The Department of Music at The Open University invites applications for October 2023 entry to its PhD programme.

We have a wide range of expertise, from the medieval period to the present day. Our specialisms include historical musicology, the social and cultural study of music, music analysis, editing, performance practice, iconography, ethnomusicology, music and gender, film music, music and literature studies, music technology and music computing.

The 2022 REF judged 92 per cent of our music research as ‘internationally excellent’ or ‘world leading’.

For further details of staff and student research interests see: http://fass.open.ac.uk/music/people and http://fass.open.ac.uk/music/research-degree

Studentships

Successful applicants to the Music PhD programme will have the opportunity to apply for an Open-Oxford-Cambridge (OOC) AHRC studentship. OOC is a doctoral training partnership (DTP), funded by the AHRC. The three participating universities share extensive expertise in delivering successful doctoral training, developed in collaboration with our students and a wide range of non-HEI partners.

An OOC studentship covers university fees in full and provides a tax-free stipend for living costs at the UKRI rate (currently £17,668 per year). Awards are made for the full duration of fee liability.

How to apply

Informal enquiries about PhD studies and studentships in Music should be made to Helen Barlow at FASS-Music-Enquiries@open.ac.uk in the first instance. Potential applicants are encouraged to email a draft research proposal as soon as possible and ideally at least two months before the deadline.

Further details of the application process for OOC studentships can be found here: http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/funding/ooc-dtp

Initially, applications for studentships will be assessed for a place on the Music PhD programme. Successful applicants will then be forwarded to studentship panels for further assessment and ranking.

Please note that the deadline for all postgraduate research degree applications, including for OOC studentships, is 12 noon on 11 January 2023.

The conductor, harpsichordist and OU PhD student Bridget Cunningham brings Handel’s pasticcio opera, Caio Fabbricio HWV A9, back to life in a concert by London Early Opera on 24 May 2022 – the first modern-day concert performance of the work.

Caio Fabbricio was first performed in London in 1733 and is based on an earlier opera by Johann Adolf Hasse. It is an internationally important work and contains a brilliant and well-considered collection of some of the finest 18th-century Neapolitan arias by composers such as Hasse and Leonardo Vinci, all chosen by Handel and woven around his own dramatic recitatives.

The plot looks back to Ancient Rome when the incorruptible Roman ambassador, Caio Fabbricio, was sent to Tarento to restore peace and order between republican Rome and the Greeks under the leadership of the warlike King Pyrrhus (Pirro) in the wake of the latter’s self-damaging ‘Pyrrhic’ victory in 280 B.C.

Bridget is currently studying towards a PhD in music at the OU, funded by an AHRC OOC stipend and supervised by Dr Helen Coffey, Professor David Rowland and Professor Donald Burrows. Recently she gave a paper for the Open University Music Research Day which explored Hasse’s operatic music and Handel’s pasticcios including Caio Fabbricio – a piece that she has researched, edited and recorded in her Handel series with Signum Records. You can listen to part of the recording here.

Tickets for the concert can be purchased here.

Caio Fabbricio HWV A9 by G.F. Handel

Tuesday 24^th MAY 2022    19:00 (Ends at 21:45)

St George’s Church Hanover Square, Mayfair, London, W1S 1FX

ConductIT, an ERASMUS funded collaborative project to create online resources for learning the art of conducting will be launched this week in a hybrid live-online event in Aveiro, Portugal. The Open University is one of four partner institutions in the venture. The others are the University of Stavanger, the Royal Northern College of Music and the Universidad de Aveiro. The launch event will be streamed live on Friday 26 November 10am-4pm. To view the livestream, go to https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/9480631098

The project was badly affected by the pandemic as many of the live rehearsals and performances scheduled for filming were cancelled. In spite of the difficulties, some uniquely creative materials have been produced that will enable anyone wanting to pursue a better knowledge of conducting, to develop their skills or to get advice from some of the best conductors in the world.

The ConductIT website https://conductit.eu/  features a ‘study room’ offering a collection of workbook resources with downloadable instrumental parts for short orchestral extracts that can be studied alongside videos demonstrating specific techniques.  In the ‘careers office’ section, experts in the business share insights about how to develop a career in conducting. The ‘library’ also includes a unique series of ‘downtime’ videos created during the lockdown in which conductors reflected on how they were using their unexpected time off.  A freestanding MOOC on basic conducting skills for beginners has been available on the website since December 2020, but it has now been translated and is available in Portuguese https://pt-mooc.conductit.eu/ and will soon be available in Spanish.

Amazing Grace and its legacies: reflections at 250

15-16 July 2022, The Open University and Olney Parish Church

Call for Papers

John Newton’s ‘Amazing grace’ can lay claim to be one of the best-known hymns worldwide. Believed to have been written in late 1772 in preparation for a New Year’s Day service at the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul, Olney, where Newton was curate, in the ensuing 250 years it has been sung and heard around the world in many different guises, both sacred and secular. Its connections with John Newton’s own life and ministry, its popular status in the USA and beyond, and performances of it by famous singers, religious leaders and politicians are several of the ways in which its meanings and influence have been expressed.

