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Dr Martin Clarke

Senior Lecturer Music

Music

martin.clarke@open.ac.uk

ORCID Profile

Biography

Professional biography

Martin Clarke is a musicologist with interests in the intersections of music, theology and religious practice, and Welsh musical history. He joined the central academic staff of The OU in 2014, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2019. He was Head of Discipline from 2020-23. From 2016-19 he served as Director of Teaching (Arts & Humanities). Martin also has extensive experience of HE quality assurance; he was one of the authors of the OU's TEF submission in 2023, which was rated Gold. As Director of Teaching, he oversaw the Arts & Humanities Quality Monitoring and Enhancement process each year, and also led the programme's successful Periodic Quality Review in 2019. He chaired the Periodic Quality Review of the OU's Health & Social Care programme in 2022, and has chaired programme validation and re-validation panels and worked as an academic assessor for the OU's Validation Partnerships unit. Martin is an experienced doctoral supervisor and welcomes enquiries from potential research students interested in his areas of expertise; he is a UK Council for Graduate Education Recognised Research Supervisor.

Martin was educated at St Martin's Comprehensive School, Caerphilly, and St Chad's College, Durham University. He is also active as an organist and choir director; he holds the Fellowship Diploma of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO). Martin is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).

Research interests

Martin Clarke's primary research interests lie in the relationships between music, theology and religious practice, and the history of music in Wales. His work on music, theology and religion has been principally focused on music and religious practice in Britain since the eighteenth century, and in the Methodist movement more widely. His book, British Methodist Hymnody: Theology, Heritage and Experience, was published by Routledge in 2017. He co-edited A History of Welsh Music (Cambridge University Press, 2022) with Trevor Herbert and Helen Barlow, contributing chapters on music and religion and music and sport. Projects in progress include an edition of original settings of hymn texts by Charles Wesley by John Frederick Lampe and Jonathan Battishill (A-R Editions), co-editing one volume of the five-volume Oxford Handbook of Music and Christian Theology (forthcoming 2025), and co-editing volumes on the legacies of 'Amazing Grace' and  Isaac Watts. He co-organised a conference with the Cowper & Newton Museum, Olney, in 2022 as part of the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the hymn 'Amazing Grace.' With C. Michael Hawn, Beverly A. Howard and Geoffrey C. Moore, Martin has co-authored a new edition of Sing with Understanding (GIA, 2022).

Martin was a Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded Listening Experience Database project, as part of which he worked on a study of Listening Experiences in Christian Worship in Britain. His work on this project has been published in Nineteenth-Century Music Review and in two volumes of essays based on contributions to project conferences. He is Deputy Editor of The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology to which he has contributed numerous entries, and since 2025 has been co-editor of Nineteenth-Century Music Review (Cambridge University Press).

Martin has supervised three PhD students to completion and is currently supervising a further four students. Former students have completed theses on Sir Arthur Sullivan, on Jacques Maritain and theological aesthetics and music (co-supervised with a colleague in Philosophy), and on musical festivals in nineteenth-century Manchester. Current PhD students are working on projects relating to a variety of aspects of British musical culture in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Salvation Army musical festivals, the development of municipal orchestras, hymnody and the Clapham sect (co-supervised with a colleague in Religious Studies), and new music at the Crystal Palace. Martin has supervised full-time and part-time PhD students from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from those teaching in higher education to those returning to academic study in retirement. He also has experience of helping students to secure funding for doctoral study. Martin would welcome enquiries from potential research students interested in working on topics related to his areas of research specialism. For further information, including on funding opportunities, please see the Postgraduate Research page of the OU Music website.

For details of Martin's published work, please see below.

Teaching interests

Martin has written units for A234 Understanding Music on harmonising melodies and writing piano accompaniments, A342 Central Questions in the Study of Music on studying sacred music, and two iterations of the MA in Music (A873 and A874, A890 and A891). He has also written material for The Practice of Music Making, a collaborative module developed by Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and the OU. He has served as module team chair of several Music modules and chaired the production team for a suite of short courses in Music that launched in 2022. Martin worked as an Associate Lecturer for the OU from 2008-16, teaching on a variety of music and interdisciplinary modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Prior to joining the OU full-time, he taught on many undergraduate modules in music at Durham University.

