Helen Green joined the Open University in 2007 as Research Assistant for the project G F Handel: The Collected Biographical Documents, and was appointed Lecturer in January 2012. She studied for a BA in German and Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, subsequently completing her MMus there in Advanced Musical Studies (Historical Musicology) with German. Following this, she studied for a DPhil in Music at the University of Oxford. She spent two separate years in Germany as part of her university education; for her BA degree she studied for a year at the University of Constance, and research for her DPhil was carried out during a year’s residence in the south of the country while affiliated to the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Helen’s research interests primarily concern musical patronage in German and English cities and courts from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. She has published on various aspects of the employment of civic and court instrumentalists as a reflection of social and political developments. She maintains a particular interest in the use of music in civic and court entertainments and festivals, as well as the factors influencing the movement of musicians between places of employment.
In addition to her research activities, Helen is also an associate lecturer in the university. She teaches one undergraduate module but her main responsibilities are in the music graduate programme.
‘City Life and Music for Secular Entertainment in Maximilian I’s Germany (1486-1519)’ in Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson (eds.), Noise, Audition, Aurality (forthcoming)
‘The Spanish Habsburgs in England: Music and Entertainment for Philip of Spain in Sixteenth-Century London’ in Laura Fernandez Gonzalez and Fernando Checa Cremades (eds.), Festival Culture in the Lands of the Spanish Habsburgs (forthcoming, 2012)
‘Defining the City “Trumpeter”: German Civic Identity and the Employment of Brass Instrumentalists c.1500’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association (May 2011)
‘Meetings of City and Court: Music and Ceremony in the Imperial Cities of Maximilian I’, Jahrbuch der Oswald von Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft (2008/2009)
‘Musiker zwischen Stadt und Hof. Die Stadtpfeifer der bayerischen Reichsstädte und ihre Arbeitsstätten zur Zeit Maximilians I´ Musik in Bayern 69 (2005)
‘Musical Interaction at the Court of Maximilian I (1486-1519)’ Early Modern Exchanges Conference, UCL, September 2011
‘Handel and Hamburg’, Documents about Handel and Others Study Day, The Open University in London, December 2010
‘City Life and the Musical Community of Elizabethan London’, Society for Renaissance Studies Conference, York, July 2010
‘The Spanish Habsburgs in England: Music and Entertainment for Philip II in Sixteenth-Century London’, Recreating Renaissance and Baroque Spectacle Conference, Edinburgh, July 2010
‘Music and Entertainment for Shrovetide in Maximilian I’s Cities (1486-1519)’ Conference of the Renaissance Society of America, Venice, April 2010
‘“Loud Noyses of Musicke”: Musical Representation and the Court and Civic Ensembles of Elizabethan London’, Galpin Society/Historic Brass Society Conference, Edinburgh, July 2009
'Dances and Dance Music in the Cities of Maximilian I’s Teutsche Nation (1486-1519)', Medieval-Renaissance Music Conference, Utrecht University, July 2009
'The Presentation of Maximilian I’s Musical Image and the Doppelhochzeit of 1515', RMA Study Day, Image, Music, Identity: Constructing and Experiencing Identities through Music within Visual Culture, University of Nottingham, June 2009
'Meetings of City and Court: Music and Ceremony in the Imperial Cities of Maximilian I' Symposium of the Oswald von Wolkenstein Gesellschaft: Kaiser Maximilian I (1459-1519) und die Hofkultur seiner Zeit, Brixen, South Tirol, September 2007