Michael Alan Anderson Interview
Michael Alan Anderson is a professor of musicology and the artistic director of Schola Antiqua. He’s also the author of Music and Performance in the Book of Hours, which surveys references to Gregorian chants and performance cues in books of hours, or Christian prayer guides. As Michael explains, “these devotional manuals were the most popular and widespread books of the late Middle Ages.”
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I got a late start as a musician, when I was asked to join the high school choir as a sophomore. The unusually demanding director got me hooked on ‘serious’ choral music, and I took a second major in music as an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame. Moving back to my native Chicago after graduation and taking a mundane corporate day job, I performed at nights with the Chicago Symphony Chorus, ticking off the warhorses for a few years. But something was missing, and it was bugging me: I was searching for something deeper from that musical experience that music directors and my fellow singers could not provide.
While serving as a cantor at church one day, I ran into a former professor of mine from Notre Dame, who wondered if I wanted to learn more about the plainchant I happened to be singing that Sunday. This began my journey into early music scholarship, the plunge to graduate school (University of Chicago), and an unexpected appointment at the Eastman School of Music, one of the world’s great music conservatories. I kept my performing career going, though, and remain the artistic director of the Chicago-based early music ensemble, Schola Antiqua.