Campus Directory

Division Arts Division

Department/College/Unit Music Department

Title Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Humanities Division
Feminist Studies Department
Italian Studies

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Primary Office Location Music Center
289

Mail Stop Music Center

Biography, Education and Training

B.A., B.M., University of Melbourne
M.A., Ph.D., University of Southern California

Summary of Expertise

Nina Treadwell’s research and publications are informed by her experience as a performer on plucked-string instruments of the Renaissance and early Baroque periods and by her interest in gender studies. In particular, she has published articles that explore the social and political implications of women's musical performance on the sixteenth-century Italian stage, with performance practice issues bearing on questions of musical meaning.

Research Interests

She has published articles that explore the social and political implications of women's musical performance on the sixteenth-century Italian stage, with performance practice issues bearing on questions of musical meaning. Her publications appear in journals such as Cambridge Opera Journal, Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, Current Musicology, Lute Society Journal, and Musicology Australia, and the 2002 collectionGender, Sexuality, and Early Music, ed. T. Borgerding. Her first book Music and Wonder at the Medici Court: The 1589 interludes for "La pellegrina" was published by Indiana University Press in 2008.
She is currently working on two book projects. The first, tentatively titled "Bad Girls" and Vidding: Musicking and the Dynamics of Relational Embodiment draws together phenomenological, feminist, and musicological perspectives to develop a theory of practice-based "relational embodiment" in new media, focusing on online communities devoted to the British women's prison series Bad Girls. Treadwell demonstrates how multisensory musical meaning figures into expressions of lesbian desire through fan-created music videos that promote productive, process-oriented virtual spaces. Her second project, Women, Music, and Performance in Sixteenth-Century Italy, is a collection of case studies examining women's performance and patronage particularly with respect to questions of gender and class.
Dr. Treadwell is the recipient of numerous awards including grants from the Australian Federation of University Women, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Newberry Library, and the American Musicological Society. She is an active member of the UCSC Visual and Performance Studies Research Cluster.

Selected Presentations

• # 2008 "Bad Girls, Embodiment, and Fan-Created Music Videos." Arts Research Institute, Fall Gathering, UCSC. September 24, 2008. [Invited]
• #
• # 2008 "Bad Girls / 'The Intertwining' / Music." Embodiment: Visualities and Performativities Seminar, Cowell College, UCSC. February 27, 2008. [Invited]
• # 2007 "'Now I come to you, ladies, after so much time': Cleopatra, Maria d'Aragona, and an intermedio for the Duchess of Alba." American Musicological Society, Quebec City. November 2, 2007.
• # 2007 "'It's not my fault I can't do it': Gender Bending and Homoeroticism in Early Eighteenth-century Comic Opera." UCSC April in Santa Cruz Symposium: New Directions in Contemporary Opera. Round Table Discussion. April 6, 2007. [Invited]
• # 2007 "Musical Bodies in Time and Space: Marshalling meraviglia in the Medici Theater in 1589." UCSC Visual and Performance Studies Research Cluster. Cowell College. Feb. 28, 2007. [Invited]
• # 2005 "Reading Between the Lines: Performance Practice and Musical Meaning in the Interludes for La pellegrina (1589)." Inaugural lecture for the UCSC Music Department's Graduate Colloquium Series. Oct. 24, 2005. [Invited]
• # 2005 "Music and Wonder at a Medici Wedding." Lecture and instrument demonstration. Oct. 19, 2005. Dante Alighieri Society, Santa Cruz. Vets Hall, Downtown Santa Cruz [Invited]
• # 2005 "Changing Time: Temporal Perceptions in Medicean Musical Theater." William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, as part of the session "Temporalities" in the program Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Cultural Expression directed by Susan McClary. May 20, 2005. [Invited]
• # 2004 "On Seeing and Hearing Music: Medicean Theater and the 'Mystery of State.'" American Musicological Society, Seattle, Washington. November 14, 2004.
• # 2004 "Subliminal meanings, altered states and the 'sight of sound.'" Distinguished Lecture Series, Department of Musicology, University of California, Los Angeles. March 4, 2004. [Invited]
• # 2003 "'Bodies that Matter': Performing Gender in the Intermedi for La pellegrina(1589)." Society for Renaissance Studies, University of Bristol, England. September 13, 2003.
• # 2003 "Music, Wonder, and the 'Mystery of State': Rethinking the Intermedi for La pellegrina "UCLA Humanities Consortium, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Series: "Nations and Identities: Knowledges and Technologies." May19, 2003.
• # 2003 "Staging a Medici Show." Southern California Early Music Society Speaker Series, Los Angeles, California. [Invited]
• # 2002 "Rethinking the Intermedi forLa pellegrina: Technologies of the Voice and the Aesthetic of Wonder." American Musicological Society, Columbus, Ohio. November 1, 2002.
• # 2002 "She descended on a cloud 'from the highest spheres': Florentine proto-monody 'alla Romanina.'"
• # --International Musicological Society, Leuven, Belgium (August 7, 2002)
• # --Society for Seventheeth-Century Music, Princeton University (April 6, 2002)
• # 2001 "'Welcome, great Master! to our favour'd Isle': Haydn's symphonies and their reception in London." California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. July 31. [Invited; presented as part of the July 2001 San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival]

