Karen Desmond

I specialize in 13th- and 14th-century music. I'm interested in the aesthetics, theories, and technologies, including developments in music notation, that underpinned medieval music-making. I'm currently the Principal Investigator for a five-year 2-million-euro ERC Consolidator grant project titled BROKENSONG (2023-8) that examines polyphonic singing and written culture in late medieval Britain and Ireland. I've published on this area in my Journal of the American Musicological Society article (‘W. de Wicumbe’s Rolls and Singing the Alleluya ca. 1250’), which reveals the connections and crossovers between the plainchant Alleluya prosula, insular liturgical polyphony, and the motet.

I've also worked extensively on the expansion of fourteenth-century music notation systems during a period known as the ars nova. My 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 one of four finalists for the 2019 Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory. This book's research and writing was supported by a one-year NEH Research Fellowship (2014) and a two-year SSHRC Banting Fellowship (2014-16). My second monograph, titled Organizing Medieval Alleluyas: Music Analysis and the Creative Process in Late Medieval Britain, is under contract with Cambridge University Press, and is forthcoming next year. This book's research was supported by a one-year NEH Research Fellowship (2022). Other book projects include my 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). I've also co-edited two 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).

My digital musicology project 'Measuring Polyphony' (https://www.measuringpolyphony.org) was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant for the development of an online mensural music editor 'Measuring Polyphony' (2019-20), and was reviewed in the Digital Reviews section of the Journal of the American Musicological Society.

My Ph.D. in musicology is from New York University (2009), and was supervised by Edward H. Roesner. Since 2011, I've researched and taught at many different international institutions including Brandeis University (2016-2023, as Professor of Musicology and Chair of the Department), the University of Cambridge (Spring 2019, Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall and Visiting Scholar, Faculty of Music), Harvard University (Spring 2018, Visiting Assistant Professor), McGill University (2014-2016, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow), the University of Cologne (2012-13, postdoctoral researcher), and University College Cork (2011-13, Lecturer in Musicology). My service to the profession includes extensive grant and publication reviewing activities, serving as chair of the American Musicological Society’s Board Committee on Technology from 2019-2022, and I'm currently on the editorial boards of the Journal of Musicology and Early Music.

I welcome inquiries from prospective PhD students or postdoctoral scholars interested in working on any aspect of medieval music, music notation, or digital musicology.