Kathleen Nelson is an Associate Investigator with the Centre in 2016. She is an Associate Professor at The University of Sydney where she is based in musicology at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Having commenced study at The University of Adelaide in performance, she subsequently moved into musicology and graduated with a PhD in 1994 with a dissertation on medieval liturgical music sources associated with the town of Zamora in western Spain.
Kathleen’s research has focused principally on western European medieval liturgical manuscripts with musical notation, although she has also published in other areas of music history. Her current research interest and work ranges around transmission of melodic practice for liturgical chant. She has in recent years been working on a large study of notated chant for a single text, Exultet iam angelica (for the Easter vigil), aiming to build better understanding of its varied melodic practice especially as found in sources of medieval Spain. Her project with the Centre will investigate an unusual notated practice for the Passion texts as found in twelfth-century manuscripts.
Contact
kathleen.nelson@sydney.edu.au
Academic profile
Academia
Research Project
Interrogating Twelfth-Century Notation for the Eloi Eloi Segment of the Passions
Relevant Publications
Nelson, K. and M. Gómez, eds. A Musicological Gift: Libro Homenaje for Jane Morlet Hardie. Lions Bay BC Canada: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2013.
Nelson, K. ‘The Exultet at Vic during the Era of Bishop Oliba’. In A Musicological Gift: Libro Homenaje for Jane Morlet Hardie, edited by K. Nelson and M. Gómez, pp. 213-29. Lions Bay BC Canada: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2013.
Nelson, K., ed. Cathedral, City and Cloister: Essays on Manuscripts, Music and Art in Old and New Worlds. Lions Bay BC Canada: Institute of Mediaeval Music. Ottawa, Canada: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2011.
Nelson, K. ‘University of Sydney, Fisher Rare Book Additional Manuscript 357: A Product of Many Changes’. In Cathedral, City and Cloister: Essays on Manuscripts, Music and Art in Old and New Worlds, edited by K. Nelson, pp. 113-33. Ottawa, Canada: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2011.
Nelson, K. ‘Seeking Early Exultet Practice in Iberia’. In Identity and Locality in Early European Music, edited by J. Stoessel, pp. 27-36. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.
Nelson, K. ‘Fragments of medieval chant manuscripts at the University of Sydney’. Fontes Artis Musicae 55.1 (2008): 223-31.
Nelson, K. ‘Observations on an Early Twelfth-Century Antiphoner Fragment at Toledo’. In Concordis Modulationis Ordo Ismael Fernández de la Cuesta In Honorem, edited by Robert Stevenson and Emilio Rey Garcia. Inter-American Music Review 17 (2007): 17-24.
Nelson, K. ‘Commemorations of the Light: the Exultet in Toledo Sources from c.1200 to c.1600’. In Commemoration, Ritual and Performance: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Music, edited by J. M. Hardie and D. Harvey. Musicological Studies 84 (2006): 70-87. Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2006.
Nelson, K. ‘Two Twelfth-Century Fragments in Zamora: Representatives of a Period of Transition’. In Encomium Musicae: Essays in Honor of Robert J. Snow, edited by D. Crawford and G. G. Wagstaff, pp. 161-74. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2002.
Nelson, K. ‘Conlaudemus omnes pie and Deo nos agentes: Polyphony in a Fourteenth-century Source of the Church of Zamora’. In Fuentes Musicales en la Península Ibérica (ca. 1250-ca. 1550), edited by M. Gómez and M. Bernadó, pp. 109-19. Lleida: Ediciones de la Universitat de Lleida, 2001.
Selected Presentations
Conference Paper: ‘Music, Reason and Affect: Medieval Chant for a Passion Text’, Inaugural Conference of the Society for the History of Emotions, ‘Emotions of Cultures/Cultures of Emotions: Comparative Perspectives’, UWA, 11–13 December 2017.