contact

Dr Melanie L. Marshall
Department of Music
College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences
University College Cork
Cork
Ireland
http://www.music.ucc.ie/mlm/
ml.marshall[at]ucc[dot]ie

education

2000–2004 Ph.D in Musicology, University of Southampton, U.K.
Supervisor: Dr Laurie Stras
‘Cultural codes and hierarchies in the mid-cinquecento villotta.’
I examined the villotta as a construction of sexualised rusticity and I proposed the implications of this for the dedicatees and probable sponsors of three printed collections of villotte. The dedicatees inhabit a social milieu far removed from the rustic world evoked by the publications’ titles and contents. I argued that sponsorship of these collections allows a noble patron to fashion a rustic other and simultaneously to fashion a noble self. In polite company, musical eroticism—particularly when so closely associated with rusticity—becomes a test of gentility. By responding with the requisite degree of nonchalance, gentlemen and gentlewomen demonstrate their status and sophistication. I analysed a technique by which a composer could conceal and reveal sexual indecencies. My thesis has extensive appendices that include my transcriptions and translations of four villotte books by Alvise Castellino, Antonino Barges and Filippo Azzaiolo in addition to dialect songs by Mathias Hermann Werrecore, Giordano Passetto and Perisonne Cambio.
1996–97 M.A. (Musicology), University of Southampton, U.K.
Dissertation supervisor: Dr Laurie Stras
‘Luca Marenzio’s five books of secular vocal music published in 1585.’
1992–96 B.Mus (Hons) II:1, University of Edinburgh

employment and affiliation

2011-2013 Visiting Scholar, NYU Department of Music (18 months, pending Marie Curie contract)
2011 Visiting Scholar, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Department of Musicology (6 months, pending Marie Curie contract)
2005– College Lecturer in Music (wholetime permanent; assistant professor equivalent), University College Cork, Ireland

fellowships, scholarships, awards and grants

2011-14 Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship, held at University College Cork, with sojourns as a visiting scholar at UCLA and NYU.
2010 Small grant from the Society for Renaissance Studies to bring Prof. Bonnie Gordon (University of Virginia) to Ireland for a week of research seminars in Cork, Dublin and Maynooth.
2009 Sabbatical leave (Oct.-Dec.), University College Cork
2008 Conference organisation grant (for bodies|music), College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, University College Cork
2002 Arts & Humanities Research Board Overseas Conference Attendence grant
Small Award from the University of Southampton Faculty of Arts
2001 Arts & Humanities Research Board Studentship
Wingate Scholarship awarded by Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation
Grants from the Watt Memorial Trust and the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust
2000 Teaching Assistantship, University of Southampton
Small Award from the University of Southampton Faculty of Arts
1996 Bucher Award, University of Edinburgh
1995 James McMorran Bursary, Nairn, Scotland

publications

‘Warriors and Musicians: Notes from the Colonna Family Archive,’ Early Music, in press.

Brooks, Jeanice and Melanie L. Marshall, ‘Editorial,’ Early Music, in press.

‘Grateful Friends, True Friends: Gifts of Music and Poetry Associated with Girolamo Fenaruolo,’ in “Uno gentile et subtile ingenio”: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Bonnie Blackburn ed. Gioia Filocamo, M. Jennifer Bloxam, and Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Épitome musicale ed. Philippe Vendrix, 709-18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009).

Review of Richard Wistreich, Warrior, Courtier, Singer, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), for Renaissance Studies: Journal of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 23/2 (2009), 404-06.

Review of Susan McClary, Modal Subjectivities: Self-Fashioning in the Italian Madrigal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 11 (2007), 72-82.

Review of Marco Bizzarini, Luca Marenzio: The Career of a Musician between the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation, trans. James Chater (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), Music and Letters, 88/1 (Feb. 2007), 151-153.

Review of Kelley Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices: Music, Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), Current Musicology, 82 (Fall 2006), 7-12.

Review of Cecilia Luzzi, Poesia e musica nei madrigali a cinque voci di Filippo Di Monte (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editori, 2003), Early Music 34/2 (May 2006), 292-293.

CD Liner Notes for Andrea Gabrieli The Madrigal in Venice: Politics, Dialogues and Pastorales, I Fagiolini directed by Robert Hollingworth. Chandos (CHAN 0697; 2003).

publications in progress

‘Sixteenth-century Italian masculinities and music at the court of Ferrara,’ in Eros and Euterpe ed. Massimo Ossi. (Invited contribution. More information.)

‘Social Decorum and Sexual Representations in the Cinquecento.’ To be submitted to Music and Letters. (More information.)

‘Sprezzatura and Musical Eroticism’. To be submitted to JAMS. (More information.)

presentations

2011 ‘The Sound of Whiteness: Early Music Vocal Performance Practice in Britain’
Committee on Women and Gender session, American Musicological Society, San Francisco, CA.
Nov.

