Each year, the composition program of the Department of Music hosts a composers’ seminar that is open to all CNU students and the public. The seminar affords students an opportunity to meet and converse with a composer of international renown.

Past composers:

2000-01   Dr. Samuel Adler 
The Juilliard School of Music
2001-02     Martin Ellerby 
Studio Music Company, 
Royal Air Force Music Services, England
2002-03 Nigel Clarke 
England  

2003-04

Dr. Eric Ewazen 
The Juilliard School of Music

Rolf Rudin 
Frankfurter Musikhochschule, Germany
2004-05 Dr. Morris Rosenzweig 
University of Utah
2005-06 Dr. Dmitri Tymoczko 
Princeton University
2006-07 Dr. W. Francis McBeth 
Quachita University
2007-08 Dr. Jennifer Barker 
University of Delaware
2008-09 Dr. Adophus Hailstork 
Old Dominion University

2009-10

Thomas Miller 
DePaul University

Dr. Kenneth Fuchs 
University of Connecticut

2010-11

 Dr. René Clausen 
Concordia College
2011-12

Dr. John Traill
Oxford University

2012-13

 Dr. Don Freund 
Indiana University

This prestigious lecture series in musicology was founded in the spring of 1996 in honor of the late Vianne Webb, one of Hampton Roads' leading music scholars and director of classical music programming at WHRO FM 90.3. Each year, leading musicologists are invited to the CNU campus to deliver lectures in their field of expertise.

Past lecturers:

2000

Suzanne Cusick (University of Virginia)
Women Musicians and the Turning of Centuries

Wiley Hitchcock (Emeritus, City University of New York)
Music of Charles Ives
2001 Ron Pen (University of Kentucky)
American Fiddle Tunes
2002 Barbara Haggh-Huglo (University of Maryland)
Where Do Composers Get Their Ideas?

2003

Timothy McGee (University of Toronto)
Medieval Song

Howard Smither (University of North Carolina)
The Oratorio
2004 Deane L. Root (University of Pittsburgh)
Stephen Foster and American Cultural History
2005 Raoul Camus (Brooklyn College)
American Dance
2006 Dr. Susan Boynton (Columbia University)
Time and Memory in Fanny Hensel's Das Jahr
2007 David and Ginger Hildebrand (Peabody Conservatory)
Music in America: The First 200 Years
2008 Ron Pen (University of Kentucky)
2009 Craig Wright (Yale University)
Mozart and the Nature of Genius
2010 Dr. Clyde Brockett (Christopher Newport University)
Ethnicity, Nationalism and Integration in the Music of Gottschalk    
2013 Richard Will (University of Virginia)
100 Years of Seduction