Alexander Meszler

Events

  • Global Research Perspective and the Organ

    July 7, 2022 @ 10:00 am
    Kimberly Marshall and Alexander Meszler discuss their new resource, “The Online Encyclopedia of the Organ,” which brings together a team of editor-writers and international experts. The encyclopedia contains approximately 4000 articles with more than 750 graphics on topics related to the organ and its history, all cross-referenced. It is the first scholarly endeavor to include under-researched or misunderstood geographic areas such as South Africa, Korea, the Philippines, and Bolivia, as well as the work of women and people of color.  This presentation will demonstrate the online encyclopedia and discuss strategies for how users can best exploit its articles, which include historical overviews, specifications, organists, and composers for the instrument. The resource is envisioned as a vibrant ongoing process of interacting with scholars globally to update and broaden the Encyclopedia with new collections of themed articles. 

Alexander Meszler
About

Alexander Meszler is an organist committed to interdisciplinary performance and research. With Kimberly Marshall, he is a General Editor for a forthcoming Encyclopedia of the Organ which will consist of more than 4,000 articles and 750 graphics on topics related to the organ and its history: technical developments, organists, composers for the organ, and specifications of important instruments, all cross-referenced. It will be available online for free. In 2018, he received a Fulbright for study in Versailles, France where he worked with Jean-Baptiste Robin and researched secularism and the organ. In 2018, he was awarded a grant from the Ruth and Clarence Mader Memorial Scholarship Fund for his ongoing project, “The Organ and Secularized Churches: Church Brewpubs of the Rust Belt Region.” A summary of his research on secularism has been published online in Vox Humana. In 2020, his research on Andrea Antico’s Frottole of 1517 was awarded The Diapason’s inaugural “Gruenstein Award.” Meszler has appeared at conferences of the European Association for the Study of Religions, The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Historical Keyboard Society of North America, the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, and more.

Meszler is dedicated to the promotion and performance of new works and serves as a member of the American Guild of Organists’ Committee on New Music. He has premiered numerous new works for the organ. He also serves on the Board of Epsilon Spires in Brattleboro, Vermont, a center for illuminating relationships between creative arts, natural sciences, and sustainability.