‘Florentine Gypsy Fictions’
Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada
Mar. 24-26
2010 ‘Performing Renaissance Music Today’
Renaissance Now, UCC
Dec. 9-10

‘Early Music Performance and Historically Contingent Bodies’
‘Body to Body, Sound to Sound’ at Biorhythms: Music and the Body, Science Gallery, Dublin
Sept. 29
‘Gypsy Fictions: Jonson and the Zingaresca’ (with Prof. James Knowles, UCC English)
‘Gender and Renaissance Writing’, Irish Renaissance Seminar, Moore Institute, NUI Galway
May 8

‘Performing Early Music = Performing Whiteness?’
bodies/music, UCC
April 19-20

‘Performing Early Music = Performing Whiteness?’
Music Research Seminars, University of Huddersfield
Feb. 22
2008 ‘Lowering the Tone: Strophic Song and the Performance of Gender and Class in Italian Academies’
Invited presentation at Cultural Institutions in Early Modern Italy and Europe, Department of Italian Studies, University of Reading.
July 4

‘Music & Performance Among Friends: A Gift of the Friend’s Body?’
Society of Musicology in Ireland Annual Meeting, Waterford, Ireland.
May 9-11
2007 ‘The Gift of Music Between Friends’
Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Vienna, Austria
August 8-11

‘Female Vocality and Strophic Song in Cinquecento Ferrara’
Invited presentation at Angels and Devils, Centre for Italian Women’s Studies, University of Reading
June 2

‘Wine, Women and Song’
Sexualities, Textualities, Art & Music in Early Modern Italy, University College Cork
May 18-19
2006 Music and Erotic Discourse in a Cinquecento Academy
Invited presentation for the Music Seminars, Department of Music, NUI Maynooth
Sept 29

‘Sprezzatura, hierarchy and musical eroticism’
Society of Musicology in Ireland Annual Meeting, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland.
May 5-7

‘Sprezzatura, hierarchy and musical eroticism’
Department of Music, UCC Research Seminar.
March 23

‘Sprezzatura, hierarchy and eroticism in Cinquecento dialect song’
Invited presentation for Department of Italian, UCC Research Seminar.
January 31
2005 ‘Sprezzatura, hierarchy and eroticism’
Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Cambridge University, U.K.
April 7-9
2004 ‘Sixteenth-century Italian masculinities and Alvise Castellino's villotte of 1541’
Masculinity, Patriarchy and Power Conference, Southampton University
April 5-7

‘Imitating the rustic and revealing the noble’
Invited presentation at Eros and Euterpe Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
February 6-8

‘Imitating the rustic and revealing the noble’
Music Seminar Series, Southampton University
February 3
2002 ‘Power, Pornography & Entertainment in a cinquecento academy’
American Musicological Society, Columbus, OH

‘Power, Pornography & Entertainment in a cinquecento academy’
Invited presentation at University of Edinburgh, School of Arts, Culture and Environment, Music Research Seminar (45 minute version)

‘Power, Pornography & Entertainment in a cinquecento academy’
Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Bristol University
2001 ‘Power, Pornography & Entertainment in a cinquecento academy’
RMA 35th Research Students’ Conference, Royal College of Music

‘Everything in the Garden is Lovely: Vice and the Villotta in the Veneto’
Music Department Seminar, University of Southampton

current research projects

Gentlemanly Conduct, Memory, and Music

I study gender identities, shamefulness and the history of memory by examining the repercussions of a shameful event (bigamy) in the history of two elite Florentine families, the Della Casa and the Rucellai. Since later members of these families, the maternal uncle and nephew Giovanni Della Casa and Pandolfo Rucellai, were the dedicatees of secular vocal music from opposite ends of the conventional hierarchy (Rore’s madrigals and anonymous dialect song), I examine the history of memory with respect to their own conduct and seek connections between life and music. This will result in an article.

Sex and the Cinquecento City: Musical Eroticism in Ferrara, Venice and the Veneto

This project extends my theoretical and contextual work on mid-cinquecento musical eroticism, gender, decency and nobility in relation to the villotta to encompass other vocal genres in northern Italy, and will result in a monograph. Musical eroticism encompasses equivocal texts that employ a vast erotic lexicon and part-writing that infringes conventional contrapuntal procedures. I favour a New Historicist approach to music, which views all culture as text for analysis and attempts to understand that culture both from an ‘indigenous’ viewpoint and an external, analytic position; to this end I draw upon diverse theoretical perspectives, including Bakhtinian heteroglossia, to scrutinise the multivocality of equivocal poetry and its musical settings. I will analyse a corpus of secular madrigals and Song of Songs settings associated with Ferrarese courts and Venetian and Venetan academies, and demonstrate that erotic musical transgressions in madrigals were adopted from the so-called ‘lighter’ genres such as the villotta and villanesca. I will show that a similar erotic and musical language appears in the chansons associated with the court of Renée de France in Ferrara. Finally, my examination of Song of Songs settings by composers associated with Ferrara and Venice will demonstrate the use of music-theoretical transgressions in Italian sacred music and demonstrate their association with the erotic.

