Research Interests

• Chansons and secular polyphony between 15th and 16th centuries
• Early Venetian opera and 17th-century Italian literature
• Music and philosophy in the Early Modern Era, particularly in the works of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)
• Antonio Caldara’s operas for Salzburg

Vita

One of the main focuses of my scholarly activity is Franco-Flemish polyphony of the 15th/16th century, with a particular interest in historically grounded musical analysis. Another focus is the relationship between early Venetian opera libretti and the literature of members of the Accademia degli Incogniti (1637 to c. 1660). In this regard, I have been leading the FWF (Austrian Science and Research Fund) funded project “Early Venetian Opera and Literature of the Incogniti” since 01.05.2019. New research focus: the Salzburg operas by Antonio Caldara (1717-27): this will profit from the experience, the knowledge and, not least, the international network gained and established working in the last opera project.

Between 2014 and 2018, I led the FWF project “Borrowing and Quoting Monophonic Melodies in Secular and Sacred Polyphony around 1500”, a continuation of the FWF project “Borrowing and Quoting Monophonic Melodies in Song around 1500” led by Prof. Dr. Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl. Both projects resulted in the database https://chansonmelodies-sbg-ac.eu, which presents transcriptions with variants and concordances of all melodies and their texts. The two chansons projects cover a total repertoire of hundreds of chansons and masses that are based on monophonic French songs. The time period considered ranges from the Loire chansonniers of the 1470s to the German prints of the late 1540s. One of the main results of this second phase of the research project is a monograph on the Chansonnier de Bayeux (F-Pn, f. fr. 9346), currently in preparation.

Another research interest is the study of the connections between music and “magical” philosophy in the Renaissance. In this field, I have already published two essays on musical aspects in the philosophy of Giordano Bruno.

Many years experience in university teaching (in Oxford, London, Salzburg, Vienna, Basel, Bologna and Saarbrücken) with a focus on the secular repertoire of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, on music analysis and on Italian opera. Furthermore, successful completion of the “Internal Course on University Didactics” of the PLUS in 2011/2. And, last but not least, I am a passionate alto singer, with singing experience in various choirs and ensembles in Italy, England, Norway and Austria.

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