Ross Duffin

Ross W. Duffin was born in London, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario there. He received his master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University where he specialized in the performance practice of early music – basically the manner in which music from earlier centuries was performed. He came to Case Western Reserve in 1978 to direct the nationally recognized early music program, and retired from that position in 2018. He is now Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music Emeritus, and CWRU Distinguished University Professor Emeritus.

Duffin has made a name for himself as a scholar in a wide range of musical repertoires, publishing articles on music from the 13th to the 19th centuries. His two main specializations have been Franco-Flemish music of the 15th century and English music of the 16th and 17th centuries. His edition of DuFay chansons won the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society for work of benefit to both scholars and performers, and his edition of Josquin motets was published in 1998 by Oxford University Press. In 2000 appeared A Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music (Indiana) which he edited with contributions from two dozen of the world’s leading medieval music perfomers and scholars. Among his English music publications are Richard Davy: St. Matthew Passion (A-R Editions, 2011), Cantiones Sacrae: Madrigalian Motets from Jacobean England (A-R Editions, 2005) and Shakespeare’s Songbook (W. W. Norton, 2004), a study of all the vocal music from Shakespeare’s plays, which won the inaugural Claude V. Palisca Award from the AMS, and concerning which he was interviewed by Robert Siegel on All Things Considered. His How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) was published by W. W. Norton in the Fall of 2006 and continues to make waves in music circles worldwide. He also published an introduction and edition, The Music Treatises of Thomas Ravenscroft (Ashgate, 2014). A follow-up to Shakespeare’s Songbook, entitled Some Other Note: The Lost Songs of English Renaissance Comedy, was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. His work in identifying the musical sources of Canada’s national anthem was featured in the Toronto Globe & Mail newspaper in August 2020.

Regarding performance, from 1978 to 2018 he oversaw the historical performance practice program at Case, including the Collegium Musicum, the Early Music Singers, and the Baroque Orchestra. A tenor, he sang with the small chorus attached to Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, from its inception in 1992 until 2017. He was also founding artistic director of Quire Cleveland, a professional early music choir established in Cleveland in 2008. Originally a Renaissance wind player, he taught at numerous summer programs in the US and Canada, and three times led symposia for collegium directors at Amherst and Madison Early Music Festivals.

Among the general public of a certain age, Duffin is perhaps best known as the long-time host and producer of Micrologus: Exploring the World of Early Music, which aired on National Public Radio from 1980 to 1998. Some stations have archived programs, which is why people still claim to hear his voice from time to time. Other multimedia projects include several videos of staged early music performances, produced for the Case Music Department, and over 250 video performances on Quire’s YouTube Channel, with nearly 1.5 million views from over 200 countries.

An engaging lecturer, Dr. Duffin has spoken at Stanford, Eastman, Oxford, Princeton, Northwestern, the University of Chicago, Yale, Oberlin, Longy, Juilliard, Peabody, USC, the Purcell School in England, Royal Northern College of Music, the Royal Academy in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities in Scotland, the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, and the English Broadside Ballad Archive in Santa Barbara, CA, among other places.

Books

• Duffin, Ross W. Some Other Note: The Lost Songs of English Renaissance Comedy. New York: W. W. Norton, 2018.
• The Music Treatises of Thomas Ravenscroft: ‘Treatise of Practicall Musicke’ (c.1607) and A Briefe Discourse (1614), edited and with an introduction by Ross W. Duffin. Volume in the series Music Theory in Britain 1500–1700, Jessie Ann Owens, general editor. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014.
• How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (And Why You Should Care). New York: W. W. Norton, 2007^[6]; paperback, 2008; Polish translation, 2016; Chinese translation, 2018; French translation, 2022.
• Shakespeare’s Songbook. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. Winner of the inaugural Claude V. Palisca Award from the American Musicological Society (2005).
• A Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music, editor. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000; paperback 2002.
• Inventory of Musical Iconography, no. 8: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Répertoire Internationale d’Iconographie Musicale, 1991.