Selected Publications

• Treadwell, Nina. Music and Wonder at the Medici Court: The 1589 Interludes for "La pellegrina" (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008). CD included.
• http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?isbn=978-0-253-35218-7
• Treadwell, Nina. "Music of the Gods: Solo Song and effetti meravigliosi in the Interludes for La pellegrina." Current Musicology 83 (Spring 2007): 33-84.
• “She descended on a cloud ‘from the highest spheres’: Florentine monody ‘alla Romanina.’” Cambridge Opera Journal 16/1 (2004): 1-22.
• “‘Simil combattimento fatto da Dame’: The musico-theatrical entertainments of Margherita Gonzaga’s balletto delle donne and the female warrior in Ferrarese cultural history.” In Gender, Sexuality and Early Music, ed. Todd M. Borgerding. New York and London: Routledge, 2002, 27-40.
• "Female Operatic Cross-Dressing: Bernardo Saddumene's Libretto for Leonardo Vinci's Li zite 'n galera (1722)." Cambridge Opera Journal 10/2 (1998): 131-156.
• "The Performance of Gender in Cavalieri/Guidiccioni's Ballo 'O che nuovo miracolo' (1589)." Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 1 (1997): 55-70.
• "Guitar Alfabeto in Italian Monody: The Publications of Alessandro Vincenti." Journal of the Lute Society 33 (1993): 12-22.
• "The Guitar Passacalles of Santiago de Murcia (ca. 1685-1740): An Alternative Stringing." Musicology Australia 15 (1992): 67-76.
• "On the Use of Fingernails when Playing the Baroque Guitar." Context: A Journal of Melbourne Music Postgraduates 2 (Summer, 1991): 16-19.
• "Santiago de Murcia: Prelude and Allegro in D minor." Australian Music Teacher 1/4 (1991): 236-242.

Selected Recordings

• Echoes. Voxfire, with Nina Treadwell (theorbo & baroque guitar) and variousartists. Voxfire, 2006.
• The Pellegrina Project. Nina Treadwell, director, chitarrone, baroque guitar. Compact disc recording that accompanies my book Music, Wonder, at the ‘Medici Court. Squires Music Productions, 2005.
• Our Bite is Better Than Our Bark [Rubedo Canis Musica Promotional Sampler, 1999], track 3: “The Leaves Be Green,” Nina Treadwell & James Tyler, lutes.
• "The Leaves Be Green": Elizabethan Music for Lutes & Mixed Consorts. Musica Viva, dir. James Tyler. Rubedo Canis Musica 19604, 1998.
• Roland de Lassus. La Cortesia. Ensemble de' Medici. Rubedo Canis Musica 19502, 1995.
• Heinrich Isaac. Natalis Domini. Ensemble de' Medici. Rubedo Canis Musica 19501, 1995.
• Girolamo Frescobaldi. Begli occhi io non provo. Ensemble de' Medici. Rubedo Canis Musica 94001-2, 1994.