Victor Coelho
Professor of Music (CFA)
Teaches KHC 301: The Nature of Inquiry, KHC HC 501: Innovation, Culture & Society I and KHC HC 502: Innovation, Culture & Society II
A musicologist and performer of international distinction, Professor Coelho works primarily in the areas of 16th- and 17th-century Italian music, as well as popular music. His areas of research include Renaissance and Baroque instrumental styles, lute music, performance practice, interdisciplinary approaches, and cross-cultural perspectives. As a specialist on popular music, he is interested in African-American music, rock history, improvisation, and performance issues, and has appeared on the Fox Network, the CBC, WGBH, and MTV.
Coelho has held visiting appointments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1984 to 19855), the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris (1990), the University of Melbourne (1992), and Cornell University (1995). In 2004, he was Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti in Florence. From 1986 to 2005, he taught at the University of Calgary, where he was named University Professor. From 2007 to 2011, he held the position of Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education at Boston University, and was the principal author of the University’s “One BU” report on undergraduate education.
His books include Music and Science in the Age of Galileo (Kluwer), The Manuscript Sources of 17th-Century Italian Lute Music (Garland), Performance on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela (Cambridge), and the Cambridge Companion to the Guitar. Forthcoming books include (with Keith Polk) Instrumentalists and Renaissance Culture (Cambridge), and the Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones.
He is lutenist and co-director of the early music group “Il Furioso,” and performs regularly with Boston Baroque and many other groups. In 2000, he received the Noah Greenberg Award given by the American Musicological Society for his reconstruction and recording (with Alan Curtis) of the music for the Medici wedding of 1608. His recordings as lutenist and director appear on the Stradivarius and Toccata Classics labels, and he also tours regularly as a blues guitarist with the Rooster Blues Band.