Musicology - Research and Creative Activity
Western historical musicology research strengths lie in medieval studies, Beethoven sketches, early twentieth century French and German music, modernist and postmodernist aesthetics, cultural critique and gender studies, Percy Grainger and the post-war European avant garde.
Current postgraduate students are involved in a number of research areas including medieval troubadour song via Renaissance lute intabulations, aspects of Baroque vocal practice, studies of C.P.E. Bach, twentieth-century guitar music, post-World War II Polish sonorism, post-World War II French music, Australian music theatre history, Beethoven reception in the 1970s, and analysis of current popular music genres.
Post-war avant-garde
Work by Richard Toop on the Post-War Avant Garde is centred on the so-called 'Darmstadt School' of the 1950s and its successors, partly from a historical and aesthetic standpoint, partly from an analytical one (with particular reference to composers' sketches). Recent publications include a book on György Ligeti, major entries in the New Grove Dictionary (2nd Ed., 2000) on Stockhausen and Ferneyhough and a chapter in the Cambridge History of 20th Century Music (2004).
Medieval studies
Research into medieval music can incorporate the study of a variety of music from Gregorian Chant to complex polyphony and can include many aspects such as music notation, the means of learning music, manuscripts, modality, counterpoint, the study of composers such as Hildegard of Bingen, Perotin, Machaut or Dufay, dance music, instruments, etc. In the Musicology Unit, this field is represented by Dr Kathleen Nelson. Her current research in medieval music focuses on Aquitanian music notation used in chant books of the 11th to the 13th centuries in Spain. Her publications on medieval music include Medieval Liturgical Music of Zamora(Ottawa, 1996) and “Two Twelfth-Century Fragments in Zamora: Representatives of a Period of Transition,” in Encomium Musicae: Essays in Memory of Robert J. Snow, published in 2002.
Australian Music History - Percy Grainger and the Australian Broadcasting Commission
Research into the music, ideas, and life of Percy Grainger is a field which interests many Australian scholars. A major collection of his materials exists in Australia in the Grainger Museum in Melbourne, and other smaller collections may be found in other archives in Australia such as the National Archives of Australia which holds materials relating to Grainger's interaction and work with the Australian Broadcasting Commission. ABC materials have been used by Dr Kathleen Nelson for two articles: "Percy Grainger's Work for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1934-1935: Background and Reception," Australasian Music Research, vol. 2-3, (1999) pp. 99-110, and "Grainger and the Australian Broadcasting Commission after 1935: Memories, Hopes and Frustrations, Australasian Music Research, vol. 5, (2001) pp. 113-24. Another article by her on Grainger's work with early music also appears in the same journal "Living, Deathless, Timeless Music: Grainger and Early Music," pp. 83-104.
Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School
Jennie Shaw's current research focuses on Schoenberg's compositional process, theoretical writings and aesthetic of 1914 - 1922. She completed her dissertation on Schoenberg's wartime compositions in 2002. Much of Jennie's research is based on close study of the composer's music sketches and text manuscripts, now held at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, and their place in 20th-century culture and in the history of ideas. Her publications include a chapter on Schoenberg and the androgynous ideal in Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg (2000), a chapter on Schoenberg's op. 14 songs in Arnold Schönberg: Interpretationen seiner Werke (2002), an article on Schoenberg's Rilke settings in the Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 5 (2004) and an essay on Schoenberg reception in Australia in the 1940s and 1950s in Australasian Music Research 8 (forthcoming 2005).