Thomas Forrest Kelly

Morton B. Knafel Research Professor of Music, Harvard University

Thomas Forrest Kelly is Morton B. Knafel Research Professor of Music at Harvard University. Before coming to Harvard he taught at Oberlin Conservatory (where he served as acting Dean of the Conservatory); at the Five Colleges in Massachusetts; and at Wellesley College. He has also taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, The Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, the Conservatorio of Naples, and the Pontifical Ambrosian Institute in Milan.

A graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, he holds A. M. and Ph. D. (1973) from Harvard. Two years in France allowed him to earn degrees from the Schola Cantorum in Paris and the Royal Academy of Music. He has held Fulbright, NEH, ACLS, and Rome Prize fellowships.

Kelly has focused principally on medieval music, and on the performance of music of the past. Most recently he is the author of The Role of the Scroll (W. W. Norton, 2019). He is co-editor, with Mark Everist, of the Cambridge History of Medieval Music. Among other books, he is the author of Capturing Music (2015); Early Music: A Very Short Introduction (2011, translated into German and Hungarian); First Nights (2000, translated into Korean and Chinese); First Nights at the Opera (2004); The Exultet in Southern Italy (1996). His The Beneventan Chant (awarded the 1989 Otto Kinkeldey Award) has recently appeared in a revised Italian translation.

Kelly is an honorary citizen of the city of Benevento (Italy). He is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres of the French Republic and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of the American Academy in Rome, and of the Medieval Academy of America. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017.

WEBSITE:
thomasforrestkelly.net