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The papers included in this volume were presented, in much shorter form, at a conference entitled... more The papers included in this volume were presented, in much shorter form, at a conference entitled ‘Sources of Identity: Makers, Owners and Users of Music Sources Before 1600’ held at the University of Sheffield in 2013. The stated aim of the event was to leave aside the traditionally dominant view of early music sources as a means of access to medieval and Renaissance repertoires, focussing instead on the people who commissioned, made, owned and used music books, and on their reasons for so doing. In the terms proposed by a recent study of art patronage in the period, what was the ‘payoff’ enjoyed by individuals and groups who created and deployed such objects?
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Although medieval English music has been relatively neglected in comparison with repertoire from ... more Although medieval English music has been relatively neglected in comparison with repertoire from France and Italy, there are few classical musicians today who have not listened to the thirteenth-century song ‘Sumer is icumen in’, or read of the achievements and fame of fifteenth-century composer John Dunstaple. Similarly, the identification of a distinctively English musical style (sometimes understood as the contenance angloise) has been made on numerous occasions by writers exploring the extent to which English ideas influenced polyphonic composition abroad. Angel song: Medieval English music in history examines the ways in which the standard narratives of English musical history have been crafted, from the Middle Ages to the present. Colton challenges the way in which the concept of a canon of English music has been built around a handful of pieces, composers, and practices, each of which offer opportunities for a reappraisal of English musical and devotional cultures between 1250 and 1460.
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From the perennially young, precocious figure of 'little orphan Annie' to the physical and vocal ... more From the perennially young, precocious figure of 'little orphan Annie' to the physical and vocal ageing of the eighteenth-century castrato, interlinked cultural constructions of age and gender are central to the historical and contemporary depiction of creative activity and its audiences. Gender, Age and Musical Creativity takes an interdisciplinary approach to issues of identity and its representation, examining intersections of age and gender in relation to music and musicians across a wide range of periods, places, and genres, including female patronage in Renaissance Italy, the working-class brass band tradition of northern England, twentieth-century jazz and popular music cultures, and the contemporary 'New Music' scene. Drawing together the work of musicologists and practitioners, the collection offers new ways in which to conceptualise the complex links between age and gender in both individual and collective practice and their reception: essays explore juvenilia and 'late' style in composition and performance, the role of public and private institutions in fostering and sustaining creative activity throughout the course of musical careers, and the ways in which genres and scenes themselves age over time.
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Previously published as the Eyewitness Companion: Classical Music, edited by John Burrow. My cont... more Previously published as the Eyewitness Companion: Classical Music, edited by John Burrow. My contributions were the entries for ten medieval and renaissance composers (e.g. Machaut, Byrd, Tallis, Palestrina), and the introductory section on early music. Available in several languages.
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Thesis
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Articles and book chapters
Performance, Ceremony and Display in Late Medieval England, 2020
This chapter is pages 212–35.
Published in Donington by Shaun Tyas.
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The present article demonstrates the complexity of musico-textual relationships in Ave miles cele... more The present article demonstrates the complexity of musico-textual relationships in Ave miles celestis curie, a 14th-century polyphonic song whose generic markers relate it to both English troped chant settings and to the motet. Ave miles celestis curie was written in honour of the St Edmund, king and martyr, whose cult flourished in England, particularly in East Anglia. Through a fresh analysis of the tenor parts, lyrics and structural elements, I argue that previous discussions of Ave miles celestis curie have overlooked some of the musical and textual troping on which it is based. Furthermore, Ave miles celestis curie is used to interrogate assumptions about the limitations of analysing English music in comparison with contemporary French motets; rather than being only generic in sentiment, I argue for fresh investigation into individual pieces to reconsider the presence of subtle relationships between music and text.
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This new article was under embargo until 1 April 2016 but is now fully available here free to rea... more This new article was under embargo until 1 April 2016 but is now fully available here free to read and to download.
(Obviously it's a spoof...)
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The introduction to the book is now available through open access. Let us whet your appetite for ... more The introduction to the book is now available through open access. Let us whet your appetite for what is an absolutely fantastic volume.
