December 2020 sees Beethoven’s 250th birthday, and to mark the anniversary, Dr Robert Samuels of the OU Music Department has contributed an item to Romantic Europe: The Virtual Exhibition (RÊVE).

The exhibition publishes a new ‘exhibit’ each month, and each contains an image of an object connected to a figure important to the Romantic movement, with a short essay on its significance. Robert’s choice is an essay on Beethoven’s ear trumpets.

The virtual exhibition is part of a larger project, European Romanticisms in Association (ERA), a pan-European network that brings together individual researchers, scholarly associations, and heritage institutions engaged in research into European Romanticism. The Co-ordinator of the whole project is Professor Nicola Watson of the English Department at the OU.

You can find Robert’s post about Beethoven’s ear trumpets by clicking this link to the RÊVE website .

Tom Hewitt with supervisor Robert Samuels

OU Music student Tom Hewitt has qualified for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) after successfully completing his viva voce examination on 8 January. Tom’s thesis was supervised by Robert Samuels of the Music Department and David Roden of the Philosophy Department. Its title is Cyborg Music: A Future Musicotechnographic Aesthetic, and it explores the philosophical and practical consequences of the reliance of humans on technology to create music.

Tom with his PhD examiners, Dr Sean Williams (OU) and Professor Peter Dayan (Edinburgh).

Tom first started studying with The Open University in 1987, while working for the Metropolitan Police Service. Since taking early retirement from the Met, he has acquired three degrees and a diploma from the OU: a BA in 2010 with modules in Music, Maths and Philosophy; an MA in Music in 2013; and now a PhD. He also gained the Diploma in Music in 2009, which was awarded to students who had completed modules in Music at Level 2 and Level 3 before the introduction of the full BA Music degree.

Tom’s story is one of hard work, long dedication and great intellectual creativity. The Department offers him its warmest congratulations on his achievement and very best wishes for his future.

Here’s a quick round-up of recent research activities, publications and events involving OU Music academics.

Prize for Emeritus Professor’s book

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Brass Instruments, edited by Trevor Herbert, Arnold Myers and John Wallace, has been named as one of the winners of the Choice Outstanding Academic Titles of 2019. Choice is the reviews journal of the Association of College and Research Librarians, a division of the American Libraries Association. 6,000 academic titles across all subjects were submitted for the awards.

Cultural History of Glasgow Research Network

At the Public Study Day, Saturday 16^th November, Dr Elaine Moohan and other network members presented collaborative talks about their research as well as a number of short talks about how to interpret types of archival documents and museum artefacts. These will shortly appear on the project website as Toolkits for research.

Friends of Glasgow Cathedral lecture

Elaine Moohan was delighted to be invited back to a meeting of the Friends of Glasgow Cathedral on St Andrew’s Day. She gave a lecture about church music in Glasgow during the 70 years following the Scottish Reformation of 1560.

Recent publications

Elaine Moohan’s edition of the complete works of Robert Johnson (c1500-c1560) is now in press and will be shortly available. Johnson’s works include church music for 2-5 voices, songs, and instrumental pieces. Individual works will be available as pdfs to encourage choirs to add his music to their repertoire.

An essay by Helen Coffey on ‘Music and ceremony in Maximilian’s Innsbruck’ has just been published on the University of Vienna’s Musikleben website.

Laura Hamer has had two chapters published in The Cambridge History of Music Criticism, edited by Christopher Dingle: ‘Critiquing the Canon: The Role of Criticism on Canon Formation’ and ‘The Gender Paradox: Criticism of Women and Women as Critics’. Earlier this year, Laura’s essay ‘A Cultural Formation: Dukas and Elsa Barraine’ was published in  Paul Dukas: Legacies of a French Musician, edited by Helen Minors and Laura Watson.

An article by Naomi Barker titled ‘Mottos and Metaphors: Towards an Interpretation of the Emblems in Frescobaldi’s Primo libro d’arie musicali’ was recently published in the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, the official journal of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music.

Martin Clarke‘s chapter ‘“Come, All You People”: Lutheran Influences on the Spread of Global Hymnody’ was published in Celebrating Lutheran Music: Scholarly Perspectives at the Quincentenary, edited by Jonas Lundblad, Mattias Lundberg and Maria Schildt.

Head of Department Byron Dueck recently translated an historically important article on pentatonic music theory. The original article was written by Constantin Brăiloiu and published in 1955 as “Un problème de tonalité (La métabole pentatonique)”. The translation, entitled “A problem of tonality (Pentatonic metamorphosis)”, has been published in Translingual Discourse in Ethnomusicology.

Robert Samuels‘ blog post ‘Schoenberg’s Coalition Chess’ has been republished in Spanish in the journal El Rapto de Europa.