Karen Desmond

Assistant Professor of Music

Departments/Programs

Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Music

Degrees

New York University, Ph.D.
New York University, M.A.
University College Cork, B.Mus.

Expertise

Medieval music and theory and its intellectual contexts; the writings and music of Jehan des Murs, Philippe de Vitry, Jacobus de Montibus and Guillaume de Machaut; manuscripts, paleography, notation, and digital editions; digital musicology; Schubert’s songs; popular music.

Profile

Karen Desmond (Ph.D. 2009, New York University) is an Assistant Professor of Music at Brandeis University, and Chair of the Graduate Program in Musicology. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Harvard University in 2018. Previously she held postdoctoral research positions at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University (2014-16), and the University of Cologne (2012-13), and taught at University College Cork, Ireland (Lecturer in Musicology, 2011-13). Her monograph Music and the moderni, 1300-1350: The ars nova in Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press, August 2018) challenges prevailing accounts of the ars nova. Awards include an NEH Research Fellowship, an SSHRC Banting Fellowship, and a Provost’s Innovation Grant from Brandeis University. She has begun work on her second monograph, tentatively titled Torso: Understanding the Polyphony of Late Medieval England from its Fragmentary Remains. Other completed projects include her translation of Lambert’s Ars musica, edited by Christian Meyer (Ashgate, 2015), The Montpellier Codex: The Final Fascicle, a collection of essays co-edited with Catherine Bradley (The Boydell Press, 2018), and a website of late medieval motets digitally encoded in mensural notation, available at http://www.measuringpolyphony.org.

Courses Taught

MUS	1a	Exploring Western Music
MUS	131a	History of Music I: Ancient through Early Baroque
MUS	135a	History of Music III: Romantic and 20th Century
MUS	184b	Proseminar in Medieval Music
MUS	202b	Seminar in Seeing Sound: The History and Practice of Notation to c. 1500
MUS	212a	Seminar: Analyzing Early Music (1300-1600)
MUS	224b	Seminar in Medieval Music

Scholarship

Desmond, Karen & Anna Zayaruznaya, ed. Early Music: Philippe de Vitry Special. Oxford University Press, 46 2018. (forthcoming)

Desmond, Karen, Matthieu Husson & C. Philipp E. Nothaft, ed. Erudition and the Republic of Letters: Jean des Murs Special Issue. Brill, 3 2018. (forthcoming)

Desmond, Karen. "'One is the loneliest number . . .’: The Semibreve Stands Alone." Early Music 46. (2018). (forthcoming)

Desmond, Karen. "Jean des Murs and the Three libelli on music in BnF lat. 7378A: A Preliminary Report." Erudition and the Republic of Letters 3. 2 (2018). (forthcoming)

Desmond, Karen. "Review of Music and Culture in the Middle Ages and Beyond: Liturgy, Sources, Symbolism edited by (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2016)." Music & Letters 2018 (forthcoming)

Bradley and Karen Desmond. "Introduction." The Montpellier Codex: The Final Fascicle. Contents, Contexts, Chronologies.. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018. 1-12.

Bradley, Catherine and Karen Desmond, ed. The Montpellier Codex:The Final Fascicle. Contents, Contexts, Chronologies.. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018.

Desmond, Karen. "Notations." A Companion to Medieval Motets. Ed. Jared Hartt. The Boydell Press, 2018

Desmond, Karen. "Texture, Rhythm, and Stylistic Groupings in Montpellier 8 Motets." The Montpellier Codex: The Final Fascicle. Contents, Contexts, Chronologies. Ed. Catherine A. Bradley and Karen Desmond. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018. 139-160.

Desmond, Karen. Measuring Polyphony: Digital Editions of Late Medieval Music. <http://www.measuringpolyphony.org>.

Desmond, Karen. Music and the moderni, 1300-1350: The ars nova in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Desmond, Karen. "Philippe de Vitry: Ars nova." Lexicon Musiktheorie. 2017.

