Eric Rice

Professor of Music History, Director of Collegium Musicum

Department of Music

---

Eric Rice, Ph.D.

Professor of Music History

 

Ph.D., Columbia University

Certificate in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Columbia University

M.Phil., Columbia University

M.A., Columbia University

B.A., Bowdoin College

 

On leave Fall 2024 and Spring 2025

 

Musicologist and conductor Eric Rice is Professor of Music at the University of Connecticut in Storrs and served as Head of the Department of Music there from 2014 to 2024.

 

Rice’s research interests fall broadly into two categories: representations of cultures from outside of Europe in notated music of the Western tradition and the relationship of liturgical music to architecture, politics, and secular music. Most of his research projects involve early music, broadly construed as compositions dating from before 1750. He engages in multimodal projects involving performance, musicological research, and emerging technology to understand and teach the musical cultures and performance practices of medieval and Early Modern Europe and its relationship to the Global Early Modern.

As part of his research, Rice directs Ensemble Origo, which engages in applied musicology by performing his reconstructions of music’s original contexts. The group has been praised by Music Web International as “versatile and accomplished”; by the Boston Musical Intelligencer as “aesthetically…top-notch” with “immaculate execution”; and by the New York Times as “a fine, flexible ensemble.” It has been called a “Liturgical Time Machine” that “succeed[s] in resurrecting the past in a uniquely ear-opening way” (Journal of the Academy of Sacred Drama). The ensemble’s debut recording on the Naxos label, Le nozze in Baviera, is a set of four musical vignettes by Orlande de Lassus from a 1568 wedding celebration, which initially captured Rice’s interest because of Lassus’s musical representations of Black Africans; the recording has been called “a journey from religiosity to bawdiness [that] is both involving and fascinating” (Classical Explorer) and a “phenomenal” musicological endeavor that “captivate[s] the listener’s attention” (Early Music America). Two other recording projects are currently in post-production: a Lutheran mass as it might have been heard ca. 1530 and the coronation mass of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in Bologna in 1530, which is an integral part of Charles V|R, a virtual reality project with UConn’s Greenhouse Studios. A third recording project tracing the African and Mesoamerican relationship to the sarabande and the chaconne is underway.

 

Rice is the author of Music and Ritual at Charlemagne’s Marienkirche in Aachen (Merseburger Verlag, 2009) and co-editor of Young Choristers, 650-1700 (Boydell & Brewer, 2008), the first scholarly volume dedicated to the history of professional child singers. His articles have appeared in Current Musicology, the Journal of Musicological Research, the Revue de Musicologie, and Viator. He has received fellowships from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to pursue archival research in France and Germany.

 

In his teaching, Rice aims to engage students with the musical cultures of the past through study and performance. He teaches courses in music history, the notation and performance of early music, and medieval studies. He also directs the UConn Collegium Musicum, an early music ensemble of student instrumentalists and singers that engages with European music and cultures of the past. Recent projects include a performance of a reconstruction of a Viennese mass of 1730 by Johann Joseph Fux (an excerpt of which was performed at Early Music America’s Young Performers Festival in October 2023); J.S. Bach’s Actus Tragicus (Cantata 106) in commemoration of those we have lost due to COVID-19; a collaboration with Ensemble Origo in a modern premiere of Sebastian Knüpfer’s polychoral cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden, which had been edited by baroque violinist Daniel Lee (of The Sebastians) as part of his UConn doctoral dissertation on the piccolo violin; and a North American premiere of Reinhard Keiser’s Brockes-Passion. Other programs include “Vox feminae,” a survey of women composers before 1750 (to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Barbara Strozzi’s birth); “Early Music and the African Diaspora” (in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the African-American Cultural Center at UConn); a “Magical Motet History Tour” with motets and ricercars from Perotin to Poulenc that the ensemble was able to perform on tour in some of the European cities that produced them; and a “Shakespeare’s Songbook” concert (to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death), with music from the plays as well as Thomas Tallis’s famous 40-part Spem in alium. In 2011, Rice led the UConn Collegium on a tour to Quito and Ibarra, Ecuador, where they presented a reconstructed mass for the Feast of Corpus Christi incorporating early modern villancicos transcribed and edited by then-UConn undergraduate and artistic assistant Angelica Durrell.

