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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
The Plainsong and Medieval Music Society
DIAMM

Medieval Studies blogs

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

Musicology blogs

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

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: rondeau

The dart of love: an analysis of Machaut’s rondeau no.5

I was discussing this piece with some of my students last term and made a mental note to blog an analysis of it. Continue reading The dart of love: an analysis of Machaut’s rondeau no.5

Posted on June 12, 2012July 5, 2012Categories Guillaume de Machaut, music analysisTags 14thC, courtly love, rondeau6 Comments on The dart of love: an analysis of Machaut’s rondeau no.5

Music in the fourteenth century: a short general overview (contains link to full text)

My chapter on the fourteenth century from the Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music, edited by Mark Everist has now been published by Cambridge University Press. Continue reading Music in the fourteenth century: a short general overview (contains link to full text)

Posted on May 14, 2011July 3, 2011Categories medieval composers, medieval singers, publicationsTags 14thC, ars subtilior, balade, medieval, Middle Ages, research, rondeau, song, virelai1 Comment on Music in the fourteenth century: a short general overview (contains link to full text)

The Medieval Song Network (includes text of my 2005 ‘Learning French by Singing’ article)

New website launched to bring together scholars working on medieval song from various disciplinary perspectives Continue reading The Medieval Song Network (includes text of my 2005 ‘Learning French by Singing’ article)

Posted on March 17, 2011June 12, 2011Categories digital humanities, publicationsTags 14thC, 15thC, Anglo-French, medieval, rondeau, songLeave a comment on The Medieval Song Network (includes text of my 2005 ‘Learning French by Singing’ article)

The composer P. des Molins

Updated version of the English draft for my 2005 MGG entry on P. des Molins. Continue reading The composer P. des Molins

Posted on January 3, 2011July 29, 2011Categories medieval composers, publicationsTags 14thC, balade, P. des Molins, rondeau, songLeave a comment on The composer P. des Molins

The composer Grimace

Updated English version of 2002 dictionary entry on Grimace. Continue reading The composer Grimace

Posted on December 29, 2010July 29, 2011Categories medieval composers, publicationsTags 14thC, balade, Grimace, polytextuality, rondeau, virelaiLeave a comment on The composer Grimace

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