Lorraine Fitzmaurice '13 doesn't believe in just picking up a piece of sheet music, banging it out a few times on the piano and then winging it in front of an audience.

In fact, to prepare for the Dec. 5 concert at 8 p.m. at Sage Chapel, "War and Politics: The Dirty Side of Early Music," that she's leading, Fitzmaurice researched the political intrigue about the creation of the work, the author of the original poem on which the work is based and the culture of the time in which it was written. She's listened to similar works, taught herself how to pronounce words in Old French (a mixture of French and Latin) and painstakingly wrote the correct pronunciations using the International Phonetic Alphabet on each stanza of music to elicit the correct sounds from her group of vocalists.

Fitzmaurice, a College Scholar who came to Cornell from Billerica, Mass., thinking she would major in biochemistry soon found that her real dream was to be a choral conductor. The rigorous study and research critical to a scientist remains just as important to Fitzmaurice.

"A rehearsal is basically using the scientific method," Fitzmaurice said. "It's just a big dynamic experiment with human components."

Fitzmaurice played clarinet in high school and was first exposed to Gregorian chant during a gap year she spent in Germany. She became passionate about music as a Cornell freshman, when she took a course on the history of western music.

"I learned that the fundamental concepts of music have a very interesting and complicated back history," she said. As a sophomore, she founded Cornell Schola Cantorum, a group focused on Gregorian chant and the genres that grew from it. The group includes students with majors from ILR to plant pathology who share a love of early music -- and who aren't afraid to work on challenging pieces.

For this semester's concert, Fitzmaurice wanted to "explode the notion" that early music is based on heavenly inspiration, always sounding angelic and ethereal. The group will perform selections from Tinctoris's Missa L'homme Armé, which are based on a popular drinking song of the day about an armed man, she said. Since most audience members won't understand the words and narrator Alice Colby-Hall, professor emerita of French literature, will also be speaking in Old French, subtitles will be projected during the concert.

"People at Cornell value creativity and doing new and interesting things," she said of the support she feels for her musical efforts, as well as her College Scholar studies of theology and philosophy. "I believe that it's important to teach people about the whole culture of the music, show photos and listen to other works from the composer. The more engaged your singers are with the music and the more they understand it, the better the experience will be for them and the better the end product that they share with the audience."

Fitzmaurice will spend the spring semester finishing her thesis on current Gregorian chant practice in the Catholic church, which she researched during a summer trip funded by the Tanner Dean Summer Research Fellowship and the Harry Kaplan Summer Travel Grant. She already has a position for the summer as the orchestral manager of the Boston Early Music Festival; her future plans include pursuing a doctorate in choral conducting.

Kathy Hovis is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.