The majority of my research falls into one of two main categories…
German Vocal Music of the Nineteenth Century
This includes my PhD research into the music of Johannes Brahms for four singers with piano accompaniment, and the importance of domestic music-making (Hausmusik) to German culture in the nineteenth century.
It also embraces my work for Graham Johnson for his Franz Schubert. The Complete Songs and more recent research into the British reception of Lieder in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thanks to key performers and composers such as Sir Georg Henschel.
Performance History
By this I mean, quite simply, the history of performance and performers (rather than historically-informed practices). What information can concert programmes reveal about trends in repertoire, audience types, and broader cultural attitudes towards music and those who practised it? These questions have led me to write on the early years of the Edinburgh Festival, a series of variety concerts held at the Wigmore Hall in the 1920s which were intended to entertain war-wounded veteran, and the English-language singable translations that were made of German lieder in the late nineteenth century.
These research areas have also led me to organise concerts of particular kinds of repertoire – such as vocal quartets by Brahms and his contemporaries – and to find different ways to bring all kinds of research to a wider audience through pre-concert talks, curated concerts and programme note writing. You’ll find a little more information about each of these activities using the navigation bar to the right of this text – or you can contact me for more information.
