British Music: Composition, Criticism and Nationhood since 1800
Participants: Katrina Dowling, Kenji Fujimura, Liz Sellars, Patrick Spedding, Julie Waters and Paul Watt
Formed in 2008, the aim of this Research Group is to foster collaborative and individual research on British music since 1800 amongst staff, postgraduate students and community groups. The immediate goal of the group is to identify and locate scores of once-popular (and now neglected works) by British composers and to have them performed and, where possible, recorded. These enterprises will be accompanied by publications and seminars. Along with an active program of performing British repertory, plans for the future include articles and books, as well as lobbying Australian radio stations, ensembles and orchestras (both professional and amateur) to programme this lesser-known repertory. The Research Group will collaborate with colleagues from the Monash School of English, Communications and Performance Studies and the Australian Study Group for British Music.
Recent Publications
Julie Waters,‘Proselytizing the Prague Manifesto in Britain: the commissioning, conception, and musical language of Alan Bush’s “Nottingham Symphony”,’ Music and Politics (forthcoming, 2009)
Paul Watt,
Conference Papers, Musicological Society of Australia’s 2008 Conference
Katrina Dowling, ‘Englishness in post-Second World War music criticism: challenges posed by the music of Lennox Berkeley and Alan Bush’
Julie Waters, ‘Alan Bush, the 1948 Prague Composers’ Congress, and the British Composers; Guild, 1948-49’
Paul Watt, ‘The German problem in early 20th-century England and Joseph Holbrooke’s projection of a dual musical identity’
Collaborations
With the Monash Academy Orchestra, the Cluster will be hosting a Festival-Symposium in late 2010: more details will be published soon!
With Anne-Marie Forbes (University of Tasmania) Paul Watt is co-editing a book on the British composer Joseph Holbrooke (1878-1958), tentatively titled Joseph Holbrooke: Composer, Critic and Champion of British Music.
Higher Degrees in Progress
Masters
Katrina Dowling, ‘Stylistic Correspondence in the Music for Solo Recorder and Piano or Harpsichord Composed 1939-1989 by Gordon Jacob, Edmund Rubbra, Lennox Berkeley, Arnold Cooke, Malcolm Arnold and Alan Ridout’PhD
Julie Waters, ‘“Against the Stream”: Alan Bush’s First Three Symphonies, Marxism, and the Search for Political Commitment in Music’Higher Degrees Recently Completed
PhD
Paul Watt, ‘The Intellectual Life of Ernest Newman in the 1890s’, University of Sydney, 2009
Kenji Fujimura, ‘Researching Performance: Translations into Editions and Performances of the Forgotten Piano Works of William Hurlstone (1876-1906)’, Monash University, 2009