RESEARCH

My research interests began with a curiosity for the origins of music notation and how a tool that aided a reproduction of sound came to be used by musicians around the world. 

As an avid  pianist who adored Chopin in my teenage years, I hadn't thought much about the history of music notation until I learned how our current music notation developed in medieval Europe in my college music history courses. 

It fascinated me. 

The more I learned about how music notation developed, the more I realized that I enjoyed reading about how people described music in theoretical texts. And this is what I currently study and write about.

In my main area of research, I investigate the history of music theory through music treatises written in England at the turn of the fourteenth century. My current book project, Sweet Consonance: Musical Discourse in England, 1280–1370, explores what was considered foundational knowledge to musicians in fourteenth-century England, and includes the first critical study of how the English rationalized the third as a consonant interval.

I also research the presence of Western music in Japan and currently serve as co-Chair of the American Musicological Society Global East Asian Music Research study group.