Capturing Music: The Invention of the First Recording Technology

An illustrated talk, with music, about the daring venture of recording sound by making marks on parchment; what we call musical notation is the gradual refinement of a brilliant idea. This lecture will trace its development and meet the pathbreaking medieval people who made it possible for us to hear the music of the past.

Thomas Forrest Kelly’s most recent book is Capturing Music (2015); he is also the author of First Nights: Five Performance Premieres and Early Music: A Very Short Introduction. His book The Beneventan Chant was awarded the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society for the most distinguished work of musicological scholarship of 1989. He is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres of the French Republic and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy in Rome. He has held awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is an honorary citizen of the city of Benevento (Italy).