Andrew Hicks

Associate Professor

Overview

Andrew Hicks’ research focuses on the intellectual history of early musical thought from a cross-disciplinary perspective that embraces philosophical, cosmological, scientific and grammatical discourse in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and spans the linguistic and cultural spheres of Latin, Greek, Persian, and Arabic. His first book, Composing the World: Harmony in the Medieval Platonic Cosmos (Oxford University Press, 2017), won the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson book award (2018) and the Society for Music Theory's Emerging Scholar book award (2018). He collaborated with Fr. Édouard Jeauneau on  John Scottus Eriugena’s Commentary and Homily on the Gospel of John (CCCM 166, Brepols 2008), and he is currently preparing the first editions of William of Conches’ Glosulae super Priscianum (Brepols) and (with Irene Caiazzo) the Glosae super Macrobium (Brepols). His published essays range across the history of music theory, late ancient and medieval Pythagoreanism, the reception of Martianus Capella, textual criticism, and musical metaphors and modalities in Classical Persian literatures. He won the 2018 Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin for research on his next book titled The Broken Harp: Listening Otherwise in Classical Persian Literature.

Hicks is a member of the Departments of Music and Classics, the Director of the Program in Medieval Studies, and a member of the Graduate Field of Near Eastern Studies, the Religious Studies Program, and the Carl Sagan Institute. He served as the House Professor-Dean of Hans Bethe House on Cornell's West Campus from 2019–2025. He regularly leads graduate seminars in the history of music theory, medieval Latin literature, Latin paleography and codicology, medieval cosmology, philosophical commentaries, and musical thought in medieval Arabo-Persian cultures, and he teaches undergraduate courses in music history and theory. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Medieval Latin, co-editor of the Guillelmi de Conchis Opera Omnia, and was co-editor of the Journal of Musicology (2018–2023). He also serves on the editorial board of TEAMS

Publications

Books

  • Composing the World: The Harmony of the Medieval Platonic Cosmos. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • Iohannis Scotti seu Eriugenae Homilia et Commentarius in Euangelium Iohannis. Ed. Édouard Jeauneau and Andrew Hicks. Corpus christianorum. Continuatio mediaeualis, 166. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008.
  • Guillelmi de Conchis Glosae super Macrobium. Ed. Irene Caiazzo and Andrew Hicks. Corpus christianorum. Continuatio mediaeualis. Turnhout: Brepols (in progress).
  • Guillelmi de Conchis Glosulae super Priscianum. Ed. Andrew Hicks and Édouard Jeauneau. Corpus christianorum. Continuatio mediaeualis. Turnhout: Brepols (in progress).
  • The Broken Harp: Listening Otherwise in Classical Persian Literature (book project in progress).

Articles

Reference works, reviews, and miscellaneous

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