Thomas J. Mathiesen | |
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Born | Thomas James Mathiesen 30 April 1947 |
Known for | Scholarship on the music of Ancient Greece |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Ancient music,early music theory |
Institutions |
Thomas James Mathiesen (born 30 April 1947) is an American musicologist,whose research focuses on Ancient music and the music theory of ancient and early periods. A leading scholar of the music of Ancient Greece,Mathiesen has written four monographs and numerous articles on the topic.
Thomas James Mathiesen was born in Roslyn Heights,New York,US on 30 April 1947. He received a Bachelor of Arts at Willamette University in 1968,and both a Master of Music and a PhD at the University of Southern California (USC). At the latter school,Mathiesen's teachers included scholars such as Ingolf Dahl and Halsey Stevens. After a stint teaching at USC from 1971 to 1972,he became a professor at the Brigham Young University. In 1988 he became a professor at Indiana University Bloomington,and in 1996 he was made a distinguished Professor of Music there. [1]
Mathiesen's research centers around Ancient music,in particular,he is a leading scholar of the music of Ancient Greece. [1] This subject is the topic of his four book-length studies,Aristides Quintilianus on Music in Three Books:Translation,with Introduction,Commentary,and Annotations (1983),Ancient Greek Music Theory:A Catalogue raisonnéof Manuscripts RISM B/XI (1988),Greek Views of Music (1997) and Apollo’s Lyre:Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (1999). [2] Other topics he engages in include the history of music theory,particularly of Medieval music and Renaissance music. [1] His scholarship includes the topics of "textual criticism,editorial technique,bibliography and codicology". [1]
Mathiesen established in 1990 the online project Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum (TML) and led it until 2015. Due to his efforts TML became a world-wide known database of early music treatises,with a free access. [3]
The recipient of numerous awards and grants,Mathiesen has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1990,the American Musicological Society's Kinkeldey Award and multiple Deems Taylor Awards from ASCAP,among others. [4]
Although definitions of music vary wildly throughout the world, every known culture partakes in it, and it is thus considered a cultural universal. The origins of music remain highly contentious; commentators often relate it to the origin of language, with much disagreement surrounding whether music arose before, after or simultaneously with language. Many theories have been proposed by scholars from a wide range of disciplines, though none have achieved broad approval. Most cultures have their own mythical origins concerning the invention of music, generally rooted in their respective mythological, religious or philosophical beliefs.
Bharata Muni was an ancient sage who the musical treatise Natya Shastra is traditionally attributed to. The work covers ancient Indian dramaturgy and histrionics, especially Sanskrit theatre. Bharata is considered the father of Indian theatrical art forms. He is dated to between 200 BCE and 200 CE, but estimates vary between 500 BCE and 500 CE.
Ars nova refers to a musical style which flourished in the Kingdom of France and its surroundings during the Late Middle Ages. More particularly, it refers to the period between the preparation of the Roman de Fauvel (1310s) and the death of composer Guillaume de Machaut in 1377. The term is sometimes used more generally to refer to all European polyphonic music of the fourteenth century. For instance, the term "Italian ars nova" is sometimes used to denote the music of Francesco Landini and his compatriots, although Trecento music is the more common term for the contemporary 14th-century music in Italy. The "ars" in "ars nova" can be read as "technique", or "style". The term was first used in two musical treatises, titled Ars novae musicae by Johannes de Muris, and a collection of writings attributed to Philippe de Vitry often simply called "Ars nova" today. Musicologist Johannes Wolf first applied to the term as description of an entire era in 1904.
Gustave Reese was an American musicologist and teacher. Reese is known mainly for his work on medieval and Renaissance music, particularly with his two publications Music in the Middle Ages (1940) and Music in the Renaissance (1954); these two books remain the standard reference works for these two eras, with complete and precise bibliographical material, allowing for almost every piece of music mentioned to be traced back to a primary source.
Claude Victor Palisca was an American musicologist. An internationally recognized authority on early music, especially opera of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, he was the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor Emeritus of Music at Yale University. Palisca is best known for co-writing the standard textbook A History of Western Music, as well as for his substantial body of work on the history of music theory in the Renaissance, reflected in his editorship of the Yale Music Theory in Translation series and in the book Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (1985). In particular, he was the leading expert on the Florentine Camerata. His 1968 book Baroque Music in the Prentice-Hall history of music series ran to three editions.
