Emma Hornby

Lecturer in Music

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Emma studied at Worcester College, Oxford, where she was a choral scholar. She completed her DPhil in 1998 and was subsequently a Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College. After four years as a College Lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, she moved to a Research Associateship at Durham University, where she worked as assistant editor to Prof. J.R. Watson on a New Dictionary of Hymnology (2003-7). In 2006 she moved to a part-time lectureship at Goldsmiths, University of London, and joined the department at Bristol in 2007. Emma is an external supervisor at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. Her research focuses on western liturgical chant in the middle ages, with particular interests in questions of transmission, orality, the relationship between Old Roman and Gregorian chant, analysis of formulaic chant, and the relationship between words and music in the Middle Ages. Her first book, Gregorian and Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts, was published by Ashgate in 2002 and her second book, Medieval Liturgical Chant and Patristic Exegesis: words and music in the second-mode tracts was published by Boydell and Brewer in 2009. She has published articles in Plainsong and Medieval Music and The Journal of Musicology; her Journal of Musicology article was included in Thomas Forrest Kelly’s collection of seminal articles in the field, Oral and Written Transmission in Chant (Ashgate, 2009). She is co-editor, with David Maw, of a forthcoming Festschrift for John Caldwell. She reviews for Music and Letters and Plainsong and Medieval Music, among others. Emma is currently collaborating with Prof. Rebecca Maloy (University of Colorado at Boulder) on a monograph on text, music and theology in Old Hispanic chant.

Emma is a member of Cantus Planus, a Study Group of the International Musicological Society, and is a regular attendee of the Leeds International Medieval Congress.

Emma is director of the music department's womens' choir, Schola Cantorum.

Main areas of teaching:

Research interests

Medieval music, particularly western liturgical chant. I supervise research projects on many aspects of medieval and renaissance music. Currently supervised MPhil/MLitt/PhD topics include:

Funding awards

(date, amount, awarding body, project title, tenure)

Major publications

Books

Gregorian and Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts (Ashgate, 2002). Reviewed in Music and Letters 86 (2005), 275-8; Notes 59 (2003), 644-6.

Medieval Liturgical Chant and Patristic Exegesis: words and music in the second-mode tracts (Boydell and Brewer, 2009)

Articles

Refereed Journals:

‘The beginning of notation of western liturgical chant: evaluating Kenneth Levy’s reading of the evidence’ (The Journal of Musicology, Summer 2004).

‘Exploring the Transmission History of Beatus uir, the Mass Proper chant for St Gregory’ (Plainsong and Medieval Music, October 2003).

Chapters in Edited Books/Encyclopedias:

Co-authored with Rebecca Maloy, ‘Analysis of Old Hispanic chant: problems and proposals’, presented at the 15th Meeting of the IMS Study Group ‘Cantus Planus’ in Dobogókő, Hungary, August 2009, and forthcoming in conference proceedings

‘Preliminary thoughts on silence in western plainchant’, in Nicky Losseff and Jenny Doctor (eds), Silence, Music, Silent Music (Ashgate, 2007).

‘From Nativity to Resurrection: Musical and Exegetical Resonances in the Good Friday Chant Qui habitat’, in Christine Joynes (ed.), Perspectives on the Passion: Encountering the Bible through the Arts (Continuum, 2008).

‘Rhetoric and exegesis in the second-mode tracts and the way in which these pieces function as “readings” of their texts’, Papers read at the twelfth meeting of the IMS Study Group ‘Cantus Planus’, Lillafured, 2004 (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2006)

‘Two expressions of a single idea: using the eighth-mode tracts to describe the relationship between Old Roman and Gregorian chant’, in Cantus Planus. Papers read at the ninth meeting, Visegrad, Hungary, 1998 (Budapest: HungarianAcademy of Sciences, 2001), 415-29.

‘The origins of the eighth-mode tracts: what kept the oral transmission stable?’, in Études Grégoriennes 26 (1998), 135-62. Previously read at the University of Tours’ La composition modale avant l’octoéchos Conference in September 1997.

