Ben Arnold

Acting Director, School of Music

Ph.D. University of Kentucky, 1986; M.M. University of Kentucky, 1981; B.M. University of Kentucky, 1977

Research Areas: Franz Liszt, Music of War, Holocaust, and 9/11

Ben Arnold has written extensively on music in response to war and the composer Franz Liszt. In addition to writing for and editing The Liszt Companion (Greenwood Press), he has contributed to A Guide to Liszt Research, New Perspectives on Liszt and His Music, Liszt and His World, Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe: The Bellagio Conference Proceedings, Liszt the Progressive, Liszt Saeculum, and Liszt: A Chorus of Voices. In 2022, he was named editor of the Journal of the American Liszt Society. 

He is also the author of Music and War and published articles or chapters in The Oxford Companion to American Military History, The Musical Quarterly, The Journal of Musicological Review, The Music Review, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Music and War in the United States, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and the Handbook of the Literature and Research of World War Two. 

Arnold has presented papers at conferences around the world. He was a lecturer for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra pre-concert series, the Emory Chamber Music Society, and the Highlands Chamber Music Festival. As a pianist, Arnold performs with his wife, soprano Elizabeth Packard Arnold. Performances include an all-Liszt recital in Weimar, Germany, as part of the International Franz Liszt Congress’s 200th-anniversary celebration of his birth and presentations at several American Liszt Society’s festivals. 

Arnold served as the Acting Chair of the University of Kentucky Department of Theatre and Dance (2022-2023) and was Director of the UK School of Music from 2003 to 2012. He participated as an evaluator for the National Association of Schools of Music for many years and previously taught at Emory University, serving two terms as Chair of the Music Department and Director of Graduate Studies in Music.