Oxford ISSUE 3 | 2013

THE MAGAZINE FOR THE ALUMNI OF THE FACULTY OF MUSIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Inside this issue: Ashmolean Museum: Musical Technologies Partnership with the Royal Academy of Music Interview with Jane Glover CBE Where Performance meets Research CONTENTS Oxford Where Performance Meets Research...... 3 Performing without barlines Stravinsky, The Rite and the piano...... 4 Alumnus Peter Hill on The Rite of Spring for four hands ahead of his 10 May Concert THE MAGAZINE FOR THE ALUMNI OF THE FACULTY OF MUSIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD marking its centenary Crossing Scales...... 6 FROM THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD Professor Georgina Born and Dr Jason Stanyek talk Ethnomusicology at Oxford “The Oxford Professor of Music … has never issued the results of research in printed form, but his George Eastman Visiting Professorship.... 8 pupils know how profound his knowledge is, and he has devoted much time to organisation Professor Kofi Agawu on his appointment and and administrative work. Another Oxford scholar who has done fine work in his quiet, retired lecture series: Is African Music Superior? way … is also known more widely as a cultivated composer writing rarely but sensitively.” Bate Collection News...... 9 Andy Lamb looks at the Collection’s recent Not a portrait of my current colleagues in the Faculty of Music, you will be pleased to developments and announces the Bate learn, but a snapshot I stumbled across recently in Eric Blom’s Music in England (1942). Recording Prize winner Sir Hugh Allen (1869–1946) and Ernest Walker (1870–1949), the two figures to whom Old Bonds Renewed...... 10 Blom was referring, were clearly significant in their day. Allen was simultaneously Director Celebrating our partnership with the Royal of the Royal College of Music and Heather Professor at Oxford, and did much to lay the Academy of Music foundations for the modern Faculty, which was established in 1944. Walker is perhaps Alumna Profile: Mozart’s Woman...... 12 best remembered for his History of Music in England (1907) as well as many contributions Interview with Conductor and Academic, Jane to the 2nd edition of Grove. I wonder what they would make of today’s Music Faculty? Glover CBE New Music, New Technology...... 14 In some senses, the life of the Oxford academic has not changed so much. Research, The Faculty invests in technological music teaching and administration remain at the heart of what we do. But we could never making, and celebrates technology old now get away (regrettably, some might say) with allowing the fruits of our research to and new through a collaboration with the be transmitted solely through our teaching, thanks to the demands of the Research Ashmolean Museum Excellence Framework, which requires not only that we keep publishing demonstrably Alumni Profiles...... 16 ‘world class’ work, but also that we can be seen to have ‘impact’ well beyond the confines Oxford Musician catches up with seven Faculty of academe. Both Allen and Walker ‘did’ impact: it’s in the nature of being a musician to Alumni want to communicate with the wider world; it’s just they didn’t have to measure it and Current Student Profiles...... 18 tell the Funding Council about it. Teaching, too, is still a top priority. Undergraduates now nd We meet Ertgun Scholar Joe Snape and 2 paying £9,000 a year rightly expect value for money, but so does the growing international year violinist Savitri Grier body of masters and doctoral students. I suspect, however, that those venerable OUMS...... 19 gentleman would have been shocked by the level of ‘organisation and administrative The society reports back on the year’s successes, work’ expected of the 21st century academic. As noted in our article about the Faculty’s and the incoming President tells us what’s in relationship with the Royal Academy of Music (p. 10), it is today unimaginable that store for the coming year someone like Allen could head both a university department and a major conservatoire. News and Releases from Members of the Faculty...... 20 Yet, despite the many pressures on both staff and students, I’m continually astounded News, recordings, books and broadcasts by the range and quality of what members of the Faculty achieve. In this latest issue of Alumni News and Releases...... 23 Oxford Musician you will get just a taste of the world-leading and impactful work being News from Music Faculty Alumni undertaken here, whether that be in the global cross-currents of ethnomusicology Stay in touch...... 24 (p. 6), in the engagement with the latest technologies (p. 14), or in the interface between Alumni Events, benefits, and how to be involved research and performance (p. 3). That energy seems to ripple outwards to our alumni too, as the tales of their extraordinary achievements reveal in the following pages. But Edited by Professor Jonathan Cross, Ms Rebecca Tay we’re not complacent. We know we need to do more to guarantee a healthy future and Ms Aloïse Fiala-Murphy for the next generation of Faculty members by winning research grants, raising funds, Magazine designed by Baseline Arts Ltd developing our outreach work, and diversifying still further our student body. Photography by Ralph Williamson, David Fisher, I hope you enjoy reading Oxford Musician. We love hearing from our alumni. Tell us what Mark Mobley, Gary Ombler, Marco Borggreve, John Batten, Jim Steere, Anna Söderblom, Mim Saxl, you think of the magazine. Even better: come back to Oxford and tell us in person. Lluniau Llwyfan, Aditi Deo and Jaani Riordan. A warm welcome always awaits you. 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. Cover image: OxLOrk perform at the Ashmolean Museum (p. 16)

Professor Jonathan Cross 2 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 Chair, Music Faculty Board FACULTY 3

. 2013 . OXFORD MUSICIAN MUSICIAN OXFORD Mus. 474, fol. 63 verso 474, fol. Mus.

everyone pursues naked busily self- good. contrapuntal a greater for interest fantasy is musicBecause the Jacobean like composers Gibbons words, from freed and Jenkins can indulge in some rather players complex games: interrelating them to and challenging in new ways time while at the same together, stay some them by befuddling and astounding remarkable musical experimentation. One part an extended might, for viol player’s as be composed in such a way passage, because assertto beat. Or, the wrong this is music built on the parts imitating one part a clear might play each other, of themusical phrase but the rhythms next part just enough to will be altered Multiply these mightily confusing. prove typical or six times (the five by processes in a consort)number of players and you can see the difficulty – but also the fun! fantasies without bar lines has Playing clarified composers thought of the how parlour game in a challenging genre: everyone which the basic task is for to make the piece without the end of it to element of confrontation This ‘falling off’. and surprise is of course primarily experienced the participants, by but and conflict also are the excitement easily picked as well, listeners up by contributing the swirl to of excitement that marks this fascinating music. FBA Dreyfus Laurence Professor Magdalen College Phantasm Director, www.phantasm.org.uk PhantasmViols K

Playing without bar lines, and without a without bar lines, Playing that making means conductor of course, ‘feel’. different music has an entirely of say, Rather than counting groupings is a vertical after which there beats, four metrical orientation, one counts line for them and measures durations of notes which ‘tactus’ beat or against the regular underlies the composition. But even the though this beat is generally regular, of pulses in the individual organisation parts is often wildly and intentionally one In ensemble music, playing irregular. complement both to intently listen has to their the other parts ignore as to as well conflictingpotentially metrical signals. playing from different is completely This string in a classic or romantic the rhythms dead easy are which quartet, example, for comparison.by Consort music completely of parts. is Insteadlacks a hierarchy there democracya pure – or perhaps of voices a corporatebetter, whichin leviathan century th

Phantasm Viol Consort Viol Phantasm

Performing without barlinesPerforming An undisputed achievement of achievement undisputed An has been musicology traditional texts of reliable the establishment which has inspired early music, for and critical historical an impressive It turns out though, that literature. performing scholarly early music from the best way editions is not always its understand it and appreciate to Consort- Phantasm, content. expressive at Magdalen College, in-residence specialises in the early 17 L Meets Research

English chamber music called ‘consort ‘consort English chamber music called and is experimenting with music’ composers such by performing Fantasies as Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) and John Jenkins original (1592–1678) from parts specially prepared notation or from of manuscripts the layout which duplicate chamber music, Just as in later sources. here but – lines, see only their own players – in the Jacobean is the big difference these partssources contain no bar lines. Where Performance Performance Where EVENT Stravinsky, The Rite

L Stravinsky at the piano

Stravinsky’s performance on the piano, as he unveiled his new work, made an indelible impression. One of his first listeners was the conductor Pierre and the piano Monteux, who heard The Rite in April 1912, more than a year before the first performance: ‘The room was small and the music was large, the sound of it completely dwarfing the poor piano on which the composer was pounding, completely dwarfing Diaghilev and his poor conductor, listening in utter amazement. The old upright piano quivered and shook as Stravinsky tried to give us an idea of his new work … I remember vividly his dynamism and his sort of ruthless impetuosity as he attacked the score. By the time he had reached the second tableau his face was so completely covered with sweat that I thought, “He will surely burst …”. My own head ached badly, and I must admit I did not understand one note of Le Sacre.’