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Lady Gaga and Popular Music: Performing Gender, Fashion, and Culture, Jan 14, 2014
The cultural history of the telephone is one that has run in parallel with that of recorded techn... more The cultural history of the telephone is one that has run in parallel with that of recorded technology in popular music. Both histories are invoked by the corpus of “telephone songs”, songs whose lyrics focus chiefly on the mediation of a romantic relationship by telecommunication technology. Lady Gaga’s “Telephone”, originally a solo project designed for Britney Spears but later a collaboration with Beyoncé, exploits the standard conventions of the telephone song genre. Common tropes are explored, but also sometimes subverted through playful manipulation of the expectations for women in relation to technology, sexuality, race and gender.
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Contemporary Music …, Jan 1, 2010
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Zelo tui langueo / T. [Omnes de Saba] / Reor nescia has been discussed more widely than many othe... more Zelo tui langueo / T. [Omnes de Saba] / Reor nescia has been discussed more widely than many other English motets on account of a number of puzzling elements of its content and provenance. Two manuscript copies of the motet survive; in addition, two images of clerics performing the motet are preserved in psalters of the early 14th century, roughly contemporary with the musical sources. The feminine poetic voice used in one of the motet's texted lines has invited speculation that Zelo tui langueo may have been composed or performed by women. The provenance of one musical source (York Minster, Ms. xvi.N.3) offered corroboration, linking the music to a community of monks and nuns from a Gilbertine double house in Shouldham, Norfolk, but this origin was rejected after palaeographical studies undertaken in the last decades of the 20th century. This article examines the motet within a network of various documents, and relocates it musically, textually and socially within devotional life in East Anglia. In addition, it explores elements of the historiography of female music-making in late medieval England.
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Judith Weir's music embraces the unusual, from libretti drawing on the medieval past to fantastic... more Judith Weir's music embraces the unusual, from libretti drawing on the medieval past to fantastic narratives set within diverse stylistic frames. Her musical language has been praised and criticised in almost equal measure for its versatility and humour. Weir's music seems tied to the musical past, but in ways so divergent between pieces that critics struggle to engage with it as fully as with the music of other British composers of recent decades. Focusing on several works, I explore the often fraught sense of historical subjectivity in Weir's music and its reception. I also examine the critical discourse relating to Weir's music, in particular works based on historical or non-Western stimuli, arguing that these texts (even the words of the composer herself) are tied closely to a historical line that continues to feel anxious about the creative powers of women composers.
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The chanson de nonne presents stereotypical images of young women whose bodies and voices are tra... more The chanson de nonne presents stereotypical images of young women whose bodies and voices are trapped within the confines of a nunnery. Close examination of the architectural
metaphors used to describe virginity and chastity in the Middle Ages allows comparisons to be made between the structures – metaphorical, musical and textual – that held fictitious nuns within the frame of the clerical imagination at the centre of thirteenth-century motet production.
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St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint, 2009
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This article describes a previously undocumented source of English music dating from the middle o... more This article describes a previously undocumented source of English music dating from the middle of the seventeenth century. The musical content comprises four short popular tunes, set to simple bass lines. The significance of the source lies in its notation, which, it is argued, is a unique form of keyboard tablature whose melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic details are largely recoverable. It is also suggested that the music was copied by a learner under the supervision of her music tutor. The music is transcribed and the context of the source explored in relation to the performance and copying cultures of seventeenth-century amateur musicians.
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Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300–1918, Nov 2016
This chapter draws on texts by mystics and religious commentators whose writings were considered ... more This chapter draws on texts by mystics and religious commentators whose writings were considered unorthodox, in order to examine how sound was understood by individuals living on the fringes of official religious doctrine. Examples will include the spiritual song of Richard Rolle, sounds experienced by Margery Kempe, and the description of performance found in the reforming tracts of John Wycliffe. These were individuals whose personal spirituality was both informed by the teachings of the Christian church and in some ways positioned in opposition to it. My purpose is not to attempt a recreation of the sound of a specific piece of music, nor to summarise the different musical sounds (vocal, instrumental, percussive) familiar to members of medieval society in their daily lives. Rather, I interrogate the issue of what musical sound meant to religious writers of the age. I have purposefully avoided ‘learned’ texts, such as treatises on plainchant, harmony, the modes and rhythm, focusing instead on more personal perceptions of musical sound. My question is not ‘what did music sound like’, but ‘how did these people perceive sound, and what did it mean to them’? The link between musical sounds and the other senses is something that recurs in my examples.
