Megan Eagen-Jones, Ph.D. 2016

Advisor: Anne MacNeil

Dissertation Title: The Articulation of Cultural Identity through Psalm Motets, Augsburg 1540-1585

Find it in the library here.

Dissertation Abstract:

The purpose of my dissertation, “Transmission, Translation, and Exegesis of the Book of Psalms through Psalm Settings and Motets in Counter-Reformation Augsburg, c1540–1580,” is to identify and interrogate points of intersection between musical and textual modes of Biblical interpretation, through an intensive study of sixteenth-century music books and documents preserved in the Augsburg State and City Archives, the Augsburg State- and City Library and the Bavarian State Library in Munich. Music is rarely considered as a source for new exegetical ideas. Rather, scholars focus on music’s power to represent or express preexisting concepts. My project turns this approach on its ear by exposing an intricate latticework of cross-influences that musical and textual types of exegesis had on each other. In considering nearly eighty liturgical books and motet collections, in tandem with various translations, commentaries, and dialogues on the psalms, and examining unique, closely-related texts and textual combinations shared between them, my work demonstrates the essential role psalm settings and motets played in informing and forwarding Counter Reformation-era theologies.

Dr. Eagen-Jones is currently a Lecturer in Musicology in the School of Music of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is working on several projects related to her primary research area, sixteenth century sacred music, but she also has interests in Irish traditional music and fin de siècle European modernism.