Alana Mailes - Portrait

Alana Mailes

Paul Mellon/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize
September 9, 2019–April 3, 2020
Profession
PhD Candidate, Department of Music, Harvard University
Project title
Musica Transalpina: English Musicians in the Italian Peninsula, ca. 1580–1660
Project description

My project is a study of musical life in English expatriate and diplomatic communities throughout the Italian peninsula ca. 1580–1660, primarily the English College in Rome and English embassy in Venice. My project examines the many complex, diverse ways in which transnational networks of students, ecclesiastics, merchants, tourists, diplomats, spies, and other travelers facilitated the transmission of music across borders. As one of the first histories of music and migration in early modern Europe, my project draws on multidisciplinary theories of cultural mobility. Eschewing a traditional focus on a few famous composers, I instead contextualize their activities in an account that includes professional performers and pedagogues, amateur musicians, and women musicians, thus broadening out from individual biography to the social systems through which individuals and repertoires moved.