Season 4, Episode 10 – Season Finale!

Well, it’s our final episode, and we have the exact right guest to help say goodbye to a podcast that focuses on music scholarship, and why it matters: William Cheng, whose work fundamentally reconsiders what musicology can be, by laying out a philosophy of care and repair. This conversation covers a large swath of Dr. Cheng’s scholarship, including his foundational writing on music and video games, his public-oriented social justice advocacy, and his scrutiny of ethical questions around musical taste. It’s a rumination on the present and future of the field. And it’s our finale.

William Cheng is Chair and Professor of Music at Dartmouth College.

If you’re interested in learning more about Dr. Cheng’s work, check out:

• The book Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination
• The book Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good
• The book Loving Music Till It Hurts
• The volume Queering the Field (co-edited Gregory Barz)
• The volume A Cultural History of Western Music in the Modern Age (co-edited with Danielle Fosler-Lussier).
• The article “The ‘open secret’ of sexual abuse in Venezuela’s famous youth orchestra program is finally exposed,” in The Washington Post, co-authored with Geoff Baker
• The article “Gaslight of the Gods” in the Chronicle of Higher Ed

Sound Expertise is hosted by Will Robin (@seatedovation), and produced by D. Edward Davis (@warmsilence). Please subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and/or Spotify. Questions or comments? Email soundexpertise00 @ gmail

A written transcript of this episode is available here; thanks to Andrew Dell’Antonio for volunteering to prepare transcripts for the show!