Karen Desmond
Degrees
New York University, Ph.D.New York University, M.A.
University College Cork, B.Mus.
Expertise
Music in the history of ideas, medieval music and theory and its intellectual contexts, music in England and France in the late Middle Ages, the scientific writings and music theory of Jean des Murs, Jacobus and his Mirror of Music, Philippe de Vitry, Guillaume de Machaut, motets, liturgical polyphony, manuscripts, palaeography, codicology, notation, digital editions, digital musicology, digital humanities.Profile
Karen Desmond is an Associate Professor of Music (tenured) and Chair of the Department at Brandeis University. She works on the manuscripts and notation of French and English polyphony in the later Middle Ages. Her books and other publications center on the aesthetic and theoretical systems that underpinned medieval music composition, and investigate change and creativity in the arts.Desmond welcomes applications from prospective PhD students interested in working on any aspect of medieval music, music notation, or digital musicology.
Desmond has written quite a bit on the expansion of music notation systems during a period known as the “ars nova.” The music notation developed by ars nova theorists in the first half of the fourteenth century ushered in possibly the most significant change in the way in which musicians and composers in western Europe thought of musical composition, that is, as an act facilitated by the visual forms of music notation. Her work on the ars nova fills in serious gaps in the field’s understanding of the main ars nova protagonists, and identifies and explains what was at stake.
Desmond's monograph, Music and the Moderni, 1300-1350: The Ars nova in Theory and Practice, won the 2019 Lewis Lockwood Award from the American Musicological Society, and was a finalist for the 2019 Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory. This book's research and writing was supported by an NEH Research Fellowship (2014), an SSHRC Banting Fellowship (2014-16). Other book projects include her translation of Lambert’s Ars musica, edited by Christian Meyer (Ashgate, 2015) and The Montpellier Codex: The Final Fascicle, a collection of essays co-edited with Catherine Bradley (The Boydell Press, 2018). Desmond was co-editor for two recent special issue journals: one on the fourteenth-century composer, Philippe de Vitry (in Early Music), and one on the fourteenth-century astronomer and music theorist, Jean des Murs (in Erudition and the Republic of Letters).
Her current research centers on the liturgical polyphony of late medieval England, and the Worcester Fragments more specifically. I'm interested in the cycles of creativity, efflorescence, obsolescence, destruction, reuse, rediscovery and reconstruction that defined the performance and composition of English music during the Middle Ages, and its transmission and study since. Her most recent publication in the Journal of the American Musicological Society ("W. de Wicumbe’s Rolls and Singing the Alleluya ca. 1250"), through an investigation of mid-thirteenth-century roll fragments, examines the connections and crossover between the plainchant Alleluya prosula, insular liturgical polyphony, and the motet.
Desmond is also a digital musicologist: her music encoding project "Measuring Polyphony" was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant for the development of an online mensural music editor (2019-20). The "MP Editor" allows users to transcribe compositions in a style of medieval notation—called “mensural notation”—directly from digital images of the original manuscripts (available at https://editor.measuringpolyphony.org). Capitalizing on the availability of high-quality images via IIIF, these computer encodings follow the community-based standards of the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI), and are linked directly to “zones” within the manuscripts, which allows for the simultaneous viewing of the image and its encoding in a web browser.
Desmond has a wide range of teaching and research experience at several different international institutions including the University of Cambridge (Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall and Visiting Scholar, Faculty of Music, Spring 2019), Harvard University (Visiting Assistant Professor, Spring 2018), McGill University (Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, 2014-2016), the University of Cologne (a postdoctoral researcher (2012-2013) on a DFG-funded project led by Prof. Dr. Frank Hentschel at the Institut für Musikwissenschaft), and University College Cork (Lecturer in Musicology, 2011-13). Her Ph.D. in musicology is from New York University (2009), and was supervised by Edward H. Roesner. At present, she's chair of the American Musicological Society’s Board Committee on Technology (2019-2022), and sits on the Council of the American Musicological Society. Desmond also sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Musicology and Plainsong and Medieval Music.
Courses Taught
| MUS | 1a | Exploring Western Music |
| MUS | 131a | History of Music I: Ancient through Early Baroque |
| MUS | 180b | Proseminar in Digital Musicology |
| MUS | 182a | Introduction to Musicology |
| 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 |
Awards and Honors
2019 Lewis Lockwood Award for outstanding work of musicological scholarship (early stages), from the American Musicological Society (2019)
Scholarship
Desmond, Karen. "Medieval Music Scrolls, Scribes, and Performance: The Extant Scrolls of Thirteenth-Century English Polyphony." Manuscript Cultures (2020). (forthcoming)
Desmond, Karen (PI). "Measuring Polyphony: An Online Music Editor for Late Medieval Polyphony." 2021 <https://editor.meausuringpolyphony.org>.
Desmond, Karen (PI). Measuring Polyphony: Digital Encodings of Late Medieval Music. <https://www.measuringpolyphony.org>.
Desmond, Karen. "Traces of Revision in Machaut's Motet Bone Pastor." Poetry, Music, and Art in Guillaume de Machaut’s Earliest Manuscript (BnF fr. 1586). Ed. Lawrence Earp & Jared Hartt. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. 397-432.
Desmond, Karen, and Emily Hopkins, Sam Howes, Julie E. Cumming. "Computer-Assisted Analysis of Sonority in Fourteenth-Century Motets." Music Theory Online 26. 4 (2020).
Desmond, Karen. "Review of." Rev. of Guillaume de Machaut: The Complete Poetry and Music: Volume 9: The Motets, by Jacques Boogaart, ed. and Barton Palmer, trans.. Revue de musicologie vol. 106 2020: 280-4.
Desmond, Karen. "Review." Rev. of Thesaurus musicarum latinarum (TML, http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/), a project of the Center for Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature, Journal of the American Musicological Society vol. 72/3 2019: 887-902.
Desmond, Karen. "W. de Wicumbe’s Scrolls and Singing the Alleluya c. 1250." Journal of the American Musicological Society 73. 3 (2020): 639-709.
C. Philipp E. Nothaft, Karen Desmond & Matthieu Husson, ed. Erudition and the Republic of Letters: Jean des Murs's Quadrival Pursuits (Special Issue). Brill, 2019.
C. Philipp E. Nothaft, Karen Desmond & Matthieu Husson. "Introduction: Jean des Murs's Quadrival Pursuits." Erudition and the Republic of Letters 4. (2019): 1-12.
Desmond, Karen. "Jean des Murs and the Three libelli on Music in BnF lat. 7378A: A Preliminary Report." Erudition and the Republic of Letters 4. 1 (2019): 40-63.
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 & Anna Zayaruznaya, ed. Early Music: Philippe de Vitry and the Ars nova (Special Issue). Oxford University Press, 46 2018.
Desmond, Karen & Anna Zayaruznaya. "Editorial: Philippe de Vitry and the Ars nova." Early Music 46 (2018): 373.
Desmond, Karen. "'One is the loneliest number . . .’: The Semibreve Stands Alone." Early Music 46. (2018): 403-416.
Desmond, Karen. "Notations." A Companion to Medieval Motets. Ed. Jared Hartt. Farnham: The Boydell Press, 2018. 103-130.
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 vol. 99 2018: 278-281.
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. 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.