Mary Channen Caldwell is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research, which focuses on medieval song, liturgy, pedagogy, and intertextuality, has been published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music & Letters, the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Plainsong & Medieval Music, and Early Music History.
'What does the medieval refrain do in Latin song?, asks Mary Channen Caldwell at the opening of her engaging new study. A very great deal, as it turns out. Throughout Devotional Refrains, she argues for refrains as carrying multivalent musical and cultural meanings, beautifully demonstrating their often overlapping devotional, temporal, structural, and performative implications.' Rachel May Golden, University of Tennessee