Emily Thelen

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Humanities, Co-Director of the Center for Norbertine Studies and Executive Director for Mission Integration
Emily Thelen
About

Emily Thelen is a musicologist with expertise in early music and manuscript studies. Before coming to St. Norbert College, she taught a variety of music history courses at Princeton and New York Universities and now enjoys teaching across humanities disciplines, including a course on Norbertine and college history.  While holding a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Leuven, Belgium, she worked for the Alamire Foundation on the site of the Norbertine Park Abbey.  Her research examines the intersection of music, liturgy and politics in the Low Countries and has been supported by grants from the Belgian American Educational Foundation, the government of Flanders and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library. She currently serves as the Executive Director for Mission Integration and the Co-Director of the Center for Norbertine Studies.

Interests
  • Alamire Manuscripts
  • Flemish Polyphony
  • Confraternity Studies
  • Marian Devotion and Popular Piety in the Middle Ages
  • Contemporary Catholic Liturgical Music
  • Medieval Norbertine Liturgy & Spirituality
Publications

Books

A Choirbook for the Seven Sorrows: Royal Library of Belgium MS. 215-16, Study / Een Koorboek voor de Zeven Smarten: Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België MS. 215-216, Studie. Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile, vol. 2. Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2018.

Editor, The Seven Sorrows Confraternity of Brussels: Drama, Ceremony, and Art Patronage, 16th-17th Centuries. Studies in European Urban History, 1100-1800, vol. 37. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015.

Articles and Book Chapters

“Celebrating Du Fay at 550 Years.” Sacred Music 151, no. 2 (Summer 2024): 53-65.

“The Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin: Piety, Politics, and Plainchant at the Burgundian- Habsburg Court.” Early Music History 35 (2016): 261-307.

“Music and Liturgy of the Seven Sorrows Confraternity of Brussels.” In The Seven Sorrows Confraternity of Brussels: Drama, Ceremony, and Art Patronage, 16th-17th Centuries, ed. Emily S. Thelen, Studies in European Urban History, 1100-1800, vol. 37, 67-89. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015.

“Pierre de la Rue (c. 1452–1518), Missa de septem doloribus beate Marie Virginis (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, Ms. 6428).” In Polyphony in the Picture: Seven Masterpieces from the Workshop of Petrus Alamire / Meerstemmigheid in Beeld: Zeven Meesterwerken uit het Atelier van Petrus Alamire, ed. David J. Burn, 47-77. Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2015.

“Music, Competition, and Propaganda in the Court of Philip the Fair.” In Staging the Court of Burgundy, eds. Wim Blockmans et al., 147-151. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013.