James Grier

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Professor of Music History

Curriculum Vitae (.pdf)

James Grier, Professor of Music History, pursues research in Textual Criticism and Editing Music, Medieval Music with a particular interest in Music and Liturgy in Medieval Aquitaine, and Popular Music since World War II. His books include The Critical Editing of Music (1996) and The Musical World of a Medieval Monk: Adémar de Chabannes in Eleventh-Century Aquitaine (2006), both with Cambridge University Press, The History of Musical Notation (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press) and a palaeographic study of the music hand of Adémar de Chabannes (forthcoming from Brepols). He has also published articles in Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of Musicology, Early Music History, Acta Musicologica, Plainsong and Medieval Music, Musica Disciplina, Revue d’Histoire des Textes, Speculum, Scriptorium and Journal of Medieval Latin. His research has been supported by numerous grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and a Morse Fellowship while at Yale University. In 2002-3, Professor Grier held the Edward T. Cone Membership in Music Studies in the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. For the period 2009-12, he has been awarded a Killam Research Fellowship, as well as Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies for his research in The Foundations of Musical Literacy in the Medieval West 800-1100.

He taught in the Department of Classical Studies, University of Waterloo, Mount Allison University, and the School of Music at Queen’s University, before joining the Department of Music, Yale University, where he taught for seven years. Professor Grier joined the Faculty of Music, University of Western Ontario in 1997, and has held the rank of Full Professor there since 1999.

 

Education:

  • MusBac, Composition, University of Toronto, 1975
  • BA, Latin Language and Literature, University of Toronto, 1977
  • MA, Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 1979
  • PhD, Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 1985

 

Representative Publications

Books:

Articles:

  • “The Stemma of the Aquitanian Versaria,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 41 (1988), 250-88.
  • “Lachmann, Bédier and the Bipartite Stemma: Towards a Responsible Application of the Common-Error Method,” Revue d’Histoire des Textes 18 (1988), 263-78.
  • “Some Codicological Observations on the Aquitanian Versaria,” Musica Disciplina 44 (1990), 5-56.
  • “Scribal Practices in the Aquitanian Versaria of the Twelfth Century: Towards a Typology of Error and Variant,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 45 (1992), 373-427.
  • “A New Voice in the Monastery: Tropes and Versus from Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Aquitaine,” Speculum 69 (1994), 1023-69.
  • “Musical Sources and Stemmatic Filiation: A Tool for Editing Music,” Journal of Musicology 13 (1995), 73-102.
  • “Roger de Chabannes (d. 1025), Cantor of St Martial, Limoges,” Early Music History 14 (1995), 53-119.
  • “Editing Adémar de Chabannes’ Liturgy for the Feast of Saint Martial,” Plainsong and Medieval Music 6 (1997), 97-118.
  • “Scriptio interrupta: Adémar de Chabannes and the Production of Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS latin 909,” Scriptorium 51 (1997), 234-50 and plates 17-27.
  • “The Mothers of Invention and Uncle Meat: Alienation, Anachronism and a Double Variation,” Acta Musicologica 73 (2001), 77-95.
  • “Adémar de Chabannes, Carolingian Musical Practices, and Nota Romana,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 56 (2003), 43-98.
  • “The Music is the Message: Music in the Apostolic Liturgy of Saint Martial,” Plainsong and Medieval Music 12 (2003), 1-14.
  • “The Musical Autographs of Adémar de Chabannes (989-1034),” Early Music History 24 (2005), 125-68.
  • “The Music is the Message II: Adémar de Chabannes’ Music for the Apostolic Office of Saint Martial,” Plainsong and Medieval Music 15 (2006), 43-54.
  • “Biblical and Classical Imagery in the Liturgical Poetry of Adémar de Chabannes (989-1034),” Journal of Medieval Latin 16 (2006), 76-94.
  • “The Reinstatement of Polyphony in Musical Composition: Fugal Finales in Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets,” Journal of Musicology 27 (2010), 55-83.

 

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