Staff Index Prof Rachel Cowgill Prof Rachel Cowgill Profile Page
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| Job Title: | Professor In Music |
| Phone No: | 0151 291 3942 |
| Faculty: | Arts and Humanities |
| Subject/Service Area: | Music |
| Professional Memberships: | Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA) Royal Musical Association (RMA) International Musicological Society (IMS) American Musicological Society (AMS) International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) North American British Music Studies Association (NABMSA) British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS)
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| Key Tasks and Responsibilities: | |
Rachel teaches music in its cultural and historical contexts from the early classical period to the present day, and supervises PhD students on a range of topics in British music, opera, gender and popular-music studies. She is also research coordinator for the Music Department. Rachel has published widely, and is a regular speaker, convenor and broadcaster. She edits one of the premier international journals in musicology - the Journal of the Royal Musical Association - and co-edits the book series 'Music in Britain, 1600-1900' for Boydell & Brewer. |
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| Background: | Rachel hails from the north-west of England and studied music at Goldsmiths College, London, graduating with a first-class BMus(hons) degree. She was awarded British Academy studentships to study for her MMus (Historical Musicology) and PhD at King's College, London, where her research focused on the reception of Mozart's music in late Georgian England. After freelancing as a cellist, guitar-teacher and lecturer, she moved back up north in 1996 to take up a lectureship at the University of Huddersfield, then transferred to Leeds University School of Music in 2000, where she was senior lecturer and director of research. She joined Liverpool Hope University as Professor of Musicology in September 2009. |
| Research Interests: | Rachel works at the boundaries between musicology and cultural history, and her research is concerned broadly with performance traditions in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Italian opera, and the place, organisation and practice of music in Britain from around 1730 onwards. Themes of identity, taste and canon formation recur in her writing, and currently she is working on studies of British amateur blackface minstrelsy, the reception of Mozart's Requiem in nineteenth-century Britain, the career of the internationally celebrated soprano and early diva Angelica Catalani (1780-1849), music for Armistice Day on the BBC in the interwar period, and musical performance in London's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pleasure gardens. Rachel has particular expertise in archival research techniques, and with colleagues at the University of Huddersfield and University of York she devised and directed the AHRC-funded Music Archival Research Skills programme (MARS). Currently Rachel is supervising PhD students in the following areas: opera and adaptation (AHRC); Jamaican popular music; women singer-songwriters. Her supervisees have recently completed research degrees on: music in Victorian town halls; the life and music of Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (AHRC); Lucy Vestris; tonic solfa in Britain; DIY queer feminist (sub)cultural resistance in the UK (ESRC). Rachel would like to hear from potential research/graduate students with interests related to her current research areas, and has a number of projects she is keen to develop, including studies of musical culture in and around Liverpool 1760-1840, and music and tourism in the north-west pre 1930.
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| Publications: |
CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING:
Books (single authored)
The Rise and Fall of the Metropolitan Police Minstrels (Ashgate, in progress)
Redeeming the Requiem: The English Reception of Mozart’s Last Work (Boydell & Brewer, in progress)
Books (edited)
With David Cooper and Clive Brown. Art and Ideology in European Opera: Essays in Honour of Julian Rushton (Boydell & Brewer, forthcoming 2010)
With Hilary Poriss. The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century (OUP, in progress)
With Edward Cray, David Gregory, and Derek B. Scott (vol. eds), Patrick Spedding and Paul Watt (gen. eds). Bawdy Songs of the Romantic Period, 4 vols (Pickering & Chatto, in progress)
With Dave Russell and Derek B. Scott. Music and the Idea of the North (in progress)
Chapters in books
‘Performance Alfresco: Music-Making in English Pleasure Gardens’, chapter in Grounds for Pleasure: Pleasure Gardens in Britain and America, 1660-1880, ed. by Jonathan Conlin (University of Virginia Press, in progress)