Numerous entries in the Dictionary of Hymnology. Major articles include: ‘Plainchant’, ‘Kyrie eleison’, ‘Doxology’, ‘Trinity hymns’, and ‘Marian hymns’. Other articles include: ‘Alcuin’, ‘Anselm of Canterbury’, ‘Antiphon, ‘Arnulf von Leuwen’, ‘Ave maris stella’, Bianco da Siena’, ‘Breviary’, ‘A.H. Brown’, ‘Cantio’, ‘Conductus’, ‘Hilary of Poitiers’, ‘Hilduin, ‘Hrabanus Maurus’, ‘Mechthild of Magdeburg’, ‘Missals’, ‘Monk of Salzburg’, ‘Paul the Deacon’, ‘Peter Damian’, ‘Pia dictamina’, ‘Te decet laus’, ‘Te lucis ante terminum’, Ut queant laxis’, ‘Veni creator spiritus’, ‘Vespers’, ‘John Wainwright’, ‘Walahfrid Strabo’ and ‘Wipo of Burgundy’.

Book reviews:

Review of Elizabeth Eva Leach, Sung Birds Music, Poetry, and Nature in the Later Middle Ages. (Cornell UP, 2007) for Medium Aevum (2008)

Review of Susan Rankin, The Winchester Troper (London, 2007) for Early Music (2008)

Review of Susan Boynton and Isabelle Cochelin, From Dead of Night to End of Day: the Medieval Custom of Cluny (Brepols, 2006) for Plainsong and Medieval Music (2008)

Review of Susan Boynton, Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa 1000-1125 (Cornell UP, 2006) for Music and Letters (2008)

Review of Terence Bailey and Alma Santosuosso, Music in Medieval Europe (2007) for Music and Letters (2008)

Review of James Grier, The Musical World of a Medieval Monk: Ademar de Chabannes in Eleventh-Century Aquitaine (CUP, 2006) for Music and Letters (2008)

Review of Sally Harper, Music in Welsh Culture before 1650: A Study of the Principal Sources (Ashgate, 2007) for Renaissance Studies (2008)

Review of K.D. Hartzell, Catalogue of Manuscripts written or owned in England up to 1200 containing Music (Boydell, 2006) for Early Music (2008)

Review of Letania and Preces: Music for Lenten and Rogations Litanies, Clyde Brockett (Institute of Medieval Music: Ottawa, 2006) in Plainsong and Medieval Music (2007).

Review of Jumping to Conclusions: The Falling-Third Cadences in Chant, Polyphony, and Recitative, Richard Hudson (Ashgate, 2006) in Music and Letters (2007).

Review of Monumenta Monodica Medii Aevi Subsidia Band IV: Der lateinische Hymnus im Mittelalter ed. Andreas Haug et al (Bärenreiter: Kassel, 2004), in Plainsong and Medieval Music 14(2005).

Review of Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouvères, John Haines (Cambridge University Press, 2004), in Medium Aevum 74 (2005).

Review of Western Plainchant in the first Millennium, ed. James Haar et al (Ashgate, 2004), in Choir and Organ (August, 2004).

Review of Medieval Music Cultures of the Adriatic Region, ed. Stanislav Tuksar (Zagreb: Croatian Musicological Society, 2000), in Plainsong and Medieval Music 11 (2002).

Review of Guido D’Arezzo: Monacho Pomposiano, ed. Angelo Rusconi (Florence: S. Olschki Editore, 2000), in Early Music 30 (2002), 123-4.

Review of Big Bangs, Howard Goodall (London: Vintage, 2001), in The British Journal of Music Education 19 (2002), 305-22.

Review of An Introduction to Gregorian Chant, Richard Crocker (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), in The Catholic Herald (16 February 2001).

Review of Medieval Music in Sloveniaand its European Connections, ed. Jurij Snoj (Ljubljana: Zalozba ZRC for the Institute of Musicology, 1998), in Music and Letters 80 (1999), 435-6.

Review of The Critical Editing of Music, James Grier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), in TEXT 13 (1999), 253-7.