British Music: Composition, Criticism and Nationhood since 1800

Participants: Katrina Dowling,Kenji Fujimura, Jeremy de Korte, Emma Nixon, Elizabeth Sellars, Patrick Spedding, Julie Waters and Paul Watt

Formed in 2008, the aim of this Research Group is to foster research on British music, focusing on 1800 onwards.

In addition to individual research, collaborative research is encouraged. At present, the Research Group collaborates with colleagues from six other universities in Australia and overseas.

In September 2010 the Research Group hosted Australia’s first conference on British music (pdf).

Books

1. Patrick Spedding and Paul Watt (eds), Bawdy Songbooks of the Romantic Period 4 vols., forthcoming, Pickering & Chatto, 2011. Volume editors are: Rachel Cowgill (Liverpool Hope University), Ed Cray (University of Southern California), David Gregory (Athabasca University) and Derek B. Scott (University of Leeds).
2. Anne-Marie Forbes and Paul Watt (eds). Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic and Advocate of British Music (in preparation)
3. Paul Watt, Ernest Newman: An Intellectual Biography (in preparation)

Articles and Book Chapters

Julie Waters

1. ‘Proselytizing the Prague Manifesto in Britain: The Commissioning, Conception, and Musical Language of Alan Bush’s “Nottingham” Symphony’, Music and Politics 3/1 (2009).
2. ‘Marxists, Manifestos and “Musical Uproar”: Alan Bush, the 1948 Prague Congress and the British Composers’ Guild, Journal of Musicological Research (forthcoming).
3. ‘A Gift to the People: The Commissioning of the “Nottingham” Symphony’, Clarion (forthcoming 2011).

Paul Watt

1. “A Gigantic and Popular Place of Entertainment”: Granville Bantock and Music-making at the New Brighton Tower in the late 1890s’, Research Chronicle of the Royal Musical Association (2009): 111–65.
2. ‘The Catalogue of Ernest Newman’s Library: Revelations about his Intellectual Life in the 1890s’, Script & Print 31.2 (2007): 81–103.
3. ‘Ernest Newman’s The Man Liszt of 1934: Reading its Freethought Agenda’, Context: A Journal of Music Research 31 (2006): 193–205.
4. ‘The Historiography of Opera Criticism’, in The Oxford Handbook of Opera, ed. Helen Greenwald. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
5. ‘Ernest Newman’s Draft of a Berlioz Biography (1899) and its Appropriation of Emile Hennequin’s Style Theory’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, forthcoming.
6. ‘The Musical Life of Alexandra Palace in the late Nineteenth Century’ (with Alison Rabinovici, University of Melbourne), in preparation.
7. ‘Joseph Holbrooke and Musical Nation-building in his Contemporary British Composers (1925)’, in Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic and Advocate of British Music, eds. Anne-Marie Forbes and Paul Watt, in preparation.

Performances and Recordings

Katrina Dowling

’By George!’, British chamber music of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, Sospiro chamber ensemble and Tanya Bail, Holy Trinity Church, Kew, 12 September 2010

Kenji Fujimura

With Trio Anima Mundi Kenji has performed the following repertoire:

• Frank Bridge, Phantasie Trio in c minor
• William Hurlstone, Piano Trio in G major, op. posth.
• John Ireland, Piano Trio No. 2 in e minor
• Charles Stanford, Piano Trio in A major, op. 158

On 20 September 2010, Kenji gave the Australian premiere of William Hurlstone’s Piano Concerto at Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University, with the Monash Academy Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Northey.

Kenji is also preparing the world premiere recording of William Hurlstone complete music for solo piano.

Elizabeth Sellars

1. Lennox Berkeley: Sonatina for Violin and Piano, Concertino for Flute, Violin, Cello and Piano, Naxos, 8.557324, 2005
2. Vaughan Williams, The Lark Ascending, Australia Pro Arte, conducted by Jeffrey Crellin, BMW Edge, Federation Square, Melbourne, 16 and 18 July, 2006.
3. Hurlstone, English Sketches for Violin and Piano, 12 November, 2006, St Michael’s Church, Melbourne.
4. Finzi: Elegy, 9 April 2006, St Michael’s Church, Melbourne.
5. Benjamin: Violin and Piano Sonata, 20 September 2008, Monash University, Melbourne.
6. Edward Moeran, Fantasy Quartet for Oboe and Strings, Religious Centre, Monash University, 19 September 2010: Elizabeth Sellars (violin), Jeff Crellin (oboe), Simon Oswell (viola), Howard Penny (cello).

Kenji Fujimura and Elizabeth Sellars

1. Hurlstone: Violin Sonata, 14 May, 2006 St Michael’s Church, Melbourne
2. Finzi: Elegy, 9 April 2006, St Michael’s Church, Melbourne.
3. George Benjamin Violin Sonata (world premiere recording, in preparation).

Emma Nixon

1. Performances of traditional and contemporary Scottish fiddle music at Whitby Folk Week, 2008 & 2010 (UK); Masters recital (Folk and Traditional Music, Newcastle University), September 2008, The Sage Gateshead, UK; Featured Artist at various concerts in Newcastle (UK) throughout 2007 & 2008 including St Francis Church, Heaton and Village Hall, Heddon-on-the-Wall; Northumbrian ‘Friendly Neets’, August 2010, Alnsmouth.
2. Performance of traditional and contemporary Scottish fiddle music in duo with Tony Vandermeer at Neurum Creek Music Festival, September 2010, Neurum Creek.
3. Performance of Celtic fiddle music directing National Fiddle Rally at National Folk Festival, 2010, Canberra.
4. Performances of Celtic fiddle music as director of Brisbane Celtic Fiddle Club, 2009 & 2010 including Woodford Folk Festival, Endeavour Foundation Grand Highland Charity Ball & Tartan Day.
5. Performances with The Shieling (acapella Scottish Gaelic quartet) 2009 & 2010 including Tartan Day, The Kirking of the Tartan, Neurum Creek Music Festival.

Conference Papers

Katrina Dowling

‘Englishness in post-Second World War music criticism: challenges posed by the music of Lennox Berkeley and Alan Bush’, national conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, University of Melbourne, 2008

Emma Nixon

‘Transmission of style in Scottish fiddling’, North Atlantic Fiddle Convention, Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, 2010

Julie Waters

‘Alan Bush’s Byron Symphony and anti-imperialism in 1950s Britain’, British Academy Conference, ‘Red Strains: Music and Communism outside the Communist Bloc after 1945’, London, 15 January 2011

‘Alan Bush’s Byron Symphony, anti-imperialism and British radical nationalism’, joint conference of the New Zealand and Australian musicological societies, University of Otago, 3 December 2010

‘Alan Bush and the GDR: the Commissioning of the Byron Symphony’, Collaborations: Creative Partnerships in Music Conference, Monash University, 2009

‘Alan Bush, Ideology and English National Style’, British Music Study Day, University of Melbourne, 2009

Paul Watt

‘Ernest Newman and Joseph Holbrooke at loggerheads over propaganda for British music in the early twentieth century’, joint conference of the New Zealand and Australian musicological societies, University of Otago, 3 December 2010

‘French influences on English musical criticism: the case of Ernest Newman and the Weekly Critical Review, 1903–04’, Seventh Biennial Conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, University of Bristol, 2009

Collaborations

Tamara Smolyar performed works by Joseph Holbrooke and Alan Bush that accompanied papers presented by Paul Watt and Julie Waters at the joint New Zealand Musicological Society-Musicological Society of Australia Conference at Dunedin in December 2010.