Lecture: Schoenberg in Context

Alexander Carpenter, University of Alberta

When: January 22, 2026. 12:30 PM
Where: Deutsch Seminar Room (112), International Center

Dr. Carpenter is a musicologist, music critic and musician. His research focuses on the music of Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School but also deals more broadly with Viennese cultural and intellectual history. He is also a scholar of popular music, and has published on a wide array of topics, including David Bowie, progressive rock, gothic rock, popular music and national identity, film music and the waltz. He is the editor of the book Schoenberg in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and co-editor of the forthcoming volume Echoes of Tartini (Brill-Boehlau). At Augustana, he has served as Director of Music and as Chair of Fine Arts and Humanities. From 2021-25, he served as the Director of the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies in the Faculty of Arts, Edmonton campus of the University of Alberta.

He teaches courses on the history European art music (from Ancient Greece to the present), popular music, film music and aesthetics. In the spring of 2026, he will teach a place-based course on music history in Vienna, Austria.

As musician, he performs regularly as a singer and guitarist with the Edmonton-based rock bands Boomstick and The Exstatics.