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

July ESMR Newsletter

The latest Study Group Newsletter is available here. 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.

This month, the newsletter covers the following topics:

• EMSR Updates
  • Fall Business Meeting with Kerry McCarthy
  • Early Music 101, Dates and Topics
• Member News
• Announcements
  • Call for Editions: Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance series        
  • CFP: “At the Threshold: Sound and Music in Sickness, Death, and Commemoration in Early Modern Europe”  
  • Organology Study Group Events      
  • CFP: Renaissance Society of America, Annual Meeting

Upcoming Deadlines:

CFP: BFE-RMA Research Students’ Conference 2027

The British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE) and Royal Musical Association (RMA) Research Students’ Conference will be hosted by the University of Oxford on Wednesday 6 – Friday 8 January 2027. Proposals are welcome from postgraduate research students (e.g. PhD, MPhil, MRes) in any area of Music in the following formats: 

• Academic Papers
• Lecture-Recitals
• Themed Panel Sessions 
• Compositions 
• Poster Presentations

For poster presentations, proposals are also invited from students enrolled on postgraduate taught programmes (e.g. MA, MSt, MMus) as well as research degrees. 

For details, please see https://www.music.ox.ac.uk/event/2027-bfe-rma-conference 

All proposals must be submitted by Friday 4 September 2026 via the conference submission form. 

NB: RMA/Musici Trust Prize for a paper on music before 1600

Speakers at the 2027 BFE-RMA Research Students’ Conference will be invited to submit their papers to the RMA/Musici Trust prize for a student paper on music before 1600. The winner will receive a £300 prize, be offered mentorship and also be invited to present their work at the RMA Annual Conference.

Upcoming Events:

EMSR Fall Business Meeting, October 15th (4:00pm EST)

EMSR’s Fall Business Meeting will take place on October 15, 2026 at 4:00pm (EST) and will be held on Zoom. This year’s keynote will be delivered by Kerry McCarthy. Please register below to receive the link! 

Register here: https://fsu.zoom.us/meeting/register/THJ7gnn3SgSGEuDQCBLFug

Early Music 101 Dates and Topics 

EMSR is delighted to announce the Fall schedule for Early Music 101, a series of interactive online workshops aimed at advanced undergraduates and graduate students curious about musical practices before 1600, and at researchers interested in developing a secondary research area in early music. Early Music 101 will provide participants with a foundational understanding of what research in early music involves, focusing on the following topics: 

• Session I: What is Archival Research
  • Thursday, Sept 24 (4:00EST) 
  • Sarah Long and Catherine Saucier introduce the fundamentals of archival research in early music, from planning visits to archives and special collections to navigating the primary sources found there. Participants will come away with practical strategies for locating, accessing, and working with pre-1600 musical materials firsthand.
  • Register here: https://fsu.zoom.us/meeting/register/f6Ww3cBfTha-LEUm9XXjfQ
• Session II: What is a Source
  • Oct 29 (4:00EST) 
  • Mary Channen Caldwell and Giovanni Zanovello explore what counts as a “source” in early music research, examining the manuscripts, prints, and other materials that preserve musical practices from before 1600. The session demystifies how researchers read, interpret, and draw new knowledge from these documents and material objects, including early forms of notation and evidence of performance practice.
  • Register here: https://fsu.zoom.us/meeting/register/iZH3uCtzRvWsXAVEDmDDow
• Session III: Filling Up Your Research Toolkit
  • December 10 (4:00EST)
  • Jennifer Bain and Luisa Nardini survey the essential skills and resources of the early music researcher, from transcribing early notation to using digital repositories and databases. Participants will leave with a practical toolkit for launching their own research on pre-1600 musical traditions.
  • Register here: https://fsu.zoom.us/meeting/register/vbkFAdmCQPmFBhO0B06Yqg

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

The Early Musics Skills and Resources Study Group will host the following roundtable at AMS 2026 (online): Sipping From the Fire Hose: Finding and Managing Early Music Research Tools and Resources. The panelists bring expertise spanning music theory, manuscript studies, plainchant, polyphonic repertories, and digital humanities, and represent institutions across North America and Europe. Their collective endeavors encompass the development of searchable databases for theoretical treatises as well as repertorial and textual corpora, computational approaches to musical analysis, the digitization and cataloguing of medieval and Renaissance sources, and the integration of digital tools into graduate and undergraduate pedagogy. We look forward to a vibrant and productive discussion; we will provide details when they are available. 

Officers