Andrew Westerhaus graduated from Vanderbilt with a B.Mus, summa cum laude and is currently a Ph.D candidate in the history and theory of music at the University of Chicago. He has an article published in the current issue of Plainsong and Medieval Music entitled “A lexicon of contratenor behavior: case studies of equal-cantus Italian motets from the MS Bologna Q15.” His paper considers contratenor parts in four of these motets from codicological, contrapuntal and stylistic perspectives. His lexicon seeks to distinguish between the features of an original contratenor and a later one, and the paper posits that studying contratenors can offer a unique window into fifteenth-century compositional thinking.
Currently, Mr. Westerhaus is working on a dissertation concerning analytical issues in Stravinsky’s so-called “Neo-Classical” music.