Benita Natusch is a first-year PhD student in Historical Musicology. Benita grew up playing the piano and studying flute in the pre-college program at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany, before receiving a B.A. in Musicology, with a minor in Art History, from Humboldt University of Berlin. As an undergraduate, she studied at Columbia University for two semesters as a visiting student. Benita is particularly interested in 20th-century music and aesthetics. In her senior thesis, “The Sound of Silence: The Shaping of Silence in Space-Time Configurations in the Works of John Cage, Toru Takemitsu and Morton Feldman,” she examines the distinct ways in which these composers conceive of the relationship between silence and sound, space and time, and performer and listener. In doing so, she combines musical analysis with aesthetic, visual and intercultural perspectives. Her other interests include, broadly, the intersection of music, art history, and dance, which she pursued during a six-week DAAD-funded research stay at the German Historical Institute in Rome.