Editions

• A Musicall Banquet of Daintie Conceits: Anthony Munday’s 1588 Miscellany with Tunes. Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance 177. Middleton, WI: A‑R Editions, 2023.
• Psalmes, or Songs of Sion (1631): William Slatyer’s Scandalous Collection. Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era 234. Middleton, WI: A‑R Editions, 2022.
• Gude & Godlie Ballatis Noted. Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance 174. Middleton, WI: A‑R Editions, 2022.
• Richard Davy: St. Matthew Passion: Reconstructed from the Eton Choirbook with Lyrics in Latin and English. Collegium Musicum Yale University Series. Madison: A‑R Editions, 2011.
• Iohn Coprario: Fantasia à 5 reconstructed from the Blossom Partbooks. Hazel Grove, UK: VdGS Edition 224, 2008.
• Cantiones Sacræ: Madrigalian Motets from Jacobean England, 18 motets (including 6 reconstructions) and introduction, Madison: A‑R Editions, 2006.
• A Josquin Anthology: 12 motets. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Thomas Tomkins: Five Consort Anthems, co-editor. Teddington, UK: Fretwork Editions, 1994.
• Forty-five Dufay Chansons from Canonici 213: A Performance Edition in Original Notation. Ogni Sorte Editions, 1983. Winner of the Noah Greenberg Award of the American Musicological Society (1980).

Invited and Refereed Articles

• "Shakespeare: Songs & Sonnets," Music & Letters 103 (2022), 205–25.
• "Mourning Sickness: The Musical Birth of ‘Barbara Allen,'" Early Music 50 (2022), 65–76.
• "Thomas Morley, Robert Johnson, and Songs for the Shakespearean Stage," Christopher R. Wilson and Mervyn Cooke, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music (2022), 356–86.
• Special Issue: J. S. Bach: Tuning and Temperament, BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute 53 (2022), guest editor, including "Introduction," 143–55.
• "Thomas Ravenscroft: A Briefe 'Civil' Discourse," Notes and Queries 70 (2022).
• "Hidden Music in Early Elizabethan Tragedy," Early Theatre 24 (2021), 11–61.
• "Calixa Lavallée and the Construction of a National Anthem," Musical Quarterly 103 (2020), 9–32). Cited in Brad Wheeler, "O Canada is a copy-and-past composition drawn from Mozart, Wagner and others, musicologist contends," The Globe and Mail (3 August 2020), 1.
• "Framing a ditty for Elizabeth: Thoughts on Music for the 1602 Summer Progress," Early Music History 39 (2020), 115–48.
• "'Propriety and Justness': Harmonic Intonation in the Eighteenth Century," Historical Performance 2 (2019), 55–90.
• "She Stoops to Conquer and its Lost Songs," Music & Letters 99 (2018), 159–93.
• "Cipriano de Rore, Giovanni Benedetti, and the Just Tuning Conundrum," Journal of the Alamire Foundation 9 (2017), 57–83.
• "Music and the Stage in the Time of Shakespeare," Oxford Handbooks of Literature: The Age of Shakespeare, ed., R. Malcolm Smuts, 748–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
• "Leonardo’s Lira," Cleveland Museum of Art Magazine (2015), 10–12. Covered in LiveScience, NBC News, Huffington Post, et al.
• "Concolinel: Moth’s lost song recovered?" Shakespeare Quarterly 66 (2015), 89–94. Covered in LiveScience, Daily Mail, et al.
• "Cracking a Centuries-Old Tradition," Early Music America Magazine (November 2014), 44–48.
• "Voices and Viols, Bibles and Bindings: The Origins of the Blossom Partbooks," Early Music History 33 (2014), 61–108.
• "Ensemble Improvisation in the 15th-Century Mensural Dance Repertoire," article and edition for Instruments, Ensembles, and Repertory, 1300-1600: Essays in Honor of Keith Polk, ed. Timothy J. McGee and Stewart Carter, 195–234. Brepols, 2013.
• "International Influences and Tudor Music," The Blackwell Companion to Tudor Literature and Culture 1485–1603, ed. Kent Cartwright, 79–94. Oxford: Blackwell, 2010.
• "Contrapunctus Simplex et Diminutus: Polyphonic Improvisation for Voices in the Fifteenth Century," Basler Jahrbuch für historiche Musikpraxis 31 (2007; appeared 2009), 69–90.
• "Just Intonation in Renaissance Theory and Practice," online article with multimedia, Music Theory Online 12.3 (2006):
• "Ballads in Shakespeare's World," Noises, Sounds, and Sweet Airs: Music in Early Modern England, ed. Jessie Ann Owens, 32–47. Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library Catalog for Shakespeare and Music Exhibition (June–September 2006).
• "Baroque Ensemble Tuning in 1/6 Syntonic Comma Meantone," online article with multimedia, Digital Case (2006)
• "Catching the Burthen: A New Round of Shakespearean Musical Hunting," Studies in Music 19–20 (2000–2001; appeared 2006), 1–15.
• "To Entertain a King: Music for James and Henry at the Merchant Taylors Feast of 1607," Music & Letters 83 (2002), 525–41.
• "Mi chiamano Mimi but my name is Quarti toni: Solmization and Ockeghem’s famous Mass." Early Music 29 (2001), 164–84.
• "Why I hate Vallotti (or is it Young?)," premiere article in Historical Performance Online (February 2000)
• "Backward Bells and Barrel Bells: Some Notes on the Early History of Loud Instruments," Historic Brass Society Journal 9 (1997), 113–29. Reprinted in Timothy J. McGee, ed., Instruments and their Music in the Middle Ages (Ashgate, 2009).
• "'Cornets & Sagbuts': Some Thoughts on the Early 17th-century English Repertory for Brass," Perspectives in Brass Scholarship: Proceedings of the International Historic Brass Symposium, Amherst, 1995, ed. Stewart Carter, 47–70. New York: Pendragon Press, 1997.
• "New Light on Jacobean Taste and Practice in Music for Voices and Viols," Proceedings of Le Concert des Voix et des Instruments à la Renaissance, Paris: CNRS (1995), 601–18.
• "Performance Practice: Que me veux tu?" Early Music America Magazine 1 (1995).
• "Princely Pastimes, or A Courtly Catch," Music Library Association Notes (journal) 49 (1993), 911–24.
• "The Trompette des Menestrels in the 15th Century Alta Capella," Early Music 17 (1989), 397–402, Early Brass Journal (1985). Reprinted in Timothy J. McGee, ed., Instruments and their Music in the Middle Ages (Ashgate, 2009).
• "The Sumer Canon: A New Revision," Speculum (journal) 63 (January 1988), 1–21.
• "National Pronunciations of Latin, ca.1490–ca.1600," The Journal of Musicology 4 (1985–86), 217–26.

