Margaret Bent

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Margaret Hilda Bent (nee Bassington) (b. Dec. 23, 1940) is an English musicologist.

Bent studied organ at Girton College, receiving her BA in 1962 and Ph.D in 1969. Her dissertation, supervised by Thurston Dart, was a study of the Old Hall Manuscript. She taught at Cambridge and King's College after 1963, and became lecturer at Goldsmiths' College in 1972. In 1975 she became professor at Brandeis University; in 1981 she joined the faculty at Princeton University, remaining until 1992, when she returned to England to teach at All Souls College. Bent was president of the American Musicological Society from 1984-86.

Bent's study of the Old Hall Manuscript (both her dissertation and the edition, co-edited with Andrew Hughes, published in the Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 1969-73) was a key work in the scholarship of early English music. She was a pioneer in musical paleography and source studies. She has done extensive work on the medieval motet, previously a neglected area of musicological inquiry. Her studies of John Dunstaple, Philippe de Vitry, Guillaume de Machaut, musica ficta and the Roman de Fauvel have all been highly influential.

[edit] Books

  • The Old Hall Manuscript: a Paleographical Study (dissertation, U. of Cambridge, 1969)
  • Dunstaple (London, 1981)
  • (ed., with A. Wathey) Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS français 146 (Oxford, 1998)

[edit] References