Remi Chiu is a musicologist specializing in Renaissance music and the history of medicine. He is the author of Plague and Music in the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press), which examines the role of music and music-making in the medical, spiritual, and civic strategies for combating pestilence. A companion volume of Renaissance plague songs, Songs in Times of Plague, was published by A-R Editions. His other work on music and medical history have appeared in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences; Frontiers in Psychology; Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques; Early Music History; Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy; and The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising. Some of his work on music and plague has been featured in The Guardian, NPR, PBS, and Pitchfork, among other outlets.

With Alessandra Ignesti, he is co-editing the complete Masses of Ippolito Baccusi, a northern Italian composer active in the late sixteenth century. The first of six planned volumes was published in 2024.

Chiu’s current research focuses on the role of music in popular (quasi-) scientific entertainments and the uses of music in quack medicine advertising in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This study shows how music can shape consumers’ concept of a normative body—and how medical commodities can help maintain it. Learn more about his research activities and other publications here.

Remi Chiu is the current general editor of the Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance series, published by A-R Editions. He is a pianist and earned his PhD in musicology from McGill University. Prior to joining Peabody as chair of the musicology department, he taught at the University of Toronto and Loyola University Maryland, where he was the director of the music program. He serves as director-at-large on the Board of the American Musicological Society.