Kathleen Hansell
Editor
E-mail: khansell@press.uchicago.edu
Subjects: Music
Series: The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Music in Facsimile, Monuments of Renaissance Music
As music editor, my major duty is managing our critical edition of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, which we co-publish with Casa Ricordi, Milan. The next volume slated to appear (February 2011) is Verdi’s Chamber Music. We are currently preparing the opera Attila, which had its premiere at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in March 2010, with Riccardo Muti conducting from second proofs of our score. In addition, I acquire new manuscripts and sponsor translation projects in various areas of art music. I joined the Press in 1992, after four years at Casa Ricordi in Italy, where I worked daily with performers as well as visiting scholars. As managing editor of the Verdi edition I acquire the necessary source materials for each volume and review both musical decisions and the accompanying critical commentaries and historical introductions.
I also acquire new book manuscripts and sponsor translation projects in various areas of art music. Here my training in musicology at several institutions has stood me in good stead (Ph.D., University of California Berkeley; M.Mus., University of Illinois; B.A., Wellesley College). I focus on areas of music history in which the Press is particularly strong, including the history of opera, music aesthetics and philosophy, studies in medieval and Renaissance music, 18th-century topics, and aspects of modernism. This includes the long-standing series of critical editions, Monuments of Renaissance Music. I particularly seek out interdisciplinary studies placing music in the overall context of the arts, literature, and general history. Some recent highlights among my acquisitions are Music in German Philosophy: An Introduction; Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the Awakening of Finland; A Language of Its Own: Sense and Meaning in the Making of Western Art Music; Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer: Paris, 1830–1914; Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court: Music and the Circulation of Power; and Jewish Musical Modernism, Old and New.
Aiding me ably in my work is Shenyun Wu, editorial associate.