L Professor Peter Hill We hear for the first time of Stravinsky’s Peter Hill first got to know Stravinsky’s of the piano gives if anything a sharper arrangement of The Rite for piano duet arrangement of The Rite of Spring for focus to the brutal dissonances, as well when he and Debussy met to read piano duet when an undergraduate as to the complex rhythms from whose through the work (on 9 June 1912), at Oxford in the late 1960s. He is the ruthless momentum the work derives the occasion described by Louis Laloy: author of the Cambridge Handbook its unique power. The four-hand version ‘Debussy agreed to play the bass part. on The Rite, and has recorded the four- also reminds us of the central role of the Stravinsky asked if he could remove hand version with Benjamin Frith in a piano in the work’s creation. The bulk of his collar; and pointing his nose at the Stravinsky recital for Naxos that also the music was composed in a tiny room keyboard, and sometimes humming contains the Sonata for Two Pianos in Clarens, in Switzerland, Stravinsky a part that was omitted from the and the Concerto for Two Pianos. using a muted upright to pummel and arrangement, he led into a welter of pound his ideas into shape. The music sound the supple, agile hands of his Stravinsky’s piano duet arrangement has strong pianistic qualities, the snug ‘fit’ friend. Debussy followed without a of The Rite of Spring has a validity all of under the hands – as with the hammered hitch and seemed to make light of the its own: the range of colour which he chords that open ‘The Augurs of Spring’ difficulty. When they had finished, there elicits from the huge orchestra is lost, of – suggesting that much was discovered was no question of embracing, or even course, but the black-and-white medium while improvising. of compliments. We were dumbfounded,

4 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 EVENT

overwhelmed by this hurricane which service to all those who would like to of awe as the grandest works of nature. had come from the depths of the ages, learn the performance tradition of my Stravinsky must have felt this too, that he and which had taken life by the roots.’ wor k ’. To modern ears both versions ‘discovered’ The Rite: ‘I heard, and I wrote sound astonishingly ragged (though what I heard,’ he said simply, ‘I am the The postponement of the premiere Monteux’s has a ‘Danse sacrale’ that is vessel through which The Rite passed.’ n (originally intended for the 1912 Paris uniquely fast and exciting). Stravinsky’s season) enabled Stravinsky to rethink the later recordings are a different matter, of Professor Peter Hill ending. The sacrifice itself was to have course, but we can only regret that he Christ Church, 1969 been to the music that was later renamed never thought to record himself in the ‘Ritual Action of the Ancestors’, with its version for piano. mesmerising gyrations engulfed by two huge tutti, and the stuttering bass clarinets In later spoken accounts Stravinsky at the end of the movement depicting sought to recapture the original impulse the victim’s death by exhaustion. At for The Rite. He remembered ‘the violent some point in the early autumn of 1912 Russian spring that seemed to begin Stravinsky decided to compose a new in a hour and was like the whole earth ‘Sacrificial Dance’: this was completed with cracking … the most wonderful event of frantic haste in mid-November just in time every year of my childhood’ – a remark for the rehearsals with the dancers. The that reminds us that The Rite is the most music for this final section contains The ‘natural’ of Stravinsky’s stage works: Rite’s most radical innovation, rhythmic no narrator (as in L’Histoire du soldat ‘cells’ that are lengthened and shortened or Oedipus Rex), no play-within-a-play unpredictably. The complexities gave (Petrushka), no stylistic pastiche (Pulcinella, endless trouble to Diaghilev’s Ballets The Rake’s Progress). A century after its first Peter Hill’s most recent recording, of Russes dancers, and the young Marie performance, the marvel of The Rite is that Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, is Rambert (who later founded the Rambert it just is, an essential work, that continues available on the Delphian label. Dance Company, and who had been to arouse something of the same feelings www.delphianrecords.co.uk trained in Dalcrozian eurhythmics) had to be drafted in to give the company extra coaching. She remembered Stravinsky’s furious energy at rehearsals when he ‘blazed up, pushed aside the fat pianist … and proceeded to play twice as fast as we had been doing and twice as fast as we could possibly dance’.

The earliest score of The Rite to be published was the arrangement for piano duet, which appeared a few days before the first performance, and predates by eight years the first edition of the orchestral score; this 1913 edition of the piano duet contains a number of interesting details (later omitted in Stravinsky’s numerous revisions of the work), including changes of tempo in the ‘Danse sacrale’. We also get some idea of what the first performance sounded like from the two earliest recordings, conducted by Stravinsky and by Monteux, both dating from May 1929. A press release issued on behalf of Monteux by the Compagnie française du gramophone stated that his interpretation had Stravinsky’s approval, and that it was ‘the only model on which all conductors base their performances’. Stravinsky’s Music alumni can claim a 20% discount off all tickets to this event, riposte, issued by Columbia Records which will include an alumni drinks reception. (France) described his own recording as ‘a masterpiece of phonographic realisation, Email [email protected], or phone 01865 276 133 for more a model of recording that renders a true information and to book your ticket.

OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 . 5 if I didn’t try to get if I didn’t Professor Georgina Born Georgina Professor

also ‘the constellation of bodily, social, social, ‘the of bodily, constellation also mediations and discursive technological embedded’. in which they are of mediation those levels Working across acts of scholarly inventiveness requires , adapting a scales’ that Born calls ‘crossing Marilyn the anthropologist phrase from Strathern. Such acts mean that Born’s raises weighty questions both research cultural criticism and theoryfor and for public policy always – questions that are pursued in tandem with a concern for what music is and what it might be. getting his hands dirty loves too Stanyek with I kind ‘The of ethnography sound. a certain entails kindpractise of proximity, feel amiss and I would as I possibly fabric as deep into the musical sitting amongst and I’m in Brazil Say I’m can. feel the air and I can of musicians, a group L

Oxford Handbook of Mobile Oxford Dr Jason Stanyek

L

completing an ethnographic monograph monograph completing an ethnographic on Brazilian diasporic performance and Fifty Northern Wave: has co-edited Brazil’s in the United States of Bossa Nova Years University Press). Oxford (forthcoming, He has co-authoredan award-winning and is about on music technology essay The release to Music Studies, a co-edited, two-volume set. He is a keynote speaker at the MusDig 2013 conference. between the work resonances The remarkable. are of Born and Stanyek a commitment Both scholars share turning out to ‘a interdisciplinarity, to and to social theory, itself, anthropology to media theory’ Born). Indeed (Georgina projects has career-long one of Born’s and a composite develop been to perspective that is theoretical innovative musical sounds but attuned not only to Crossing Scales Crossing 2013 .

OXFORD MUSICIAN MUSICIAN OXFORD . Ethnomusicology at Oxford Ethnomusicology 6 Dr Stanyek’s research addresses two main addresses research Dr Stanyek’s Brazilian music and the historytopics: He is currently of music technology. Having written major ethnographic written major ethnographic Having studies of IRCAM and the BBC, Born directs the currently Professor project Council Research European Towards Mediation: Digitisation, ‘Music, (MusDig). Interdisciplinary Music Studies’ five-year This (2010–15), €1.7 million the first provides programme research digital of the ways global ethnography music- radically altered media have making and in both the developing in the post- Now world. developed fieldwork phase of the project, Born and preparing are group research her lively books and journalseveral articles for publication. MusDig is also holding a in July major international conference 2013. Oxford has been at the forefront of at the forefront has been Oxford a tradition of through such changes, from work stretching ethnomusicological Montague and scholars such as Jeremy MartinHélène La Rue to Currently Stokes. is represented ethnomusicology at Oxford Born and Dr Jason Georgina Professor by Stanyek, who build on and extend this new ways. tradition in exciting Ethnomusicology is changing. Once Once is changing. Ethnomusicology with primarily associated the field was the study of so-called and traditional it is better musics; now non-western which all types seen as a lens through be can be studied, of music and dance in particular rooted they near or far, in global currents. or circulating places

FACULTY FACULTY 7

. 2013 . OXFORD MUSICIAN MUSICIAN OXFORD Music, Sound andMusic, Space Born Georgina by Edited is the first collectionThis integrate to musicology and from research sound studies on music and sound Music everydayas they mediate life. and sound exert an inescapable influence on the contemporary world, the ubiquityfrom of MP3 players use of sound controversial the to Inas an instrument of torture. this book, the leading scholars explore spatialisation of music and sound, their capacity modes of engender to their constitution of public and private, subjectivity and the politics of sound University Press) (Cambridge and space. n

Malwi folk musician Prahlad Tipaniya in concert at Tipaniya Prahlad Malwi folk musician singing in a tribal together: Women Recording

the Rajasthan Kabir Yatra 2012 Kabir Yatra the Rajasthan Maharashtra village near Nandurbar, MusDig Deo, Dr India project by Aditi Photographs Dr Kyle Devine Dr Kyle (MusDig) Administrator Project J I reveals deep connections betweenreveals the moment and the sonic ethnographic on the one hand; with culturalfabric, transregional at once local, politics that are Other essays and global on the other. seemingly mundane music how show actually are caught up in technologies questions about both the past and urgent consumerism of capitalism, labour, future humanityand ultimately itself. Born and Stanyek,Such is the field for and teaching that Ethnomusicological working be defined by must research an by disciplines and scales, across experimental combine ethos that looks to with texture of sonic micro-level readings cultural and visages of broad overarching comments Stanyek historical processes. ‘The is very between those scales flickering important, and he is in agreement to me’ a sense of the gives work with Born ‘Such identitydistinctive of what Jason and I are in Music at Oxford’. together here forging that It the future look to is clear as we Ethnomusicology will continue to and direction Whilst the nature change. predict, the of the change is difficult to of at the Faculty work of Born and Stanyek in lead the way that we Music will ensure charting ahead. and influencing the path

In elaboration of this idea Stanyek’s work In elaboration of this idea Stanyek’s States in the United on Brazilian choro being moved by a hand motion, or I feel a a hand motion, or by being moved off another body onto come of sweat drop mine – even though I might be 6000 miles when I’m I did the fieldwork where from away I still feel – and I do mydoing the write-up, sensations’. – those proximate best to convey

‘...even though I might be 6000 I did where from miles away doing the fieldwork when I’m I still feel – and the write-up, I do my best to convey – those sensations’.proximate Crossing Scales Crossing FACULTY George Eastman

