Jeffery Kite-Powell

JEFFERY T. KITE-POWELL, Professor Emeritus at the Florida State University College of Music and former Coordinator of Music History and Musicology, received the B.M. degree in clarinet performance from the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati and the B.S. in Music Education from the University of Cincinnati. He earned an M.A. in Musicology with a minor in Philosophy from the University of New Mexico and the Ph.D. in Musicology with minors in Music Education and English Literature from the University of Hamburg, in Hamburg, Germany.

In addition to teaching music history and musicology-related courses, Professor Kite-Powell directed the FSU Early Music Ensemble, a group that often exceeded fifty graduate and undergraduate students divided into ensembles of brass, woodwind, and string instrumentalists, and the select vocal group, Cantores Musicæ Antiquæ (see photo and remarks below).

His publications include:

* the definitive study of "The Visby (Petri) Organ Tablature of 1611" (digital copy at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nxuegkz8sh664h3/AAB0AS1lYarqRP7noQYjnl4Fa?dl=0), published by Heinrichshofen's Press in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, 1980;

*the reconstruction of Hugo Leichsenring's important dissertation on "Church Music in Hamburg during the Reformation" (Berlin, 1922), published by Wagner Publishers, Hamburg, Germany, 1982;

*"A Performer's Guide to Renaissance Music," editor of and contributor to both the 1994 first edition (Schirmer Books) and the 2007 expanded and revised second edition (Indiana University Press), in the series "Studies in Historical Performance Practice," of which he is the general editor;

*a translation and edition of "Michael Praetorius's Syntagma Musicum III," published by Oxford University Press in 2004;

*an article entitled "Notating--Accompanying--Conducting: Intabulation Usage in the Levoca Manuscripts," in Proceedings of the First International Organ Academy of Göteborg, Sweden. University of Göteborg Press, 1995: 99-130 (an updated and expanded version of this article can be found at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1t_Ie_1PIKRYW4NTIDkLUTQZV0DjT7348

*an article entitled "Michael Praetorius: In His Own Words," Early Music America Magazine 10/1 (Spring 2004): 26-29. Digital copy at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4bboa25lzfdvwjj/AACerxyK94wim1fYdmMSKzhYa?dl=0

*In 2011 a book chapter entitled "Performance Forces and Italian Influence in Michael Praetorius's Syntagma Musicum III" was published as vol. 5 in the series "Ligaturen: Musikwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien," Hannover, 115-32, Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Digital copy at: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eF6yrW4zIFnogehAmkQNnFVqn_nc62RA

*The revised and expanded edition of "A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth-Century Music," edited by J. Kite-Powell, was released by Indiana University Press in 2012.

*On his retirement, over twenty colleagues and former students from across the country contributed to a book entitled "Hands-On" Musicology: Essays in Honor of Jeffery Kite-Powell," published in 2012 (see http://www.steglein.com/Books/books.php).

*In 2019 his article, "Michael Praetorius's Variable Options on Performance" was published in the journal De musica disserenda, No. 2. Digital link at: https://www.dropbox.com/preview/MPC/MPC--Ljubljana%20conference--paper%20and%20article/Article%20Proofs%20for%20Slovenian%20journal%20with%20corrections%2011-10-19..pdf?role=personal

*His chapter entitled “German Organ Tablature” will appear in Tablature in Western Music, John Griffiths, editor. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2020.

--------

Dr. Kite-Powell has been an invited lecturer at international conferences in Göteborg, Sweden, 1994, Hamburg, Germany, 1995, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1997 (where he was the keynote speaker), Wolfenbüttel, Germany, 2008, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2019, and Indiana University, 2019.

He has been a clinician at workshops around the Southeast and has taught at the Amherst Early Music Institute.

Professor Kite-Powell served as president of Early Music America (1998-2001), treasurer of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music (1997-1999), and president of the Southern Chapter of the American Musicological Society (1992-1994).

