Benjamin Brand
Music History
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Benjamin Brand's scholarly interests include musical institutions in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the history of music theory, ritual studies, and historiography. A Mellon scholar, Prof. Brand received his B.A. from the University of Chicago (Academic Honors; Phi Beta Kappa) and his Ph.D. from Yale University. His dissertation, "Liturgical Ceremony at the Cathedral of Lucca, 1275-1500," provided the first examination of music and ritual at one of the most vibrant churches in medieval Tuscany. His current research explores the ways in which music, ritual, and the visual arts shaped the identities of religious communities in central Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Prof. Brand has published in The Journal of Musicology and the volume L'istituzione 'cappella musicale' fra corte e chiesa nell'Italia del Rinascimento (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2007). His edition of one of the oldest offices dedicated to a Tuscan saint, the Historia Sancti Reguli, is forthcoming from the Institute for Mediaeval Music (Ottawa, Canada). In addition, he has presented papers at the national and regional meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, and the International Congress on Medieval Studies, and the Renaissance Society of America. Current projects include a monograph study entitled Cathedral Liturgies in the Golden Age of the Tuscan Communes (1100-1300).