This conference, co-hosted by The Open University, The Cowper and Newton Museum and Olney Parish Church, seeks to examine the hymn and its legacies in this 250^th anniversary year. It will feature keynote addresses from Prof Bruce Hindmarsh (Regent College, Vancouver, BC) and Prof Anthony Reddie (Regent’s Park College, Oxford University). Scholars from any discipline and drawing on any methodology are invited to propose twenty-minute papers on any topic relating to ‘Amazing grace’, its influence and legacy. Possible topics may include but need not be limited to the following:

• ‘Amazing grace’ and its eighteenth-century contexts
• Literary and theological analyses
• The words and music of ‘Amazing grace’: tunes, arrangements, re-tunings
• Performances and performers, e.g., Aretha Franklin, Barack Obama, Andrea Bocelli
• ‘Amazing grace’ and the Black Christian Experience
• ‘Amazing grace’ and American identity
• The global afterlives of ‘Amazing grace’, e.g., interpretations or popular/religious place in Africa, Asia or South America
• ‘Amazing grace’ in film and other media

Proposals of no more than 250 words should be submitted via https://forms.office.com/r/t7uhsTKyh5 by 1 January 2022. Decisions will be communicated by 1 February 2022. Papers will be presented on Friday 15 July 2022 at The Open University. We are currently planning to hold the event in-person but will also facilitate online participation for delegates who are unable or do not wish to travel (details TBC). The second day of the conference will be held at Olney Parish Church and will feature keynote lectures, a roundtable discussion, tours of the Cowper & Newton Museum, and a concert.

Please direct any queries to amazing-grace@open.ac.uk.

Conference committee

Gareth Atkins (Cambridge University)

Nancy Jiwon Cho (Seoul National University)

Martin V. Clarke (The Open University, chair)

Matthew Williams (University of Bristol)

Congratulations to the winners of the Instruments INDIA Young Creator’s competition, a competition held by Dr Manuella Blackburn and Milap, as part of their funded ED&I AHRC fellowship programme.

The competition saw Instruments INDIA make available a selection of samples from their upcoming commercial sample pack, for young producers and musicians aged 14-21 to experiment with and create new music of any style or genre with. The sample pack showcases the beautiful sounds of Indian instruments, performed by renowned Indian musicians in partnership with Milap – the UK’s leading Indian arts development hub. There are three awards being given as part of the competition, for the age categories 14-17 (UK), 18-21 (UK), and 14-21 (International), with a £500 prize for the winner of each category.

Dr. Manuella Blackburn: “It’s great to be able to offer this sample pack of Indian musical instrument sounds to music production communities worldwide. What is special about this opportunity is that it is specifically aimed at young composers, artists, and producers. Hearing the range of responses and interpretations of Indian instrument samples has been a pleasure and it has clearly captivated the imaginations of these submitting artists who are starting out in their creative journeys.”

The competition received over 30 submissions from around the world, with the winning tracks being chosen by an expert judging panel. The jury featured Ramshanker Sathianarayanan (composer and orchestral conductor), Girishh Gopalakrishnan (producer, composer and singer), Kousic Sen (Tabla), Jonny Batchelor (sample pack producer), and Hayley Suviste (composer).

The winners selected by the jury are:

Age 14-17 (UK): Joshua van der Hagen (Liopli) – Confused Circus

Joshua is 17 years old and based in the UK. He has been making music for just over two years, and was initially inspired by watching others on YouTube make music.

 Age 18-21 (UK): Nicolas Garcia-Peguinho (Acrux) – Silk Stria

Nicolas is 20 years old and from London, and is currently in their third year of studying music at the University of Manchester.

Age 14-21 (International): Eugene Mantilla (EUMAN) – Blinding Daylight

Eugene is an 18-year-old from from Peabody, Massachusetts. He has been making electronic music for over five years using Ableton Live.

Visit the Instruments INDIA SoundCloud page to listen to a podcast episode in which the judging panel announce, listen to, and discuss the winning submissions, and showcase a selection of other highly recommended submissions.

In 2018, Naomi Barker from the OU Music department joined a team of conducting experts to create online resources for teaching conductors. The project, called ConductIT is funded by the ERASMUS scheme and spearheaded by the University of Stavanger (Norway), with the Royal Northern College of Music and the University of Aveiro (Portugal). Today we are delighted to announce that the ConductIT MOOC is now live on the website!

This short course on conducting is aimed at anyone interested in conducting, from the general public, through musicians and teachers who have to direct ensembles but have no prior training, to students who may be thinking of conducting as a career. It is the first section of what will be a large online resource for teaching and learning conducting which will be available globally. Over the coming year, further resources will be added to the online resources, covering techniques, rehearsal strategies, score study and preparation and insights into conducting as a career.

The COVID 19 pandemic impacted the production of video materials documenting rehearsals and performances as events were cancelled across Europe. In the midst of this adversity, RNCM’s Mark Heron invited twelve well-known conductors to make short videos with advice about using unexpected ‘down time’. These videos are also now available in the ConductIT library of resources.