Other activities include service for several years (through 2010) on the editorial board of the Seventeenth-Century Society's Web Library of Seventeenth-Century Music, and he served (2010-2012) on the American Musicological Society Performance Committee, and organized the events for the convention in San Francisco in November, 2011. He has also served on the Advisory Board of Early Music America Magazine for several years.

Honors and awards include:

Travel to Collections grant from the NEH, 1992

President's (FSU) Foundation Grant, 1992-1993

Teacher Incentive Award, 1994

Early Music America's Thomas Binkley Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Collegium Director; presented at the Boston Early Music Festival, June 2003

A Festschrift was published in 2012 entitled: "Hands-On" Musicology: Essays in Honor of Jeffery Kite-Powell."

Copy and paste the following links into your browser:

Nearly 200 selections from his ensembles' concerts can be uploaded at:

https://www.youtube.com/user/jtkp1/videos?view=0&sort=p&view_as=subscriber&flow=grid

which has over 625 subscribers and over 400K views.

YouTube Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/user/jtkp1/playlists

Link to YouTube reviews of the recording by Cantores Muisicæ Antiquæ of the Victoria Requiem:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ejnaW2EQ0vEGQL8YS4C8wda9Q9yRU41L

Short video produced in part by former students on his retirement:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nkowhs5ssz8sffk/The%20Life%20%26%20Times%20of%20JKP.mp4?dl=0

* Cantores Musicæ Antiquæ [Singers of Early Music] was formed in the fall of 1989 with the intent to perform music from 1200-1650 in a historically informed manner. The group consists of eight to twelve singers, often one on a part, and includes undergraduates, masters, and doctoral students. Some students are voice majors, while others study music education, choral conducting, theory, or musicology.

After our inaugural concert, my friend and colleague, Douglass Seaton, sent a letter to Dean Bob Glidden praising the ensemble, as seen in this excerpt:

"There is no question that this was by far the best early-music performance I have heard since I came to Florida State. Indeed, it was perhaps one of the best three or four musical experiences I have had in Tallahassee, and having recently been to England and heard some of the finest early-music choirs in the world, I would have to say that the Cantores Musicæ Antiquæ last night were as fine as any of them."

Following our performance at the Florida American Choral Directors Association at Rollins College, Winter Park, in 1994, the Director of Choral Activities at the University of Miami (Jo-Michael Scheibe), and the Artistic Director of the Miami Bach Society (Donald Oglesby) co-wrote the following lines to Dean Jon Piersol about our performance: "It was truly an outstanding performance of the highest professional caliber, worthy of comparison to groups like the Tallis Scholars. The standing ovation accorded the group by the members of ACDA testifies to the strength of the ensemble's performance. We [. . . ] hope you can make it possible for these singers to be heard on recording and in concert throughout the nation. They bring credit to the choral music activities of Florida State University and our State."

Indeed, the ensemble is often referred to as Tallahassee's "Tallis Scholars," one of England's premiere vocal ensembles. Our local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat, has referred to the group as "FSU's heavenly Renaissance choir."

Two full-length concerts per year are common for this group of singers, and they have performed for the American Musicological Society regional conventions in Lafayette, La., Tuscaloosa, Al, Tallahassee, Palm Beach, and New Orleans (twice), the National Theory Society convention, the national convention of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, the International Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel Conference, the International conference on "John Eccles and His Contemporaries: English Theatre and Music in London circa 1700," and for the opening of the exhibition from the Victoria & Albert Museum at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach; twice they were broadcast on National Public Radio's Millennium of Music.

Many of the singers from earlier years are currently professors, performers, or administrators at colleges and universities around the country and abroad, including (those of which I am aware) Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, New York, Wisconsin, Australia, Iceland, and Norway.

In 2017 an excerpt from a Cantores concert was published by MIT Press in an e-book entitled Polyphonic Minds by Peter Pesic