We are so very pleased to share that recent IU Jacobs School of Music alumna, Dr. Elizabeth Grace Elmi, was awarded the 2020 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the International Musicological Society (IMS).
In her dissertation, titled “Singing Lyric among Local Aristocratic Networks in the Aragonese-Ruled Kingdom of Naples: Aesthetic and Political Meaning in the Written Records of an Oral Practice,” advised by Prof. Massimo Ossi, Elmi examined the predominantly oral practice of singing lyric poetry among members of the Neapolitan aristocracy in Southern Italy during the late fifteenth century.
The International Musicological Society Outstanding Dissertation Award (IMSODA) is open to scholars who have completed their doctoral dissertation in the field of music within the last two years of the deadline. The winning dissertation—which can be written in any language—is then published as an online open access monograph.
The International Musicological Society (IMS) was born on the centenary of Beethoven’s death: 1927. At that time, the idea of music as a universal language was still at its height, modeled on Beethoven’s legacy. It was a unifying idea; after the ravages of World War I, musicologists in Europe sought to establish a common purpose that could transcend enemy lines, open borders, and usher in an international society that would work together to protect and advance the object of their study. The vision was of a global society connected by a music of universal reach. Or, as it states in the statutes:
“The purpose of IMS is to further musicological research in its broadest sense among all peoples and nations”; or to put it in more modern terms, “the advancement of musicological research on the basis of international cooperation.”
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