Richard Freedman

Biography

I first came to Haverford in 1986 from the University of Pennsylvania, where I earned both M.A. and Ph.D in the History and Theory of Music. My undergraduate studies were completed at the Faculty of Music of the University of Western Ontario, a leading Canadian music school. When not busy in the classroom or with research I enjoy giving public lectures on music, notably a series of pre-concert talks for the Philadelphia Orchestra and for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. I have also worked with One-Day-University (a traveling set of continuing education panels). More than Mozart, a set of 14 recorded talks for those curious to be better listeners, can be purchased through Recorded Books and Audible.com

Education

B.Mus., University of Western Ontario

M.A. and Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

Research

My scholarly work has focuses on the music of Renaissance France and Italy--works by composers such as Josquin des Prez, Orlando di Lasso and Luca Marenzio. I’m interested in the stories of stylistic and cultural change these works can tell. Much of my work involves primary sources and documents in one way or another, and I often travel to European libraries and archives. In 1992-1993 I was a Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford University. In 2001 I held a faculty fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

Other projects have been supported by the Mellon Foundation and (most recently), the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. My work has appeared in various forms: presentations at scholarly conferences in Belgium, England, France, and Germany. Papers have appeared in leading journals such as The Musical Quarterly, Journal of Musicology, Early Music History, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Notes, and Music and Letters. I’ve also written a long list of articles (all on Renaissance topics) for the second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music. My book on the French songs of Orlando di Lasso considers the publication history of those work in 16th-century Paris and Geneva, showing how Calvinist listeners adapted Lasso’s music for pious devotion: The Chansons of Orlando di Lasso and their Protestant Listeners: Music, Piety, and Print in Sixteenth-Century France (The University of Rochester Press/Boydell and Brewer, 2001).

I am currently at work on two large projects:

• A history of Renaissance music for a new series of textbooks to be issued in 2012 by W. W. Norton;
• A digital humanities project that will create a new electronic forum for collaboration among scholars, students, and performers. It centers on a dozen sets of music books originally printed by the Parisian press of Nicholas Du Chemin. The project began thanks to support from a Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.   Now it continues through at least the fall of 2013 through generous support from the American Council of Learned Societies (Digital Innovations Fellowship) and the Scholarly Editions initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  My partners in this work include the Centre d’Etudes Superieures de la Renaissance in Tours, France, the leading French institute for the study of Early Modern culture. See the links posted below.

My Links

• Music in the Renaissance: Digital Resources
  Companion Web Site for Music in the Renaissance (W.W. Norton)
• Music History at Haverford College
• Music 229: Thinking About Music
• Music 220: Saints and Sinners: Musical Europe before 1400
• Music 221: Music, Ritual, and Representation, 1400-1600
• Du Chemin Project Narrative
  (Scope, Aims, and Methods)
• Du Chemin Project
  The Project!
• NEH Office of Digital Humanities
• CESR, Tours France
• Folger Shakespeare Library
• Wolfson College, Oxford
• University of Western Ontario Faculty of Music
• University of Rochester Press
  (Link to book: The Chansons of Orlando di Lasso)
• Understanding Classical Music
  (From Recorded Books, Inc)
• Understanding Classical Music
  (From Audible.Com)

Courses: Fall 2012, Haverford

Courses: Spring 2013, Haverford