Faculty Member, Music
Thesis Title: Behind the mirror: Revealing the contexts of Jacobus's Speculum musicae
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Edward Roesner
Stanley Boorman Gabriela Currie |
About
Karen's research focuses on the intersection between medieval music and the history of ideas. She explores how music theorists and composers were influenced by developments in other medieval disciplines, such as the grammatical arts (grammar, rhetoric), science, philosophy and theology. She completed her Ph.D. in musicology at New York University (May 2009; advisor, Edward Roesner). Karen's dissertation, entitled 'Behind the Mirror: Revealing the Contexts of Jacobus's Speculum musicae', addresses how and why concepts, controversies or advancements in other fields of intellectual inquiry, such as metaphysics, theology, mathematics and natural philosophy, influenced writings about music in the later Middle Ages. Her published articles (in the Journal of Musicology and the Journal of Plainsong and Medieval Music) include an analysis of the grammatical and rhetorical analogies present in Guido of Arezzo's Micrologus as they relate to performance practice, and a presentation of new biographical evidence she discovered about the activities of Jacobus in Liége. She is currently finishing up two articles on Speculum musicae, and beginning research for a larger-scale project that examines the concepts of newness, innovation and modernity in fourteenth-century music, theory and science. Her other interests include the digital humanities; music and ritual in medieval Dublin; medieval Marian liturgies; and analysis of musical expression in Schubert's songs.
