Students in the IU Department of Musicology have the opportunity to apply for grants and fellowships that support travel, research, and study abroad. These funds, generously provided by donors and department supporters, help students access archives, participate in language programs, and engage with primary sources and cultural contexts crucial to their research. Learn more about IU Musicology funding opportunities here.
Thanks to the A. Peter Brown and Carol V. Brown Research Travel Fund, the Peter Burkholder and Doug McKinney Musicology Research Travel Fund, the W. Richard Shindle Musicology Fund, the Laura S. Youens-Wexler Musicology Travel Fund, the David Henry Jacobs International Overseas Study Musicology Fellowship, the Jacobs Student Travel Committee, and the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, the three students featured in this travel blog—Mingfei Li, Kaylee Feller-Simmons, and Sarah Sabol—were able to travel abroad for both research and language learning.
I am grateful for a very fruitful summer I spent in Germany and Austria funded by the A. Peter Brown and Carol V. Brown Research Travel Fund and the David Henry Jacobs International Overseas Study Musicology Fellowship. This study and research trip has allowed me to access archival materials that had been previously difficult to access. Thanks to this support I visited archives in Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Vienna, where I examined manuscripts of these repertories and established connections with archivists. Having the opportunity to spend time with these performance materials has shaped my dissertation topic and furthered my research.
While in Vienna, I enrolled in intensive German courses at the University of Vienna, which has greatly enhanced my language skills for working with German-language primary sources. Sightseeing in Bavaria and Vienna during my free time also provided me with more well-rounded understandings of the culture, people, and language related to my dissertation research – not to mention that it was fun, too.
—Mingfei Li
I’d like to express my gratitude to the W. Richard Shindle Fund for Musicological Research and Travel that allowed me to conduct my research in the Netherlands this summer. This funding supported enrollment in an intensive early modern Dutch paleography course at Columbia University, providing the tools I need to translate antiquated Dutch vocabulary and historical scripts, as well as a three-week stay in Den Haag, where I viewed the 17th century Dutch songbooks that will be the center of my forthcoming dissertation.
This trip was crucial to my studies and well-timed: seeing the primary sources in person helped me make sense of a massive repertoire, which redirected and focused the scope of my dissertation proposal. I now have a greater understanding of the materials with which I am working (and a greater appreciation of Dutch street food).
—Kaylee Feller-Simmons
This summer, I received funding from the 
David Henry Jacobs International Overseas Study Musicology Fellowship, the Laura S. Youens-Wexler Musicology Travel Fund, the JSOM Travel Fund, and the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship to take an intensive course in Italian for seven weeks in Verona and begin archival research at the Accademica Filarmonica of Verona in preparation for writing the proposal for my dissertation, which focuses on Italian academies in the sixteenth century.
My language studies went well, and I improved my Italian from a B1 level to a B2. At the Accademia Filarmonica archive, I had the opportunity to examine all the extant madrigal prints dedicated to the academy. Highlights of the summer definitely include seeing Turandot and Aida at the Arena di Verona! In addition to studying in Italy, I had to opportunity to present my paper “Taking Up the Cross: Difficulty, Effort, and Contemplation in Three Cruciform Riddles” at MedRen in Granada in July and connect with other early music scholars.
—Sarah Sabol
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