UAlbany Professor of French Wins National Musicology Award

Professor Mary Beth Winn has devoted her professional career to the program in French Studies.

ALBANY, N.Y. (November 28, 2012) -- University at Albany Professor of French Studies Mary Beth Winn is among a team of three scholars who recently won the American Musicological Society’s 2012 Claude V. Palisca Award. This annual national award honors a scholarly edition or translation in the field of musicology that is deemed by a committee of scholars to “best exemplify the highest qualities of originality, interpretation, logic and clarity of thought, and communication.”

Winn and Laura Youens, professor of music at George Washington University, and Barton Hudson, professor emeritus of music at West Virginia University, were chosen for their critical edition of Thomasii Crequillonis Opera omnia, Vols. 18 and 20.

“It is extremely gratifying to have the quality of our work recognized and honored by this award, a further tribute to the excellence of the French Studies faculty and their programs at UAlbany,” said Winn.

This is the first time the prize has been awarded to a team of scholars. Their landmark publication offers a critical edition of the poems and the music of Crecquillon’s songs, and represents the culmination of more than 20 years of collaborative research.

The two volumes, published in 2011 by the American Institute of Musicology, conclude the seven-volume edition of chansons by the Renaissance composer Thomas Crecquillon. A musician and chaplain at the court of Emperor Charles V from about 1540-’50, Crecquillon composed 12 masses and 124 motets (choral compositions) in addition to 214 chansons (lyric-driven French songs), setting to music texts by some of the most celebrated poets of Renaissance France. More than 230 sources, both manuscript and print, attest to the wide dissemination and popularity of his chansons.

Winn earned a Ph.D. in French from Yale University, and has devoted her professional career to the program in French Studies, teaching a wide range of courses in French language and culture, as well as in medieval and Renaissance studies, in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. She has also taught at UAlbany’s Honors College and the College of Arts and Sciences, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Winn has published widely on 15th and 16th century French literature and the arts, focusing on printing, patronage, and the history of the book. In addition, she is the recipient of numerous grants for research, including three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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