Lyrica Society for Word-Music Relations

Welcome to the Internet site of the Lyrica Society for Word-Music Relations, an independent academic and artistic organization which investigates and promotes the myriad of interactions between text and music. Lyrica was founded by Dr. Louis Auld, Professor of French Literature at Central Connecticut State University in 1981. Since then, it has grown to include nearly 500 members in North America, Europe, Turkey and Japan. After serving as Editor of our peer-reviewed journal, Ars Lyrica, and as Secretary-Treasurer for seventeen years, Professor Auld retired from those posts, but remains active as an advisor to the Society's Executive Board. Lyrica welcomes literary, musicological and performance-practice research into word-music issues crossing all historical periods, and enveloping all musical and literary genres and cultural frameworks. Chronologically through the academic calendar, the Society is present at the annual conventions of the American Musicological Society, the Modern Language Association, the National Association of Teachers for Singing, and the National Opera Association (alternating biennially), the Renaissance Society of America, and the American Comparative Literature Association, where our seminar explores a special topic each year.

Our annual Lyrica Dialogues at Harvard are held each spring. The 2010 Dialogues, themed Mendelssohn, Brahms, the German Choral Tradition, are funded by the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard, the Office for the Arts at Harvard, and are hosted by the Harvard Divinity School.

Lyrica welcomes missives to its Newsletter, articles and book reviews to Ars Lyrica, and invites one and all to its conference presentations and Dialogues. Members receive our journal and Newsletter, and may join the Society by completing and returning our Membership Form.

Cordially,

Paul-André Bempéchat, President