User:Michael Scott Cuthbert

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Michael Scott Cuthbert is a musicologist and composer. Assistant Professor at M.I.T., Cuthbert received his degrees from Harvard University (A.B. scl, A.M., and Ph.D. 2006). His research has focused on fourteenth century Italian music as well as contemporary topics, especially minimalism. He leans heavily on the use of computer models in understanding music and its history.

Cuthbert has taught several courses on music history including specific topics in fourteenth-century music, pre-compositional process, and music after 1960. At M.I.T. he has also taught portions of the music theory sequence. He has given presentations on medieval and contemporary music throughout the United States and in Italy, France, Ireland, and Iceland. Cuthbert has also composed for a variety of ensembles including the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Prior to coming to M.I.T., Cuthbert held Visiting Assistant Professor positions at Smith College and Mount Holyoke College. He was the 2004 Lily Auchincloss Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Medieval Studies. During 2009-10, he is Ahmanson Fellow at Harvard's Villa I Tatti center for Italian Renaissance studies, writing a book on Sacred Music in the Age of Plague and Schism.

Publications

• Ars nova: French and Italian Music in the 14th Century, edited with John Nádas (Music in the Medieval World Reference Series vol. 6). London: Ashgate, 2009.
• "Palimpsests, Sketches, and Extracts: The Organization and Compositions of Seville 5-2-25," L’Ars Nova Italiana del Trecento 7 (2009), pp. 57–78.
• "A New Trecento Source of a French Ballade (Je voy mon cuer)," in Golden Muse: The Loeb Music Library at 50: Harvard Library Bulletin, new series 18 (2008), pp. 77–81.
• "Esperance and the French Song in Foreign Sources," Studi Musicali 36.1 (2007), pp. 1-19.
• "Generalized Set Analysis and Sub-Saharan African Rhythm? Evaluating and Expanding the Theories of Willie Anku," Journal of New Music Research (formerly Interface) 35.3 (September 2006), pp. 211–19
• "Zacara's D'amor Languire and Strategies for Borrowing in the Early Fifteenth-Century Italian Mass," in Antonio Zacara da Teramo e il suo tempo, edited by Francesco Zimei, (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2005). pp. 337–57.
• "Free Improvisation: John Zorn and the Construction of Jewish Identity through Music," in Studies in Jewish Musical Traditions, edited by Kay Kaufman Shelemay (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard College Library, 2001), pp. 1-31.
• with Jennifer G. Lee, "Original Sources: Manuscript and Printed," in Johann Sebastian Bach, “The Man from Whom All True Musical Wisdom Proceeded,” A 250th Anniversary Exhibition, edited by Christoph Wolff (Cambridge, Mass.: President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2000).

Reviews

• Der Mensural Codex St. Emmeram: Faksimile der Handschift Clm 14274 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München, review for Notes 65.4 (June 2009), pp. 252–4.

Dissertation

• "Trecento Fragments and Polyphony beyond the Codex," (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 2006).