Carl Michael Alfred Steinberg was an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. He was best known, according to San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joshua Kosman, for "the illuminating, witty and often deeply personal notes he wrote for the San Francisco Symphony's program booklets, beginning in 1979." He contributed several entries to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, wrote articles for music journals and magazine, notes for CDs, and published a number of books on music, both collected published annotations and new writings.
Jubal is a Biblical figure in Genesis 4:21 of the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. Mentioned only once, he is sometimes regarded by Christians, particularly by medieval commentators, as the 'inventor of music'. A descendant of Cain, his father is Lamech and his brother is Jabal.
John Kladas was a Byzantine composer. He had the post of lampadarius in the cathedral of Hagia Sophia of Constantinople. He wrote several works on the theory of music, the most important being the Grammatike tes mousikes.
Magister Franciscus was a French composer-poet in the ars nova style of late medieval music. He is known for two surviving works, the three-part ballades: De Narcissus and Phiton, Phiton, beste tres venimeuse; the former was widely distributed in his lifetime. Modern scholarship disagrees on whether Franciscus was the same person as the composer F. Andrieu.
Gilbert Reaney was an English musicologist who specialized in medieval and Renaissance music, theory and literature. Described as "one of the most prolific and influential musicologists of the past century", Reaney made significant contributions to his fields of expertise, particularly on the life and works of Guillaume de Machaut, as well as medieval music theory.
The American Institute of Musicology (AIM) is a musicological organization that researches, promotes and produces publications on early music. Founded in 1944 by Armen Carapetyan, the AIM's chief objective is the publication of modern editions of medieval, Renaissance and early Baroque compositions and works of music theory. Among the series it produces are the Corpus mensurabilis musicae (CMM), Corpus Scriptorum de Musica (CSM) and Corpus of Early Keyboard Music (CEKM). In CMM specifically, the AIM has published the entire surviving oeuvres of a considerable amount of composers, most notably the complete works of Guillaume de Machaut and Guillaume Du Fay, among many others. The CSM, which focuses on music theory, has published the treatises of important theorists such as Guido of Arezzo and Jean Philippe Rameau. The breadth and quality of publications produced by the AIM constitutes a central contribution to the study, practice and performance of early music.
Robert Paul Commanday was an American music critic who specialized in classical music. Among the leading critics of the West Coast, Commanday was a major presence in the Bay Area music scene over a five-decade career. From 1964 to 1994 he was the chief classical music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, following which he became the founding editor of San Francisco Classical Voice in 1998. As a critic he held high standards, though his writing was interspersed with humorous comments. His focus concerned American music in general, but particularly ensembles, performers and events in San Francisco. Also a music educator and choral conductor, Commanday held brief teaching posts at Ithaca College and the University of Illinois, before a decade of teaching music and conducting choirs at the University of California, Berkeley.
Trevor Noël Goodwin was an English music critic, dance critic and author who specialized in classical music and ballet. Described as having a "rare ability to write about music and dance with equal distinction", for 22 years Goodwin was Chief music and dance critic for the Daily Express. He held criticism posts at many English newspapers, including the News Chronicle, Truth and The Manchester Guardian among others; from 1978 to 1998 he also reviewed performances for The Times. Goodwin wrote an early history of the Scottish Ballet and was coauthor for two books: London Symphony: Portrait of an Orchestra with Hubert J. Foss and a Knight at the Opera with Geraint Evans.
The Parthian Empire, a major state of ancient Iran, lasted from 247 BCE to 224 CE, in which music played a prominent role. Compared to their Western rival, the Roman Empire, much less is known about the Parthians, but information on music can be gathered from a few Parthian texts, accounts from Greek and Roman writers, some archeological evidence, and a variety of visual sources. The last of these are usually from either the archeological sites and former settlements of Hatra or Nisa, and include terracotta plaques, reliefs and illustrations on drinking horns known as rhytons. Music played a role in many aspects of Parthian life, being used in festivals, weddings, education, warfare and other social gatherings. Surviving artistic records indicate that it involved both men and women, who could be instrumentalists or singers.
Jacob J. Sawyer (1856–1885) was an American composer, pianist, songwriter, and conductor. His Welcome to the Era March (1877) was included in James Monroe Trotter's Music and Some Highly Musical People (1878).