Super interesting discussion with @brettrushforth.bsky.social and Chris Hodson about their new book about the French Atlantic: archives, collaboration, writing, organizing your research, questioning big narratives, history from below, and more #earlymodern

Drafting the Past@draftingthepast.bsky.social · yesterday

We're back! @brettrushforth.bsky.social and Chris Hodson joined me to talk about two decades of collaborating on BEYOND THE OCEAN, using visual and material culture to tell a different story, and more. Plus a cameo by Eminem! Listen here: player.captivate.fm/episode/f2ca... 🗃️

We’re releasing selected highlights from our Close Readings subscription podcast in full to mark a ‘summer of travel’. This week, @irinadumitrescu.bsky.social and Mary Wellesley look at the fantastical medieval bestseller 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘪𝘳 𝘑𝘰𝘩𝘯 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Travel with Close Readings: ‘The Travels of Sir John Mandeville’

Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 2 August · 1hr 2min

podcasts.apple.com

Help needed! The AMS Study Group for Early Musics Skills & Resources is building a bibliography of recent monographs and edited volumes on pre-1600 musical traditions. It’s not yet exhaustive, but it’d be great to get as close as possible. What’s missing? Apologies for anything currently left off.

Recent Scholarship for AMS-EMSR newsletter

AMS-EMSR Study Group Recent Scholarship Journals dedicated to Pre-1600 Repertories Early Music [link] Early Music History [link] Plainsong & Medieval Music [link] Journal of the Alamire Foundation [...

docs.google.com

Christopher Cerrone’s Beaufort Scales for 8 voices and electronics (2023) on fabulous recording by Lorelei Ensemble (dir. Beth Willer). Amid 13 sung movements on poetic texts about the force of wind are 4 narrated interludes on texts from Melville, Fitzgerald, Anne Carson, and the King James Bible.

Christopher Cerrone: Beaufort Scales - YouTube

youtube.com

Wrapped up my term as Acting Director of the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies at UMass Amherst on June 30 — caught my breath and looking back, what a spring it was! A few highlights 🧵

Urania is the Muse of #astronomy; here is a small homage, and a reminder that she needs all her sisters with her. anatomiesofpower.wordpress.com/2026/08/02/u...

Urania and the Music of the Spheres

Hesiod, a Greek poet writing some time in the 8th or 7th century BCE, lists the Muses and the last two are Ourania (Latinized Urania) and Calliope.  The last is the greatest of all, he says – …

anatomiesofpower.wordpress.com

Nick Drake’s “Fire” from Rachel Portman’s Tipping Points (2022)

Tipping Points: Fire (Poem)

YouTube video by Release - Topic

youtu.be

Early fifteenth-century composer John Dunstaple’s annotations add new light to our understanding of the reception of Boethius’s treatise De institutione musica.

Exciting!

Loot & Repair. Plunder and Restitution between the Early Modern Battlefield and the Modern-Day Museum

Il termine bottino (loot), indicante una categoria di oggetti che esiste prevalentemente in funzione della conquista, descrive una relazione di possesso, se non più specificamente di espropriazione. I...

officinalibraria.net

🎉 We are pleased to announce that the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries are a new subscribing member to our @openingthefuture.bsky.social programme! As well as enhancing their eBook collection, by subscribing they are contributing to new #openaccess titles. Learn more > buff.ly/EO4IwMw

𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗘𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮 𝗰.𝟭𝟰𝟬𝟬–𝗰.𝟭𝟳𝟬𝟬 𝗦𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗱𝗼 𝘆 𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗼 𝗲𝗻 𝗹𝗮 𝗰𝗶𝘂𝗱𝗮𝗱 𝗱𝗲 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮 Edited by Eduardo Carrero Santamaría, Tess Knighton and Francesc Orts-Ruiz Available in Open Access More Info: bit.ly/4fw40Fv #UrbanHistory #Music #Renaissance #Baroque #Musicology #Valencia #History

Adding new meaning to looking through a book. From Gaspare Visconti’s Di Paolo e Daria amanti (1494-6). Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 C 27, fol. 110.

From a few weeks back at the wonderful Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in VT. So much fun collaborating with brilliant musicians to bring Mendelssohn Op13 to life. Also got to work with other quartets while talking about Prokofiev 2nd, Shosty 4th, Montgomery’s Strum, and Mendelssohn Op80.

Last week’s adventures are over and he’s back to his usual form. So much better than the cone of shame in the end, but not as elegant as the Tudor ruffle making the rounds online.

