Musicology, medieval to modern

About me
I am both a music theorist and musicologist, with wide-ranging interests in everything from the minutiae of musical structures and manuscripts to the broadest cultural, historical, and philosophical contexts for music. My principal focus has been on music and poetry of the fourteenth century, although I have also written about songs from both earlier and later periods. My forthcoming interdisciplinary book titled, Guillaume de Machaut: Secretary, Poet, Musician, will be published by Cornell University Press in March 2011. I have published articles on the counterpoint of the French fourteenth-century composer Guillaume de Machaut in the Journal of Music Theory (2000), Music Analysis, (2000) and Plainsong and Medieval Music (2001). My interest in the musico-poetic aspects of Machaut’s songs resulted in articles on his Fortune balades (Early Music History, 2000), the opening five songs of the notated balade section (Journal of Musicology, 2002), and those on the themes of hope and merci (French Forum, 2003). My earlier book Sung Birds: Music, Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2007), deals with the ontology and ethics of musical sound through the lens of the earliest composed pieces that imitate birdsong. This book’s chapter on the problematic figure of…
Blog
- Blog caveat
  About my research blog This blog is designed to give easy access to abstracts and descriptions of my published and forthcoming work. It also include brief notices of ongoing research projects and reflections on academic life. I blog in a personal capacity. Copyright: all images have been downloaded from open access sources. Any copyright holders who believe their rights to be infringed are invited to contact me immediately!
Publications
Books Guillaume de Machaut: Secretary, Poet, Musician (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011). Sung Birds: Music, Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007). Citation in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture: Learning from the Learned. In Honour of Margaret Bent’s 65th Birthday. Co-edited with Suzannah Clark (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005). Machaut’s Music: New Interpretations. Edited (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003). Articles “Reading and Theorizing Medieval Music Theory: Interpretation and its Contexts” Music Theory Spectrum, 33/1 (2011): 90-98. doi: 10.1525/mts.2011.33.1.90 “Music and Verbal Meaning: Machaut’s Polytextual Songs” Speculum 85 (2010): 567-91. doi: 10.1017/S0038713410001302 “Guillaume de Machaut, Royal Almoner: Honte, paour (B25) and Donnez, signeurs (B26) in Context,” Early Music, 38 (2010): 21-42.doi: 10.1093/em/caq006 “Grammar in the Medieval Song-School,” New Medieval Literatures 11 (2009): 195-211. doi: 10.1484/J.NML.1.00590 “Machaut’s Peer, Thomas Paien,” Plainsong and Medieval Music 19 (2009): 1-22. doi:10.1017/S0961137109990027 “Gendering the Semitone, Sexing the Leading Tone: Fourteenth-Century Music Theory and the Directed Progression,” Music Theory Spectrum 28 (2006): 1-21. View abstract. [Winner of Outstanding Publication Award 2007 from the Society for Music Theory (US); Honorable Mention for the Pauline Alderman Award for outstanding research in Women and Music in the category Outstanding Scholarly Article, 2007]. doi: 10.1525/mts.2006.28.1.1 “‘The Little Pipe Sings Sweetly as the Fowler Deceives the Bird’: Sirens in the Middle Ages,” Music & Letters 87 (2006): 187-211.View abstract. [Winner of the Pauline Alderman Award for outstanding research in Women…
- Books
- Articles and book chapters
Undergraduate applications
St Hugh’s College Admissions Exeter College Admissions Faculty of Music Admissions University of Oxford Admissions Your application consists of the UCAS form, your submitted work, a short performance on your chosen instrument, and an interview at your chosen college. (You will also have at least one other college interview at a college your did not choose). This page tells you what to expect in the St Hugh’s and Exeter interview. NB: This only applies to St Hugh’s and Exeter Colleges. Oxford is a collegiate university, so admission is to a College in the first instance. Interviews and decision-making processes vary from college to college. What to expect If you apply to St Hugh’s or Exeter Colleges to read for a BA in Music, you will be interviewed by me (Dr Leach) and one other person, usually the College Lecturer. We will give you two tasks. Prose summary and commentary Music analysis 1. We will ask you to arrive 30 mins before your interview time to read a prose text–usually a short article by a musicologist. In the interview we will ask you to summarize the text and will then ask you one question about the way in which it presents…
Graduate study and postdoc mentoring
Teaching resources

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Earlier blogposts

Medieval Studies blogs

medieval song and sundries
Medieval Motet (Catherine A. Bradley)
Manuscript Egerton 1500 (Catherine Léglu)
Multimodal Machaut (Kate Maxwell)
Jason Stoessel
Musicology in the Making (Henry Hope)
Trecento (Michael Scott Cuthbert)
ars musicae

Musicology blogs

Early Modern English Music (Katherine Butler)
Early Music
Trecento (Michael Scott Cuthbert)
medieval song and sundries
Musicology in the Making (Henry Hope)
Jason Stoessel
Note Against Note (Melanie Marshall)
Medieval Motet (Catherine A. Bradley)
Luís C. F. Henriques
ars musicae

Other academic blogs

Renaissance art and music
medieval song and sundries

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Contact details

Prof. Elizabeth Eva Leach
Faculty of Music
St Aldate's
Oxford OX1 1DB
Great Britain
Email: Elizabeth Eva Leach

College Appointments

Tutorial Fellow in Music
St Hugh’s College, Oxford

Stipendiary Lecturer in Music
Exeter College, Oxford

Most viewed

Category: medieval French literature

My review of the proceedings of a conference on Le Tournoi de Chauvency in the Douce 308 MS in the Bodleian Library, Oxford was just published in French Studies. Continue reading The Tournament at Chauvency