Wente’s research examines the relationship between music, performance, composition, and technology, particularly in relation to the player piano. She explores these topics in her 2022 book, “The Player Piano and Musical Labor: The Ghost in the Machine.” In the article, she offers a perspective on historical and contemporary questions of authorship, authenticity, and creativity, highlighting how emerging technologies continue to reshape the ways music is created, performed and experienced.

The day-long pre-conference, titled “Navigating Crisis and Change,” brought together leaders in music studies, the performing arts, education, and nonprofit management to share strategies for guiding organizations through periods of transformation. Sessions addressed topics such as ethical leadership, institutional resilience, and values-based decision-making, with speakers including Bonnie Gordon (University of Virginia), Siovahn Walker (Executive Director, AMS), and William Quillen (Dean, Oberlin Conservatory of Music).

Wente’s participation reflects her ongoing commitment to advancing collaborative, forward-thinking leadership in higher education and the arts, as well as her active engagement in national conversations about sustaining music programs through change.

Wente’s presentation examined Steinway & Sons’ Spirio, a modern descendant of earlier mechanical instruments such as the Pianola and reproducing piano. Her research situates the Spirio within a long lineage of technologies that blur boundaries between human performance and mechanical reproduction, raising new questions about artistry, authenticity and ownership in twenty-first-century music culture. Her paper contributes to an ongoing second book project exploring intersections of music, technology, and mechanical performance, expanding on themes of embodiment, labor and the uncanny in an age of artificial intelligence.

While at the conference, Wente was delighted to reconnect with Elon Music and Honors Fellow mentee alum Kaylee Therieau ’22, who is currently in her first year of the Music Theory Ph.D. program at Florida State University.

Associate Professor of Music Allison Wente in the Department of Music had a textbook review published in Volume 36 of the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy.

Wente’s review of Joseph Straus’ “Understanding Post-Tonal Music and Miguel A. Roig-FrancolĂ­’s The Art of Post-Tonal Analysis: Thirty-Three Graphic Music Analyses” covers the subject matter, audience, organization, accessibility, instructional usability and diversity of examples in each text.

The full article is can be found .

The book’s description reads: “By the early 20th century the machine aesthetic was a well-established and dominant interest that fundamentally transformed musical performance and listening practices. While numerous scholars have examined this aesthetic in art and literature, musical compositions representing industrialized labor practices and the role of the machine in music remain largely unexplored. Moreover, in recounting the history of machines in musical recording and reproduction, scholars often tend to emphasize the phonograph, rather than player piano, despite the latter’s prominence within the newly established musical marketplace. Machines and their music influenced multiple areas of early 20th-century musical culture, from film scores to popular music and even the concert hall. But the opposite was also true: industrialized labor practices changed the musical marketplace and musical culture as a whole. As consumers accepted mechanical replacements for what previously required an active human laborer, ghostly, mechanical performers labored tirelessly in parlors, businesses, and even concert halls. Although the player piano failed to maintain a stronghold in the recorded music marketplace after 1930, the widespread acceptance of recording technologies as media for storing and enjoying music indicates a much more fundamental societal shift. This book explores that shift, examining the rise and fall of the player piano in early 20th-century society and connecting it to the digital technologies of today.”

Wente’s article, “Search-Solve-Sing: A Group Presentation Model to Strengthen Practice and Performance Techniques in Upper-Level Aural Skills Classes,” presents an aural skills lesson model that puts small groups of students in charge of analyzing, performing, and teaching in the aural skills classroom.

The article abstract is:

“Whether in a high school or college, from conservatories to liberal arts colleges, singing prepared melodies in upper-level aural skills classes presents unique challenges that differ from those of lower levels. While lower-level aural skills melodies tend to incorporate strings of predictable tonal gestures, upper-level aural skills melodies are often complex and require audiation and pre-analysis even for the most accomplished students. This article presents an aural skills lesson model titled Search-Solve-Sing: a three-part plan for preparing and presenting aural skills melodies that puts small groups of students in charge of analyzing, performing, and teaching in the aural skills classroom.

In Search-Solve-Sing students work in groups to identify simple sections and troubleshoot challenging ones in a melody (the search and solve portions of the process) as they prepare a lesson plan to present to the class. This is followed by a group performance, and subsequent whole-class performance, of the melody (sing!). Through small group work, students engage more deeply with course materials, develop stronger sight-singing abilities, and reap the benefits of learning from one another. Search-Solve-Sing is a student presentation model that flips the aural skills classroom and allows students to teach and learn from one another.”

The full article is located here:

Wente wrote the majority of this article at the CATL Faculty Writing Residency in June 2019. She is thankful to her group members, Sophie Adamson, Jennifer Eidum, Michael Strickland and Nicole Triche for sharing their advice, encouragement, and ideas, and to CATL and Elon for providing a beautiful, productive work environment.

Wente’s article, “Queue the Roll: Taylorized Labor Practices and Music of the Machine Age,” forms a basis for a musical topic of the mechanical using examples from concert, film, and popular repertoires.

The article abstract is: By the early 20th century the machine aesthetic was a well-established and dominant interest. While this aesthetic has been examined in art and in literature, the representation of industrial labor practices and the role of the machine in musical compositions remain largely unexplored.

In this article, I use labor theory to frame a discussion of a musical topic of the mechanical in various musical examples from the United States and Europe in the 1910s, 20s, and 30s. Each example imitates, showcases, or features the sounds of the machine, and illuminates the ways in which industrialized labor influenced music. I organize the machine sounds into three categories: music written to sound like or imitate the machine, music written to highlight the skills of virtuoso performers while also showcasing what the machine can do, and music written specifically for machines. These categories encompass a wide variety of performing bodies, audiences, and spaces, evidencing the ubiquitous presence of the machine aesthetic in early twentieth-century music culture.

As the discussion of the examples in each part will show, the prevalence of machine sounds in music indicates the widespread influence of industrialization and its culturally dominant ideology, Frederick Winslow Taylor’s system of scientific management.

The full article is located here: http://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.18.24.4/mto.18.24.4.wente.html