Donna Mayer-Martin
Meadows School of the Arts 2009
Dr. Donna Mayer-Martin, Associate Professor of Music History, received her B.M. in Piano from Saint Mary College, Kansas and M.M. and Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Dr. Mayer-Martin taught at Wake Forest University before joining Meadows School of the Arts in 1982. She started as an assistant professor, soon became an associate professor in the Division of Music and for two terms she served as chair of the Music History department. Professor Mayer-Martin joined the Medieval Studies faculty at SMU as part of an interdisciplinary team-teaching experiment in such courses as Medieval Ideas of the Feminine and The Medieval Pilgrimage. As SMU's professor-in-residence for the SMU-in-Paris program, she regularly taught music history courses on-site in Paris for music students and served as coordinator with the Paris Conservatoire. The courses she created at SMU -- Like A Virgin: From Hildegard to Madonna and The Owl and the Nightingale -- were extraordinarily original and intellectually and musically vivid. She served on many faculty and decanal councils both in the Meadows School of the Arts and in other areas of the University. Although she was the music editor of the new Encyclopedia of Medieval Germany, has published essays and given many lectures for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the long-awaited, yet to be published Thematic Catalogue of Troubadour and Trouvère Melodies, will be her true legacy. Above all, however, Professor Mayer-Martin was a dedicated teacher and a keen learner; her students agree that she poured her energies and passion into her teaching.
Dr. Donna Mayer-Martin, Associate Professor of Music History, received her B.M. in Piano from Saint Mary College, Kansas and M.M. and Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Dr. Mayer-Martin taught at Wake Forest University before joining Meadows School of the Arts in 1982. She started as an assistant professor, soon became an associate professor in the Division of Music and for two terms she served as chair of the Music History department. Professor Mayer-Martin joined the Medieval Studies faculty at SMU as part of an interdisciplinary team-teaching experiment in such courses as Medieval Ideas of the Feminine and The Medieval Pilgrimage. As SMU's professor-in-residence for the SMU-in-Paris program, she regularly taught music history courses on-site in Paris for music students and served as coordinator with the Paris Conservatoire. The courses she created at SMU -- Like A Virgin: From Hildegard to Madonna and The Owl and the Nightingale -- were extraordinarily original and intellectually and musically vivid. She served on many faculty and decanal councils both in the Meadows School of the Arts and in other areas of the University. Although she was the music editor of the new Encyclopedia of Medieval Germany, has published essays and given many lectures for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the long-awaited, yet to be published Thematic Catalogue of Troubadour and Trouvère Melodies, will be her true legacy. Above all, however, Professor Mayer-Martin was a dedicated teacher and a keen learner; her students agree that she poured her energies and passion into her teaching.