Saraswathi Shukla

Saraswathi Shukla is assistant professor of historical musicology and co-director of CU Boulder’s MM in Historical Performance + Research. Trained as a musicologist, historian and harpsichordist, she applies interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies to the study of 17th- and 18th-century instrumental music and material cultures, as well as the cultural politics of 20th- and 21st-century early music revivals in the United States and Europe.

Her research has appeared in journals such as the Sound Studies Review, Keyboard Perspectives, Eighteenth-Century Music and the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, and has received numerous awards including the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music’s Irene Alm Memorial Prize, the Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50, two Georges Lurcy Fellowships, the Chateaubriand Fellowship and a DAAD Study Scholarship at the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig. She has been a member of the EU Commission’s COST Action, EarlyMuse, which studies the current and future state of early music in Europe from a range of perspectives and currently serves on the boards of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music and the American Musicological Society.

Saraswathi earned a PhD in music with a designated emphasis in Renaissance and early modern studies from the University of California, Berkeley and an AB in history from Princeton University. Before coming to CU Boulder, she taught at the Université de Lorraine in Metz and the Université de Tours.

In tandem with her academic work, Saraswathi frequently collaborates with musicians in the United States and France. She has been an artistic director of recordings by Lillian Gordis, edited liner notes for the ensemble Capriccio Stravagante and the essay collection Memorandum XXI (Paradizo, 2013) by harpsichordist and conductor Skip Sempé, and given pre-concert lectures for Opera Lafayette at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York, as well as at the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Neuchâtel in Switzerland for Jérôme Hantaï and Gordis. Most recently, she translated the preface to Denis Herlin’s forthcoming edition of the fourth book of Couperin’s Pièces de clavecin for Bärenreiter. At CU Boulder, Saraswathi helps curate the Eaton historical performance series.

In her spare time, Saraswathi enjoys playing continuo with the College of Music’s Early Music Ensemble!

MusicologyHistorical performance