Name:  Simon Morrison *97

Title:  Professor

Department: Music

Education:

• Ph.D., M.F.A. in Music History, Princeton University
• M.A. in Music History, McGill University
• B. Mus. cum laude in Music History and Literature, University of Toronto

Number of Years at Princeton: 11

Currently Teaching: 

• Mus 103 – Intro to Music
• Mus 514 – Topics in 19^th and Early 20^th Century Music                     

Research: Professor Morrison studies Russian and French music of the twentieth century, especially music for dance. He is particularly interested in the intersection of music and politics, which led him to write a biography of Sergey Prokofiev, one of the most beloved and brilliant composers of the twentieth century, but someone who suffered censorship and repression in his final years in the Soviet Union. In 2005, Professor Morrison oversaw the recreation of the Prokofiev ballet Le Pas d'Acier at Princeton University. Most recently, he restored the original, “happy ending” version of the ballet Romeo and Juliet for the Mark Morris Dance Group.

The author of two books and over 100 scholarly papers, essays, reviews and lectures, Professor Morrison has been awarded the Alfred Einstein Award of the American Musicological Society, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship and a Phi Beta Kappa Society Teacher Award. Currently, he is beginning work on a book on the Ballets Suédois, a leading force in Parisian modernism, and contemplating a textbook on film music.

Princeton Community Involvement: Professor Morrison is a Freshman advisor and a fellow in Butler College. He is on the Executive Committee of the Alumni Council and has conducted two Alumni Studies courses. In addition, Professor Morrison has given several talks for the Alumni Association Speakers Bureau Program (one cherished experience being a trip to Santa Fe). He is the advisor on several junior projects and senior theses, along with a cluster of doctoral dissertations on topics ranging from the first famous Russian opera to French film music of the 1960s.

Hobbies: “My work is my life (and my sanity),” says Professor Morrison. However, he also enjoys travel, most specifically the challenge of establishing the same routines he has in Princeton elsewhere – particularly “grumpy, ghostly Moscow.” He is an avid reader, climber of the stair master and winter lager connoisseur who enjoys tinkering with his 19th-century home here in Princeton.   

Web site: http://www.princeton.edu/~simonm/