📅 Date: Friday, August 28, 2026
🕒 Start Time: 4:00 PM
📍 Location: Harkness Chapel, Classroom
👥 Who: Free | Open to the public
About The Series
Our weekly Friday colloquia showcase current research by distinguished visiting scholars alongside our own faculty and graduate students in musicology, historical performance practice, and music education. A brief reception follows each talk to keep the conversation going. All are welcome!
About The Talk
“Musicologist as Detective: Solving the Mysteries of an Unstudied Manuscript”
The affinities of famed fictional detectives for music and of musicologists for reading detective novels have long been recognized. Having a nose for cold cases and figuring things out from carefully assembled evidence is crucial, as is the creative jump that often occurs when a detective or musicologist knows she's "got it." In this lecture, Fassler shows the necessary tools for puzzling out and repositioning a previously unstudied manuscript within a late 15th-century context. The codex is a sequentiary – a collection of chants sung before the Gospel in the mass liturgy and produced by Bickenkloster nuns (Poor Clares) in the Black Forest. How did they compile this book? From what possible sources? What makes it distinctive? Such questions will be broached with visual and musical examples from this magnificent collection. The book is a witness to their lives, particular interests, and community as led by the mystic Ursula Haider (1413-1498).
About The Speaker
Margot Fassler, Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy, University of Notre Dame, is Director of the Program in Sacred Music and Tangeman Professor of Music History, Emerita, Yale University. Her books include Music in the Medieval West and its accompanying Anthology (New York, 2014); (with Jeffery Hamburger, Eva Schlotheuber, and Susan Marti), Life and Latin Learning at Paradies bei Soest, 1300-1425: Inscription and Illumination in the Choir Books of a North German Dominican Convent, 2 vols. (Munster, 2016), and Medieval Cantors and Their Craft (ed. with Katie Bugyis and AB Kraebel) York Medieval Press, 2017. Fassler is a member of the North American Academy of Liturgy, a former President of the Medieval Academy of America, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society. In 2019-20, Fassler was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
Venue Information
Harkness Classroom, located inside Harkness Chapel, serves as both a lecture hall for large classes and a backstage area during events. It is also the meeting location for the CWRU Music Colloquium Series.
Health + Safety
The health and well-being of our community is important to us as we gather for campus events. University Health and Counseling Services provides up-to-date guidance and resources to help support a safe campus experience. For life-threatening emergencies, please call CWRU Public Safety immediately at 216.368.3333.