Library professional and musicology researcher. Editor of UK RISM catalogue of music manuscripts, http://www.rism.org.uk. Research interests include 17th-century English music; the Restoration theatre; cultural life in England before 1900; digital humanities. Address: 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB
The French entertainment Le Triomphe de l’Amour was premiered at Louis XIV’s court in January 168... more The French entertainment Le Triomphe de l’Amour was premiered at Louis XIV’s court in January 1681. A revised version was staged at the Paris Opéra in May 1681 with additional music and new scenic effects. Thomas Betterton modelled the final masque from his dramatic opera The Prophetess (1690) on the Paris version of the work, borrowing its theme and spectacular multi-stage machine effects and some lyrics. Roger Savage has shown that the sleep scene from The Fairy Queen (1692) has ideas and text in common with Le Triomphe de l’Amour. A scenic effect in The Fairy Queen is also derived from the work. Given the literary and scenic borrowings from Le Triomphe de l’Amour in both dramatic operas, and Betterton’s role in adapting The Prophetess, he was almost certainly responsible for the Fairy Queen adaptation too. Some of Purcell’s music for The Fairy Queen emulates Lully’s music for the French work. Purcell borrows instrumental effects, stylistic features, and melodic and harmonic material. He may also have taken inspiration from the work in his treatment of the instruments in The Prophetess, though the influence of Grabu is more strongly apparent in this work. Purcell’s borrowings provide further evidence that aemulatio remained core to both literary and musical composition in late 17th-century London.
Librarians and archivists are increasingly collecting and working with large quantities of digita... more Librarians and archivists are increasingly collecting and working with large quantities of digital data. In science, business, and now the humanities, the production and analysis of vast amounts of data (so-called ‘big data research’) have become fundamental activities. This article introduces the project A Big Data History of Music, a collaboration between Royal Holloway, University of London, and the British Library. The project has made the British Library’s catalogue records for printed and manuscript music available as open data, and has explored how the analysis and visualisation of huge numbers of bibliographic records can open new perspectives for researchers into music history. In addition to the British Library data (over a million records), the project drew on a further million bibliographic descriptions from RISM, which have also recently been released as open data. To show the challenges posed by the heterogeneous nature of the data, the article outlines the different structures of the various catalogue records used in the project, and summarises how the British Library data was cleaned and enhanced prior to its public release. Examples are given of how music-bibliographical data can be analysed and visualised, and how scholars and citizen scientists can engage with this data through hackathons, large-scale data analyses, and database construction. It is hoped this article will encourage other research libraries to consider making their catalogue records available as open data.
The tradition of the Shrove-tide court entertainment with dancing and music, strong in the first ... more The tradition of the Shrove-tide court entertainment with dancing and music, strong in the first half of the seventeenth century in England, was restored with the monarchy after 1660. Shrove-tide masques, balls and plays, along with dishes of pancakes and fritters, remained a feature of the court calendar to the end of Charles II’s reign. As well as borrowing elements from the Jacobean court masque, some of the entertainments presented before Charles II were modelled on French entertainments staged for Louis XIV. John Blow’s court opera Venus and Adonis may have received its first performance at a Shrove-tide event in 1682/3.
This position paper sets out the possibility of a musicology based on the analysis of musical-bib... more This position paper sets out the possibility of a musicology based on the analysis of musical-bibliographical metadata as Big Data. It outlines the work underway, as part of the AHRC-funded project A Big Data History of Music, to align seven major datasets of musical-bibliographical metadata. After discussing some of the technical challenges of data alignment, it suggests how analysis and visualization of this data might transform musicological understandings of cultural transmission and canon formation.
Henry Purcell was the only composer of his generation to be honoured with performances of his mus... more Henry Purcell was the only composer of his generation to be honoured with performances of his music at both the Academy of Ancient Music and Concerts of Ancient Music in the 18th century. Both organizations also programmed 18th-century music for The Tempest, believing it to be by Purcell. Excerpts from Purcell’s theatre works were performed at the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club too, where the Earl of Sandwich and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn introduced much of the Purcell repertory; Sandwich was also a key figure in the promotion of Purcell’s music at the Concerts of Ancient Music. Although the Academy of Ancient Music’s instrumental parts for King Arthur do not exhibit as many signs of modernization as do their manuscripts of Dido and Aeneas, some amendments to the musical text are found there, as well as in the Catch Club’s manuscripts of Purcell’s music. Purcell’s works were generally well received by the press, and newspaper reviews provide evidence of concerts of his music taking inspiration—and sometimes performers—from the Concerts of Ancient Music. The misattributed Tempest was seemingly one of the most popular ‘Purcell’ works with late 18th-century audiences; it entered the canon and remained there until Margaret Laurie made a conclusive case against its being by Purcell, and suggested John Weldon as the likely composer. Dr Laurie has also removed 18th-century accretions from the score of King Arthur, and we are at last seeing an end to the perpetuation of 18th-century tastes and prejudices in editions of Purcell’s music.
