyndebourne (England), Bilbao (Spain), and Munich.