One day in 1999, a decade after the “new” musicology was really new, and at the tail end of the culture wars of the ’80s and ’90s, I was an 18-year-old freshman and wannabe musicologist attending a job talk for a new hire in the musicology department at my undergraduate institution. A female candidate presented her research on women and music-making in the Renaissance, there was a polite Q&A, and then, instead of thanking the candidate and ending the presentation, a tenured member of the faculty offered a rebuttal, if that’s what you could call it. The title of his talk: “Hildegard von Bingen: Superior Mother.” Graduate students distributed the accompanying handout with giddy smirks.
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