Musical Theory and Ear Training

Adalyat Issiyeva holds a Bachelor of Music from Almaty State Conservatoire and completed master’s and doctoral work at McGill University. Shifting from an ethnomusicological focus (“Philosophical and Religious Aspects of Uighur Muqam”) to western European early music, her master’s research, “Ostinato Motets by Josquin des Prez,” investigated number symbolism and compositional techniques in renaissance music. She completed her doctoral dissertation titled “Russian Orientalism: From Ethnography to Art-Song in Russian Nineteenth-Century Music” in 2014. Her studies were funded by scholarships from the Social Studies and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC), Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et Culture (FRQSC), and McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. She has published articles in several journals and collections of articles. Her book Representing Russia’s Orient, published by Oxford University Press, received a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title award for 2021. It explores political implications of nineteenth-century Russian art songs with oriental subjects, and was described by reviewer Richard Taruskin as a “critical evaluation of orientalist art songs by famous composers, and generous anthology of rare specimens,” addressing the subject “with unprecedented depth and acuity.” Her most recent research focuses on the state-regulated formation of musical identities for ethnic minorities under the Stalin regime.