Samuel Brannon, Ph.D. 2016

Advisor: Anne MacNeil

Dissertation Title: Books about Music in Renaissance Print Culture: Authors, Printers, and Readers

Find it in the library here.

Dissertation Abstract:

This study examines the ways that printing technology affected the relationships between Renaissance music theorists and their readers. I argue that the proliferation of books by past and present writers and emerging reader expectations of textual and logical coherence led to the coalescence and formalization of music theory as a field of inquiry. By comparing multiple copies ofsingle books about music, Ishow how readers employed a wide range of strategies to understand the often-confusing subject of music. Similarly, Ishow how music theorists and printers responded in kind, making their books more readable and user-friendly, while still attempting to profit from the enterprise. In exploring the complex negotiations between writers about music, their printers, and their readers, I seek to demonstrate how printing technology enabled authors and readers to engage with one another in unprecedented and meaningful ways.

Dr. Brannon currently works as a computer science and robotics teacher at Ranney School, a private grade school in New Jersey. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Randolph-Macon College, where he teaches composition. He is working on his first book, tentatively titled Music, Commerce, and Ideas: The Birth of Modern Music Discourse in the First Age of Print. He is also an active composer.