The Department of Music will host a talk titled “From Betrothal to Cloister: Echoes of Women’s Voices in Sources and Images c. 1500” Friday, Sept. 20, from 4 to 5 p.m. in Harkness Chapel.
About the talk
Although in the decades around 1500 women were rarely able to function as musical professionals in the modern sense, they are regularly represented in musical imagery and in various kinds of texts, from diverting narratives to instructive texts. Additionally, there are at least nine extant Italian manuscripts of complex polyphonic repertoire created between 1460 and 1540 that are associated with women, either as owners or users. Much of the repertoire in these documents has been studied for the purpose of tracing the influence of male composers, but what can consideration of these sources as a group tell us about the women who spent hours of their lives making music from their pages?
About the speaker
Jane Hatter is an Associate Professor of Musicology and Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies at the School of Music at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. She holds a PhD and MA from the Schulich School of Music, McGill University (Montréal), and a BM from the University of the Pacific. As a cultural musicologist, her research focuses on the musical communities of early modern Europe, exploring motets, music in visual culture, women in early music, gender and musical performance, and early music pedagogy. Her work examines the cultural and social contexts of music in the 15th and 16th centuries, aiming to reveal the networks that promoted musical knowledge and practices beyond the recognized composers of the time.
Her first monograph, Composing Community in Late Medieval Music: Self-Reference, Pedagogy, and Practice, has been praised for its interdisciplinary approach and readability, connecting music with other forms of late medieval cultural expression. She recently co-edited an interdisciplinary volume of the journal Early Music with David Rothenberg, bringing together musicologists and art historians to explore intersections between the visual and auditory elements of early modern memorials. Currently, she is working on a new book project that seeks to reconnect visual depictions of female musicians from early 16th-century Europe with the repertoires, practices, and communities of the time.
Dr. Hatter was awarded a residential fellowship at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, for the 2023/24 academic year, supporting her ongoing research.