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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

DIAMM
International Machaut Society
The Plainsong and Medieval Music Society

Medieval Studies blogs

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

Musicology blogs

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

Other academic blogs

medieval song and sundries
Renaissance art and music

Twitter

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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: distributed cognition

Leach en France, Leach en français

Texte et présentation Powerpoint sur le contrepoint chez Machaut. Continue reading Leach en France, Leach en français

Posted on November 25, 2014March 10, 2015Categories academic life, Guillaume de Machaut, medieval composers, medieval music theory, medieval singers, music analysis, Teaching materialsTags 14thC, CNSMD, Conservatoire National Supérieur Musique et Danse de Lyon, Contrepoint, distributed cognition, Guillaume de Machaut, Machaut, medieval, medieval song, Middle Ages, musicology, Pierre Hamon, songLeave a comment on Leach en France, Leach en français

Revisiting old work

Work on a chapter for an edited collection on jugement poetry involves some rehashing…and a brief rant about Sound Studies. Continue reading Revisiting old work

Posted on January 2, 2013February 4, 2013Categories academic lifeTags 14thC, advice literature, distributed cognition, ethics, ideology, intertextuality, medieval, medieval song, Middle Ages, mirror-for-princes, motet, musicology, polytextuality, songLeave a comment on Revisiting old work

Forging song in the medieval rehearsal room (contains links to full text)

Pythagoras in the forge — Pythagoras in the forge (left) from GKS 80 2º: Speculum humanae salvationis, 47 verso Speculum humanae salvationis [The Mirror of Human Salvation], Germany, 1400-1450

Paper on distributed cognition and medieval song is published in a volume edited by Mary Carruthers Continue reading Forging song in the medieval rehearsal room (contains links to full text)

Posted on May 23, 2010August 3, 2012Categories medieval composers, medieval singers, publicationsTags 14thC, balade, distributed cognition, polytextuality, Senleches3 Comments on Forging song in the medieval rehearsal room (contains links to full text)

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