
Margaret Bent's publications range over English, French and Italian polyphonic musical repertories, manuscripts, compositional processes, notation and theory of the 14th to 16th centuries. Recent publications include a study and facsimile of the early 15th-century Veneto manuscript Bologna Q15 (2008), and (with Robert Klugseder) a reconstructed Liber cantus from the Veneto (2012). Her current work explores networks of musicians in the Veneto, and she has just completed a monograph relocating the origins of Jacobus, the author of the Speculum Musicae, from Liège to Spain (2015).
- Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College (from 2008)
- Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College (from 1992 to 2008)
- Professor (including Chairmanship), Music Department, Princeton University (from 1981 to 1992)
- Visiting Professor, then Full Professor and Chairman, Music Department, Brandeis University (from 1975 to 1981)
- Lecturer and Senior Lecturer, Goldsmiths’ College, London (from 1972 to 1975)
- Teaching for universities of London and Cambridge (from 1964 to 1972)
- Undergraduate and postgraduate work, Girton College, Cambridge (organ scholar) (from 1959 to 1964)
- English, French and Italian music of the 14th to 16th centuries
- Technical matters of music theory, counterpoint, analysis, musica ficta, text-setting, and other issues that bridge notation and performance in early music, descriptions of new sources, aspects of musical transmission, stemmatics, and manuscript studies, interfaces with literary, historical and biographical questions
- Interdisciplinary collaborations involving aspects of words and music, rhetoric and the non-verbal arts
- Magister Jacobus de Ispania, author of the Speculum musicae, RMA monograph (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015).
- (with Robert Klugseder), Ein Liber cantus aus dem Veneto: Fragmente in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München und der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek Wien. A Veneto Liber cantus (c. 1440): Fragments in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, and the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (Reichert: Wiesbaden, 2012).
- Bologna Q15: The Making and Remaking of a Musical Manuscript: Introductory Study and Facsimile Edition (Lucca: Libreria Italiana Musicale, 2008).
- Counterpoint, Composition, and Musica Ficta (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).
- ed. with Andrew Wathey, Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 146 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
- Link to publications
- Royal Musical Association, Dent Medal (1979)
- American Musicological Society, President 1984-6. Corresponding Member (from 1995)
- Fellow of the British Academy (from 1993)
- Foreign Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (from 1994)
- Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (from 1995)
- Member of Academia Europea (from 1995)
- Glasgow University, Honorary D. Mus (1997)
- Notre Dame University, Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts (2002)
- Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (from 2002)
- Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (from 2004)
- Institute of Musical Research (London University School of Advanced Study), founding chair of Advisory Council (from 2005 to 2009)
- F. Ll. Harrison medal, Society for Musicology in Ireland (2007)
- Honorary Fellow, Academy of Saint Cecilia (from 2007)
- Honorary Fellow, Girton College Cambridge (from 2007)
- Distinguished Senior Fellow, School of Advanced Study (from 2010)
- Université de Montréal, Doctor honoris causa (2010)
- Appointed CBE 2008
- International Member, American Philosophical Society (from 2013)
- Continuing supervision of doctoral students
- Visiting professorships, most recently at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Universität Basel
- Guggenheim Fellowship (from 1983 to 1984).
- Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship (from 2010 to 2011).
- Many small or collaborative awards, including for www.diamm.ac.uk.