Jenny Thomas

Dr. Jenny Thomas, a musicologist whose research is in Renaissance music, describes listening to Bach during the Easter season and how that concert renewed her spiritual life. Dr. Jennifer Thomas is the author of the most comprehensive catalogue of the Renaissance motet to date, an electronic database that enables a comprehensive, fluid inquiry into the central genre of the sixteenth-century and for which she has articulated new research methodologies. Her current and recent research touches on a wide range of Renaissance topics such as repertory formation during the Renaissance, core repertory motets at the French court, classical traits in Renaissance polyphony, the relationships among the major Renaissance genres of mass, motet, and chanson, Josquin Des Prez, new methodologies enabled by the availability of large musicological databases, biographical information to be gleaned from an understanding of Renaissance music sources, and the social and musical contexts of individual motets. She regards the motet, the central genre of most sixteenth-century composers, as an effective vehicle for investigating a broad spectrum of topics in the musical culture of the Renaissance.