 

For his work with Ensemble Origo and the UConn Collegium, Rice was awarded the 2019 Thomas Binkley Award, which is given by Early Music America for excellence in performance and scholarship by the director of a university early music ensemble. He also received the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Public Engagement (now known as “Community Engaged Scholarship”) in 2011 for his work with the UConn Collegium, with the Connecticut Early Music Festival, which he served as Artistic Director from 2007 to 2015, and with the Boston-based ensemble Exsultemus, in which he was music director and tenor from 2003 to 2009.

 

A fervent believer in experiential learning, Rice established the UConn Summer Music in Strasbourg Program in 2019. In this three-week program, students travel to historic sites in France and Germany, study music that was originally made at those sites, and rehearse and perform the repertoire in concert. Students earn six credits — three in performance and three for a writing-intensive seminar that satisfies University and major requirements. The program affords students an opportunity to study in Europe without the loss of time toward their music degree that could result from studying abroad for an entire semester.

 

After serving as Associate Department Head for Graduate Studies (2011-2013), Rice served two five-year terms as Head of the Department of Music at UConn, providing a decade of stable leadership to a department that had had ten leaders between 1996 and 2014. The following is a list of accomplishments during his tenure:

 

• Increased number of full-time faculty from 17 (in 2014) to 23 (in 2024) despite ten straight years of budget rescissions and ten retirements/separations
• Increased diversity of faculty from four women and four people of color in 2014 to eight women, one gender queer/fluid person, and five people of color in 2024
• Created new full-time positions in vocal coaching/accompanying and percussion
• Increased undergraduate student body from ca. 140 in 2014 to ca. 180 in 2024
• Oversaw the revision of the BA in General Music from 65 down to 42 credits, contributing to an increase in undergraduate student body due to students adding music as a second major
• Prompted the revision of the music history curriculum to include decolonized survey of notated traditions (a course he developed) and new survey of non-notated traditions
• Assisted in restarting the Department’s touring program, facilitating international choir tours in 2016, 2018, 2020 (canceled due to the pandemic), and 2023 as well as regional tours by instrumental ensembles
• Established “Department Head Forum,” an open question-and-answer session with undergraduate students every semester as part of the Department’s Convocation requirements
• Established the Music Student Advisory Council to advise the Department Head in communication with student body
• Reconfigured Department’s committee structure, eliminating the Executive Committee and refocusing the work of the Diversity Committee on recruiting and retention
• Established the External Concert Committee to award grants to outside/collaborating professional ensembles concertizing at UConn
• Spurred revision of Department’s Bylaws and Promotion, Tenure, and Reappointment Procedures to align with the contract of the American Association of University Professors and the University Bylaws
• Established Associate Department Head for Advising (in addition to Associate Heads for Undergraduate and Graduate Studies)
• Led the Department through reaccreditation by the National Association of Schools of Music; wrote the entire self-study and resolved all accreditation issues
• Stewarded budget through ten fiscal years of budget rescissions and audit restructuring
• Assisted Dean’s Office in oversight of numerous renovations, including retiling entire facility; asbestos abatement; soundproofing and acoustical mitigation; new paneling, roof, seats, and stage in recital hall
• Assisted Dean and UConn Foundation Officers in fundraising for undergraduate scholarships, resulting in the establishment of three new permanent funds
• Worked with UConn Foundation Officers and the Dean’s Office to further the All-Steinway initiative, increasing the number of Steinway pianos at UConn from 40% to 85% over ten years

 

Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Rice discovered his interest in early music as an undergraduate at Bowdoin College. After a four-year career as a schooner captain and marine educator at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City, he returned to his music studies at Columbia University, where he earned the M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Historical Musicology as well as a Certificate in Medieval and Renaissance studies. While pursuing these degrees, he also studied conducting and voice, and he sang professionally in New York City churches that feature medieval and Renaissance repertoire in their liturgies. He taught at Brandeis University from 2001 to 2003 before joining the faculty at the University of Connecticut. He lives with his wife, Anne, in Hampton, Connecticut, where their two sons, Gregory and Nathaniel, visit them occasionally.