VisitingIt has been my very good fortune Professorship to as a colonizing force in Africa’ and to the L Professor Kofi Agawu spend 2012–13 in Oxford as the 71st African Studies Seminar on ‘Theories of George Eastman Professor. The lovely African rhythm.’ Finally, and by some twist Eastman House on Jowett Walk, where of fate, several of my former teachers It’s easy to understand how my wife Christie and I have lived since (Bojan Bujic, Harry Johnstone, Reinhard I can feel at home here, the end of September, is a short walk Strohm and Brian Trowell) and colleagues from Balliol College, the Bodleian (Laurence Dreyfus, Curtis Price and Rhian ‘home’ being a place where library and the centre of town. It’s been Samuel) have ended up at Oxford. It’s one finds existential comfort a year to experience various rituals easy to understand how I can feel at associated with college life, meet a home here, ‘home’ being a place where and at the same time receives wide range of students and colleagues one finds existential comfort and at the with diverse interests, and take in any same time receives unrestrained critical unrestrained critical feedback number of plays, concerts and films feedback to one’s work! to one’s work! in Oxford; it’s been ‘too much,’ as we would say in West Africa. When the Faculty suggested that I give the recorded samples of music from across a series of public lectures to be known western and southern Africa. The substance I’m not exactly a stranger to Oxford. As as the George Eastman Lectures in of the lectures is now being incorporated an undergraduate at Reading University Music, I responded with a rubric that into a monograph, The African Imagination many years ago, I occasionally took the raised an eyebrow or two: “Is African in Music, which I hope to complete by the train to Oxford to browse in Blackwell’s Music Superior?” What I had in mind time I leave here in August. Music Shop. It was on one of those visits was simply, or perhaps not so simply, that I picked up a used miniature score to compel attention to the basic On a wall above the staircase in the of Haydn’s op. 76 no. 3, read it silently on qualities of traditional African music Eastman House hangs a plaque with the the way back, inadvertently committed (foremost among them, repetition), names of previous Eastman professors (the the minuet movement to memory, only and to encourage discussion within a list begins in 1930–31). The last (and only to find the same minuet on a pastiche- comparative framework. Alas, the bald other) music scholar to have occupied composition exam the following week! provocation seemed to engender some these premises was Charles Welles More recently – and more to the point – anxiety. ‘Superior to what?’ I was often Rosen, Eastman Professor in 1987–88, the Oxford-Princeton partnership in music asked, and often indignantly. who passed away on 9 December 2012, analysis, initiated in 2010, has brought a a couple of months after I’d begun my number of colleagues and postgraduate The four lectures took place during Hillary own tenure here. Professor Rosen was students from our two institutions into term. Each one dealt with a different a truly seminal thinker in our field, an contact. I also spent a week here in aspect of African music. It was nice to see inspiring combination of theorist, critic and October 2010 as Astor Visiting Lecturer, many people in attendance, and especially practitioner. I wish to take this opportunity lecturing to the music faculty on ‘Tonality gratifying to observe a genuine interest in to pay a special tribute to him. n

8 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013

FACULTY

9

.

2013 . n OXFORD MUSICIAN MUSICIAN OXFORD Joseph Currie

K The Bate Bate The Recording Prize Become a friend of the Bate Become www.bate.ox.ac.uk/friends-of-the-bate form. the application and download The 2012/13 Bate Recording Prize Prize Recording 2012/13 Bate The of the Faculty of undergraduates for Joseph to Music has been awarded . Jesus College) (Finalist, Currie with substantially Joseph has worked Collection and pioneered the Bate ‘Action performancethe exciting with the in collaboration Potential’ of Art. College Royal selected He was his field on entries for a strong from from movements of two recording 3 (Set 1) in No. Suite the Keyboard on played G F Handel, D minor by the Goermans made by Harpsichord Jean Goermans Elder in his Paris the on one of in 1750 (dated workshop from come the jacks). It have is said to Mauves-sur- de Landres, the Chateau it is thought where France, Nuigle, the 18th since been located have to the It from purchased was century. collection a Thomas thanks to Michael & the Austin from donation generous Hope Trust. Pilkington n

News Andrew Lamb Andrew Collection Manager Bate [email protected] 01865 276139 If you’d like to be kept further informed of the Bate’s activities, then you can become a activities, then you like be kept to further of the Bate’s informed If you’d our monthly newsletter. receive to or let us knowfriend email address of the Bate, your Next academic year we plan to run a series of study days. We have worked with closely have We seriesa run days. study of to plan Nextwe year academic and will be looking the years a number of specialist musical instrument societies over da Viola the approached already have We these and new develop relationships. to and the plans are Gamba SocietyTechnology and the Institute of Musical Instrument takingalready shape. We are looking forward to hosting a major conference (24–29 July) on the place of looking are hosting a major conference forward to We of has attractedThis the attention and society. culture musical instruments in science, lookingthe international community are members of and we welcoming forward to the International of Museums and the American Council Musical Instrument Society. Another fun development has been progress on the interactive gallery display. This This gallery on the interactive display. has been progress Another fun development that contains in-depthcomprises screen about objects, aspects a touch label copy analysis. images and technical of the collection, photographic sound samples, and work- of volunteers had teams have we endeavour this technological For effortThis has experience and media. students helping out with new information the work of our a new generation through to the Bate in bringing invaluable proved her taught gallery who incorporates it into Isabelle Carré, sessions Officer, Education local schools. for We are also well on the way to completing the next phase of our archival recording completing the next recording to on the way phase of our archival also well are We performers been working have make to with professional high-qualityWe project. launch a CD just about to instruments in the collection of are and we recordings has been a fabulously This performedof horn music, Anneke by Scott and friends. eagerly project and has been other music collections copied by exciting in the UK and abroad. 2012 has seen an increase in gallery activities and we have broadened our programme gallery in our programme 2012 has seen an increase broadened activitieshave and we galleryof informal students the opportunity giving recitals of demonstrating assisting now are so popular that we has proven This the collection.instruments from musical including of events, programme set up their own Museum to the Ashmolean forthcoming their 13 June until 11 Stradivarius for which runs from exhibition, recitals 2013. August October began with the excellent news that the Bate Collection had been had been Collection the Bate that news October began with the excellent this, Following the Arts of England. by status Council Accreditation Full awarded this might all seem Whilst Status. Designated apply for to leave been given have we it is in fact importance of signal like burden, a bureaucratic and places the collection with all of those national collections the British held by Museumon an equal footing be seeking will made in 2014 and we main submission will be The V&A. and the have we this, In friends and other institutions. our workendorsement from towards been fortunate in appointing a new Museum Registry Elin Bornemann, who Officer, catalogue and special has been doing sterling work on the production of an updated exhibition.

Bate Collection Bate

PARTNERSHIP OldRenewed Bonds

Leave the High and make for Dreyfus held a Chair at the Academy in Headington. Keep driving straight the 1990s and Professor Robert Saxton for some 50 miles and the elevated was its Head of Composition. In the Westway will bring you gently back to other direction Jane Glover (p. 12), earth at the Marylebone Road, home the Academy’s Head of Opera, was a of the Royal Academy of Music. This Fellow of St Hugh’s College in the 1980s. straight and narrow path between Many current staff at the Academy read the University and the Academy is music at Oxford, including the Deputy emblematic of the close connections Principal, Timothy Jones, Head of Organ, that have existed between the two David Titterington, the Head of Choral institutions for nearly 200 years.

The Academy’s founding Principal, L Professor Jonathan Freeman-Attwood William Crotch, simultaneously held the Heather Chair in Music at Oxford Conducting, Patrick Russill, the Sterndale between 1822 and 1832. Radical changes Bennett Lecturer, Jeremy Summerly, in the duties of both posts make it and the Crotch Professor of Early Music, unlikely that history will repeat itself, Laurence Cummings. but in recent times, too, most Academy Principals have been Oxford musicians: The Academy has historically been the Sir Thomas Armstrong was Organist most attractive route for postgraduate of Christ Church, Sir David Lumsden studies for Oxford alumni, especially the Organist of New College; those looking for a different ‘flavour’ of the current Principal, Professor music education and a training that Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, was emphasises professional preparation a postgraduate at Christ Church; and a student experience at the and his predecessor, Sir Curtis heart of professional musical life in Price, moved from the Academy London. One thinks of all sorts: from to become Warden of New College broadcaster and pianist David Owen in 2008.

J Bust of Dr William Crotch. By J. Fazi, 1853. White Academics have also moved between plaster. Crotch is depicted, head and shoulders, the two institutions. Professor Laurence wearing academic robes.

10 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 20132012 PARTNERSHIP

RAM Scheme Student Profiles

TOM JESTY 2nd Year, St Peter’s College

I am very involved in College life and I get plenty of exciting experience playing as an accompanist and repetiteur, and as a soloist with the college orchestra. Alongside this the monthly lessons I am having with Ian Fountain under the RAM scheme have been the perfect avenue to focus on solo repertoire. I am currently enjoying working on Rachmaninov’s Old Bonds D minor piano sonata, which I hope to perform in the winter. In addition, it is a fantastic opportunity to visit the Academy once in a while and meet with Oxford friends now studying there. It is also a great way to have a taste of what is in store if I should take a postgraduate course at a conservatoire as my next step.

