| 1 | Name: | Dr. Anne Walters Robertson | |
| Institution: | University of Chicago | ||
| Year Elected: | 2015 | ||
| Class: | 4. Humanities | ||
| Subdivision: | 401. Archaeology | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1956 | ||
Anne Walters Robertson is a music historian who writes on subjects ranging from the plainchant of the early church to the Latin and vernacular polyphony of the late middle ages. She is currently Dean of the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago. In her work, liturgical and secular music, and often the interactions of the two, mirror theological and courtly ideas and shape the development of medieval spirituality and personal devotion, architecture, institutional identity, and politics. The theme of French royal culture also winds its way through Robertson’s books, which focus on the history of music at the cathedral of Reims, where the kings of France were crowned, and the music and liturgy of the abbey of St-Denis of Paris, where the kings were buried. Her research on fourteenth-century polyphony points to the fundamental roles of local musical dialect in understanding Philippe de Vitry’s life and music, and of mystical theology in illuminating the compositions of Guillaume de Machaut. More recently, she has studied the symbolic and folkloric aspects of the seminal masses and motets of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as the title of her 2006 article, "The Savior, the Woman, and the Head of the Dragon in the Caput Masses and Motet," suggests. She has taught at the University of Chicago since 1984, where, throughout her career, she has been involved in the work of the broader University and the professional organizations, serving as Deputy Provost for Research and Education (2001-4) and Chair of the Music Department (1992-98, 2008, 2014-17), and as Co-Chair of the OPUS Campaign of the American Musicological Society (2005-9) and President of the AMS (2011-2012). Robertson studied piano at the University of Houston (B.Mus., August 1974, summa cum laude and valedictorian; M.Mus. 1976) and music theory at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University (M.Mus. 1979) before taking the Ph.D. in musicology at Yale University (1984). She is the first scholar to win all three awards of the Medieval Academy of America: the Haskins Medal (2006) for her book Guillaume de Machaut and Reims: Context and Meaning in his Musical Works (Cambridge University Press, 2002), the John Nicholas Brown Prize (1995) for The Service Books of the Royal Abbey of Saint Denis: Images of Ritual and Music in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), and the Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize (1987). Another trio of prizes, bestowed by the AMS, includes the H. Colin Slim Award (2007), the Otto Kinkeldey Award (2003), and the Alfred Einstein Award (1989). In 2007, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association presented her with the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal. She has received grants and fellowships from the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation (1996-97), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1992), the American Philosophical Society (1990), the National Endowment for the Humanities (1990, 1986-87, 1985), the American Council of Learned Societies (1988, 1986), the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music (1982 83), the Fulbright Program (France, 1981 82), and the American Association of University Women (honorary, 1982). Robertson became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2015. | |||