Notable Former Students

Many professionals who studied early music with Ross Duffin have earned renown and/or awards. Among others, these include:

Francy Acosta, Julie Andrijeski, Michael Bane, Joel Becktell, Letitia Berlin, David Betts, Cynthia Keiko Black, Justin Bland, Joanna Blendulf, Alexander Bonus, Christine Brandes, Dashon Burton, Shannon Canavin, Kathleen Cantrell, Margaret Carpenter Haigh, Alan Choo, Sarah Coffman, Luke Conklin, Tracy Cowart, Karin Cueller-Rendon, Alice Culin-Ellison, Nancy Dahn, Hannah De Priest, David Dolata, Nathan Dougherty, Mark Duer, Rachel Elezi, Daniel Elyar, David Esteban Escobar, Dominic Favia, Daniel Fridley, Sarah Fuhs, Elizabeth Furuta, Adam Knight Gilbert, Rotem Gilbert, Steven Greenman, Katie Hagen, Nicolas Haigh, Christopher Haritatos, Michael Harper, Fiona Hughes, Rip Jackson, Daniel Kenworthy, Katrina King Nicholson, Richard Kolb, Carrie Krause, Kevin Kwan, Anna Levenstein, Eva Lymenstull, Brian MacGilvray, Brian Marble, Paula Maust, David R. McCormick, John McElliott, Colleen McGary-Smith, Ida Mercer, Allison Monroe, Vivian Sarah Montgomery, Cheryl Moore, Elena Mullins Bailey, Debra Nagy, Mary Oleskiewicz, Laura Osterlund, Judith Overcash Acres, Joan Plana Nadal, José Luis Posada, Sian Ricketts, Katie Rietman, John Romey, Andrew Rosenblum, David Ross, John Mark Rozendaal, Guillermo Salas-Suárez, Matthew Leslie Santana, Karina Schmitz, Sandy Schwoebel, Amy Shen, Jimin Shin, Corey Shotwell, Maia Silberstein, William Skeen, Joshua Stauffer, Danna Sundet, Barbara Swanson, Qin Ying Tan, Nadia Tarnawsky, Craig Trompeter, Brandon Vance, Sarah Weiner, Karin Weston, Elisa Wicks, Eric Wicks, Christine Wilkinson Beckman, Maury Wilkinson, Nathaniel Wood, Marlisa del Cid Woods, Janet Youngdahl, Natasha Zielazinski