This summer I am attending a music course in Cervo, a good chance to meet more Norris to a promising current tenor on the professionals in the field and continue to explore the world of solo and chamber Royal Academy Opera, Stuart Jackson. piano performance. n

Like the University, the Academy is as cosmopolitan an environment as you’ll find, with students from over 50 countries. OLIVIA CLARKE There are some 400 students on full-time Finalist, The Queen’s College postgraduate programmes in a large number of disciplines, ranging from the Scuttling around on hands and knees core classical disciplines to musical theatre, pretending to be a fox cub on the jazz and commercial composition. Many stage of the Royal Opera House aged Oxford students identify the Academy twelve, with Joyce DiDonato and teacher of their choice whilst still ‘up’, Dawn Upshaw playing my ‘parents’ was thus preparing the ground for audition. enough to show me what I wanted Several also attend events delivered by to spend the rest of my life doing. regular visiting professors such as Maxim Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen was Vengerov (Menuhin Professor), Semyon my introduction to a world that still Bychkov (Klemperer Chair of Conducting), excites and inspires me, a world that Barbara Bonney, Angelika Kirchschlager, my degree has enabled me to engage Reinhold Friedrich, Patrick Messina and with academically as well as practically. a battery of alumni and teachers who now hold principal chairs in the Royal The wealth of student-run opera companies in Oxford has enabled me to get out Concertgebouw and Berlin Philharmonic onstage at least once a term. Some favourites include Erste Dame/Die Zauberflöte, Orchestras – to name just a few. Madame Silberklang/Der Schauspieldirektor, and Cleonilla/Ottone in Villa. Although I have remained studying with my current teacher, Eileen Price, throughout Oxford, Recognising all these complementarities the University has offered me some high quality extra-tuition in the form of the RAM and shared values, in 2011 the Academy scheme and invaluable termly masterclasses. and the Oxford Music Faculty established a scheme for a number of talented Oxford Outside of singing, being an organ scholar in Oxford has contributed greatly to performers to receive one-to-one lessons building an all-round musicianship, enriching my skills as a conductor, accompanist with Academy staff and to participate and keyboard player. In the future I’m very excited about starting the next level ever-more broadly in the musical life of of vocal training, and am planning to apply to American schools as well as UK the Academy. n conservatoires in a year or two. n

OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 . 11 ALUMNI profile

Interview with AlumnaJane Glover CBE

Since her tenure with the London Mozart Players in the late 1980s, conductor and alumna Jane Glover (St Hugh’s College, mat. 1968) has become recognised as one of our leading Mozart experts. Her 2005 book Mozart’s Women was nominated for both the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Non-Fiction and this year sees her debut at the Metropolitan Opera Mozart’sconducting The Magic Flute. Woman

We sent Jonathon Swinard (St Catherine’s College, 2008) to the Royal Academy of Music, where she is currently Artistic Director of Opera, to catch up on her career to date and to find out more about the composer she describes as being ‘completely in her DNA’.

You made your professional conducting debut at the Wexford Festival in 1975. Did you feel there were any barriers to launching a career as a female conductor? Oh it felt completely mad. There weren’t many women conductors around at the time. When I left Oxford I said: ‘I’ll give myself two years’. Yet after two years one was still lying awake at night wondering how to pay the bills and finding other ways of earning a living. I did a lot of editing of music for Neville Marriner, for instance, and I wrote the music column in The Listener.

Was conducting initially a complement or a supplement to your academic work? My DPhil was on 17th century Venetian opera, but the point of it actually was to make performing editions of early operas and put them back in the theatre where they belong. It was doing those in Oxford that caught the attention of the wider music business, which led to professional conducting offers from Wexford and the BBC.

Your first opera was presumably in Oxford? I did Figaro in my final year. It wore me out and gave me glandular fever, but actually I learnt as much doing it as I did doing anything else in those three years. In my day the academic background (of the undergraduate course) was terribly unpractical. And although I wasn’t very

12 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 ALUMNI

Antonio Pappano has recently caused controversy by ...you can have fantastic technique and suggesting the current generation of young opera singers are nothing in the eyes, face or aura. I often ‘weaker in the bodies’ or ‘don’t care’ as much as their elders did. As someone responsible for the next generation, do you like to stop conducting altogether and just think he is right? I wouldn’t want to ruffle feathers, but I do think there is a class look at people and smile. of musician – not just singers – who fly around the world too quickly, do too many gigs and get worn out. And the thing about a singer is that your burnout point is much lower because your instrument is your body and it’s very hard to protect it.

What is the most challenging project you’ve done recently? The 2011 world premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies’s Kommilitonen! at the RAM (co-commissioned with the Julliard School) is possibly the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done. David Pountney wrote the libretto and was directing – so it was like having Mozart and Da Ponte in the room!

You’ve conducted all the mature Mozart operas. Have any of his earlier stage works been unjustly neglected? I have never conducted any of the three teenage Italian operas Mitridate (1770), Ascanio in Alba (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772) but I am about to do Lucio Silla in Bordeaux, which I think is the greatest of them. Maybe ask me again later in the year!

Of course we can’t leave before congratulating you on your forthcoming Metropolitan Opera debut this December where good at those keyboard tests, I must say that those are the things you will be conducting their ‘reduced’ Magic Flute. Do you that have stood me in good stead. I now play recitatives till the have any say in what makes the final cut? cows come home and figured bass is virtually a second language. No, I don’t think I do! They do it in English as a family show for Christmas. I normally can’t bear to lose a semiquaver of Mozart, Who were your academic mentors? but James Levine has already done it and is a man I worship, so The legendary Fred Sternfeld who later supervised my DPhil He I’m not going to turn my debut down on those grounds! I’m just and his wife sort of slightly adopted me. I basically spent four thrilled to be going there. n years living between Oxford and Venice and would go and see them in Florence. He had my academic career worked out, so when I eventually said: ‘you know, Fred, this conducting thing…’ I think he thought I’d chosen for second best. Jonathon Swinard studied When did you become comfortable, then, that the conducting at St. Catherine’s College, career had gained sufficient impetus? where he held the New The big change was going to Glyndebourne. Whenever I stood Chamber Opera Répétiteur up to conduct, people would write articles about what I was Scholarship, and the Guildhall wearing and whether a woman should be doing this. I became School of Music and Drama. the focus of attention for the wrong reasons and needed to be a In September 2012 he joined small cog in a big wheel – learning my trade from watching other the music staff at Scottish great people. So I wrote to Brian Dickie (the then Head of Music) Opera as the company’s and asked him if I could have a job. And he said ‘Yes, come and first Emerging Artist Répétiteur, working on The Magic Flute and join the music staff’. I never had to do the audition, thank god. Werther. He is currently Chorus Master on Nicolai’s Die lustigen There’s no way I would have passed it. I don’t have good chops, so Weiber von Windsor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland where I practised like anything before I went down. Even so, after a year he is also a vocal coach in the opera department. they said: ‘Jane… we’d like you to be Chorus Master’. Quite right. His opera experience began with New Chamber Opera (NCO), What advice would you give aspiring conductors? first as répétiteur, then as NCO Studio conductor (Rossini, The In a gardening sense, just get your hands dirty. Conducting is part Barber of Seville, Handel Esther) and assistant conductor for the technique (which you can learn) and part communication. But company’s main summer production (Salieri Falstaff, Mozart Il you can have fantastic technique and nothing in the eyes, face re pastore). Other conducting experience includes Murder in the or aura. I often like to stop conducting altogether and just look Cathedral (Oxford Playhouse), the premiere of Dr Martyn Harry’s at people and smile. With a group of people I know very well like children’s opera Passing the Remote and a year with the Oxford Music of the Baroque, my orchestra in Chicago, I can do that. In University Student Chorus. n general one does far too much as a young conductor. [email protected]

. OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 . 13 FACULTY

New Technology

In 2012–13 the Faculty has deepened The forum also encompassed the its commitment to New Music, bi-annual visit from the Cavaleri String increasing opportunities for student Quartet (in residence at the Faculty of composers and performers alike. At Music, supported by the Radcliffe Trust) the heart of New Music in the Faculty Newand featured two further composition Music is the work of Professor Robert Saxton workshops ahead of the premiere of two and Dr Martyn Harry, whose wealth student compositions in the Holywell of experience and professional Music Room. engagements is supported by the continued efforts of Dr John Traill, founder and conductor of Ensemble “Rehearsing my work with ISIS, the Faculty’s dedicated New Music the Cavaleri String Quartet ensemble. enabled me to accrue practical This academic year we were particularly skills that can only come with pleased to introduce the new ISIS Scholars scheme; recognising the work such experience.” of our fantastic student musicians, Images, clockwise from top: Nigel McBride allowing the ensemble to grow from (postgraduate composer, Magdalen Daniel Hulme in the Faculty’s Electronic Music Studio strength to strength. It has been a joy to College) iMac computers in the new MRC reap the resulting rewards, not least, the professionally executed performance of Professor Eric Clarke speaking on musical technologies at the Ashmolean student compositions during the annual Another fantastic success has been the New Music Forum (Hilary term 2013). formation of the new Oxford Laptop Family enjoys an interactive musical installation at These scholarships have made a real Orchestra (OxLOrk). This type of ensemble Live Friday difference to the vitality of the New Music is an exciting new development in DJ demonstration at Live Friday Programme and would not have been technological Music performance, and OxLOrk perform in the Ashmolean’s atrium possible without the support of the Joan Conway Fund and Osgood Memorial Prize.

The opportunity for student composers to hear their works performed by accomplished professional musicians is a staple of the New Music programme. This year’s New Music Forum included workshops led by electroacoustic composer Trevor Wishart, the acclaimed contemporary music ensemble CHROMA, and contemporary pianist Richard Casey of the New Music Players.

