Charles E. Brewer
Charles E. Brewer, Professor of Musicology, received the B.A. degree from S.U.N.Y. Binghamton with a Certificate in Medieval Studies, the M.A. degree from Columbia University, and the Ph.D. degree from the City University of New York. He received fellowships from the International Research and Exchanges Board, Fulbright Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities supporting his research in European archives.
His curiosity has led his research into different areas. A continuing interest are the musical cultures of Central Europe during the Middle Ages and the Seventeenth Century. His dissertation research on medieval music in Poland was given the Stefan and Wanda Wilk Prize in 1986. Studies on the instrumental music of the Seventeenth Century has resulted in his monograph, The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat, and their Contemporaries (Farnham: Ashgate Press, 2011), critical editions, and frequent collaborations with performers, including the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, InAlto, the Ensemble for Early Music, and ACRONYM. His studies on the music of William Billings appeared in two works, Singing Sedition: Piety and Politics in the Music of William Billings (Hillsdale: Pendragon Press, 2017) and William Billings, An Early American Composer of Music and His Seditious Song Chester: The Cultural Significance of Tune Names during the American Revolution (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2017). His “hobby” research has been on film music, particularly the music for the avant-garde films of Dr. James Sibley Watson, Jr., and Melville Webber. Also active as a performer on historic keyboard instruments, he has performed with the Cantores Musicae Antiquae, the Tallahassee Bach Parley, and the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra. He is currently completing a volume of monophonic Latin song for the Notre Dame Conductus: Opera Omnia series.
He has served as chair of the American Chapter of the International Heinrich Schütz Society, a member of the American Musicology Society national council, is currently a member of the editorial board for the Journal of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, and served as an external reviewer for both The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music and The Web Library of Seventeenth-Century Music.
Recent Courses
Revisiting the Carmina Burana
Lyric Drama in the Baroque
Transatlantic Music: British-American Musical Connections in the 1760s and 1770s
Soundscapes of Science Fiction
Affiliations
American Musicological Society
Society for Seventeenth-century Music
International Schütz Society
International Musicological Society, Study Group “Cantus Planus”
Society of Early Americanists
Selected Publications
Collectio cantilenarum saeculi XV (rkp. Biblioteki Jagiellonskiej Kj 2464, Zródła do historii muzyki polskiej XXX (Kraków: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 1990).
“The Web of Sources for Planctus ante nescia.” Cantus Planus: Papers read at the 16th meeting [I.M.S. Study Group on Chant] Vienna, Austria 2011 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Kommission für Musikforschung, 2012), 72-77.
“The Songs of Johannes Decanus,” Plainsong and Mediaeval Music 20/1 (2011), 31-49.
“Locating the Codex Buranus: Notational Contexts”. In Revisiting the Codex Buranus—Contexts, Contents, Concepts, edited by Tristan E. Franklinos and Henry Hope, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music 21 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2020), 283-315.
Compositions for Solo Violin and Continuo from the Collections of Prince-Bishop Karl Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn in Kroměříž (Madison: A-R Editions, 1997).
“Contexts for and Functions of Instrumental Music in Central Europe”. In A Companion to Music at the Habsburg Courts in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, edited by Andrew Weaver, Brill’s Companions to the Musical Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Europe 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), Chapter 9, 348-94.
“Protestant Church Music in England and America.” In The Cambridge History of Eighteenth Century Music, ed. Simon Keefe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp.168-180.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Sonatas from Manuscript Sources, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, The Complete Works, Series I, Volume 6.4 (Los Altos: The Packard Humanities Institute, 2016).
“The Rochester Amateurs and The Fall of the House of Usher,” The Edgar Allan Poe Review 16/1 (Spring, 2015), 44-53.
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