Impact and engagement

Martin has given talks and lectures for the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, the Charles Wesley Society, the Wesley Historical Society, and the Hymn Society of the US and Canada. He has contributed to the Museum of Methodism's blog and is a reviewer for Organists' Review. He was the lead academic consultant for the OU/BBC Wales co-production Wales: Music Nation (2 episodes, 2022).

External collaborations

In 2007 and 2015 Martin Clarke held Visiting Fellowships at Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University. In 2013, he was an invited speaker at a Consultation on Music and Theology at the Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University. He is an executive committee member of the Society for Christian Scholarship and Music, and a trustee of the Pratt Green Trust. Martin also serves on the Methodist Church's Faith & Order Liturgical Subcommittee. He is external examiner for undergraduate Music at the University of York.

Projects

Listening and British cultures: listeners' responses to music in Britain, c. 1700-2018

Publications

Book

Amazing Grace at 250: Global Heritage and Contested Legacies (2025)

A History of Welsh Music (2022)

British Methodist Hymnody: Theology, Heritage, and Experience (2017)

Music and Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2012)

Book Chapter

Retuning “Amazing Grace" (2025)

Introduction (2025)

Music and Spirituality in Communal Song: Methodists and Welsh Sporting Crowds (2024)

1780 Collection of Hymns (2024)

Singing Welshness: Sport, Music and the Crowd (2022)

Nonconformists and Their Music (2022)

An Introduction to the Study of Congregational Song (2022)

"God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity": Singing the Trinity (2022)

A Brief History of Congregational Song: Shaping Theology through Hymn Compilations (2022)

Christian Hymn: A Proposed Definition (2022)

How Does a Hymn Mean? (2022)

Music (2021)

Churches and Devotional Practice (2020)

‘O Lord, open thou our lips’: listeners’ experiences of BBC Radio 3’s Choral Evensong on The New Radio 3 Forum (2019)

“Come, all you people”: Lutheran Influences on the Spread of Global Hymnody (2019)

Church musicians in nineteenth-century Durham (2018)

Listening to a singing people: accounts of Methodist hymn-singing (2017)

'Meet and Right it is to Sing': nineteenth-century hymnals and the reasons for singing (2012)

Introduction (2012)

John Frederick Lampe's Hymns on the Great Festivals and Other Occasions (2010)

Journal Article

[Book Review] Andrew Gant, O Sing unto the Lord: A History of English Church Music. London, Profile Books, 2016 (2025)

Music and Charles Wesley’s Legacy (2024)

[Book Review] Guy L. Beck. Musicology of Religion: Theories, Methods, and Directions (SUNY Series in Religious Studies.) Albany: State University of New York Press, 2023. (2024)

[Book review] Eftychia Papanikolaou and Markus Rathey, eds, Sacred and Secular Intersections in Music of the Long Nineteenth Century: Church, Stage, and Concert Hall (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2022). (2023)

Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania. By Sarah Justina Eyerly (2022)

Charles Wesley, Methodism and new art music in the long eighteenth century (2021)

Hearing and Believing: Listening Experiences as Religious Experiences in Nineteenth-Century British Methodism (2020)

[Book Review] Wesley Hymns (2019)

The Whole Church Sings: Congregational Singing in Luther’s Wittenberg, Robin A. Leaver (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 206 pp, £17.99, pbk (2017)

[Digital Resource Review] Digital Hymnology: Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, Hymn Tune Index, Hymnary.org (2016)

"And can it be": analysing the words, music and contexts of an iconic Methodist hymn (2016)

The Illingworth Moor Singers' Book: a snapshot of Methodist music in the early ninteenth century (2010)

John Wesley’s “Directions for Singing”: Methodist Hymnody as an Expression of Methodist Beliefs in Thought and Practice (2009)

Spirituality and Practicality: John Wesley’s visit to America and Moravian Influences on Methodist Music and Worship (2008)

[Book review] A Thorough Insight into Methodist Worship (2007)

[CD Review] The English Hymn – 5 (2005)

Presentation / Conference

Singing justice? Congregational song and social justice in contemporary British Methodism (2024)

'Above all sing spiritually': musical reform and revival in Methodism (2018)

'Loud organs, his glory forth tell in deep tone': the interaction of music, liturgy, and theology in mid-nineteenth-century Britain (2014)