Professor of Music, Director of the Center for the Humanities
The doctoral work in historical musicology was completed by Diane Touliatos at The Ohio State University's School of Music under the supervision of her dissertation advisors, Richard Hoppin and Milos Velimirovic.
As a faculty member in the Department of Music at UM-St. Louis since 1979 and as a Research Fellow at the Center for International Studies at UM-St. Louis since 1982, Diane Touliatos has focused her research efforts in Eastern Medieval Chant, Ancient Greek Music, and Women Composers. In the area of musicology, she has achieved a world-wide reputation as an internationally published scholar. More specifically in the area of Medieval Byzantine Musicology and Women Composers, she has become a leading world-wide expert and consequently an invited speaker at conferences and university seminars all over Western Europe, Greece, Poland, Russia, and the former Yugoslavia.
As of January, 1997 Diane Touliatos was elected by the Humanities Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Missouri at St. Louis as Director of the Center for the Humanities. This is the only Center for the Humanities in the entire University of Missouri system and in the state of Missouri.
Touliatos already has two books in international presses: The Byzantine Amomos Chant of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries and Catalogue of the Byzantine Musical Manuscripts in the Vatican, the latter being the first and only detailed catalogue in the history of the Vatican Archives of the 96 Medieval Byzantine musical manuscripts. She has also published over 50 full-length articles in scholarly refereed journals on various aspects of Ancient Greek, Eastern Medieval Chant, and women composers. Her research in this area has been varied and exemplifies the following research topics: 1) Medieval Byzantine sacred chants and their historical place in the different liturgical rites; 2) comparisons to Medieval Western chants; 3) Medieval Byzantine secular chants; 4) Medieval Western, Byzantine and Ancient Greek women composers (discovering the earliest preserved music by a woman composer); 5) catalogues of Byzantine musical manuscripts; and 6) serial bibliographies on Eastern musical research.
She is also currently working on the following books: The Musical Treatise of Ioannes Plousiadenos: Translation, Annotations and Commentary will reveal the cryptic system of modulation within the Medieval notation of the Byzantine eight modal system and the use of proto-polyphony in the performance practice of Byzantine music; The Catalogue of the Musical Manuscripts of the Athens National Library will be the only complete catalogue including all acquisitions---296 Eastern and Western musical manuscripts; The Muses: Greek Women in Music in Antiquity and Byzantium will cover the role and musical contributions of women from Hellenistic Alexandria through the post-Byzantine era; The History of Byzantine Music is a textbook based on Touliatos' research and lectures in teaching this course and includes pioneering research and changes in the discipline since the Wellesz book was last published in 1961.
Touliatos' research has been supported by various grants including the Fulbright Research Grant, several National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council for Learned Societies, three Weldon Springs Grants (UM-St. Louis), and a University of Missouri system-wide Research Board Grant for the discovery and publication of the complete music (over fifty pieces) by Kassia, the earliest known woman for whom there is preserved music.
As a research scholar and teacher, Touliatos attracts students from all over the world who come to the UM-SL campus specifically to study with her in the area of Greek/Byzantine music. She has also participated as an outside thesis/dissertation advisor at the Conservatory of the University of Cinncinnati, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the Macedonian University of Thessaloniki, Greece. In the Department of Music, Touliatos teaches every area of Western music history and has developed many new courses in the music history curriculum. She was awarded the 1990-91 Distinguished Teaching Award for the Pierre Laclede Honors College of UM-St. Louis for the seminar "Evolution of Western Musical Styles."
Although not directly related to music, Touliatos spearheaded the fundraising drive for an endowed Professorship in Modern Greek Language, Literature, and Culture for the UM-SL campus. She worked very diligently in this effort by single-handedly arranging for a benefit concert which reaped $8000 and ultimately secured a grant in the amount of $150,000 from the Greek Government which helped bring this campaign of $1,500,000 to fruition in January of 1995. This effort was the first endowed professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and it led to a host of other endowed professorships which followed in the college.
Among her most recent recognitions of scholarship are her invitations abroad. In August of 1996 she was invited to present a paper at an International Conference on Ancient Greek Music held at Delphi, Greece by the European Cultural Centre of Delphi upon the discovery and reconstruction of the ancient Hydraulicon water organ. She also presented the only major paper on music to be published at the XIXth International Congress of Byzantine Studies held in Copenhagen, Denmark in August, 1996. In December of 1996 Touliatos was invited by the Fondation Royaumont to present a paper at the Centre Europeen pour la Recherche et l'Interpretation des Musiques Medievales in Paris, France. Touliatos is the only North American 1998-99 recipient of the Alexander S. Onassis Senior Scholar Research Grant. In May of 1999, she presented invited music seminars at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki and the Macedonian University. In December of 1999, she was the only musicologist invited by the Greek Government to speak at the World Congress for Greeks Abroad.
On November 17, 2001, Dr. Touliatos received the national Hellenic Spirit Award, a coveted award for outstanding Greek-Americans. Past recipients include George Stephanopoulos, Senator Olympia Snowe, and Michael Dukakis. Touliatos was recognized for her pioneering research in Medieval Eastern Chant and women composers. Archbishop Demetrios from New York and Bishop Iakovos from Chicago were present for the event.
Email: touliatosd@umsl.edu
Office: 314-516-5904
Professor of Music, Director of the Center for the Humanities
The doctoral work in historical musicology was completed by Diane Touliatos at The Ohio State University's School of Music under the supervision of her dissertation advisors, Richard Hoppin and Milos Velimirovic.