Desmond, Karen. "Brittani in Ps.-Adalbolds Epistola cum tractatu de musica instrumentali humanaque ac mundana." ‚Nationes‘-Begriffe im mittelalterlichen Musikschrifttum Politische und regionale Gemeinschaftsnamen in musikbezogenen Quellen, 800-1400. Ed. Frank Hentschel. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016. 239-246.

Desmond, Karen. "Katzenmusik in der Kirche: Elias Salomo über den Verfall der geistlichen Musik." ‚Nationes‘-Begriffe im mittelalterlichen Musikschrifttum Politische und regionale Gemeinschaftsnamen in musikbezogenen Quellen, 800-1400. Ed. Frank Hentschel. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016. 197-203.

Desmond, Karen. "Regionalspezifische Aspekte von Rhythmus und Notation nach Anonymus IV: Angli." ‚Nationes‘-Begriffe im mittelalterlichen Musikschrifttum Politische und regionale Gemeinschaftsnamen in musikbezogenen Quellen, 800-1400. Ed. Frank Hentschel. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016. 117-136.

Desmond, Karen. "The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet by Anna Zayaruznaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)." Early Music vol. 44 2016: 333-334.

Desmond, Karen. "The shapes and seams of French motets, c.1315-60." Rev. of The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet, by Anna Zayaruznaya. Early Music vol. 44 2016: 333-334.

Desmond, Karen. "Zur „englischen“ Prägung des Tonale secundum usum ecclesiarum Anglie et Francie des Amerus/Alvredus." ‚Nationes‘-Begriffe im mittelalterlichen Musikschrifttum Politische und regionale Gemeinschaftsnamen in musikbezogenen Quellen, 800-1400. Ed. Frank Hentschel. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016. 77-88.

Desmond, Karen. "A Paradise of Priests: Singing the Civic and Episcopal Hagiography of Medieval Liège by Catherine Saucier (University of Rochester Press, 2014)." Early Music vol. 43 2015: 320-322.

Desmond, Karen. "Did Vitry Write an Ars vetus et nova?." Journal of Musicology 32. 4 (2015): 441-493.

Desmond, Karen. "The Art of Grafted Song: Citation and Allusion in the Age of Machaut by Yolanda Plumley (Oxford University Press, 2013)." Plainsong and Medieval Music vol. 24 2015: 99-103.

Meyer, Christian (ed.) and Karen Desmond (trans.). The Ars musica attributed to Magister Lambertus/Aristoteles. Trans. Karen Desmond. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.

Desmond, Karen. "The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Poetry by Jennifer Saltzstein (Boydell & Brewer, 2013)." Speculum vol. 89 2014: 824-6.

Desmond, Karen. "Refusal, the Look of Love, and The Beastly Woman of Machaut’s Balades 27 and 38." Early Music History 32. (2013): 71-118.

Desmond, Karen. "The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, 1260-1330 by Emma Dillon (Oxford University Press, 2012)." The Medieval Review 2013

Desmond, Karen. "Ars musica septentrionalis: De l’interprétation du patrimoine musical à l’historiographie, ed. Barbara Haggh and Frédéric Billiet (Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2011)." Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association vol. 68 2012: 811-814.

Desmond, Karen. "Florentius de Faxolis: Book on Music, ed. and trans. Bonnie J. Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens (Harvard University Press, 2011)." Early Music vol. 40 2012: 687-688.

Desmond, Karen. "Texts in Play: The Ars nova and its Hypertexts." Musica disciplina 57. (2012): 81-153.

Desmond, Karen. Omni desideranti notitiam: A Music Theory Text from the Fourteenth Century. <http://www.arsmusicae.org>.

Desmond, Karen. "Behind the Mirror: Revealing the Contexts of Jacobus's Speculum musicae." Diss. New York University

Desmond, Karen. "New Light on Jacobus, Author of Speculum musicae." Plainsong and Medieval Music 9. (2000): 19-40.

Desmond, Karen. "Sicut in grammatica: Analogical Discourse in Chapter 15 of Guido’s Micrologu." Journal of Musicology 16. (1998): 467-493.