Faculty Profile

Robert Pound

(he/him/his)Professor of Music (1998)
Robert Pound

Contact Information

pound@dickinson.edu

Weiss Center for the Arts Room 206
717-245-1332

Bio

Composer and conductor Robert Pound teaches courses in theory, composition, and conducting. He is Director of the Dickinson Orchestra. Pound’s numerous compositions include orchestral works for the Atlanta Symphony and the Columbus (GA) Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra, and the Youth Orchestra of Greater Columbus. He has received commissions from such distinguished ensembles as the Corigliano Quartet, the Timaeus Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, and the Florestan Recital Project. Pound has also written music for professional stage productions, including Eurydice, Moby Dick Rehearsed, Oedipus at Colonus, André Gregory’s Bone Songs, Strindberg’s The Dance of Death, and the premiere G.D. Kimble's play What Passes for Comedy (2022). In March 2002, Pound was Composer in Residence at Columbus State University. He was guest composer and lecturer at the University of North Texas in April 2010. Pound has guest conducted with Verge (the performing ensemble of the Contemporary Music Forum, Washington, DC) with whom he performed at the June in Buffalo Festival in 2009. He was Music Director of the West Shore Symphony Orchestra (New Cumberland, PA) from 2000 to 2002. As a Fellow at Tanglewood Music Center in the summer of 2003, he participated in master classes with Robert Spano, Christoph von Dohnányi and Kurt Masur and conducted Peter Lieberson’s Razing the Gaze in Seiji Ozawa Hall as part of the Festival of Contemporary Music. More information and samples of Pound's music at: http://robertwpound.com/

Education

  • B.M., University of North Texas, 1992
  • M.M., The Juilliard School, 1994
  • D.M.A., 1998
Robert Pound

2024-2025 Academic Year

Fall 2024

MUAC 100 Music and Propaganda
Music can convey a wealth of meanings-through the context of its creation, text, setting and performers, or our associations with similar musical sounds. Because of this, music has proven a powerful but imprecise tool for propaganda. This course will explore music's role in the Cold War, a decades-long conflict for global supremacy dominated by the Soviet Union and the United States. Students will examine the diverse genres of music used for propaganda during the Cold War and develop skills to analyze that music's impact, debunking some popular myths about music's role in the Cold War along the way. The ability to read music is not required for this course and people who identify as non-musicians are welcome and encouraged.

THDA 302 The Art of Ballet Russes
Cross-listed with MUAC 358-01. The Ballets Russes (Russian Ballet), founded by Serge Diaghilev, was a laboratory for the development of modernist ideas about music, dance, theater, and the visual arts in the early 20th century. The company promoted ground-breaking artistic collaborations and some of the most important musical scores of the twentieth century, including The Firebird (1910), Daphnis and Chloe (1912), The Rite of Spring (1913), Parade (1917), The Three-Cornered Hat (1919), Pulcinella (1920), Les Noces (1923), Le Pas d’acier (1927), Apollo (1928), and The Prodigal Son (1929), were commissioned by Diaghilev. In addition to raising the stature of musical composition in ballet, one of the Diaghilev enterprise’s five resident choreographers was female—a rarity among ballet companies both then and now. In this course, we will examine the artistic innovations of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in music, dance, and design from the company’s debut in 1909 to Diaghilev’s death in 1929. We will also consider the limitations of the enterprise and the attitudes of its leading figures. Tracing the evolving aesthetic, cultural and political circumstances the Diaghilev company navigated, our course will explore early 20th century modernism and the troupe’s enduring contributions to music, art, and dance.

MUAC 358 The Art of Ballet Russes
Cross-listed with THDA 302-01. The Ballets Russes (Russian Ballet), founded by Serge Diaghilev, was a laboratory for the development of modernist ideas about music, dance, theater, and the visual arts in the early 20th century. The company promoted ground-breaking artistic collaborations and some of the most important musical scores of the twentieth century, including The Firebird (1910), Daphnis and Chloe (1912), The Rite of Spring (1913), Parade (1917), The Three-Cornered Hat (1919), Pulcinella (1920), Les Noces (1923), Le Pas d’acier (1927), Apollo (1928), and The Prodigal Son (1929), were commissioned by Diaghilev. In addition to raising the stature of musical composition in ballet, one of the Diaghilev enterprise’s five resident choreographers was female—a rarity among ballet companies both then and now. In this course, we will examine the artistic innovations of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in music, dance, and design from the company’s debut in 1909 to Diaghilev’s death in 1929. We will also consider the limitations of the enterprise and the attitudes of its leading figures. Tracing the evolving aesthetic, cultural and political circumstances the Diaghilev company navigated, our course will explore early 20th century modernism and the troupe’s enduring contributions to music, art, and dance.