Poets, Mothers, and Performers: Considering Women's Impact on the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach

Ellen Exner

Ellen Exner is a Ph.D. candidate in Historical Musicology at Harvard University. Before arriving at Harvard, Ellen attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where she earned bachelor’s degrees in Russian and in Music History. Work from her master’s thesis (Smith College, 2003) on a rare 18th-century manuscript of chorale preludes for organ and obbligato instrument by Gottfried August Homilius was published as a critical edition in 2008 (Carus, Stuttgart).

Her dissertation, due to be completed by May 2010, is entitled “Frederick the Great and the Origins of Modern Musical Life in Berlin (1732 to 1756).” Work on this dissertation has been generously supported by a Krupp Foundation grant through the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, as well as a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. On the side, Ellen works as an editorial assistant on the C. P. E. Bach: Complete Works edition (Packard Humanities Institute). She also freelances in the Boston area on both modern and baroque oboes.

Title: “Hohenzollern Women and the Legacy of J. S. Bach”

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