My research activity is also listed on my ORCID profile, available at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6077-3182, and on Google Scholar, available at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PmKeZkAAAAAJ&hl=en. Please contact me if you have any problems accessing copies of these publications.
Peer-reviewed Books (3)
1. Karen Desmond, Music and the moderni, 1300-1350: The ars nova in Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Single author monograph. 300 + xxiv pages. Winner, 2019 Lewis Lockwood Award from the American Musicological Society for outstanding work of musicological scholarship (early stages). Finalist (one of four), 2019 Wallace Berry Award, Society for Music Theory for “a distinguished book by an author of any age or career stage.” Reviewed in: Journal of Music Theory, The Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians, Parergon, Plainsong & Medieval Music, Renaissance Quarterly, Revue de Musicologie.
2. Catherine A. Bradley and Karen Desmond, eds., The Montpellier Codex: The Final Fascicle (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018). Edited collection of essays. 333 + xviii pages. Reviewed in: Early Music America, Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, The Medieval Review, Music & Letters, Notes, Plainsong and Medieval Music, Revue de musicologie, Speculum.
3. Christian Meyer, editor, and Karen Desmond, translator, The Ars musica attributed to Magister Lambertus/Aristoteles, RMA Monograph Series 27 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). Edition and Translation. 130 + xxxviii pages. Reviewed in: The Medieval Review, Music & Letters, Speculum, Theoria.
Digital Projects & Editions (3)
1. “Measuring Polyphony: An Online Music Editor for Late Medieval Polyphony,” a software application that allows users with no expertise in music encoding to encode large amounts of music data in mensural notation directly linked to digital images of the medieval manuscripts. Available at https://editor.meausuringpolyphony.org; Open source code available at https://measuringpolyphony.github.io/mp_editor/; White Paper available at https://securegrants.neh.gov/publicquery/main.aspx?f=1&gn=HAA-263800-19
2. “Measuring Polyphony: Digital Editions of Late Medieval Music”, an online digital music edition that currently presents editions of 64 fourteenth-century motets in mensural and modern notation, and downloadable XML files, PDF, and MIDI, available at http://www.measuringpolyphony.org; open source code available at https://github.com/MeasuringPolyphony/measuring_polyphony_jekyll. Reviewed in: Journal of the American Musicological Society.
3. “Omni desideranti notitiam: An online edition of a fourteenth-century theory treatise on ars nova notation attributed to Philippe de Vitry,” available at http://www.arsmusicae.org.
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles (10)
1. “W. de Wicumbe’s Rolls and Singing the Alleluya ca. 1250,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 73/3 (2020): 639-707. Link to PDF, by kind permission of the University of California Press. (Available online at https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2020.73.3.639)
2. (first author, with Emily Hopkins, Samuel Howes, Julie E. Cumming) “Computer-Assisted Analysis of Sonority in Fourteenth-Century Motets,” Music Theory Online, 26/4 (December 2020), available at https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.4/mto.20.26.4.desmond.html.
3. (with C. Philipp E. Nothaft & Matthieu Husson) “Jean des Murs’s Quadrivial Pursuits.” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 4 (2019), 1-12. Link (via BRILL). Please email me for a copy if you do not have institutional access.
4. “Jean des Murs and the Partes prolationis of BnF lat. 7378A.” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 4(2019), 40-63. Link (via BRILL). Please email me for a copy if you do not have institutional access.
5. “‘One is the loneliest number . . .’: The Semibreve Stands Alone.” Early Music 46 (August 2018), 403-416. Link to online article and downloadable PDF, by kind courtesy of Oxford University Press.
6. “Did Vitry Write an Ars vetus et nova?” Journal of Musicology 32/4 (2015), 441-493. Link to PDF.
Published as “Did Vitry Write an Ars vetus et nova?” in The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 32, Issue 4, pp. 441–493. © 2015 by the Regents of the University of California. Copying and permissions notice: Authorization to copy this content beyond fair use (as specified in Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law) for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by the Regents of the University of California for libraries and other users, provided that they are registered with and pay the specified fee via Rightslink® or directly with the Copyright Clearance Center.
7. “Refusal, the Look of Love, and The Beastly Woman of Machaut’s Balades 27 and 38,” Early Music History 32 (2013), 71-118. Link to online article.
8. “Texts in Play: The Ars nova and its Hypertexts,” Musica disciplina 57 (2012), 81-153. Link (via JSTOR). Please email me for a copy if you do not have institutional access.
9. “New Light on Jacobus, Author of Speculum musicae,” Plainsong and Medieval Music 9 (2000), 19-40. Link to online article.
10. “Sicut in grammatica: Analogical Discourse in Chapter 15 of Guido’s Micrologus,” Journal of Musicology 16 (1998), 467-493. Link to PDF.
Published as “Sicut in grammatica: Analogical Discourse in Chapter 15 of Guido’s Micrologus,” in The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 16 No. 4, Autumn, 1998; (pp. 467-493). © 2015 by the Regents of the University of California. Copying and permissions notice: Authorization to copy this content beyond fair use (as specified in Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law) for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by the Regents of the University of California for libraries and other users, provided that they are registered with and pay the specified fee via Rightslink® or directly with the Copyright Clearance Center.