Rare Book School mourns the loss of medieval manuscripts expert and RBS emeritus faculty member Albert Derolez. "His kindness as much as his brilliance will be remembered by those who knew him," said Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J. rarebookschool.org/resources/2026/07/rbs-mourns-albert-derolez

Rare Book School Mourns Emeritus Faculty Member Albert Derolez (1934–2026) - Rare Book School

It is with profound sadness that Rare Book School announces the death of RBS emeritus faculty member Albert Derolez on 11 July 2026, at the age of 91.

rarebookschool.org

Arrived today! The fabulous triumph of a book published by Brepols, edited by John Griffiths, David Dolata, and Philippe Vendrix and contributions by many more: Tablature: Europe, 1300-1750. Essential rdg on overlooked topic for scholars and performers of late medieval and early modern music.

Drawing on an ongoing project on the 4 classical elements and the arts, I'll be sharing gems I've found along the way, starting with this mvt from Purcell's Hail! Bright Cecilia, in which "each Tree its silence breaks" as instruments, "When to the Thracian Lyre with leafy Wings they flew."

Hail! bright Cecilia!: III. Hark! hark! Each Tree

YouTube video by Philippe Herreweghe - Topic

youtube.com

Think you spend too much time with your choir? Here's a summary of the chorister routine at Cambrai Cathedral in the 18th-century

Stoessel’s discerning review reminds me that there are several essays in *Composers in the Middle Ages* that I need to read: scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/ind... @jjstoessel.bsky.social

New Medieval Books: Venice and the Mongols: The Eurasian Exchange That Transformed the Medieval World, published by @princetonupress.bsky.social www.medievalists.net/2026/07/new-... #historybooks #medieval #history

New Medieval Books: Venice and the Mongols - Medievalists.net

As two powers expanded, Venice eastward and the Mongol Empire westward, their interests converged around trade. This book explores their diplomacy and commercial ties, revealing how the Black Sea…

medievalists.net

Just out: Giulio Pertile shows how early modern poetry about the creation of the world reconceptualized human creation as well. It's an insighful look at the relation between religion and poetics, with particular attention to human's impact on the planet. And it has a fabulous cover!

Sanam ​Nader-Esfahani and I have served as co-chairs of the Five College Renaissance Seminar for three years now. ​We're very excited for the new ideas and energy that the next co-chairs will bring​: Brian Ogilvie and Emiliano Ricciardi!

Rebuilding a syllabus for a grad art song seminar this fall (a mix of performers, musicologists, and theorists). Esp hunting for rdgs on performance practice and reception: how recordings, singers, and interpretive traditions have shaped (or reshaped) what we think an art song 'means.' Recs welcome?

I wrote about the Nolan Odyssey for the LRB. I'll summarize some of my main points below, in case you don't feel like reading all that. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man

As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...

lrb.co.uk

Nolan’s *Odyssey* is indeed loud. Peaked at 105db for 10 minutes straight.

All Souls College, Oxford, is seeking 5 Postdoctoral Research Fellows in - Asian and Middle Eastern Studies - History of Art/History of Music - Law - Life Science - Theoretical Computer Science These are 5-year appointments starting autumn 2027. Deadline: 4 Sep 2026 www.asc.ox.ac.uk/post-doctora...

Great news from Early Music Theory: The *Proportionale musices*, ed. and trans. JJD, has now been added to the EMT website: earlymusictheory.org/Tinctoris/te... for Book I, earlymusictheory.org/Tinctoris/te... for Books II–III. Work is in progress on *De natura et proprietate tonorum*.

The AMS Study Group for Early Musics Skills & Resources is delighted to announce Early Music 101, a new series of interactive online workshops aimed at advanced undergraduates and graduate students curious about musical practices before 1600.

CFP: Bach & Dance (UMass Amherst Bach Symposium, 23-24 April 2027) Full CFP and abstraction submission here (deadline Tue Sep 1 2026): forms.gle/w1E8YCW7pmGH...

It's been online for a few weeks while putting on the final touches, but we are formally announcing the launch of Renaissance Medals Online, starting with the condottieri of Italy, with large contributions from the National Gallery of Art, British Museum, and Berlin: numismatics.org/pocketchange...

Now Live: Renaissance Medals Online

The ANS is pleased to announce the launch of Renaissance Medals Online (RMO), a new, open-source research tool focused on the beginnings of medallic art in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth …

numismatics.org