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Oxford ISSUE 5 | 2015 THE MAGAZINE FOR THE ALUMNI OF THE FACULTY OF MUSIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD Inside this issue: Transatlantic Voices Tudor Partbooks Project New Radcliffe Chamber Music Residency Interview with alumnus Roderick Williams CONTENTS Oxford Researching Beethoven ..............................................3 Claire Holden talks about her research into string playing at the time of Beethoven Transatlantic Voices .................................................4–5 Professor Laura Tunbridge explores the history of THE MAGAZINE FOR THE ALUMNI OF THE FACULTY OF MUSIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD lieder performance in London and New York between the World Wars FROM THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD New Radcliffe Chamber Music Residency ......6–7 Introducing the Villiers Quartet Music Matters Tudor Partbooks ........................................................8–9 Digitising, analysing and reconstructing the music Beyond the endless meetings, budget discussions and day-to-day firefighting, manuscripts of sixteenth-century England one of the great pleasures of being Faculty Board Chair is having the opportunity The Bate Band Recording Project ....................... 10 to meet alumni of our Faculty on a regular basis. Last November I hosted a The Bate Collection marks the 200th anniversary of reception in the splendours of the Rector’s Lodgings at Exeter College ahead of the Battle of Waterloo by reconstructing music played a memorable violin recital given by alumna Jennifer Pike. In attendance was a at the time using period instruments wide cross-section of our graduates, recent and not so recent, alongside some of Fragments on the Borders ...................................... 11 the many generous donors who support the work of the Faculty of Music. In my Dr Matthew Cheung Salisbury discusses his research welcome speech I touched on some of the obstacles faced by today’s students, into performing medieval music which increasingly act as a disincentive to university-level study. Even as I write, Alumnus Profile: Interview with the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced the scrapping of maintenance Roderick Williams ................................................12–13 grants that support undergraduates from low-income backgrounds. Increasing Access to Music for the Visually Impaired .......................................................................... 14 I was touched by the responses of our guests on that occasion. Their concern Jonathan Darnborough talks about making more was genuine. They, like me, who benefited from an entirely free education from music available to blind and visually impaired people the age of 5 to 25, are now overseeing a generation who can only fund their Oxford/Sennheiser Electronic Music Prize ...... 15 education by taking on ever-higher levels of personal debt. ‘What can we do?’ The Faculty hosts a national competition for many of our alumni asked me, to which there was no immediate easy answer. excellence in electronic music Individual benefaction is, of course, one way to help current students, whether Alumni Profiles ......................................................16–17 by making grants to undertake fieldwork, by endowing scholarships to support The Oxford Musician catches up with six Faculty the costs of postgraduate study, or by encouraging performance activities. Any alumni donation, small or large, makes a significant difference to the work of the Faculty. Current Student Profiles .......................................... 18 We meet 3rd-year undergraduate Anna Lapwood But beyond questions of finance, it is vital that we all continue to make the case and DPhil student Eugene Birman for the value of a top-quality university education, accessible to all. Many of our OUMS ................................................................................. 19 graduates go on to work in the musical professions. But many don’t. They become The Society reports on the past year’s successes and teachers, accountants, lawyers, charity workers, even MPs. They all also become plans for this coming Michaelmas Term good citizens, trained in the skills of critical thinking, evidence-based argument News from Members of the Faculty .............. 20–21 and effective communication. Don’t let anyone tell you that a Music degree is Student News and Alumni News ......................... 22 worth less than a degree in the sciences. I fervently believe that we prepare our Reflections on the Faculty ....................................... 23 students well for the world, that deep knowledge and experience of music in Professor Laurence Dreyfus reflects on his years at the all its variety makes us better, more fulfilled, more compassionate people. But if, Faculty in the future, only wealthy school-leavers have access to higher education, then Supporting the Faculty and Staying we put at risk many of the great achievements of the post-war social democratic in Touch ..........................................................................24 consensus. Alumni events, benefits and how to be involved Education matters. Music matters. Let’s all sing out this message loud and clear. Edited by Professor Jonathan Cross and Ms Arabella Pratt Magazine designed by Baseline Arts Ltd Photography by Marco Borggreve, Eli Burakian, John Cairns, Benjamin Ealovega, Tim Fitzpatrick, Derek Foxton, Charles Gervais, Kaupo Kikkas, Scottish Borders Council and Guy Wigmore. The editors would like to thank all the students, staff and alumni who have contributed to the magazine, as well as the University of Oxford Alumni Office and Development Office. Professor Jonathan Cross Cover image: Staircase in the Faculty of Music Library Chair, Music Faculty Board, 2012–15 2 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2015 FACULTY Researching In 2010, I was awarded a five-year AHRC Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts to research string playing at the time of Beethoven. The repertoire of the 19th century presents particular challenges for historically informed performers. Received ‘period’ style is not attuned to early 19th century aesthetic values. Most ‘period’ performances of Beethoven in fact demonstrate few stylistic characteristics of the period. The aim of the Fellowship was to undertake new practice-led research, Beethovento build on existing scholarship, and to devise and deliver ways of bridging the gap between scholarship and performance. The first four years of the Fellowship (at Cardiff University) concentrated primarily on research into Viennese violin playing of the early 19th century, combined with attempts to incorporate elements of historical style into professional performances of the music of Beethoven and his L Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler contemporaries. While this approach was certainly successful in achieving a in Beethoven within the context of instrument orchestra specialising in greater awareness of the constituents early 19th-century attitudes to poetry, the performance of early 19th-century of 19th-century string playing, for many where, for example, an understanding repertoire. professional players there remained of poetic metre can be ‘sounded’ in a lack of an aesthetic intimacy, which purely instrumental works. I am currently putting together material creates a barrier to the instinctive for a Fellowship website (including assimilation of technical skills. I have also disseminated my ideas to detailed case studies of Beethoven professional performers, conservatoire symphonies) and preparing another When the opportunity came to join students and academics. I have given conference paper on salon string playing the Oxford Faculty of Music for the coaching workshops to professional in Vienna. Once the Fellowship ends final year of the Fellowship, I leapt at ensembles (including the Orchestra of in October, I am looking forward to the chance, because it coincided with the Age of Enlightenment, with which I spending some time in the Bodleian a change of direction in my research: play regularly) and have led workshops looking at string playing in Oxford a move towards a more (scholarly) at the Royal Academy of Music, the 1800–60 as an Albi Rosenthal Visiting contextualised approach that could Royal Conservatory in The Hague and Fellow of the Bodleian Libraries. n be used to better equip performers to the University of Arts, Berlin. Most make confident historically informed recently I have received an invitation Claire Holden decisions. I present some of these ideas from the Argentinian Ministry of Culture AHRC Fellow in the Creative and in a forthcoming article on articulation to develop and coach a new period Performing Arts OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2015 . 3 FACULTY Transatlantic L Moritz von Schwind’s 1868 drawing of a Schubertiade There seemed to be more musicians, but also because there was and Schubert in 1927 and 1928 performances of Schubert’s song a reluctance to hear the language of as opportunities to promote new, cycle Winterreise last year than the enemy. The ‘classics’ were replaced technically superior, electrical ever before: there were multiple by songs by Britain and America’s allies recordings. Many lieder were released, renditions at the Oxford Lieder – including France and Russia – and, of sung by stars of the day such as Festival, including Humanitas course, by native composers. There was German mezzo soprano Elena Gerhardt Professor Ian Bostridge’s recital in also a concerted effort to encourage and Austrian tenor Richard Tauber. The the intimate space of the Holywell, the performance of songs