Paul Berry
The foundation of academic teaching among aspiring professional musicians is a shared love for the experience of listening and a common commitment to the craft of music-making. Every course I teach aims to help students find ways to place the notes they hear, play, sing, or write into contexts in which those notes become meaningful, relevant, revelatory—in which music becomes both the topic of discussion and the means by which all of us can learn from one another.
Paul Berry
A historian of chamber music and song in 19th century Germany and Austria, Dr. Paul Berry received his bachelor’s degree and doctorate from Yale University. His first book, Brahms Among Friends: Listening, Performance, and the Rhetoric of Allusion, was published in 2014 by Oxford University Press; his essays and reviews have appeared in books and scholarly journals in the United States and the United Kingdom. Berry is an active tenor specializing in early music, German lieder, and 20th-century compositions. From 2007 until 2010, he served on the faculty of the University of North Texas College of Music.
At Yale, Berry teaches a wide array of courses, including “Difference In and Around the Classical Canon,” “Text, Form, and Narrative in Program Music,” and a historical survey of common-practice repertoire. He is also the School's Interim Deputy Dean, oversees the first semester of the DMA Seminar, and serves as Coordinator for Academic Studies. Over the summer, Berry gives weekly pre-concert lectures at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music, offering historical context to concertgoers.
