Bangor University

Graduate Student, Music

PhD Research Student/Graduate Teaching Assistant

Thesis Title: Teaching the Old and the New: Didactic Applications of Fourteenth-Cenutry Music Theory

About

My research interests span, in general, two different time periods in music history: music theoy of the middle ages and innovative forms of music notation including the performance practice of 20th-century graphic scores.

My Ph.D research focuses on an examination of music treatises from and around the 14th century. Although the content of these treatises are studied and well known to musicologists, it is unclear how exactly these may have been used in an educational environment at the time of their compilation. My research will attempt to shed light onto an as yet little understood aspect of late-medieval music education: What types of musical education was available? What was taught, by whom, and for whom? What didactic methodologies were used to communicate different musical skills?
These questions beg special interest, especially in the early 14th century, a time of conflict between old and new musical paradigms. Spurred on by an experimental impulse, a corpus of innovative music theory emerged, which aimed to revolutionize concepts of notation, rhythm and counterpoint. The radical break with traditional practices propagated under the auspices of an ars nova (new art) resulted in a heated controversy with theorists of a more conservative outlook who remained steadfast to received wisdom, polemically branded ars antiqua (ancient or antiquated art).
My research examines treatises in view of their didactic applications and methodologies. Such a contextualisation is needed, for, in contrast to prevailing views, these works were perhaps not embedded within an educational environment but used in a much different setting. Other than instructing students of the speculative nature of music, their specific purpose of use remain vague. Moreover, the so-called ars antiqua treatises often exhibit very original features which have been surprisingly overlooked. I am currently focusing on British treatises: Walter Odington's De speculatione musicae and Bodley 842.

My Masters theses, Writing Sound (2009)examined the method of introduction of new and innovative forms of music notation. The topic was the subject of a conference which I organised at Bangor University entitled 'Off the Staves' which attracted an international panel of scholars for the discussion of an as yet developing topic. Following up from this, I have participated in performances of graphic scores (South London Gallery, Sept. 2011; Morely College, Dec. 2011) which experimented with a vocal reproduction of Cornelius Cardew's 'Treatise'.