Mission Statement

Early Musics Skills and Resources is an AMS Study Group which aims to coordinate and energize the study of musical practices from before around 1600 by focusing on the skills necessary to teach and undertake research into musics of the distant past. The term “Early Musics” signals a desire to embrace diverse musical traditions from around the globe, including hybrid practices that emerged from trans-continental, socio-cultural, and commercial movements and routes. Research into early musics continues to be vital, vitally important, and importantly challenging for the future. Members of this group share not only an interest in studying and teaching these musical traditions, but a commitment to facilitating the specialist training and interdisciplinary collaboration upon which so much successful work depends. 

By focusing on skills rather than output, the Study Group complements early music sessions at the national meeting of the AMS, creating space to discuss the “how” of early music research. Our goal is to facilitate knowledge of and access to extracurricular opportunities and to act as a central networking hub for scholars, teachers, students, and performers to develop further training opportunities.

Announcements

Medieval Academy of America, Summer Skills Workshops

In the Summer of 2026, the MAA will offer four synchronous online intensive Summer Skills Workshops: Old French, Latin Paleography, Medieval Latin, and Medieval Liturgy and Liturgical Books. These workshops are intended to help support training for graduate students as well as advanced undergraduates who are preparing to apply to graduate school, although others are welcome to apply. Individual course descriptions are available here.

Each class will meet online for around 30 hours, with approximately five hours of homework weekly. Classes are non-credit, but students will be presented with a certificate of completion.

The cost to students will be limited to a materials fee of $100 for each course. Please note that applicants may only apply to one course per year and will be notified of their acceptance by May 15. Applications are due on April 15. All applicants must be members of the Medieval Academy of America. 

February ESMR Newsletter

The latest Study Group Newsletter is available here!

This month, the newsletter covers the following topics:

• EMSR Updates
  • Election Results          
  • AMS Early Music Program Fund     
  • 2026 Business Meeting       
  • CFP: EMSR Roundtable Session, AMS Annual Meeting 2026 (Online)          
  • Study Group Website Updates
• Announcements
  • AMS Meeting 2026, CFP   
  • Studying Early Music with Computers, AMS Summer Institute 
  • Scraps of the Sacred Colloquium      
  • Introduction to Ge’ez 
  • MA Ritual Chant and Song     
  • All Souls Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music, Hilary Term 2026  
  • Cantorales in the Americas and Beyond        
  • Prix Marta-Walter 2026         

If you have news that you would like to share about publications, awards, CFPs, job opportunities, etc., please let us know so that we can include these items in upcoming communications. You can email the officers at ams.srem@gmail.com, or contact the communications officer, Anya Wilkening, directly (awilkening@fsu.edu). 

CFP: Roundtable Session, AMS Annual Meeting 2026 (Online)

Sipping From the Fire Hose: Finding and Managing Early Music Research Tools and Resources

This Study Group roundtable session invites musicologists, performers, librarians, archivists, and scholars in related disciplines to reflect on the strategies that shape how we discover, evaluate, and mobilize research tools and resources in the study of early music. As the ecosystem of music scholarship expands, from major digital databases and digitized manuscript collections to archives and digital repositories, researchers must continually refine their approaches to navigating abundance, fragmentation, and uneven access. How do scholars, teachers, and students cultivate resource literacy across different stages of training and career paths? What practices support efficient yet critically engaging searching for early music sources, and how do we teach these methods to students encountering research infrastructures for the first time? Panelists are encouraged to share concrete methodologies, pedagogical models, and reflective accounts that illuminate the intellectual work behind successful archival and database research.

We especially welcome contributions that address collaboration with librarians and archivists, strategies for working across analog and digital collections, and approaches to documenting and sustaining research projects. Topics might include interactive tutorials for newly developed databases focused on searching the writings of music theorists, and searching different monophonic and polyphonic repertories; ongoing digitization efforts and their research possibilities; and the use of digital and analog sources in research and in the classroom. The session at this online meeting of the AMS aims to generate a practical conversation across the many sub-fields of early music studies about research fluency in pre-1600 music.

200-word proposals for participation in this roundtable should be emailed to ams.srem@gmail.com by Thursday, March 5, 2026.

Upcoming Deadlines:

Studying Early Music with Computers, AMS Summer Institute

Applications are open for Studying Early Music with Computers, a two-week residential summer institute held at New York University from 14-27 June 2026. Funded by the NEH and organized by the AMS, the institute offers a unique opportunity for scholars and educators to learn more about the machine-assisted study of early music. Featuring hands-on workshops as well as seminars on specific tools, formats, and machine-assisted investigative strategies, participants will acquire the skills and knowledge needed to advance their own research and teaching.

