Genizah Melodies
Sharing Jewish music by deep-diving into the tradition of Hebrew Chant from the Medieval Mediterranean
The texts of my repertoire for this project come from the Cairo Genizah, from which we have some 400,000 documents detailing medieval Jewish life in Fustat, or Cairo. This project seeks to re-imagine and reconstruct poetry, piyyut, and psalms from the medieval Jewish world, and to do this in the most historically-informed way possible. There are three stages to the project; research on medieval Jewish chant traditions, score arrangement of these melodies in modern notation, and ultimately, a recital and recordings. These will be posted here at the culmination of the project…
Paper: Effects of Vowel Modification in Singing
An Acoustic Investigation of the High Soprano Range
Linguistic research on the acoustics of vowel modification using an LPC (Linear predictive coding) model to track acoustic correlates of vowels across the high-frequency range of sopranos.
Study: Measuring music and prosody
How does musical ability affect sensitivity to speech sounds?
Accounting for variation in non-native speech discrimination with working memory, specialized music skills, and music background. I collected and processed data for this study, under Dr. Jocelyn Dueck and Dr. Seth Wiener.
Materials and Data: Available on Open Science Framework
Paper: Expressive Tuning in the Baroque and Beyond
An investigation into the history of tunings and temperaments, particularly concerning the underlying causes of the pull towards standardization and equal temperament. This paper explores the ancient and pre-modern roots of later tuning trends with an emphasis on Gioseffe Zarlino and Pythagoras, and challenges the traditional idea of viewing tuning changes over time through a tunnel view of societal progression.