14 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 PARTNERSHIP

mirrors similar projects embarked upon disciplines of Electroacoustic Composition The MRC also functions as a seminar room by Princeton and Stanford Universities and Computer Music. This interest has where students can be taught practical (PLOrk and SLOrk respectively). The student been reflected in the curriculum as a new technology skills to help with their research. led project uses specialist equipment prelim course ‘Sound Design and Studio designed for the performance of live Techniques’ has been introduced. electronic and electroacoustic music by In support of all of these activities we are individually expressive players. OxLOrk To further facilitate this development, Dan also delighted to announce that Cayenna performers control musical parameters has pioneered the development of the Ponchione (DPhil Candidate, Merton digitally, in real time, with a wide variety new MRC (Multimedia Research Centre) in College) has been appointed as the of different controllers. Members of the the Music Library. Here students can use first New Music Coordinator, providing orchestra are trained to code new pieces computers to edit and compose with audio additional administrative support for for the ensemble and to perform with on platforms such as ‘Pro Tools’ or ‘Logic Pro’, the healthy schedule of New Music their laptops. They perform with specially analyse and notate score using Sibelius, workshops, lectures and concerts. n designed hemisphere speakers which edit video, transcribe music, or simply sit mimic the sonic properties of acoustic and listen to a CD or online music source. Oxford Laptop Orchestra (OxLOrk) instruments and allow listeners to perceive New Technology each member of the ensemble as an individual performer. So far the ensemble has already performed in spaces as varied A Night at the Museum and prestigious as the Ashmolean Museum ‘Live Friday’ and the Holywell Music Room. At a time when the smartphones and This year we have also sadly said goodbye mobile listening devices in people’s to Dr Duncan Williams, former Information pockets have the power of a small and Music Technology Officer, who moved recording studio, we are aware as never to Plymouth University as Research Fellow before of the powerful relationships in Music with Artificial Intelligence. We between music and technology. In one wish him every success in Plymouth, and way or another, those links stretch back have appointed a worthy successor in throughout the whole of the history of Daniel Hulme, Electronic Music Studio music, in the shape of the instruments, Manager. This change in role has been in notations, and mechanical-musical response to the growing interest among inventions that have been integral our students in the technology driven to music for millennia. The invention in the Museum. The event provided a of sound recording and reproducing fascinating opportunity for people to technologies at the end of the 19th see, hear, understand, be entertained century had a particularly revolutionary by, and get hands-on experience of impact on the ways in which we some of the music-making and music- encounter, listen to, understand, and reproducing technologies from the early make music, and the gramophone and its 20th to the early 21st centuries, presented successors have brought access to more in the Museum’s outstanding spaces and music across a wider diversity of cultures among its wonderful collections. Wind-up and epochs than ever before in human gramophones, a demonstration of one history. In an exciting new initiative, the of the earliest electronic instruments (the Faculty of Music collaborated with the Theremin), live improvisation to a silent Ashmolean Museum in a unique evening film, the art of the DJ, performances by of old and new music technologies the newly formed OxLOrk – Oxford’s displayed, demonstrated and installed innovative laptop orchestra, and end-of- evening performances by members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment up in the museum restaurant, and The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band down in the café: all this, and more, brought 2,400 people through the doors on a cold Friday evening. A great success, and reminder both of the transformative power of music and its technologies, and of the fantastic and adaptable place and space that is the Ashmolean Museum. n

Eric Clarke Heather Professor of Music

OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 . 15 ALUMNI profiles

RAPHAEL CLARKSON Hungary before 1989. Gran is the German name for Esztergom, St Peter’s College, Hungary’s Canterbury, and in 2008 some Hungarian musicians 2008 – 2010 and myself started an Esztergom Liszt Week, held annually at the My masters at Oxford allowed end of August. I am now researching the relationship between key me to delve into the subject and programme in Liszt – I have analysed 500 works bar by bar of creativity and expression, and written articles on the topic. Liszt: A Chorus of Voices published both academically and as a by Pendragon Press in 2012 contains a list of my writings. Alumniperformer on trombone. I’ve [email protected] been really lucky in having www.lisztsociety.hu the chance to put this into practice, through my long-term involvement with punk-jazz ALEXANDER L’ESTRANGE quintet WorldService Project Merton College, (WSP), and Match&Fuse (M&F), a Europe-wide project which 1991 – 1994 promotes creative collaboration between like-minded ensembles. JOANNA FORBES- L’ESTRANGE Match&Fuse’s first project involved WSP and a Norwegian group, Hertford College, both bands sharing double-bill exchange tours in each others’ 1990 – 1993 countries and collaborating musically. I’ve had the pleasure of Alexander and I met in 1991 co-developing the project to the point where under the M&F as Music undergraduates, umbrella, tours are happening throughout Europe and where sharing a desk as cellists in the the first M&F festival has taken place in London to critical acclaim Philharmonia orchestra. We – both strands of the organisation involving collaboration bonded over our eclectic musical between artists performing cutting-edge improvised music in tastes and formed a jazz duo, all its forms. In July a M&F mini-festival will be staged in London, Alexander alternating between double bass, piano and guitar with headliners including Magnus Ostrom’s (of Esbjorn Svensson Trio) me on vocals. As well as playing several instruments professionally, new ensemble Thread of Life, and the UK’s Portishead-based Get Alexander is now a world-renowned choral composer; his flagship The Blessing. It’s an exciting time and I’m indebted to my period work, Zimbe!, a fusion of jazz and African songs scored for SATB at Oxford for setting me on this promising path! choir, unison children’s choir and jazz quintet, achieved such @MatchFuse Match&Fuse enormous success that he was commissioned to write a similar www.matchandfuse.co.uk work, Ahoy!, this time fusing Tudor music with sea shanties.

To celebrate twenty years in the music industry we have recently PAUL MERRICK, released an album, New things to say, dedicated to the memory Wadham College, of my singing hero, Christiane Legrand, who died in 2011. She 1965 – 1968 was the original soprano in The Swingle Singers, the a cappella After submitting a parcel octet of which I was soprano/Musical Director for seven years. of compositions and The album features eight songs by her brother Michel and eight being interviewed by by Alexander, hence Songs of L’Estrange & Legrand. Sir Jack Westrup, I spent @ALEstrangemusic | @JoannaLEstrange my undergraduate years [email protected] as a Major Scholar in www.lestrangesinthenight.com Music. During this time I developed an interest in the religious music of FRANCIS ROADS Liszt after finding a Hungarian recording of the Gran Mass in Pembroke College, Blackwell’s Music Shop. I collected everything (all Hungarian 1961 – 1965 recordings) – the masses, requiem, psalms, oratorios, motets I left Oxford in 1965 with an – and did a PhD on the subject at Sheffield University. I visited unusual degree, with Part 1 in Budapest in 1978 and since 1982 my wife and I have lived here. Chemistry, and Part 2 in Music. I taught Music History at the Liszt Academy and Marion taught After a year’s postgraduate course English. Our children went to Hungarian schools, both later in Composition and Conducting at graduating (in Law) from London University. My book Revolution the Royal College of Music, London, and Religion in the Music of Liszt was published in 1987 by I abandoned my plan to become Cambridge University Press and re-issued in 2008. Marion’s book Britain’s rising young composer Now You See It, Now You Don’t describes our life in Communist owing to a lack of talent.

16 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 ALUMNI

SEND US YOUR NEWS! It’s always good to hear from you. Stay in touch, and let us know what you’ve been up to since graduating from the faculty: [email protected]

After a spell teaching in Comprehensive and Junior Schools, I taste, see, hear and feel the music. Food and wine are selected became a Music Advisory Teacher for the London Borough of to complement the music, and a live artist paints in response to Redbridge. Thence I moved to Essex, where I ended as Head of the music. Music Curriculum Support. I took early retirement in 1994 at the @northstmusic | @perthsymphony age of 51. I had become interested in West Gallery Church Music, NorthStreetMusic | PerthSymphony and devoted myself to researching, editing and publishing the genre. LEO BLACK Since then I have been active in the West Gallery Music Association, Wadham College, 1950–1953 www.wgma.org.uk, taking on the post of Hon. Secretary this The climax of my first three Oxford year, founding London Gallery Quire www.lgq.org.uk in 1997, years was the award of a First in publishing music on my own website www.rodingmusic.co.uk, the final Honours exam. That was and leading workshops throughout Britain and overseas. Four most gratifying though I was of these took place in the Damon Wells Chapel, Pembroke puzzled to see that no fewer than College. In 2002 I was awarded a PhD by the Liverpool University six candidates out of not many for research into some West Gallery manuscripts in the Manx more than a dozen had also National Heritage Library, Douglas. I was encouraged to do this received what was supposed to by my friend Lionel Pike (Pembroke College, 1959), another be the rarest of distinctions. It Music alumnus. could be that the examiners, who had in the first year of Honours awarded just one first, to a man who went to become a BOURBY WEBSTER (NÉE professor, felt uneasy and needed time to get the balance right. NORMAN) Somerville College, 1993 – What followed was bathos. Ill-advised over my research subject, 1996 I returned from Austria deeply discouraged. Switching to a On leaving Oxford I could never composition degree for my already-approved fifth year (didn’t have predicted that a postgrad we know there was a world out there?) I duly acquired a BMus. course at the Royal College of with a porridgey string quartet that’s still somewhere in the Music on viola would lead to me deepest recesses of Bodley. It finished me as a composer. to the remarkable experience of After too long a period concluding that I was unemployable, being a founding member of the I was taken on as a trainee by a very wise old Austrian music all-female electric string quartet publisher, even surviving the question “Sprechen Sie deutsch?”, ‘bond’. I play on the first album to which I answered “Oui!”. I spent a couple of years peddling a ‘born’. mixture of the latest Stockhausen Unsinn and Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta, then I was miraculously summoned to the presence I moved to Perth, Western Australia (the world’s most remote city) of the BBC’s new Controller of Music and asked if I’d like to help in 2000 with the clear goal of learning as much about business plan programmes. Would a duck swim!? 27 of the ensuing as possible. I completed an MBA at the University of Western 28 years were spent in Paradise; I finally made a reluctant Australia and rose through the ranks of the commercial world. exit, and the next fifteen saw the production of three books, on By 2007 I felt confident dealing with C-Suite executives and Schubert, Edmund Rubbra (that one an amende honorable to knowing how a business worked, so started my own company my well-respected Oxford harmony-and-counterpoint tutor, for called North Street Music, www.northstreetmusic.com. The whom said 28 years had seen very little done), and then BBC company offers services to musicians and the music industry Music in the Glock Era and After. The last two words of that title across all genres. We run business skills courses for musicians, were noted by Glock’s successor, a fine old English gentleman programme festivals and events, produce concerts and shows, and Oxford alumnus to whom the not-so-young lions had been and promote our own concerts. known to give a hard time regardless of his seniority; he rang me to ask whether they meant he should at all costs avoid the book. The biggest project to date has been founding, running and I reassured him that all was by now sweetness and light. managing the Perth Symphony Orchestra since late 2011 www.perthsymphony.com, a professional orchestra committed A fourth book is stuck at the Pirandellian ‘four chapters in search to innovation and excellence in developing new audiences for of a theme’ stage, but 80,000 further words on Schubert are the Symphony, making classical music as relevant and appealing there for the taking if any publisher should be listening. as possible to a 21st century audience. And a final request: if any of the other five 1953 Firsts are still about, This also led to the creation of the Perth Chamber Orchestra in might they care to make themselves known and say how it looked 2013, which presents concerts that are multi-sensory so you to them? I do hope so: [email protected] n

OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 . 17 CURRENT

profiles

Joe Snape Savitri Grier

MSt, New College 2nd Year, Christ Church

Trained as a classical I was certain I wanted Studentpercussionist, I grew up to pursue a career as a rummaging in record shops, violinist long before I came self-releasing hand-painted to Oxford, so some were CDs, and peeling PVA glue surprised at my decision from my fingers. Since to apply for an academic then, I’ve performed, held degree. At first I was residencies and released apprehensive about how I music on records in quite would manage to combine a few places around the my violin playing with my world, most recently academic studies, but a year- London (Nonclassical, and-a-half down the line, I ADSR), Rotterdam (DanceWorks) and Berlin (K77 Studio, Month can truthfully say that I think doing my undergraduate degree at of Performance Art 2012), Amsterdam (Melkweg) and Morelia, Oxford has been one of the best decisions of my life! Mexico (Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras). I tend to make pieces that involve computers and incandescent I had already been successful in competitions before beginning light bulbs, and along the way I’ve had the chance to work with in Oxford (winning the Tunbridge Wells International Young many very good people. Artists Competition in 2010), and I was thrilled to have been selected as the overall winner of the Oxford Philomusica During my degree at Cambridge, I fell in with a crowd interested Concerto Competition in February 2012. Having the chance in making music happen on large scales in unusual spaces. With to perform the Tchaikovsky violin concerto in the final with a Carmen Elektra, we earned our chops putting newly written professional orchestra was a hugely special experience. I was operas in bars, museums and warehouses together with huge honoured to be invited back to perform the Sibelius concerto sound systems and lukewarm beer. In 2011, with three other with the Philomusica in October 2012, a hugely memorable Cambridge graduates, I set up The Rite Of Spring Project. In the occasion. In Christ Church I have been given further concerto two summers since, we’ve put on orchestral works by Stravinsky opportunities, performing the Mendelssohn concerto in March and Adams on the fifth floor of a Peckham car park. The Times, 2012 in preparation for my Royal Albert Hall debut in May 2012. I Arts Desk, the BBC and Sky Arts are all fans. am delighted that my first performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, perhaps the ‘king’ of the violin repertoire, will take place At Oxford, I’m writing about digital art music with regards in Christ Church Cathedral in June 2013. I have also been able to to the specific materials of contemporary practice: types of continue my passion for chamber music in Oxford, performing headphone, kinds of magnetic tape, and particular programming sonatas as well as works such as the Brahms Piano Quintet and environments. As part of this work, together with the Ertegun Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartet no. 2 with friends. Programme, Music Faculty, Oxford University Press John Fell Fund, Oxford Brookes and Modern Art Oxford, I directed a three- After finishing my degree in Oxford next year, I am planning on day festival of post-digital music practice with Christabel Stirling continuing my musical education in conservatoire, hopefully and Martyn Harry (May 2013). Artists included Tim Hecker, BJ at the Guildhall School of Music, where I would continue with Nilsen and Oval. Professor David Takeno with whom I have been studying www.digitalisdead.org . n throughout my time at Oxford. n

18 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 CURRENT

The past year has been a busy one for OUMS ensembles and upcoming events. It will also provide easily OUMS. Musical highlights have included accessible information for members about OUMS databases and Oxford University Orchestra’s performance resources. Not only will the website be a useful new resource for of Mahler’s First Symphony under the baton members in and of itself, but the more professional and engaging of Thomas Blunt and Oxford University image of OUMS will surely aid us in presenting the society Sinfonietta’s display of various French to potential external sponsors. In terms of sponsorship, and chamber works, including Poulenc’s following from the successful guidance of the last committee, Sinfonietta, in Hilary term 2013. Especially we are looking to secure funding from a variety of sources, and noteworthy was Oxford University Philharmonia’s ‘Varsity Concert’ in are approaching companies with a clear and positive outlook. Michaelmas 2012, where the orchestra was joined by singers from Cambridge and Oxford chapel choirs to perform Verdi’s Requiem, Many exciting programmes and projects have already been while the Wind Orchestra again participated in the National Concert confirmed for the next year. Trinity term will see the Oxford Band Festival and the Brass Band in the ‘UniBrass’ competition. University Orchestra perform Sibelius, Britten and Stravinsky under the baton of Ben Palmer, and Oxford University Beyond music-playing, the Society also secured a year-long Philharmonia are looking forward to working with their newly sponsorship deal with Lloyds Banking Group, but is – as ever – appointed student conductor, Cayenna Ponchione. All OUMS on the look-out for other avenues of financial support. With an ensembles will be participating in events other than their termly updated constitution to be finalised over the summer, the society concerts over the coming year, and the new committee is also is in a healthy shape as the outgoing committee passes our hoping to encourage joint concerts between OUMS ensembles responsibilities on to our successors and considering the exciting in the next few months. A string players’ tour to Costa Rica this ideas and initiatives of the new executive, the future is looking summer is currently being finalised, and the new committee is bright for University-wide music. n hoping to organise further varsity concerts as successful as that Thomas Nelson given by the Oxford University Wind Orchestra at Trinity College, University College Cambridge last term. n OUMS president 2011-12 Chloe Bradshaw Christ Church OUMS president 2012-13 Everyone on the new OUMS committee [email protected] is extremely excited about the year ahead. Not only do we have the successes of the last committee to build upon, but we Become a friend of OUO! also share a strong vision of what we can The Oxford University Orchestra provides an opportunity for achieve in the terms ahead. Our principal the University’s top musicians to play challenging and exciting aim is to revamp the society – to update repertoire with a variety of exceptional professional conductors OUMS’s image and give our members a and soloists. For only a small donation you could help support refreshed sense of just how active we are as a collective student us in this activity so that we can continue to put on the body. The new committee will strive to strengthen the perception ambitious concerts the orchestra is famous for. of OUMS amongst students as the musical hub of Oxford, as www.ouo.oums.org/friends.php we continue to bring students of all subjects together into the several University ensembles. Together, these ensembles display to the outside world the variety and high standard of musical opportunities on offer in Oxford beyond the lecture room. STAY IN TOUCH Our first task has been to update the OUMS web presence, Email [email protected] to subscribe to through which we can engage most effectively with our the OUMS Newsletter. members. At the time of writing, the dynamic new OUMS website www.oums.org OUMusic society @OUMusicSoc is nearing completion, which will contain up-to-date details on all

. OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 . 19 FACULTY NEWS NEWS AND RELEASES FROM MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY News, recordings, books and broadcasts.

