AHRC-funded DPhil Studentship on 18th and early 19th Century Music
The Academy of Ancient Music [AAM] is planning to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th anniversary with a series of concerts in the 2020-2021 season that will place his symphonic works within a ‘sounding’ context. Widely hailed as the pinnacle of symphonic music, Beethoven’s orchestral works did not exist in a vacuum. They were performed on the concert stage and discussed alongside works by his forebears, contemporaries and composers of the younger generation. Furthermore, Beethoven’s own symphonic writing was influenced by, and shaped through, successful works that he thought to imitate, emulate or challenge. The doctoral project is intended to provide a new context for understanding Beethoven’s orchestral output (not limited to symphonies) through a new focus on appropriate 18th and early 19th repertoire. The candidate’s final submission may be pursued from a repertorial, instititutional, critical, aesthetic or any other relevant angles.
Alongside their doctoral work the successful candidate will produce new (critical and/or performing) editions of music to be performed by the AAM at the Barbican Centre and even potentially released on its in-house recording label, AAM Recordings. It follows that, although the edition might not be main research output of the candidate’s DPhil, they should ideally be able to demonstrate previous experience or training in the critical editing of music. As part of the collaborative doctoral project, the candidate may also take on a public-facing role in terms of promoting the concert and informing audiences about the repertoire being studied. The project is the second of three collaborative doctoral projects held jointly with the music faculty and AAM, the first being a composition doctorate that has started in October 2017 (William Marshall, Worcester College, Oxford).
