Rate My Professor Robert Shay

Robert Shay serves as Professor of Musicology and Chair of the Musicology Department at the University of Colorado Boulder. From 2014 to 2020, he held the position of Dean of the College of Music at the same institution. Shay received his Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991, with a dissertation on "Henry Purcell and ‘Ancient’ Music in Restoration England," along with an M.A. from the same university in 1988. He also holds an M.M. in choral conducting from the New England Conservatory of Music (1985) and a B.M. in vocal performance from Wheaton College (1983). His earlier career includes serving as Professor and Director of the School of Music at the University of Missouri (2008–2014), Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Conservatory at Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts (2000–2008), faculty member at Lyon College where he directed the Concert Choir and taught music history (1991–2000), and Visiting Professor at Duke University (1999–2000).

Shay's scholarly work centers on the music of Henry Purcell and seventeenth-century England. Notable publications include the co-authored book Purcell Manuscripts: The Principal Musical Sources (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which earned the Music Library Association’s Vincent H. Duckles Award for the best book-length bibliography or research tool in music. His articles have appeared in leading journals such as Early Music, Music & Letters, Notes, and the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music. He has contributed chapters to Purcell Studies (Cambridge University Press) and King Arthur in Music (D.S. Brewer), and recently published a critical edition of Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas (Bärenreiter, 2023), with an edition of King Arthur in preparation. As a founding member of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, Shay has held roles including treasurer, nominating committee chair, program committee chair, and hosted the society's conference in Boulder in 2018. He has presented papers at meetings of the American Musicological Society and the Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, and given invited lectures at institutions including Brandeis University, Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Western Illinois University, and the Round Top Early Music Festival.