The institute is open to US citizens or people who have lived in the US for 3 years. It is largely aimed at graduate students and junior faculty members, but upper-level undergrads could be eligible too, as could more senior faculty members. Please note that you are not eligible if you have been taught or advised in an academic capacity by the project directors (Julie Cumming and Richard Freedman).

For more information and to apply, visit https://institutes.ams-net.org/. Applications are due 6 March 2026.

AMS 2026 (online)

The 92nd AMS Annual Meeting will be held online 14–15 November and 19–20 November 2026. Submissions for sessions, individual papers, workshops, roundtables, posters, and films are due 11:59 p.m. EST, 17 February 2026.

For additional information, please see https://2026online.ams-net.org/call-for-proposals/.

NB: The Alternate Years Rule is not in effect for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting. Individuals appearing on the 2025 annual meeting program are not restricted from submitting a proposal in 2026.)

Prix Marta-Walter 2026

Every two years, the Swiss Musicological Society (SMG-SSM) awards the Marta-Walter Prize (formerly Handschin Prize) for an outstanding doctoral thesis in the field of music research. The prize is named after the Swiss musicologist Marta Walter (1896-1961), who donated the financial basis of the prize with her legacy to the SMG. The prize money amounts to CHF 3,000 and the award ceremony will take place during the 4rd SMG study day (25.09.2026, Lucerne).

The SMG/SSM will consider applications by researchers having obtained their doctoral degree, including the defence, between 01.01.2024 and 31.12.2025. The application deadline is the 15.03.2026. Electronic applications can be sent to Luc Vallat (luc.vallat@unibe.ch), SMG/SSM administration office.

For additional information, please see https://www.fabula.org/actualites/132194/prix-marta-walter-2026.html.

MAA 2027 (Toronto)

The 102^nd Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place in Toronto 15-17 April 2027. Submissions for sessions and individual papers are due 1 June 2026.

For additional information, please see https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/MAA2027.

Upcoming Events:

All Souls College, Oxford Early Music Seminars

All Souls College, Oxford has announced the seminars in their series on medieval and Renaissance music. You can find more information on their website (click here), and you can sign up for the seminars through their Google Form (click here). For your convenience, we have posted the abstracts from their website below. All sessions are held on Zoom on Thursdays at 5 p.m. GMT. Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity!
 
Upcoming Seminars:

26 February 2026, 5pm–7pm GMT
Presenter: Andrew Kirkman (University of Birmingham)
Title: Made to measure or prêt à chanter? The Court of Wilhelm IV and the Later Alamire Manuscripts
Discussants: Thomas Schmidt (University of Manchester) and Zoe Saunders (Independent scholar)

The Alamire codices have traditionally been seen as diplomatic gifts, or at the very least commissions from magnates and super-rich aficionados. This article argues that for most of the later, paper codices at least, the sequence happened in reverse: in other words they comprised workshop material that was first produced and then sold once buyers could be found. The same conclusion prompts also a review of the construction of some of the more elegant, parchment sources, and the proposal that the ‘bespoke’ aspects of such codices may have extended no further than their opening—and hence most immediately visible—pages.

 
12 March 2026, 5pm–7pm GMT
Presenters: Elisabeth Giselbrecht, Louisa Hunter-Bradley and Katie McKeogh (King’s College London)
Title: No two books are the same. Interactions with early printed music and the people behind them

The DORMEME project investigates how early modern owners, readers, and users engaged with printed polyphonic music books, focusing on 1500–1545, when music printing introduced new modes of circulation alongside manuscript and oral transmission. This technological shift expanded and reshaped how individuals interacted with music books—as tools for performance and teaching, as collectable objects, and as sites of confessional negotiation. Our project undertakes a copy-based survey of surviving printed polyphonic books across European and North American collections, documenting marks of use and developing case studies that reveal how these books were used, altered, and understood.

This paper presents the project’s first synthetic results. We outline a taxonomy of interventions—textual, musical, material, and paratextual—and consider them in relation to user motivations such as correction, performance facilitation, confessional adaptation, education, personalisation, and proof-reading. Drawing on detailed examples, we examine textual changes in religious motets, musical annotations including crosses, numbers, custodes, and barline-like dashes, and patterns of personalisation that illuminate different types of owners and users. We also address the distinctive role of the proof-reader as the “first reader,” whose interventions bridge production and use. Together, these findings show how annotations can reshape our understanding of early modern musical practice and book culture.

Officers