Marie-Louise Göllner

Marie-Louise Göllner, née Martinez in Fort Collins, Colorado, on 27 June 1932, was an American musicologist specialising in the music of the Ars Nova and the late Renaissance. Her research focused above all on fourteenth-century France and Italy, and her name is associated with some of the most extensive studies of that repertoire.

She graduated in 1953 from Vassar College, where she studied with George Dickinson. She then moved to Munich, where she worked with Thrasybulos Georgiades, Hans Sedlmayr and Bernhard Bischoff. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Munich in 1962 and, in 1975, the title of DrPhil. Between 1965 and 1967 she worked at the Bavarian State Library, and she later joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she was appointed full professor in 1978.

Her book on the early Trecento examines the musical genres of the period, their styles and sources, as well as the theoretical writings, especially the Pomerium of Marchetto of Padua. Her publications also include articles on Marchetto's chromaticism, the concerto form in the eighteenth century, the structure of Machaut's refrain forms, and the transmission of French motets in German and Italian manuscripts. As an editor, she prepared volume xviii of the complete works of Orlando di Lasso, devoted to the Hymnarium of 1580–1585, and took part in the catalogue of music manuscripts of the Bavarian State Library.

Her legacy lies in the breadth of her research on medieval and Renaissance music, especially in her revision of the theory and sources of the Trecento, which remains a point of reference for those studying the Ars Nova.