Jesse Rodin

Jesse Rodin strives to make contact with lived musical experiences of the distant past. Immersing himself in original sources, he sings from choirbooks, memorizes melodies and their texts, and recreates performances held at weddings, liturgical ceremonies, and feasts. A passionate teacher, Rodin has led seminars, workshops, and masterclasses at institutions such as Princeton University, the Schola Cantorum (Basel, Switzerland), the University of Vienna, and the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (Tours, France).

Rodin’s recent monograph The Art of Counterpoint from Du Fay to Josquin (Cambridge University Press, 2024) presents a theory of how fifteenth-century polyphonic music happens in time. Other published works include a volume in honor of Joshua Rifkin (2024), The Cambridge History of Fifteenth-Century Music (2015), a volume for the New Josquin Edition (2014), Josquin’s Rome: Hearing and Composing in the Sistine Chapel (Oxford University Press, 2012), and articles that bring historiographical, analytical, evidentiary, practical, and embodied perspectives to a range of subjects. An in-progress co-edited book aims to clear the ground and offer a new path forward in Josquin studies.

As director of the vocal ensemble Cut Circle Rodin performs internationally. In partnership with the Belgian label Musique en Wallonie Cut Circle recently embarked on a project to record the complete music of Josquin des Prez (ca. 1450/51–1521). The first album appeared in 2023; the second, titled JOSQUIN: II. Motets milanais ; Missa L’ami Baudichon, is forthcoming in fall 2025. Other albums include a disc of anonymous fifteenth-century masses (2021) as well as double albums devoted to the complete songs of Johannes Okeghem (2020), the late masses of Guillaume Du Fay (2016), and music from the Sistine Chapel (2012). A short film titled Sounds of Renaissance Florence (2021) recaptures the soundscape of fifteenth-century Italy.

Two projects in the digital humanities strive to make the period as a whole more accessible. Rodin directs the Josquin Research Project (josquin.stanford.edu), a digital tool for exploring a large musical corpus. He co-directs Mapping the Musical Renaissance, which facilitates basic understanding as well as serendipitous discovery.

Rodin is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation; the Université Libre de Bruxelles; the American Council of Learned Societies; the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers; the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies; and the American Musicological Society. He has been featured in a variety of public forums, including The New Yorker. He prepares new editions of all the music Cut Circle performs; these are freely available through the Josquin Research Project. For his work with Cut Circle he has received the Prix Olivier Messiaen, the Noah Greenberg Award, Editor’s Choice (Gramophone), and a Diapason d’Or. Cut Circle’s latest album was a finalist for a Gramophone Award. 

At Stanford Rodin directs the Facsimile Singers, in which students develop native fluency in old musical notation. He has organized symposia on the composer Johannes Okeghem, medieval music pedagogy, musical analysis in the digital age, and regional Italian cooking.