The Jerome Roche Prize for 2018 is awarded to Sean Curran for his article ‘Hockets Broken and Integrated in Early Mensural Theory and an Early Motet’, Early Music History, 36 (2017), 31-104.

Curran’s article is a detailed, densely argued investigation into the contemporary theoretical meaning of hocket and its particular significance in the context of one thirteenth-century motet. Founded on a carefully constructed case that, in contrast to received opinion, the earliest theorists concerned with hocket viewed it as a brief, single-voice phenomenon, Curran provides a meticulous interpretation of the narrative and structural functioning of a brief hocket in a single piece. Impressive in its range of reference, his article offers a model of philological enquiry and close musical-textual reading, one that, even in such a richly ploughed field, seems sure to stand as a lasting contribution.

Dr Curran is a Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge.  His research traverses a wide range of cultural, critical, theoretical and philological perspectives across the late medieval period, and a book entitled Voices from the Archive: Old Music and the Motet ca.1300 is in preparation.