Isabel Pope (October 19, 1901 – February 7, 1989) was an American musicologist and philologist who specialized in Spanish song of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. A 1950

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated d ...

, she was the translator of the 1946 English-language edition of Adolfo Salazar's book '' La música moderna'' and she co-edited '' The Musical Manuscript Montecassino 871'' (1979).

Biography

Isabel Pope was born on October 19, 1901 in

Evanston, Illinois Evanston is a city in Cook County, Illinois, United States, situated on the North Shore (Chicago), North Shore along Lake Michigan. A suburb of Chicago, Evanston is north of Chicago Loop, downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skok ...

, daughter of Maud ( Perry) and Herbert Pope,Ancestry.com. Cook County, Illinois, U.S., Birth Certificates Index, 1871-1922 atabase on-line Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. the latter of whom was a lawyer specializing in federal tax law. She obtained her BA (1923), MA (1925), and PhD in Romance philology (1930) from

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1879. In 1999, it was fully incorporated into Harvard Colle ...

; her doctoral dissertation was titled ''Sources of the musical and metrical forms of the medieval lyric in the Hispanic peninsula''. She also attended

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

(1935-1936) as a musicology student under

Hugo Leichtentritt Hugo Leichtentritt (1 January 1874, Pleschen, , nearby Posen, Province of Posen13 November 1951, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a German-Jewish musicologist and composer who spent much of his life in the USA. His pupils include composers Leroy R ...

. She worked at Radcliffe as a tutor from 1935 to 1940, and after returning from an academic trip to Mexico, from 1945 to 1949. She specialized in the study of Spanish song of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. She wrote a monograph on the ''

villancico The ''villancico'' ( Spanish, ) or vilancete ( Portuguese, ) was a common poetic and musical form of the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America popular from the late 15th to 18th centuries. Important composers of villancicos were Juan del Encina, P ...

'', which Gilbert Chase called "one of the most valuable features" of the book it was published in, ''Cancionero de Upsala'' (1944). In 1950, she was awarded a

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...

fellowship and a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

, both of which she used for abroad travel to study Spanish music. Among her musicological findings included the 13th-century oral lyric roots of the ''

'' from two centuries later. She was the literary editor of '' Harmonices Musices Odhecaton A'', Helen Margaret Hewitt's 1942 edition of the '' Harmonice Musices Odhecaton'', as well as Hans Tischler's published ''

motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the preeminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to the Eng ...

'' collection. She and Masakata Kanazawa were co-editors of ''The Musical Manuscript Montecassino 871'', a 1979 edition of the ''

Cancionero de Montecassino The ''Cancionero Musical de Montecassino'' (Montecassino, Biblioteca dell'Abbazia, 871), known by the abbreviation "(CMM)" is an important Neapolitan manuscript of music from the 1480s, containing many otherwise unknown compositions. References ...

'', and she also did academic research on the aforementioned manuscript. She was the translator of W. W. Norton & Company's 1946 English-language edition of the Adolfo Salazar book ''La música moderna''. In 1956, she married Kenneth John Conant. As of 1958, she lived in

Chevy Chase, Maryland Chevy Chase () is the colloquial name of an area that includes a town, several incorporated villages, and an unincorporated census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland; and one adjoining neighborhood in northwest Washington, D ...

. Pope died on February 7, 1989, in

Bedford, Massachusetts Bedford is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population of Bedford was 14,161 at th2022 United States census History ''The following compilation comes from Ellen Abrams (1999) based on information from Abram Engl ...

Bibliography

*(ed. with Helen Margaret Hewitt) '' Harmonices Musices Odhecaton A'' (1942) *(translated) '' Music in Our Time'' (1946; original by Adolfo Salazar) *(ed. with Masakata Kanazawa) '' The Musical Manuscript Montecassino 871'' (1979)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pope, Isabel 1901 births 1989 deaths 20th-century American musicologists American women musicologists Scholars of Medieval music Scholars of Renaissance music 20th-century American philologists American Hispanists Radcliffe College alumni Radcliffe College faculty Writers from Evanston, Illinois Historians from Illinois People from Chevy Chase, Maryland Historians from Maryland