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Margaret Bent wins Claude Palisca Award
The 2009 Claude Palisca Award has been awarded to Bologna Q15: The Making and Remaking of a Musical Manuscript, an introductory study and facsimile edition by Margaret Bent (Emeritus Fellow of All Souls). This is an annual award made by the American Musicological Society in recognition of an outstanding scholarly edition or translation in the field of musicology published during the previous year.
Aside from Dr Bent's outstanding contributions, the publication has other links with the Oxford Music Faculty. DIAMM (the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music), whose home is the Faculty of Music, played a central role in providing the high-quality photography for the facsimile. Julia Craig-McFeely, a newly appointed member of the Music Faculty, undertook the photography, as well as the typesetting and layout. DIAMM is to be a central plank in the Faculty's well-advanced plans to establish a Centre in Early Music.
The Palisca Award committee's (edited) citation reads as follows:
'This year's winner [is] the unanimous choice of the committee, aptly described by one of its members as an exemplar of "regal musicology," a career-crowning achievement that will forever set a benchmark for facsimile editions.
'This year's prize-winner is an introductory study and facsimile of a crucial 15th-century manuscript, for which the quality of photography and reproduction is breathtaking. Photographed in colour when it was disbound, with illegible pages digitally restored, the edition allows us to read some music for the very first time. Initials have been filmed on both sides enabling the editor to discern music that was discarded when the manuscript was recopied. Reproducing the original cover, watermarks, and gathering signatures, the facsimile can actually claim to be more useful and informative than having the original on one's desk.
'Having studied this manuscript and its repertoire for nearly 35 years, the editor has prefaced the facsimile with a magisterial essay of 383 folio-sized pages, which provides a history of the manuscript, its structure and chronology, the circumstances surrounding its various recopyings and revisions, and an overview of the nature, style, and reception of the 328 compositions it transmits. It is a scholarly achievement of the highest order.'