The American Musicological Society (AMS) is pleased to announce that it has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ (NEH) Institute for Higher Education Faculty program. The program supports professional development programs that convene higher education faculty from across the nation to deepen their understanding of significant topics in the humanities and enrich their capacity for effective scholarship and teaching.
The AMS will use this NEH grant to host a two-week residential Institute for Higher Education Faculty entitled Studying Early Music with Computers: Tools, Formats, and Strategies, to be held at New York University, 14 – 26 July 2026. This institute is a new project and will apply insights from recent scholarship in humanistic music studies (musicology, music theory, music analysis, etc.) and digital humanities to organize an innovative program for the machine-assisted study of medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque Music. It will bring together an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars and teachers engaged in using computers to do research on music history and theory and who are actively involving students in their projects.
Studying Early Music with Computers: Tools, Formats, and Strategies will support thirty (30) participants and consist primarily of practitioner workshops and seminars on specific tools, formats, and machine-assisted investigative strategies. Through both expert talks and interactive workshops, participants will be equipped with the knowledge needed to advance their own research and teaching, including detailed explorations of the technical, infrastructural, and funding requirements necessary for conceiving, developing, deploying, and maintaining digital humanities projects and programs for the study of early music (c. 1000–1750 CE). Each participant will receive a stipend of $2200 to support attendance and travel, as well as access to reduced-rate dorm accommodations for the duration.
Studying Early Music with Computers: Tools, Formats, and Strategies will be directed by Julie E. Cumming and Richard Freedman, and will feature workshops and seminars facilitated by Megan Kaes Long, Chris White, Reba Wissner, Jennifer Bain, Karen Desmond, Ichiro Fujinaga, Debra Lacoste, Cory McKay, Emiliano Ricciardi, Craig Sapp, and Martha Thomae.