The French entertainment Le Triomphe de l’Amour was premiered at Louis XIV’s court in January 168... more The French entertainment Le Triomphe de l’Amour was premiered at Louis XIV’s court in January 1681. A revised version was staged at the Paris Opéra in May 1681 with additional music and new scenic effects. Thomas Betterton modelled the final masque from his dramatic opera The Prophetess (1690) on the Paris version of the work, borrowing its theme and spectacular multi-stage machine effects and some lyrics. Roger Savage has shown that the sleep scene from The Fairy Queen (1692) has ideas and text in common with Le Triomphe de l’Amour. A scenic effect in The Fairy Queen is also derived from the work. Given the literary and scenic borrowings from Le Triomphe de l’Amour in both dramatic operas, and Betterton’s role in adapting The Prophetess, he was almost certainly responsible for the Fairy Queen adaptation too. Some of Purcell’s music for The Fairy Queen emulates Lully’s music for the French work. Purcell borrows instrumental effects, stylistic features, and melodic and harmonic material. He may also have taken inspiration from the work in his treatment of the instruments in The Prophetess, though the influence of Grabu is more strongly apparent in this work. Purcell’s borrowings provide further evidence that aemulatio remained core to both literary and musical composition in late 17th-century London.
Librarians and archivists are increasingly collecting and working with large quantities of digita... more Librarians and archivists are increasingly collecting and working with large quantities of digital data. In science, business, and now the humanities, the production and analysis of vast amounts of data (so-called ‘big data research’) have become fundamental activities. This article introduces the project A Big Data History of Music, a collaboration between Royal Holloway, University of London, and the British Library. The project has made the British Library’s catalogue records for printed and manuscript music available as open data, and has explored how the analysis and visualisation of huge numbers of bibliographic records can open new perspectives for researchers into music history. In addition to the British Library data (over a million records), the project drew on a further million bibliographic descriptions from RISM, which have also recently been released as open data. To show the challenges posed by the heterogeneous nature of the data, the article outlines the different structures of the various catalogue records used in the project, and summarises how the British Library data was cleaned and enhanced prior to its public release. Examples are given of how music-bibliographical data can be analysed and visualised, and how scholars and citizen scientists can engage with this data through hackathons, large-scale data analyses, and database construction. It is hoped this article will encourage other research libraries to consider making their catalogue records available as open data.
The tradition of the Shrove-tide court entertainment with dancing and music, strong in the first ... more The tradition of the Shrove-tide court entertainment with dancing and music, strong in the first half of the seventeenth century in England, was restored with the monarchy after 1660. Shrove-tide masques, balls and plays, along with dishes of pancakes and fritters, remained a feature of the court calendar to the end of Charles II’s reign. As well as borrowing elements from the Jacobean court masque, some of the entertainments presented before Charles II were modelled on French entertainments staged for Louis XIV. John Blow’s court opera Venus and Adonis may have received its first performance at a Shrove-tide event in 1682/3.
This position paper sets out the possibility of a musicology based on the analysis of musical-bib... more This position paper sets out the possibility of a musicology based on the analysis of musical-bibliographical metadata as Big Data. It outlines the work underway, as part of the AHRC-funded project A Big Data History of Music, to align seven major datasets of musical-bibliographical metadata. After discussing some of the technical challenges of data alignment, it suggests how analysis and visualization of this data might transform musicological understandings of cultural transmission and canon formation.
Henry Purcell was the only composer of his generation to be honoured with performances of his mus... more Henry Purcell was the only composer of his generation to be honoured with performances of his music at both the Academy of Ancient Music and Concerts of Ancient Music in the 18th century. Both organizations also programmed 18th-century music for The Tempest, believing it to be by Purcell. Excerpts from Purcell’s theatre works were performed at the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club too, where the Earl of Sandwich and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn introduced much of the Purcell repertory; Sandwich was also a key figure in the promotion of Purcell’s music at the Concerts of Ancient Music. Although the Academy of Ancient Music’s instrumental parts for King Arthur do not exhibit as many signs of modernization as do their manuscripts of Dido and Aeneas, some amendments to the musical text are found there, as well as in the Catch Club’s manuscripts of Purcell’s music. Purcell’s works were generally well received by the press, and newspaper reviews provide evidence of concerts of his music taking inspiration—and sometimes performers—from the Concerts of Ancient Music. The misattributed Tempest was seemingly one of the most popular ‘Purcell’ works with late 18th-century audiences; it entered the canon and remained there until Margaret Laurie made a conclusive case against its being by Purcell, and suggested John Weldon as the likely composer. Dr Laurie has also removed 18th-century accretions from the score of King Arthur, and we are at last seeing an end to the perpetuation of 18th-century tastes and prejudices in editions of Purcell’s music.
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