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(Obviously it's a spoof...)
metaphors used to describe virginity and chastity in the Middle Ages allows comparisons to be made between the structures – metaphorical, musical and textual – that held fictitious nuns within the frame of the clerical imagination at the centre of thirteenth-century motet production.
(Obviously it's a spoof...)
metaphors used to describe virginity and chastity in the Middle Ages allows comparisons to be made between the structures – metaphorical, musical and textual – that held fictitious nuns within the frame of the clerical imagination at the centre of thirteenth-century motet production.
The Word document has hyperlinks to relevant literature.
It does now seem that a more cautious attitude towards real or imagined ethnic differences should be taken, and that a more imaginative approach to questions of reception and influence is needed (The Best Concords (1993), p.15).
As Martin Stokes has commented, ‘musical styles can be made emblematic of national identities in complex and often contradictory ways’ (Stokes, ‘Ethnicity, Identity and Music’ (1994), p.13). Thus in musicology, a discipline whose origins lie in the classification of musical repertories, genres and styles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there has been a historical trend to separate characteristics, to identify differences, along a number of lines that include ethnic boundaries. In this paper, I will explore anxieties relating to the ‘ethnicity’ of English medieval music, with the aim of moving towards a more representative historical approach for the repertory.
This paper reinvestigates two previous identifications—John Dunstaple of Broadfield (Hertfordshire) and John Dunstaple of Steeple Morden (Cambridgeshire)—and securely links these two men under one identity. Wathey’s identification of Dunstaple the composer with the landowner of that name is also scrutinised. The paper will further examine various unexplored documents, notably a sixteenth-century copy of the will of John Dunstaple of Broadfield, and documents from 15th-century London. The will raises a key problem for the accepted biography of the composer if the two ‘Dunstaples’ are the same man: namely, the long-accepted date of Dunstaple’s death, 24 December 1453.
1) Liturgical song and musical practice in the historia of St Edburga of Pershore
2) Authorship and homage in sequences attributed to Archbishop of York Richard Scrope
3) Challenges to the accepted biography of John Dunstaple and their implications
Although the comments in this paper concern liturgical materials that relate to places and people within England’s borders, however one defines them, the questions at their heart have a relevance to the music found within other parts of Britain, including Ireland, because of the overwhelming anonymity of medieval repertoire in the British Isles in comparison with mainland Europe.
Over the past century, a picture has gradually emerged of at least one man named John Dunstaple who was evidently a wealthy landowner, and who was amply rewarded for various types of (usually unspecified) service; this John Dunstaple was variously described in the sources as ‘esquire’ or ‘armiger’, in recognition of his high social status. This paper reinvestigates two previous identifications—John Dunstaple of Broadfield (Hertfordshire) and John Dunstaple of Steeple Morden (Cambridgeshire)—and securely links these two men under one identity. It also examines a document not previously known to musicologists, a sixteenth-century copy of the will of John Dunstaple, armiger, of Broadfield. The will fills out information relating to the Hertfordshire man and raises a key problem for the accepted biography of the composer if the two ‘Dunstaples’ are the same man: namely, the long-accepted date of Dunstaple’s death, 24 December 1453.
This paper will draw on texts by mystics and religious commentators whose writings were considered unorthodox, in order to examine how sound was understood by individuals living on the fringes of official religious doctrine. Examples will include the spiritual song of Richard Rolle, sounds experienced by Margery Kempe and the description of performance found in the reforming tracts of John Wycliffe. These were individuals whose personal spirituality was both informed by the teachings of the Christian church and in some ways positioned in opposition to it. My purpose is not to attempt a recreation of the sound of a specific piece of music, nor to summarise the different musical sounds (vocal, instrumental, percussive) familiar to members of medieval society in their daily lives. Rather, I wish to interrogate the issue of what musical sound meant to religious writers of the age. I have purposefully avoided ‘learned’ texts, such as treatises on plainchant, harmony, the modes and rhythm, focusing instead on more personal perceptions of musical sound. My question is not ‘what did music sound like’, but ‘how did these people perceive sound, and what did it mean to them’? The link between musical sounds and the other senses is something that will recur in my examples.
Music and Letters (2014) 95 (4): 648-650. doi: 10.1093/ml/gcu094
Release date:
24 November 2017
BBC Radio 3