Patricia
Ranum began studying seventeenth-century French rhetoric in the early 1980s. In
1984, her work with the singers of the Arts Florissants during rehearsals for
Charpentier's “Médée” made her concentrate her research on the
relationships that exist between poetry, musical notation and the music itself.
Her experiences coaching vocal students at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore
shaped her recent book on musical rhetoric, "The Harmonic Orator,"
with a preface by William Christie. She currently is rhetorician for French
performances by Opera Lafayette of Washington, D.C. Musicologists
know her primarily for her articles on Marc-Antoine Charpentier and his patrons,
the Guise princesses. Among historians, she is better known for her editions of
historical sources and her translations of several leading French historians,
including Fernand Braudel and Philippe Ariès. She and her husband, Orest Ranum,
a historian of early-modern France, spend their winters in Baltimore, Maryland,
and their summers in a tiny village in northern Languedoc.
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