Alexander Carpenter

Chair Dr. Alexander Carpenter - Department of Fine Arts, Augustana Faculty

Alexander Carpenter is a musicologist and music critic. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Brock University, a Master's degree in music criticism from McMaster University, and a PhD in historical musicology from the University of Toronto. He has taught courses in music history, music theory and popular music at a number of Canadian post-secondary institutions, including the University of Western Ontario, McMaster University, the University of Prince Edward Island and the Glenn Gould Professional School in Toronto. Dr. Carpenter has been a faculty member at the Augustana campus of the University of Alberta since 2006, where he is currently a  professor of music in the Department of Fine Arts and Humanities.  In 2018-19, he was a visiting professor at the University of Vienna and the University of Innsbruck.  

Dr. Carpenter's research focuses on fin-de-siècle Vienna: specifically, on the music of Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School and on the connections between music and psychoanalysis. He has given invited lectures on the subject of psychoanalysis and Viennese musical and cultural history at the Freud museums in both London and Vienna, and his research on this subject has been published in The Musical Quarterly, Studia Musicologica, Journal of Music Research Online, Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music and Psychoanalysis and History, and also as chapters in the books De-Canonizing Music History and Schoenberg's Chamber Music, Schoenberg's World. Dr. Carpenter teaches a bi-annual, place-based experiential learning course on Viennese music and culture (AUIDS 286/386) in Vienna.  He has served as the Chair of the Academic Advisory Board of the Wirth Institute since 2019.