Biography

Jessie Ann Owens is professor of music and former dean of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Davis.  She is author of Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600 (1997), the first systematic investigation of compositional process in early music, and numerous articles on Renaissance music and music theory. In 1979-80 she was a fellow at Villa I Tatti.  She  has served as president of  the American Musicological Society and the Renaissance Society of America, and is a  fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Project Summary

Jessie Ann Owens is working on a book entitled Cipriano de Rore’s Dramatic Music. De Rore was the leading composer of Italian madrigals in the middle decades of the sixteenth century. Owens explores his selection of texts, many of which set speeches or small scenes. His interest in portraying human emotion and representing character anticipates the development of opera in the decades around 1600.