Oberlin Conservatory professor Thomas Forrest Kelly recently accepted a tenure offer in Harvard's Department of Music, department chair Reinhold Brinkmann confirmed yesterday.

Kelly, a performer and scholar of early music, is the winner of the American Musicological Society's Book of the Year Award for his 1989 publication, The Beneventan Chant.

According to Brinkmann, Kelly will continue the medieval music studies program now headed by Mason Professor of Music David G. Hughes, who is retiring this spring.

"Professor Kelly is both an expert in his field and a great performer," Brinkmann said. "We're very excited that he's coming because he has so many things to offer the department."

Brinkmann said he expects, Kelly to lead a group of early music performers at Harvard, similar to those whom he now trains and directs at Oberlin.

Kelly currently heads the historical performance/early music program at Oberlin. According to former conservatory dean David Boe he has spent much of his there organizing performances, ranging from baroque orchestra to early opera and ensembles.

At Harvard, Kelly will likely teach students with an especially broad array of interests if his proposal to teach a Literature and Arts B core course is accepted.

Kelly had proposed a course entitled "First Nights," which would focus on the premiere performances of five "musical masterworks."

"I want to get students who are both familiar with these pieces and those who aren't to think of them as though they were not only contemporary, but brand new," Kelly said.

According to Brinkmann, the subjects of study would be works by Monteverdi, Handel, Beethoven, Berlioz, and Stravinsky. "I think that Tom isgoing to discuss the circumstances and historiesof some central pieces," he said." He's going totry to mix aesthetic, historical and socialapproaches to music."

Kelly said in an interview yesterday that heexpects to relinquish the performance trainingduties for which he was responsible at Oberlin.

"What I've been invited to do at Harvard is toreally focus on my scholarship, which I have beendoing all along," Kelly said. "It's just that hereI've been doing it nights and weekends."

Kelly, who received his Ph.D. from Harvard in1973, said that it was a difficult decision toleave Oberlin: "While returning to Harvard isalmost like a homecoming, I really believe thatOberlin embodies the same kind of excellence thatHarvard does, but in a different way."

"One slight different is that theundergraduates I worked with were completelycommitted to what they were doing musically," headded, "and it was hard to give that up."

Boe said conservatory, faculty members are"tremendously disappointed" Kelly is leaving "Heis a highly respected faculty members here, butI'm sure that he'll do well wherever he is."

According to Boe. a position at Oberlin hadbeen created specifically for Kelly. "We wantedsomeone who had expertise in both scholarship andperformance," Boe said. "Tom Kelly's positionreally bridged the gap between our applied and ourclassroom faculty."

Professor of Music Kay K. Shelemay, who willassume the position of department chair thissummer, said students have already expressedenthusiasm both for the proposed core class andfor Kelly himself.

"We're all absolutely thrilled that he's comingand that we'll have some one who will continue ourdepth of scholarship in medieval studies,"Shelemay added. "Tom Kelly is a wonderful teacherand extremely valuable because he's someone whocan like across disciplinary boundaries."

Intellectual diversity may be the naturalresult of Kelly's background, which is litteredwith academic appointments and internationalscholarship.

Kelly is a self-proclaimed "faculty-brat" whogrew up in the vicinity of the University of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill and studies there as anundergraduate.

After college he studies medieval music at theUniversity of Paris on a Fulbright scholarship,and later went on to study in Rome.

Before Kelly went to Oberlin he had been on thefaculty of Wellesley College and later directedthe early music program at the "Five Colleges"(Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire andUMass-Amherst) in Western Masachusetts.

Kelly has equal experience as a performer. Hecurrently serves as president of Early MusicAmerica, a national performance, organization.Other career highlights include directing theCastle Hill Music festival in Ipswich, Mass, forten years and briefly directing the CambridgeSociety for Early Music.

"After all the time I spent working withperformers in the Boston area I'm really lookingforward to coming back and renewing oldacquaintances," Kelly said.

Kelly's appointment brings the department'stotal number of tenured professors to nine.

"All of the great composers wrote ninesymphonies," department chair Brinkmann said. "Sohow we are complete.