Professor of Music W. Anthony Sheppard was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship on April 14, recognizing his distinguished efforts in music research. The fellowship will fund his writing of two books: Opera Since Einstein: Essays in Contemporary Opera and The Performer’s Voice: Timbre and Expression in Twentieth-Century Vocal Music.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was created by Simon and Olga Guggenheim in 1925 in honor of their late son. The foundation awards an annual fellowship to support individuals and their independent work, aiming to provide conditions which provide them the most possible freedom to pursue their goals.
Sheppard was surprised when he learned he was selected for the award, as the low acceptance rate almost discouraged him from even applying. “I thought, ‘This is a waste of time. I’m not going to get it,’ and the only reason I applied is because I thought, ‘Six months from now, I’ll be angry that I didn’t at least try,’” he said.
Sheppard is among 223 recipients who make up the Fellowship’s 101st class. They were selected from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants. According to the foundation’s announcement, it awarded grants to individuals working in 55 disciplines this year. Sheppard was the only recipient to be awarded funding specifically for music research.
Sheppard received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Amherst College, and his Master of Fine Arts and doctorate from Princeton University, studying opera, vocal timbre, and 20th and 21st century music, among others. He has been a professor at the College since 1996. Sheppard had planned to take a sabbatical during the fall 2026 semester. After receiving the fellowship, however, he has decided to take the full 2026-27 academic year to devote himself to research and writing.
In his application for the Fellowship, Sheppard submitted a proposal for The Performer’s Voice, which studies the quality and texture of singers’ voices across genres in the 20th century. “A lot of the focus is on how in the mid-20th century, in popular music and in unpopular music, art music, experimental music, performers were pushing their voices in various ways, getting new sounds with their voices, using sounds that people hadn’t used much in vocal music,” Sheppard said.
He added that existing scholarship does not typically combine the study of both popular and experimental music.
In his other book, Opera Since Einstein: Essays in Contemporary Opera, Sheppard identified what he sees as the hallmarks of contemporary opera, which experienced a boom in the late 20th century.
Sheppard stressed that his research is deeply connected with his teaching, and that they often influence one another. “Often, the courses are much broader, so they’re getting me to think about things and to have a broader context for the actual research project I’m doing,” he said.
Conversely, researching puts him back into the mindset of a student. He said that what he wants his own students to get out of his courses is parallel to what he hopes to gain from his own research: an understanding of how and why certain aspects of music are impactful, an interest in its social and historical contexts, and a desire to listen to more.
This award adds to Sheppard’s long list of accolades, including the Kurt Weill Prize for his first book Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater, as well as a 2020 American Musicological Society Music in American Culture Award for his book Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination.
Sheppard reflected that, while winning the Guggenheim Fellowship gave him some renewed confidence in his research efforts, he still recognizes the challenge of his research goals. “Of course, I’m excited and very happy, but I also feel like, ‘Oh, now I’ve got something else to live up to,’” he said.