Collection, student involvement in school as a pianist of virtuosity and poetic Books outreach programmes, and other activities poise, Imogen Cooper has established focused on the Orchestra’s current a reputation as one of the finest THE RIVAL SIRENS: PERFORMANCE repertoire from Corelli and Rameau to interpreters of the classical repertoire. AND IDENTITY ON HANDEL’S Brahms and Verdi, and beyond! This professorship is hosted by St John’s OPERATIC STAGE (CUP) College with thanks to the generous Dr Suzanne Aspden has released a REINHARD STROHM 2012 BALZAN support of Mick Davis. new book. In it she suggests that the PRIZEWINNER rivalry fostered between the singers Professor Reinhard Strohm (former On the 6-8 June Gérard Mortier, in 1720s London was in large part a Heather Professor) was awarded the Humanitas Visiting Professor of Opera social construction, one conditioned by prestigious Balzan Prize, the musicological Studies, will be giving his lectures at local theatrical context and audience equivalent of the Nobel Prize, ‘for his Merton College. Dr Mortier is the General expectations, and heightened by extensive research on the history of Director of the Teatro Real, Madrid, manipulations of plot and music. She European music within the cultural and and his dedication to a creative and offers readings of operas by Handel socio-historical context from the late innovative focus on new productions and Bononcini as performance events, Middle Ages to the present, and for his has been commended worldwide. This inflected by the audience’s perceptions detailed descriptions of high-rank vocal professorship is hosted by New College of singer persona and contemporary music, especially early sacred music in with the generous support of the Clore theatrical and cultural contexts. Through Flanders, and of the works of Vivaldi, Duffield Foundation. examining the case of these two women, Handel and Richard Wagner’. (Gottfried Dr Aspden demonstrates that the Scholz, Professor Emeritus of Music Analysis Events are free to attend and it is personae of at the University of Music and Performing necessary to register online: star performers, Arts, Vienna) Professor Strohm is using www.humanities.ox.ac.uk/humanitas as well as the prize money to fund a five-year their voices, programme of research with a range of 12TH CENTURY HAWICK were of crucial international collaborators on the theme, MANUSCRIPT DISCOVERED importance in ‘Towards a global history of music’. Dr Matthew Cheung Salisbury determining (Lecturer, University College and the shape of an A symposium was held at Saarland Assistant Manager of DIAMM) is leading opera during the University, Saarbrücken, 26–28 October an innovative two-year arts and music early part of the 2012, to mark Prof Strohm’s 70th birthday. project inspired by the recent discovery 18th century. It was organised jointly by the German of a fragment of a medieval manuscript Historical Institute Rome and Saarland in a local history archive in Hawick, University Institut für Musikwissenschaft. Scotland. The Hawick fragment offers a tantalising insight into an otherworldly Faculty News UNIVERSITY TEACHING AWARD landscape of medieval spirituality. The At a ceremony at Rhodes House on 7 project is sponsored by Creative Scotland NEW OAE RELATIONSHIP November, Professor Elizabeth Eva as part of the Year of Creative Scotland The Faculty of Music is delighted to have Leach received an Oxford University 2012 and has already received BBC News embarked upon a relationship over the Teaching Award recognising her coverage. next few years with the Orchestra of the innovative teaching practice in creating Age of Enlightenment. As a result of a the first ever interactive open-source WHAT’S THE SCORE AT THE benefit concert given in the Sheldonian notation course for medieval music. BODLEIAN? in February by the Orchestra and a She also won an award in the Oxford The Bodleian Libraries are enlisting the roster of top international soloists, and University Computing Service’s OxTALENT help of the public in this experimental thanks especially to the hard work and scheme for the innovative use of IT in project to help improve access to parts generosity of Sir Martin and Lady Elise teaching. of their music collections. A selection of Becket Smith, a significant five-figure unbound and uncatalogued piano sheet sum has been raised to support this HUMANITAS VISITING music from the mid-Victorian period work. Future projects will include a PROFESSORSHIPS has been digitised and people are asked major concert with Dr Owen Rees and We have been delighted to welcome to submit descriptions of the scores by Contrapunctus (see p. 22), coaching of the renowned international pianist transcribing the information they see. To student early music groups, a ‘directing Imogen Cooper as this year’s Humanitas sign up to be a contributor and for more from the keyboard/violin’ project, Visiting Professor in Classical Music and information please visit work involving instruments in the Bate Music Education. Recognised worldwide www.whats-the-score.org

20 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 FACULTY NEWS

Composition News Choir News: the full choir recorded tracks for a new compilation of music by Patrick Hawes PROFESSOR ROBERT SAXTON Recordings and for Decca. On the Choir’s in-house label In September 2012 Ashgate Press Performances (Novum) the Choir has released a 2-CD published Wyndham Thomas’s anthology of choral music by Britten monograph devoted to Professor OXFORD IN VOICE to mark the composer’s centenary. In Robert Saxton’s first opera, Caritas. Oxford Today, in association with this period, music by Marc-Antoine Roger Williams commissioned and the Faculty, has filmed a six-part web Charpentier has also been recorded for premiered Little Suite for solo organ at the series on how an Oxford choir works. release this Autumn. Sound Festival in Aberdeen in November The project goes behind the scenes 2012 and will record the work for CD in to understand what it takes to sing at MAGDALEN COLLEGE CHOIR August 2013. The Orchestra of the Swan a world-class level, and attempts to At the start of the year the choir was and trumpeter Simon Desbruslais understanding the scholarship, discipline heavily involved with Peter Phillips’ Divine (DPhil candidate, Christ Church) and passion for excellence that underpins Office Festival and then went straight premiered Robert’s trumpet concerto every note. into term with a large number of new Shakespeare Scenes in May 2013. A CD of www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk/voice Clerks and Choristers. November saw this event, including the 2012 recording the choir open the Faculty’s flagship of Psalm – A Song of Ascents, will be CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL CHOIR concert with the Orchestra of the Age of released on the Signum label later this Last August the choir made its first visit Enlightenment, leading on to memorable year. Pianist Clare Hammond has given to China and gave the opening concert Christmas concerts and sell-out ‘Messiahs’ a series of performances of Chacony for of the annual International Choral Festival along the way. December saw the release piano left-hand (1988) and will premiere a at the National Centre for the Performing of a new Christmas CD for former organ major new piano cycle, Hortus Musicae, at Arts in Beijing. The concert was streamed scholar Martin Souter’s ‘Gift of Music’ the City of London Festival in June 2013. live throughout the country. The choir’s label. In March the BBC broadcast a recording with the Oxford Philomusica of liturgical performance of Buxtehude’s DR MARTYN HARRY the original manuscript of Mendelssohn’s Membra Jesu nostri, and the choir Dr Martyn Harry is currently composing version of Handel’s Acis and Galatea (in was privileged to be performing with ‘Beltway Series’, the first movement of a the Bodleian Library)was released before members of the Orchestra of the Sixteen, projected hour-long piano piece set to Christmas on the Nimbus label. Press provided by former Academical Clerk receive its first performance later this year. reaction has been glowing about this and Honorary Fellow, Harry Christophers. ‘Beltway Series’ refers both to the baseball uniquely Oxford-based recording project. A sell-out performance of Bach’s St John rivalry of the teams in Washington The choir‘s latest CD, vol. 2 from the Eton Passion at Easter saw a welcome return and Baltimore, and to ideas drawn Choirbook entitled ‘Choirs of Angels’ has from former Academical Clerk John Mark from serialism. It is dedicated to the just been released on the Avie label. The Ainsley, as evangelist, and marked the memory of Martyn’s close friend, Phanos works range from John Browne’s richly beginning of a new partnership with Dymotis. Martyn’s suite of nineteen short scored eight-part O Maria salvatoris mater, Oxford’s most recent concert hall, St John movements scored for four cornetts, four to William Cornysh’s exquisite miniature the Evangelist, Iffley Road. At the time of sagbutts, harpsichord and organ, At His Ave Maria mater Dei. During the year, writing the first in a series of discs with Majesty’s Pleasure (premiered last year), the choir also featured in various Royal resident viol consort Phantasm is being has been released by Sforzando Records Jubilee celebrations including BBC’s The recorded. to high acclaim from both contemporary One Show! This year there are a number music and early music reviewers. of first performances of commissioned www.sfzmusic.co.uk works, in particular a major new mass by Alumni News and Francis Grier, in collaboration with the OXFORD PHILOMUSICA Rambert Ballet School, and a new work by Releases COMPOSERS’ WORKSHOP alumnus Mark Simpson for the Newbury On 7 March 2013, the Oxford Philomusica Festival. Mark Simpson (St Catherine’s gave the world premiere of postgraduate College, 2011) has had a number of composer Chris Garrard’s Broken Thumbs NEW COLLEGE CHOIR significant recent premieres. 2012 saw to a full house in the Sheldonian Theatre. This year New College Choir, in addition him commissioned to write the opening The orchestra’s realisation of the wide to its regular chapel services, has given piece, sparks, to the Last Night of the variety of extended timbral effects in concerts in Oxford, Malvern, Bath, and Proms, and 2013 saw mirror-fragment... coordination with a highly unusual part St David’s, and recently in the USA (San given its London premiere by the BBC for speaker and megaphone, was met Francisco, Stanford University, Tulsa and Symphony Orchestra, as well as a major with thunderous applause. Chris’s piece Dallas). In March, it participated in BBC new work for the National Youth Choir of was selected from a number of entries at Radio 3’s ‘Baroque Spring’ with a live Great Britain. He has just been signed by the orchestra’s composers’ workshop in broadcast of French sacred music from the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes. 2012 and is inspired by the impassioned New College Chapel. The choristers Mark will be known to many as the first impromptu speech of Kumi Naidoo, have recorded the boys’ choir sections ever winner of both the BBC Young Executive Director of Greenpeace, made of Britten’s War Requiem for the Gabrieli Musician of the Year (clarinet) and the during action in Durban. Consort’s forthcoming release, and BBC Proms/Guardian Young Composer

