Prof. Honey Meconi - Class of 1960 Music Lecture

Musicologist Honey Meconi is the inaugural Arthur Satz Professor at the University of Rochester, where she is on the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Eastman School of Music. Her Class of 1960 Lecture is titled How Hildegard Became an Internet Meme.

Thirty years ago, Hildegard von Bingen, the twelfth-century Benedictine nun who was saint, visionary, poet, composer, theological writer (and more) was essentially unknown to the general public. Today we can buy socks decorated with her name and image on the internet. This talk traces the journey from relative obscurity to her position as internet meme and middlebrow favorite, with some consideration of the accuracy of her portrayal along the way and the small role that the speaker played in making her better known.

Prof. Meconi is an expert on Renaissance music as well as the music of Hildegard of Bingen (the twelfth-century polymath, poet, and composer), and is director of The Hildegard Project, a long-term undertaking to perform all of that composer’s music. Her publications include Hildegard of Bingen (University of Illinois Press, 2018), Pierre de la Rue and Musical Life at the Habsburg-Burgundian Court (Oxford University Press, 2003; reprint 2009), the commentary volume to the facsimile edition of Brussels, Royal Library, Ms. IV.90 (Patrimonio Ediciones, 2007), and the edited volumes Early Musical Borrowing (Routledge, 2004), Fortuna desperata: 36 Settings of an Italian Song (A-R Editions, 2001; reprint 2009), Medieval Music (Ashgate, 2011), and The Mechelen Choirbook (co-edited with David J. Burn, Standaard/Davidsfonds, 2019). She has also published fiction under a nom de plume.

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