Hearing Homophony, or, How to Listen to the Future
May 10, 2022
Megan Kaes Long, Associate Professor of Music Theory, Oberlin College & Conservatory
Presented by the Friends of the Oberlin College Libraries
Friday, May 20, 2022 | 4:30 PM
Studioc, 38 E College St., Oberlin, OH 44074
Free and open to the public
Masks required indoors
Live transcription / captioning will be available
The decades surrounding the turn of the seventeenth century precipitated profound changes in musical style that remain poorly understood. This talk explores how popular songs circulating in the 1580s and 1590s helped teach amateur musicians new ways to listen to music--encouraging a new, "modern" mode of listening that we still engage in today. We'll explore how musical features ranging from text setting to nonsense-syllable refrains interacted with basic tenets of music cognition to reshape the very experience of listening itself.