Erika Supria Honisch, PhD '11,
Erika Supria Honisch works on music, politics, and religious culture in early modern Europe, with related emphases on historical sound studies, music’s materialities, historiography, and music in ritual. Her book, The Ends of Harmony: Sacred Music and Sound in Prague, 1550–1650, uses sacred music and sound to explain how people of different faiths tried, and failed, to live together in the city that hosted the opening and closing acts of the Thirty Years War.
Honisch’s articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Journal of Musicology, Early Music History, Plainsong and Medieval Music, Organised Sound, and Common Knowledge. She is also co-editor, with Christian Leitmeir, of Music in Rudolfine Prague(Brill, forthcoming), which brings together scholars from North America, the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
In addition to leading Stony Brook’s Baroque Performance Practice Workshop with Arthur Haas, Honisch has collaborated with a number of early music groups, including Schola Antiqua, the International Baroque Institute at Longy, and the Newberry Consort. With Joshua Teplitsky (History) and Aurélie Vialette (Hispanic Languages and Literatures), she coordinates the Cultures of Communication lecture series on the History of the Book.
An AMS Howard Mayer Brown Fellow (2009), Honisch works actively to promote inclusivity in musicology. She has chaired the American Musicological Society’s Committee on Cultural Diversity, and is presently serving on the AMS Program Committee. With Giovanni Zanovello (Indiana University), she has formed a collective of music historians (“Towards an Inclusive Early Music”) dedicated to diversifying early music courses. Related pedagogical projects include the “Harlem Renaissance and Music” mini-syllabus.
Andrew Cashner, PhD 2015, publishes "Hearing Faith"
Andrew Cashner, PhD '15, Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Rochester, has published his first book titled Hearing Faith.
Hearing Faith explores the ways Roman Catholics in the seventeenth-century Spanish Empire used music to connect faith and hearing. From the Royal Chapel in Madrid to Puebla Cathedral in colonial Mexico, communities celebrated Christmas and other feasts with villancicos, a widespread genre of vernacular poetry and devotional music. A large proportion of villancico texts directly address the nature of hearing and the power of music to connect people to God. By interpreting complex and fascinating examples of “music about music” in the context of contemporary theological writing, the book shows how Spanish Catholics embodied their beliefs about music, through music itself. Listening closely to these previously undiscovered and overlooked archival sources reveals how Spanish subjects listened and why.
Readership
All interested in the relationship between music, poetry, theology, and popular religion in villancicos of the Spanish Empire. Scholars and students of music, literature, historians of religion, popular culture; performers. Keywords: Spain, Mexico, Latin America, villancico, devotional music, Spanish literature, poetry, theology, seventeenth century, interpretation, hearing, senses, popular religion, Roman Catholicism, spirituality.
For more information see brill.com
About Andrew A. Cashner
Andrew A. Cashner, PhD (2015, University of Chicago), is an assistant professor of music at the University of Rochester. Recipient of the American Musicological Society’s 2015 Alfred Einstein Award, he published a critical edition of Villancicos about Music in 2017.