Bio
Rhianna Nissen is a Ph.D. candidate in Historical Musicology. She holds degrees from the Shenandoah Conservatory (BM Performance: Voice, 2013) and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (MM Music History, 2017). Her research focuses on choral singing, identity formation, and politics in (primarily) nineteenth-century Germany. In 2021, she won a Fulbright award to spend a year in Germany, where she conducted extensive research for her dissertation: “Bernhard Klein’s Jephta: Liberalism, Localism, and Questions of Meaning.” In it, she studies the unique politics of Cologne under Prussian rule and the parallel development of Cologne’s Karneval and Cologne-born composer Bernhard Klein’s oratorio, Jephta (1828). She has presented her work at the North American Conference on Nineteenth Century Music, the Music and the Moving Image conference, and the annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology. When not working on research, you can find her on a rock wall, at the dog park, or in a choir rehearsal.
