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Elizabeth Eva Leach

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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Categories

academic life (19)
blog reports (4)
blog-only publications (3)
conference reports (4)
digital humanities (24)
Douce 308 project (9)
Elizabethan England (1)
gender (3)
Guillaume de Machaut (21)
medieval composers (42)
medieval French literature (17)
medieval motets (1)
medieval music theory (2)
medieval singers (19)
music analysis (2)
public talks (1)
publications (37)
speculative musicology (4)
Teaching materials (8)
Uncategorized (1)

Recent Posts

Review of edition of medieval motets in a songbook
A medieval music blog recommendation
Resonance in Richard de Fournival

Earlier blogposts

Earlier blogposts

Links

International Machaut Society
DIAMM
The Plainsong and Medieval Music Society

Medieval Studies blogs

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

Musicology blogs

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

Other academic blogs

medieval song and sundries
Renaissance art and music

Twitter

RT @BBCOxford: Police are pursuing a renegade emu which is causing disruption on roads in south Oxfordshire. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan… 2 days ago
RT @TPpodcast_: NEW EPISODE! David talks to Martin Rees about how we should evaluate the greatest threats facing the human species in the t… 6 days ago
RT @Huddlington: Funded PhD studentships @Hudds_Uni_Music in contemporary music studies, musicology, musical multimedia, creative coding, m… 6 days ago

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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

Tag: bestiaries

At the Medieval Academy of America Annual Conference 2015

I was honoured to be invited to give the opening Plenary lecture at the MAA annual meeting, this year held at the University of Notre Dame in the US. Continue reading At the Medieval Academy of America Annual Conference 2015

Posted on March 14, 2015May 26, 2015Categories academic life, conference reports, medieval composers, medieval French literature, medieval singersTags 13thC, bestiaries, digital images, intertextuality, manuscripts, medieval, medieval song, Middle Ages, musicology, Peter Konieczny, Richard de Fournival, University of Notre DameLeave a comment on At the Medieval Academy of America Annual Conference 2015

Richard de Fournival’s Bestiary of Love

Links to some of the manuscript sources for Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amours. Continue reading Richard de Fournival’s Bestiary of Love

Posted on September 12, 2013August 15, 2018Categories digital humanities, medieval composers, Teaching materialsTags 13thC, bestiaries, digital images, facsimiles, gender, medieval, medieval song, Middle Ages4 Comments on Richard de Fournival’s Bestiary of Love

Refrains in odd places

The Bestiaire d’amours citing a motet. Continue reading Refrains in odd places

Posted on June 3, 2013July 31, 2013Categories medieval composers, medieval French literatureTags 13thC, bestiaries, manuscripts, medieval, medieval song, Middle Ages, motet1 Comment on Refrains in odd places

The vows of the peacock

Privat vs. Margue on the significance of the peacock in a 14thC poem. Continue reading The vows of the peacock

Posted on March 1, 2013June 20, 2016Categories medieval French literature, publicationsTags 14thC, Alexander the Great, bestiaries, book review, intertextuality, medieval, Middle Ages, peacock2 Comments on The vows of the peacock

The Sound of Beauty: Darwin Lecture 2011

Dealing with the dangers of music in the Middle Ages. Continue reading The Sound of Beauty: Darwin Lecture 2011

Posted on February 27, 2011September 6, 2012Categories Guillaume de Machaut, medieval composers, medieval singersTags ars subtilior, balade, bestiaries, ethics, gender, Machaut, medieval, Middle Ages, sirens, songLeave a comment on The Sound of Beauty: Darwin Lecture 2011

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