Richard Freedman

Professor of Music

Freedman first came to Haverford in 1986, and since that time has been responsible for all of our courses in the History of Music and Ethnomusicology. Before 1986 he was lecturer in the College of General Studies and in the  Music Department at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned both M.A. and Ph.D in the History and Theory of Music. His undergraduate studies were completed at the  Faculty of Music of the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada.

Research Interests

Freedman's scholarly career has focussed on the music of Renaissance France and Italy--works by composers such as Josquin, Lassus, Marenzio, and Le Jeune, considered for what they reveal about changes in musical practice and the cultural contexts in which they were produced and heard. He has extensive experience with archival and early printed sources, and often travels to European libraries to continue his work. In 1992-1993 he was a Visiting Scholar at  Wolfson College, Oxford University, and has contributed papers to conferences in Belgium, England, France, and Germany. Freedman's essays have appeared in The Musical Quarterly, Journal of Musicology, Early Music History, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Notes, and Music and Letters.

He has also written articles for the revised edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music; essays for a facsimile series of Rennaissance music issued by the Centre de musique ancienne in Tours, France; and done editorial work for the Masters and Monuments of Renaissance Music series issued by the Broude Trust.

Freedman's most recent project has been a book-length study of the Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso. The Chansons of Orlando di Lasso and their Protestant Listeners: Music, Piety, and Print in Sixteenth-Century France was recently published by The University of Rochester Press/Boydell and Brewer as part of the Eastman Studies in Music series.

Complete list of publications

Courses

Freedman's teaching duties at Haverford cover a wide range of musical ideas and settings. Each year he offers an introductory course in the History of European Music (Music 111), and gives seminar-style classes for intermediate students in the problems of Early Music (Music 230) and the Music of the 18th and 19th Centuries (Music 231). In recent years his students have worked together on a new project that used a computer-driven compact disk player (in conjunction with Voyager's CDLink program) to compare rival performances and editions of Chopin's Mazurkas. Multimedia projects have also been undertaken for Renaissance Music and Jazz (see Multimedia Projects)
 

He has also taught Twentieth Century Music (Music 403), and contributes to the department's topics class, Words and Music (Music 250). Special topics considered by this course have included Wagner's Ring, the operas of Verdi and Wagner, and Renaissance Vocal music

Freedman's course on Jazz and the Politics of Culture (Music 227) considers the history of Jazz and allied forms in the cultural history of the Americas. Musical Voices of Asia (Music 228) is a comparative study of musical practises and social contexts in South Asia, Indonesia and East Asia. 

This page maintained by rfreedma@haverford.edu, Last updated 3/2001