. OXFORD MUSICIAN . 20122013 . 21 ALUMNI NEWS

of the Year competitions. As a clarinettist available, as well as a recital disc including NEW THINGS TO SAY he is also highly active, being part of the sonatas by Robert Schumann (op. 105) L’Estranges in the Night, Alexander BBC’s New Generation Artist scheme. Of and Brahms (op. 78) and the beautiful and Joanna (p. 16) have released their his many appearances, the most recent Romances by Clara Schumann. Jennifer’s debut jazz duo CD of songs by L’Estrange was with the BBC Symphony Orchestra recording of Miklos Rozsa’s sensational and Legrand. With Alexander on double bass playing the phenomenally difficult Violin Concerto was also released in and Joanna on vocals, the CD is dedicated to Lindberg Clarinet Concerto. 2012. Norman Lebrecht described her the memory of Christiane Legrand, original interpretation in Open Letters Monthly Soprano of the Swingle Singers, of which Graham Griffiths (Christ Church, as “the most appealing I have heard Joanna is a former Musical Director. 2004) has been appointed to a part-time since Heifetz”. She is partnered by the www.lestrangesinthenight.com lectureship at City University. Graham’s BBC Philharmonic conducted by Rumon thesis on Stravinsky has recently been Gamba. www.jenniferpike.com turned into a book Stravinsky’s Piano – Genesis of a Musical Language (CUP) A BACH NOTEBOOK FOR TRUMPET Jonathan Freeman-Attwood (Christ Gareth Moorcraft (Worcester College, Church, 1987), trumpet and Daniel-Ben 2012) won the Student Competition of Pienaar, piano, have concocted a rare the British Composer Awards 2012. His programme of eleven different Bachs from piece Rondo? was performed by Helen the ubiquitous family, writing between Keen, Mark van de Wiel and Amy Harmon 1615 to 1785 – Gabrieli to Mozart, in of Endymion at the opening of the awards broad stylistic terms. Taking the domestic ceremony held at London’s Goldsmiths’ ideal of a ‘notebook’, concerto and sonata Hall on Monday 3 December 2012. movements, chorale preludes and opera overtures, are all re-imagined in unlikely Raphael Clarkson (p.16) together with and virtuosic re-workings. This is the fourth his Punk-Jazz Quintet ‘WorldService in the series (for Linn) of works which the Project’ will be staging the Match&Fuse trumpet and piano boldly claim in a radical ALUMNI EVENT: Robert Saxton Mini-Festival from 25-27 July, at Rich Mix expansion of new chamber possibilities. 60th Birthday Concert www.richmix.org.uk and the Vortex On 11–12 November Ensemble ISIS (p.14) www.vortexjazz.co.uk in London. and pianist Claire Hammond will present Further details can be found at two special retrospective concerts of www.matchandfuse.co.uk. WSP’s new Robert Saxton’s instrumental works in album Fire In A Pet Shop has just been honour of his 60th birthday. The concerts released on Megasound records: will involve Professor Saxton’s former www.worldserviceproject.co.uk composition students and Ensemble ISIS alumni, and will feature two of his JENNIFER PIKE: NEW CDS most recent works, Shakespeare Scenes Jennifer Pike (Lady Margaret Hall, for trumpet and string orchestra, and his 2012) has recording of Chausson’s new magnum opus for solo piano, Hortus Concert for Violin, Piano and String Musicae. Contact newmusic@music. Quartet with Tom Poster and the Doric ox.ac.uk to reserve your ticket. Quartet (5*s BBC Music Magazine) is now

THURSDAY A concert celebrating the tercentenary of the Treaty of Utrecht, which marked the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. 14 NOVEMBER 2013, 7.30PM A unique opportunity to hear rarely performed pieces by William SHELDONIAN THEATRE Croft in the space in which they were first performed three hundred years ago. CONTRAPUNCTUS Professor SusanWollenberg will give a pre-concert talk at ORCHESTRA OF THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT 6.30pm, free to ticket holders. CHOIR OF THE QUEEN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD Tickets £42 £28 £18 £10 | End time: 9.50pm The Treaty of Utrecht: Box Office www.musicatoxford.com | 01865 244806 Handel and Croft’s Oxford Odes 1713 A number of discounts are available to alumni, please email Owen Rees director [email protected]

SEND US YOUR NEWS! Email [email protected] and we’ll try to include you in the next issue..

22 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 FACULTY

return to his roots which features the Northumbrian pipes (he was not only able to play the pipes, but had numerous other hidden talents, not least his status as an international card player and a dedication to home brewing!). His generosity was extraordinary. Having been the external examiner for my Finals at Cambridge in 1975, he invited me to apply to Oxford to take the BMus under his supervision. Almost everything in my life subsequently unfolded from this gesture and, like all those who had the privilege to work under his guidance during his twenty-nine years at Oxford, I owe him an incalculable amount. n

Professor Robert Saxton Worcester College Professor of Composition Robert Sherlaw Johnson

AtIn the start of Michaelmas memory term 2012 Department of OUP, Robert’s of publisher, ...like all those who had the the Faculty held a tribute concert in provided post-concert food and drink memory of Dr Robert Sherlaw Johnson, creating the perfect environment for an privilege to work under his whose eightieth birthday it would have evening of reminiscences. been last year. It was a stimulating and guidance during his twenty- convivial evening in which a wide variety Amongst Robert’s early achievements nine years at Oxford, I owe of generations and areas of the music was the complete premiere recording for profession came together to celebrate Argo of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux. I him an incalculable amount. Robert’s legacy, one of the outstanding also recall him playing his own ferocious composer/pianists of his generation. large-scale Second Piano Sonata at the ISMC Festival in London in 1970, with Boulez K Professor Robert Saxton, former student and successor of Dr Robert Sherlaw Johnson, teaching The programme commenced with sitting under Robert’s nose in the audience undergraduate composition Robert’s Piano Sonata No.3 played by at St John’s Smith Square! As a composer, Peter McMullin (Lady Margaret Robert was joint first prize-winner of the Hall, 1982), followed by Commotio’s Radcliffe Music Award 1969 for his String rendition of his choral work Sedit Angelus, Quartet No 2, adjudicated by Benjamin and a performance by Robert Keeley Britten. Other memorable performances of (Magdalen College, 1978) of Four his work include the superb performance Northumbrian Tunes. This was followed by on BBC Radio 3 of his aforementioned two piano pieces written for the occasion by visionary Carmina Vernalia, conducted by his current Worcester College undergraduates former organ scholar, Nicholas Cleobury Thomas Stewart and William Marshall, (Worcester College, 1971). As a scholar, celebrating Robert’s continued legacy. Robert also achieved much: his book Violinist Mandhira de Saram (Worcester on Messiaen (Dent, 1975) was for many College, 2003) with former organ scholar, years the standard reference work on the Elizabeth Burgess on piano (Christ composer in English and, at the end of his Church, 2002) performed Robert’s final life, he was researching into plainchant. work, Margana 2, after which we were treated to the sparkling and powerful Having moved from the then new Music Asterogenesis, played by Robert Keeley. The Department at York to Oxford as a University second half of the concert was devoted to Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow of Worcester an inspired performance of the cantata/ College, Robert established the Faculty’s song cycle Carmina Vernalia by Ensemble electro-acoustic studio, researching into ISIS, led by their conductor Dr John Traill the then uncharted compositional use (New College, 2001) with rising star in of fractals. He also composed some of the opera firmament, Susannah Fairbairn his finest music, his last large-scale work (Magdalen College, 2003). The Music being the Northumbrian Symphony, a

OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2013 . 23 could do when the rest of the world was asleep! Since then I’ve always looked for any outlet for my musical curiosity. I was infamous at school for always asking questions. I’ve always been adventurous. At the beginning of my A2 year I realised EDEN BAILEY, 1st Year, Magdalen College I had nothing to lose, and decided to listen to the Geordie How a shy bairn became an Oxford Undergraduate saying “shy bairns get nowt” and applied to Oxford as well as for a job at The Sage, Gateshead. Suddenly I had a part-time job working in an exciting and progressive concert hall, and an SpotlightAfter just twoon... terms I am offer to read Music at Oxford. Since coming to Oxford I’ve tried already fully engaged to make the most of the opportunities. I’m part of a new vocal in the new and exciting ensemble started by fellow first-year musicians, the Oxford Music course. The revised Consort, I played Debussy’s Syrinx in the haunting acoustics curriculum is particularly of Magdalen antechapel, and I heard the Orchestra of the Age diverse, with special topics of Enlightenment play Handel’s Messiah at the Sheldonian including the 13th century Theatre, among other things. I’ve been very lucky, and am motet and global hip-hop, working very hard, trying not to let a moment go to waste! and plenty in between! Although I play the flute, my After my degree I hope to work in music: I am not at all main interests are academic, doing this degree simply to have a degree. The more I look which means that the course into possible careers in music, the more exciting and varied here is ideal for me. I still get excited by the sheer number of opportunities I seem to discover. Although I worry about the books available at the University! I didn’t really know what to future of the arts – Newcastle Council has just cut 100% of arts expect here as no-one from my school in Newcastle had ever funding resulting in the closure of ten out of eighteen public come to Oxford (or indeed Cambridge) to study Music, and libraries, to name just one example – I hope there will still be I don’t believe anyone had successfully applied to Oxford in some exciting prospects left when I graduate. If not, then I the four years prior to my application. This made the whole hope I will be able to rise to the challenge and reassert the application process quite scary! importance and value of creativity and the arts in everyday life, socially and culturally. Through my degree course and all of I first became really enthusiastic about the academic study of the other opportunities Oxford has given me, I’ll be in a good music when I was 13 and discovered music theory – music I position to have a go when the time comes. n

STAY IN TOUCH...

20% discount off all tickets for Celebrating the Rite of SEND US YOUR NEWS Spring, with alumnus Peter Hill (p. 4) We hope you enjoy receiving this magazine. We are Discounts off a number of tickets for Orchestra of the Age of always interested in hearing your views, comments and Enlightenment & Contrapunctus Sheldonian Concert (p. 22) news. Email us at [email protected] Book your ticket with your alumni number and sign up to our events mailing list: [email protected] | 01865 276 133 Music Faculty Events, University of Oxford @MusicFac_Events The Alumni Weekend 2013 will take place on 20-22 September 2013. Register online: Alumni Benefits www.alumniweekend.ox.ac.uk Alumni of the University of Oxford are entitled to an ever- The Oxford Careers Service provides careers support for life expanding range of benefits and services; from discounts for all alumni. Email [email protected] to arrange an associated with the Oxford Alumni Card, to exclusive holidays alumni career guidance session in person or via Skype, or log and opportunities for professional development. into Career Connect for job and networking opportunities, To register for an Alumni Card visit: www.alumni.ox.ac.uk and e-guidance: www.careers.ox.ac.uk/alumni

Faculty of Music . St Aldate’s . Oxford . OX1 1DB | 01865 276125 . www.music.ox.ac.uk