Fonction: Chercheur associé
Email: p.memelsdorff@gmail.com
Discipline: Musicologie
Statut: Chercheur Associé
Present:
- Director of the Early Music Seminars at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice (Italy).
- Director of the music festival Festtage Alte Musik Basel (Basle, Switzerland).
- Co-director of the Master 'Early Music Research and Performance' and
- Director of its section “Analysis and Notation”, at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya and Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Barcelona (Spain).
- Music director of the medieval ensemble MALA PUNICA.
2013-2015: Director of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Basle, Switzerland).
- Affiliate Researcher at the Musicology Research Group, Utrecht University (The Netherlands).
- Member of the College of the Helvetian Confederal Graduate School in Italian Civilization (Scuola Dottorale Confederale in Civiltà Italiana), Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland.
- Member of the Study Group “Transmission of Knowledge as a Primary Aim in Music Education” of the International Musicological Society.
- Member of the Study Group “Tablature in Western Music” of the International Musicological Society.
- Tenured teacher and co-director at ESMUC (Barcelona, Spain, see below).
A musicologist and music director, P. Memelsdorff was born in Argentina in 1959 and resides in Europe since 1977. He graduated from the Schola Cantorum in Basle and the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam, and obtained a Ph.D. in Musicology at the Utrecht University (awarded with the Jan Pieter Heije Prize, 2007-2012).
Specialized in late-medieval repertoires and their manuscript transmission, he was a fellow at Villa I Tatti-Harvard (Florence) in 2003-04 and Ernest-Bloch Lecturer at the University of Berkeley, California in 2010.
He is now an Affiliate Researcher at the Utrecht University and a member of the college of the Confederal Graduate School in Italian Civilization (Switzerland) and of the Study Groups “Transmission of Knowledge as a Primary Aim in Music Education” and “Tablature in Western Music” of the International Musicological Society. He is also a member of the scientific boards of the Journal of the Alamire Foundation, the Miami Bach Society, and the Ars nova series of LIM (Libreria Musicale Italiana, Lucca, Italy).
Memelsdorff published some twenty essays in the specialized press (Studi Musicali, Acta Musicologica, Recercare, Plainsong & Medieval Music, Brepols, LIM, Galluzzo), and authored a monograph on the history and codicology of the Codex Faenza 117 (LIM).
As a musician, he is a member of Jordi Savall’s Hesperion XX/XXI since 1981 and of the duo Pedro Memelsdorff-Andreas Staier since 1984. In 1987 he founded -- and ever since directs -- the medieval ensemble Mala Punica, which performed over four hundred international concerts and published 8 CD’s (obtaining forty international awards). Artistic Residences brought Memelsdorff and Mala Punica to the Universities of Harvard and Davis in California, to the Amuz in Antwerp, and the Fondation Royaumont in Paris.
Late-medieval polyphony, its production, transmission and reception
History of late-medieval music theory and counterpoint
History of Italian language and metricology
Musical patronage in the 14th and 15th centuries
Codicology and palaeography
Hibridization of musical repertoires in the French 18th-century Caribbean
Iconology and musical still-life in 17th-century Italy
2005-2009 Utrecht University, Utrecht (The Netherlands).
Ph.D. in Musicology, cum laude.
Dissertation: The Filiation and Transmission of Instrumental Polyphony in Late Medieval Italy: The Codex Faenza 117.
Doctoral supervisor: Karl Kügle. Assessment Committee: Margaret Bent, John Nádas, Pierluigi Petrobelli, Rudolf Rasch, Louis Grijp. Additional reader: David Fallows.
1981-1984 Sweelinck Conservatorium, Amsterdam (The Netherlands).
Uitvoerend Musicus (Soloist Diploma).
1979-1981 Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Basle (Switzerland).
Renaissance-Baroque Diploma.
Dissertation: Das Symbol als Dokument: Der Freskenzyklus von Giusto de’ Menabuoi im Baptisterium zu Padua.
Awards and fellowships:
2014 Jan Pieter Heije Prize, 2007-2012.
2014 Blodgett Distinguished Artist in Residence, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA).
2010 Ernest-Bloch Lecturer, University of Berkeley, California (USA).
2008 Artist in Residence, University of Davis, California (USA).
2003-2004 Fellow at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence (Italy).
2000 Artist in Residence AMUZ Augustinus Muziekcentrum, Antwerp (Belgium).
1997 Artist in Residence Fondation Royaumont, Paris (France).
Member of the Advisory Boards of:
- Series ‘Estudios de Musicología’, Editorial Alpuerto, Barcelona (Spain).
- Journal of the Alamire Foundation, Leuven (Belgium).
- Series ‘Ars Nova’ of the LIM, Libreria Musicale Italiana, Lucca (Italy).
Reviewer for the musicological journals:
- Journal of the Alamire Foundation
- Early Music
- International Young Artists’ Presentation, Antwerp (Belgium), 2007 and 2009.