Mary
Channen
Caldwell

University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania Faculty Fellow

Research Topic

Praying, Singing, Sharing: Multilinguality, Contrafacture, and Jewish-Christian Exchange in Medieval Song

Bio

Mary Channen Caldwell specializes in music in Europe ca. 1000–1600. She engages with historical musicology and medieval studies, recognizing the importance of notes on the page while seeing these abstract reflections of music as part of complex systems of cultural meaning and history. Caldwell is the codirector of Music in the Pavillion, a concert series at the University of Pennsylvania, presented by the Department of Music and Penn Libraries. She received her Ph.D. in Music History and Theory from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Music degree from the School of Music at Queen’s University (Ontario, Canada).

Selected publications

Latin Song in the Medieval West, with Anne-Zoé Rillon-Marne (Liverpool University Press, forthcoming).  

Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song (Cambridge University Press, 2022). 

Fellowship

2023-2024

This year is devoted to the study of sound and music as a part of Jewish life, and we are delighted to announce the cohort of scholars who will join us for a year of research, conversation, and engagement with the Penn community and with the public.