Scholar Lectures

Honey Meconi is the inaugural Arthur Satz Professor at the University of Rochester, where she is also Professor of Musicology at the Eastman School of Music. She is the founding editor of the monograph series “Oxford Studies in Early Music” for Oxford University Press. She is a specialist in music before 1600, and her many publications include Hildegard of Bingen (the first English-language book on Hildegard as composer), Pierre de la Rue and Musical Life at the Habsburg-Burgundian Court, and a continually expanding series of performing editions of Hildegard’s music, freely available online. Her research has been supported by Fulbright, Mellon, and NEH Fellowships as well as numerous other grants. A lifelong performer, she is co-recipient of the American Musicological Society’s Noah Greenberg Award “for distinguished contribution to the study and performance of early music.” Her public musicology blog, The Choral Singer’s Companion: Music History with a Soupçon of Snark, is read worldwide.

Mark Kligman is the Inaugural holder of the Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music where he is a professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology. He specializes in the liturgical traditions of Middle Eastern Jewish communities and various areas of popular Jewish music. He has published on the liturgical music of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn in journals as well as his book, Maqam and Liturgy: Ritual, Music and Aesthetics of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn (Wayne State University, 2009), which shows the interconnection between the music of Syrian Jews and their cultural way of life. His other publications focus on the intersection of contemporary Jewish life and various liturgical and paraliturgical musical contexts. Orthodox Popular music is the subject of his current work. He is the academic Chair of the Jewish Music Forum and co-editor of the journal MusicaJudaica. From 2014-2016 he was on the board of the Association for Jewish Studies. Presently, he is the Chair of the Jewish Studies and Music Group for the American Musicological Society. Professor Kligman is the Director of the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience.

Honey Meconi is the inaugural Arthur Satz Professor at the University of Rochester, where she is also Professor of Musicology at the Eastman School of Music. She is the founding editor of the monograph series “Oxford Studies in Early Music” for Oxford University Press. She is a specialist in music before 1600, and her many publications include Hildegard of Bingen (the first English-language book on Hildegard as composer), Pierre de la Rue and Musical Life at the Habsburg-Burgundian Court, and a continually expanding series of performing editions of Hildegard’s music, freely available online. Her research has been supported by Fulbright, Mellon, and NEH Fellowships as well as numerous other grants. A lifelong performer, she is co-recipient of the American Musicological Society’s Noah Greenberg Award “for distinguished contribution to the study and performance of early music.” Her public musicology blog, The Choral Singer’s Companion: Music History with a Soupçon of Snark, is read worldwide.

Andrew H. Weaver is Professor of Musicology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Yale University and a B.Mus. in musicology and viola performance from Rice University. A specialist in nineteenth-century German song and seventeenth-century music at the Habsburg court in Vienna, his books include Narrative and Robert Schumann’s Songs: A New Approach to the Romantic Lied (University of Rochester Press, 2024), A Companion to Music at the Habsburg Courts in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Brill, 2021), and Sacred Music as Public Image for Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III: Representing the Counter-Reformation Monarch at the End of the Thirty Years’ War (Ashgate, 2012). He also co-edited the volume Leonard Bernstein and Washington, DC: Works, Politics, Performances (University of Rochester Press, 2020). His work, which has been supported by grants from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, the American Musicological Society, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, also appears in such journals as Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Music & Letters, Journal of Musicology, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, Early Music, Schütz-Jahrbuch, Journal of Musicological Research, Journal of the American Viola Society, and more.

Rebecca Cypess is The Mordecai D. Katz and Dr. Monique C. Katz Dean of the Undergraduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yeshiva University. A musicologist and historical keyboardist, Cypess is the author of Curious and Modern Inventions: Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo’s Italy (2016) and Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment (2022); co-editor of five books including Sara Levy’s World: Gender, Judaism, and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin (2018) and Music and Jewish Culture in Early Modern Italy: New Perspectives (2022); and author of over 40 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. Her work has been recognized with the Noah Greenberg Award for contributions to historical performance and the Ruth A. Solie Award for an outstanding collection of essays, both from the American Musicological Society.

Craig A. Monson is Paul Tietjens Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St Louis, where he taught for three decades. His publications on convent music include Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent (1995), Nuns Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art, & Arson in the Convents of Italy (2010), and Divas in the Convent: Nuns, Music & Defiance in 17th-century Italy (2012). More recent writings include Habitual Offenders: A True Tale of Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in 17th-century Italy (2016) and The Black Widows of the Eternal City: The True Story of Rome’s Most Notorious Poisoners (2020). In addition to musicological venues, he has spoken at the Kimball Art Center (Fort Worth), the Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and on NPR’s Fresh Air and BBC3’s The Early Music Show. His next book, Identity Theft in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Andrea Casali, should appear in 2025.