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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 everyone busily pursues naked self- interest for a greater contrapuntal good. Meets Research Because the Jacobean fantasy is music freed from words, composers like Gibbons and Jenkins can indulge in some rather Performing without barlines complex games: interrelating players in new ways and challenging them to stay together, while at the same time Where Performancebefuddling and astounding them by some remarkable musical experimentation. One viol player’s part might, for an extended passage, be composed in such a way as to assert the wrong beat. Or, because this is music built on the parts imitating each other, one part might play a clear musical phrase but the rhythms of the next part will be altered just enough to prove mightily confusing. Multiply these processes by five or six times (the typical number of players in a consort) and you can see the difficulty – but also the fun! Playing fantasies without bar lines has clarified how composers thought of the genre: a challenging parlour game in which the basic task is for everyone to make it to the end of the piece without ‘falling off’. This element of confrontation and surprise is of course primarily experienced by the participants, but L Phantasm Viol Consort the excitement and conflict are also An undisputed achievement of Playing without bar lines, and without a easily picked up by listeners as well, traditional musicology has been conductor of course, means that making contributing to the swirl of excitement the establishment of reliable texts music has an entirely different ‘feel’. that marks this fascinating music. for early music, which has inspired Rather than counting groupings of say, an impressive historical and critical four beats, after which there is a vertical Professor Laurence Dreyfus FBA literature. It turns out though, that line for metrical orientation, one counts Magdalen College performing early music from scholarly durations of notes and measures them Director, Phantasm editions is not always the best way against the regular beat or ‘tactus’ which www.phantasm.org.uk to understand it and appreciate its underlies the composition. But even PhantasmViols expressive content. Phantasm, Consort- though this beat is generally regular, the in-residence at Magdalen College, organisation of pulses in the individual K Mus. 474, fol. 63 verso specialises in the early 17th century parts is often wildly and intentionally English chamber music called ‘consort irregular. In playing ensemble music, one music’ and is experimenting with has to listen intently both to complement performing Fantasies by composers such the other parts as well as to ignore their as Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) and potentially conflicting metrical signals. John Jenkins (1592–1678) from original This is completely different from playing notation or from specially prepared parts the rhythms in a classic or romantic string which duplicate the layout of manuscripts quartet, for example, which are dead easy sources. Just as in later chamber music, by comparison. Consort music completely players see only their own lines, but – here lacks a hierarchy of parts. Instead there is is the big difference – in the Jacobean a pure democracy of voices – or perhaps sources these parts contain no bar lines.