My research examines the reconstruction and recomposition of ancient Greek music. It has been well established by now that the melodic contour of the surviving musical fragments from classical antiquity largely conform to the contour of the Greek pitch accent of the text to which the music is set. My masters thesis compared the musical pitch accent of ancient Greek with Swedish. My doctoral dissertation begins by examining patterns in the places where melody does not conform to the textual pitch accent in extant ancient fragments.
By learning how and why composers failed to conform, I aim to increase our understanding of how ancient composers used the inherent melody of their text to create music. This will further provide insight into the unanswered question of whether or not certain genres of music, specifically the strophic song, regarded the pitch accent at all.
Outside of classics I am a classically trained harpist and I hold a BMus in musicology. I will use the findings of my research to perform reconstructions and newly commissioned recompositions on ancient and modern instruments.