Co-edited Journal Special Issues (peer-reviewed) (2)
1. C. Philipp E. Nothaft, Karen Desmond & Matthieu Husson: “Jean des Murs Special Issue,” Erudition and the Republic of Letters, 4 (2019). Co-authored introduction with Nothaft and Husson, “Jean des Murs’s Quadrivial Pursuits: Introduction” on pp. 1-12. Link (via BRILL). Please email me for a copy if you do not have institutional access. Includes articles by Jean-Patrice Boudet, Karen Desmond, Matthieu Husson, C. Philipp E. Nothaft, Laure Miolo, Elżbieta Witkowska-Zaremba).
2. Karen Desmond & Anna Zayaruznaya): “Philippe de Vitry Special Issue,” Early Music 46 (2018). Co-authored introduction with Zayaruznaya, “Vitry and the Ars nova” on p. 373 (link to online version and downloadable PDF). Includes articles by David Catalunya, Karen Desmond, Karl Kügle, and Anna Zayaruznaya.
Peer-reviewed book chapters (8)
1. “Traces of Revision in Machaut’s Motet Bone pastor,” in Poetry, Music, and Art in Guillaume de Machaut’s Earliest Manuscript (BnF fr. 1586), edited by Lawrence Earp and Jared C. Hartt, 397-432 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021).
2. “Notations,” in A Companion to Medieval Motets, 103-130, ed. Jared Hartt (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018).
3. (with Catherine Bradley) “Introduction,” in The Montpellier Codex: The Final Fascicle. Contents, Contexts, Chronologies, 1-12, edited by Catherine A. Bradley and Karen Desmond (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018).
4. “Texture, Rhythm, and Stylistic Groupings in Montpellier 8 Motets,” in The Montpellier Codex: The Final Fascicle, 139-160, edited by Catherine A. Bradley and Karen Desmond (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018).
5. “Zur „englischen“ Prägung des Tonale secundum usum ecclesiarum Anglie et Francie des Amerus ” in ,Nationes’-Begriffe im mittelalterlichen Musikschrifttum: Politische und regionale Gemeinschaftsnamen in musikbezogenen Quellen, 800-1400, 77-89, edited by Frank Hentschel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016).
6. “Regionalspezifische Aspekte von Rhythmus und Notation nach Anonymus IV: Angli”
in ,Nationes’-Begriffe im mittelalterlichen Musikschrifttum: Politische und regionale Gemeinschaftsnamen in musikbezogenen Quellen, 800-1400, 117-137, ed. Hentschel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016).
7. “Katzenmusik in der Kirche: Elias Salomo über den Verfall der geistlichen Musik” in ,Nationes’-Begriffe im mittelalterlichen Musikschrifttum: Politische und regionale Gemeinschaftsnamen in musikbezogenen Quellen, 800-1400, 197-204, ed. Hentschel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016).
8. “„Brittani“ in Ps.-Adalbolds Epistola cum tractatu de musica instrumentali humanaque ac mundane” in ,Nationes’-Begriffe im mittelalterlichen Musikschrifttum: Politische und regionale Gemeinschaftsnamen in musikbezogenen Quellen, 800-1400, 239-47, ed. Hentschel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016).
Book Reviews (10)
1. Guillaume de Machaut: The Complete Poetry and Music: Volume 9: The Motets, ed. Jacques Boogaart and trans. Barton Palmer, (Kalamazoo, MI, 2018). in Revue de musicologie, 106/1 (2020), 280-4.
4. The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet by Anna Zayaruznaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) in Early Music 44 (2016), 333-334.
5. A Paradise of Priests: Singing the Civic and Episcopal Hagiography of Medieval Liège by Catherine Saucier (University of Rochester Press, 2014) in Early Music 43 (April 2015), 320-322.
6. The Art of Grafted Song: Citation and Allusion in the Age of Machaut by Yolanda Plumley (Oxford University Press, 2013) in Plainsong and Medieval Music 24 (2015), 99-103.
7. The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Poetry by Jennifer Saltzstein (Boydell & Brewer, 2013) in Speculum 89 (July 2014), 824-826.
8. The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, 1260-1330 by Emma Dillon (Oxford University Press, 2012) in The Medieval Review (January 2013), available online at https:// scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/15235/13.01.04.html
9. Florentius de Faxolis: Book on Music, ed. and trans. Bonnie J. Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens (Harvard University Press, 2011) in Early Music 40 (November 2012), 687-688.
10. Ars musica septentrionalis: De l’interprétation du patrimoine musical à l’historiographie, ed. Barbara Haggh and Frédéric Billiet (Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2011) in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 68 (2012), 811-814.
Reference Articles In Books (3)
1. “Vitry, Philippe de” in Musikschrifttum, 519-521, ed. Felix Wörner and Ullrich Scheideler (Bärenreiter and Metzler, 2017).
2. “Notre Dame Polyphony,” in Reader’s Guide to Music History, Theory and Criticism, 497-9, ed. Murray Steib (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999).
3. “Ockeghem,” in Reader’s Guide to Music History, Theory and Criticism, 501-502, ed. Murray Steib (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999).
Ars musicae 