Margot E Fassler

Margot Elsbeth Fassler is an American musicologist born in Oswego, New York, in 1949, whose work focuses on medieval chant and liturgy. Her name is frequently associated with studies of the Latin sequence, liturgical music and medieval religious drama.

Her training began at SUNY and continued at Syracuse University, where she earned a master's degree in music history in 1978. She later took a second master's degree at Cornell University in 1980 and received her doctorate in medieval studies in 1983 with a dissertation on musical exegesis in medieval sequences. Between 1982 and 1994 she taught at Mills College in Oakland, at Yale and at Brandeis, and in 1994 she returned to Yale as director of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. There she holds a joint appointment as Professor of Musicology in the School of Music and Professor of Music and Religion in the Divinity School.

Her research covers medieval chant and liturgy, medieval drama and liturgical arts. Some of her works, such as her studies of the sequences of Adam of St Victor, the genesis of Notre-Dame polyphony and the popular tradition of the Feast of Fools, have received recognition, including the Elliott and John Nicholas Brown Prizes of the Medieval Academy of America in 1985 and 1997, and the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society in 1994. Her legacy lies in linking the study of liturgical repertoire with the religious, social and artistic context in which it was produced.