Conference Agenda

Organized by the AMS Skills and Resources for Early Musics Study Group.

The continued study of historical notations of music affords scholars and students of the academic study of music insights into pre-modern conceptions of sound, memory, writing, transmission, and performance. Despite the decline in recent decades of the number of undergraduate and graduate courses dedicated to histories of notation, interest in these skills remains strong, as evidenced in the success of opportunities created to fill the need their absence in the curriculum has left. Skills-based bootcamps and crash courses for performing with original notation, source-based research seminars and digital humanities projects, and study groups dedicated to learning and studying notation and paleography of early musics draw in both novices and advanced specialists to engage with practices of reading, performing, and analyzing past concepts of recording and visualizing pitch, rhythm, melody, and more. This panel will feature lightning talks from scholars whose research, teaching, and performance has focused on historical notations and their sources of vocal and instrumental music. Each panelist has developed ways to highlight for students, colleagues, and the wider community the far-reaching value of a deep knowledge in these notations, their related monophonic and polyphonic repertories, and the fascinating intersections of musical and visual culture.