Gordon Greene | The Canadian Encyclopedia

Article

Gordon Greene

Gordon (Kay) Greene. Musicologist, teacher, b Cardston, Alta, 27 Dec 1927; Associate in music (WBM) 1953, BA (Alberta) 1954, B ED (Alberta) 1954, MA philosophy (Alberta) 1962, PH D musicology (Indiana) 1971.

Greene, Gordon

Gordon (Kay) Greene. Musicologist, teacher, b Cardston, Alta, 27 Dec 1927; Associate in music (WBM) 1953, BA (Alberta) 1954, B ED (Alberta) 1954, MA philosophy (Alberta) 1962, PH D musicology (Indiana) 1971. He taught 1955-63 at the University of Alberta, then studied musicology 1963-6 with Willi Apel at Indiana U. He joined the University of Western Ontario in 1966 and was chairman 1966-75 of the music history department. He then began teaching in 1978 at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he served 1979-89 as dean of the Faculty of Music. He has received, among other awards, Canada Council fellowships (1964-6, 1972), and seven research grants 1968-84 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to study French secular polyphonic music in European libraries. In June 1974 he gave a series of lectures and workshops at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, and for six months in 1985 he was a visiting professor in Australia at Sydney U and Melbourne U. He has presented papers on medieval and renaissance topics at universities and conferences in Canada, the USA, Europe, and Australia. He has directed choirs at the University of Alberta, the University of Western Ontario, and Wilfrid Laurier University. Greene served 1985-7 as president of CUMS. He has been a contributor to The New Grove Dictionary, the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, and EMC.

Writings

'Fit for treasons,' Pleasures of Learning, vol 9, Dec 1962

'The work of art as a symbol,' MA thesis, University of Alberta 1962

'Musical homesteading in Alberta,' PfAC, vol 2, Winter 1963

'The secular music of Chantilly Ms. Musée Condé 564,' PH D thesis, Indiana U 1971

'From mistress to master: the origins of polyphonic music as a visible language,' Visible Language, vol 6, Spring 1972

'For whom and why does the composer prepare a score,' J of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol 32, Summer 1974

'Incipient Ars Nova in the Brussels Rotulus,' Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario, vol 1, 1976

'The schools of minstrelsy and the choir-school tradition,' ibid, vol 2, 1977

'Reconstruction of Montserrat manuscript 823,' L'Ars Nova Italiano del Trecento (Certaldo, Italy 1989)

- ed. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, vols 18-22, (Monaco, Paris l980-9)

Further Reading