The study and performance of early music (pre-1700) requires us to recreate and represent past musical practices through consulting a variety of sources available to us today. The theme of the conference seeks to encourage an interdisciplinary exploration of the ways in which we engage with these sources of and for early music and the degrees of mediation intrinsic to them. This symposium highlights perspectives from disciplines such as music theory and analysis, musicology, performance practice, the history of music theory, codicology, art history, and digital humanities that take into consideration the sources for music and music theory, broadly construed.
This virtual conference will consist of a lecture-performance, a keynote address, and six scholarly paper sessions, all held over Zoom. Registrants will receive links to each Zoom meeting 1 hour before the start of the session.
Many of the sessions include precirculated material, either short papers or recorded presentations. Please come to the session prepared to discuss the material with the speakers. Links to precirculated materials are being distributed by email several days in advance of the session. If you have registered for the conference and have not received an email with the material, please check your spam folder. If you still have not received it, contact Ryan Taycher at rtaycher@umass.edu.
This conference is co-sponsored by the Early Music Analysis Interest Group of the Society for Music Theory and the Graduate Council of the University of Chicago.
Conference Schedule
Note: All times listed below are CDT.
Friday, June 19
| 12-1 pm |
Lecture-Performance: "Rediscovering the Renaissance Violin" David Douglass, The Newberry Consort (Live Presentation) |
| 1-2 pm |
Session 1: Complex Counterpoint "Mean Counterpoint and Temperamental Choices in the Early Baroque” "Mensural Rhythm and Misaligned Lovers in Machaut's Motet 5" |
Tuesday, June 23
| 12-1 pm |
Session 2: On Kings and Queens "Performing the Harp of King David: “Call to Swarms: Charles Butler's Bee Song and Colonial Music Theory” |
| 1:15-2:30 pm |
Keynote Address: "Back to the Source" Rob C. Wegman, Princeton University (Live Presentation) |
Friday, June 26
| 12-1 pm |
Session 3:(Re)transmission “The Spanish Lux aeterna” “Re-Instrumentation in Komm, süßes Kreuz” |
| 1-2 pm |
Session 4: The Diatonic Accidental “Una nota super A: hodie mi, sed heri fa” “Gesualdo’s Transgressive Diatonicism” |
Tuesday, June 30
| 12-1 pm |
Session 5: Practical Theory, Theoretical Practice "Vitriacan Practice as Theory” "(Re-)Reading Music Theory for Guidance on Tempo in the Josquin Generation” |
| 1-2 pm |
Session 6: Theoretical Discourse in Early Modern England "Seventeenth-Century Music Theory and Margaret Cavendish's Discourse on Materialism, 1650–1670” “Complicating the Modal Paradigm with the Music of William Byrd” |