About us

Research has always been a key element of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis since it was explicitly founded as an “Institute for Teaching and Research in the Field of Early Music” in 1933.

Today the Research Department consists of permanent staff members, supported by colleagues from the teaching staff, and of research fellows of the projects. An important aim is to connect our research with current issues related to historical performance practice and thus to inform teaching at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis as well as to interact with the international community of musicology. These efforts are documented by numerous research projects and cooperations and are also aided by the scientific advisory board of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.

Susan Leslie Boynton


Professor of Music, Columbia University (USA)


Susan Boynton joined the Columbia faculty in 2000. Her research interests include liturgy and music in medieval Western monasticism, particularly the abbey of Cluny; manuscript studies; music in the Iberian peninsula; music and childhood; and intersections between music and the visual arts. Boynton is a recipient of Columbia's Distinguished Faculty Award and has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy in Rome, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Currently she is Project Leader of a digital humanities and musical iconography exchange with the Sorbonne, FAB-Musiconis. She has published seven books. The first, Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000-1125 (2006), won the Lewis Lockwood Award of the American Musicological Society. Her second monograph, Silent Music: Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain (2011), won the Society's Robert M. Stevenson Award. Prof. Boynton coedited (with Diane J. Reilly) The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages (2011). Also coedited with Diane J. Reilly,  Resounding Images: Medieval Intersections of Art, Music, and Sound (2015) won the Society's Ruth A. Solie Award.

More information: https://music.columbia.edu/bios/susan-boynton

Supported by the Maja Sacher Foundation