research and conference organisation

2010 Doing Renaissance Now (member of organising team)
body to body, sound to sound (symposium co-organiser with Dr Paul Hegarty, UCC French)
bodies/music (instigator and co-organiser with Dr Paul Hegarty, UCC French)
2009 Society for Musicology in Ireland & Royal Musical Association joint conference (peer review panel)
New Perspectives on the Renaissance, UCC, with Guido Ruggiero, Brendan Dooley and James Knowles
2007 Organiser of an international, interdisciplinary conference, Sexualities, Textualities, Art and Music in Early Modern Italy, University College Cork, 18-19 May.
2001 Conference assistant for RMA Music and Film conference, University of Southampton, April 2001.
2000 Conference administration assistant for Performance 2000, University of Southampton, April 2000)

teaching

University College Cork

  • Musicology and Text (seminar course for MA in Music and Cultural History; 2008–)
  • PATHS (Postgraduate Training in the Arts, Humanities, Commerce and Social Sciences) co-presenter of session on 'Archival Research and Document Analysis' (2006–09)
  • Seminar presentation for MA in Women’s Studies (2007–08)
  • Performance Studies (seminar course for the MA in Music and Cultural History and MA in Ethnomusicology; 2008–)
  • Early Music Ensemble (performance coaching for all years; 2007–)
  • Editing Early Music (undergraduate special interest option; 2005–)
  • Fourth Year Colloquia Research Presentation—‘“Among the Pleasures and Delights of Merry Conegliano”: Music, Eroticism and Friendship in a North Italian Salon’ (2006-07); ‘Sprezzatura, Hierarchy and Musical Eroticism in a Cinquecento Academy’ (2005–06)
  • Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern Music, 1500–1800 (undergraduate seminar; 2010–11)
  • Gender in Early Modern Music, 1500–1800 (undergraduate seminar; 2006–10)
  • Gender Identities in Early Modern Music, 1500–1800 (undergraduate seminar; 2005–06)
  • Music and Ideas: Making Monteverdi’s Vespers (first year undergraduate lecture course; 2005–08)
  • Music, Festivity and Theatre in Renaissance Europe (undergraduate special interest option; 2010–11)
  • Music in the Service of Power (undergraduate lecture course; 2005–07; 2008–09)
  • Patronage and Propaganda (undergraduate lecture course; 2010–11)
  • Performance Studies (first year undergraduate lecture course; 2006–07)
  • Renaissance Vocal Ensemble (performance coaching for all years; 2005–)
  • Senior Research Forum (undergraduate research seminars; 2009–10)
  • Women and Music Across Cultures (undergraduate lecture course; 2006–08)

University of Southampton

  • Analysis Through Composition, Teaching Assistant (first year undergraduate course; Feb–Jun 2005; 2000–02)
  • Antique Music Roadshow, Teaching Assistant (first year undergraduate course; 2004–05)
  • Classic and Romantic Music, Teaching Assistant (first year undergraduate course; Feb. 2000; Feb. 1997)
  • Music Education, Marking Assistant (undergraduate lecture course; Feb.–Jun. 2004)
  • Music Since 1945, Guest Lecturer (undergraduate lecture course; May 2005)
  • Writing about Music, Teaching Assistant (first year undergraduate course; Oct.–Dec. 1996)

professional activities (select)

14/09/2007 Musica Secreta and the Celestial Sirens gave the second performance of ‘Fallen’ at the Queen Elizabeth Hall during the South Bank Early Music Weekend.
2007 Musica Secreta, Alessandro Grandi: Motetti a Cinque Voci (1614) (divine art, dda 25062). The Sirens sing on the final six tracks.
14/10/2006 I joined the Celestial Sirens and Musica Secreta in the premiere of ‘Fallen’ at Brighton Early Music Festival.
01/2006–07/2007 Semi-professional soprano with College of Clerks Choral, Youghal
10/2001–07/2005 Semi-professional soprano with Cantores Michaelis, Southampton.
05/13/2003 Interviewed, with I Fagiolini director Robert Hollingworth, about Andrea Gabrieli’s Venice on BBC Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’.
11/27/2002 Sang tenor with Musica Secreta in concert performance of Chiara Margharita Cozzolani’s Vespers (1650) at the church of St Bartholomew the Great, London. Performance highlights were broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Music Restored’ on December 5, 2002.
06/29/2002 Participated in Deptford X festival as a member of the Church of Sonology
04/10/1999 Solo Baroque masterclass with Mary Rawcliffe (University of Southern California) held at Occidental College, Glendale CA.

professional affiliation and service (select)

2011– Cork Music Education Partnership, steering committee member
October 2008–11 On the Board of East Cork Early Music. ECEM runs the annual East Cork Early Music Festival.
January 2006–11 Member of Society for Musicology in Ireland. Council member since May 2006.
2004–present Member of Renaissance Society of America.
2002–present Member of American Musicological Society.

interests

Admiring the enormous weeds in my garden as they sow themselves all over my neglected veg plot.