‘V: Opera and Society. Gender and Sexuality’, chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Opera, ed. by Helen M. Greenwald (OUP, in progress)
Introduction (with Hilary Poriss), to The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. by Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss (OUP, in progress)
‘“Attitudes with a Shawl”: Femininity, Performance, and Spectatorship at the Italian Opera in Early Nineteenth-Century London’, chapter in The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. by Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss (OUP, in progress)
Editors' Prologue (with David Cooper and Clive Brown), to Art and Ideology in European Opera: Essays in Honour of Julian Rushton, ed. by Rachel Cowgill, David Cooper and Clive Brown (Boydell & Brewer, forthcoming 2010)
‘New Light and the Man of Might: Revisiting Early Interpretations of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte’, chapter in Art and Ideology in European Opera: Essays in Honour of Julian Rushton, ed. by Rachel Cowgill, David Cooper and Clive Brown (Boydell & Brewer, forthcoming 2010)
Periodical articles
Guest-edited issue of the London Journal: A Review of Metropolitan Society Past and Present, 'Music in London's Pleasure Gardens' (2011), including article: 'Musical Menagerie: Concerts and Music-Making at the Surrey Zoological Gardens'
PUBLISHED:
Books (edited)
With Peter Holman. Music in the British Provinces, 1690–1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). ISBN 0 7546 3160 5
With Martin Hewitt. Victorian Soundscapes Revisited, Leeds Working Papers in Victorian Studies 9 (Leeds: LCVS with LUCEM, 2007). ISBN 0 9540 1598 3
With Julian Rushton. Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century British Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). ISBN 0 7546 5208 4
Chapters in books
‘Of Science and Nature: Mozart Versus the Modern Bel Canto in Early Nineteenth-Century London’, chapter in Mozart, Marcos Portugal e o seu tempo [and their time], ed. by David Cranmer (Lisbon: Edições Colibri/Centro de Estudos da Sociologia e Estética Musical, 2010), 35-51 and 197-280 (Appendix: 'Performances and Critical Reception of Productions of Operas by Marcos António Portugal and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in London, up to the end of 1817')
'”Such scientific and profound harmonies”: The Italian Opera Orchestra and Early Performances of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in London’, chapter in The Opera Orchestra in 18th- and 19th-Century Europe. Vol. II: The Orchestra in the Theatre—Composers, Works, and Performance, ed. by N.M. Jensen and F. Piperno, Musical Life in Europe 1600–1900: Circulation, Institutions, Representation (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2008), 1–20.
With Gabriella Dideriksen, ‘Opera Orchestras in Georgian and Early Victorian London’, chapter in The Opera Orchestra in 18th-and 19th-Century Europe. Vol. I: The Orchestra in Society, 2 vols, ed. by N.M. Jensen and F. Piperno, Musical Life in Europe, 1600–1900: Circulation, Institutions, Representation (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2008), i, 259–321.
With Peter Holman, ‘Introduction: Centres and Peripheries’, in Music in the British Provinces, 1690–1914, ed. by R. Cowgill and P. Holman (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 1–7.
‘Disputing Choruses in 1760s Halifax: Joah Bates, William Herschel, and the Messiah Club’, chapter in Music in the British Provinces, 1690–1914, ed. by R. Cowgill and P. Holman (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 87–113.
‘On the Beat: The Victorian Policeman as Musician’, chapter in Victorian Soundscapes Revisited, ed. by M. Hewitt and R. Cowgill, Leeds Working Papers in Victorian Studies 9 (Leeds: LCVS with LUCEM, 2007), 191–214.
With Stephen Banfield, Delia da Sousa Correa, Martin Hewitt, and John Picker, ‘Victorian Soundscapes and the Potential for Interdisciplinary Exchange’, in Victorian Soundscapes Revisited, ed. by M. Hewitt and R. Cowgill, Leeds Working Papers in Victorian Studies 9 (Leeds: LCVS with LUCEM, 2007), 9–36.
‘Elgar’s War Requiem’, chapter in Elgar and His World, ed. by B. Adams (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 317–62
'”Hence, base intruder, hence”: Rejection and Assimilation in the Early English Reception of Mozart’s Requiem’, chapter in Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century British Music, ed. by R. Cowgill and J. Rushton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 9–30.
With Julian Rushton, Introduction to Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century British Music, ed. by R. Cowgill and J. Rushton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 1–5.
‘Mozart Productions and the Emergence of Werktreue at London’s Italian Opera House, 1780–1830’, chapter in Operatic Migrations: Transforming Works and Crossing Boundaries, ed. by R.M. Marvin and D. Thomas (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 145–86. (Volume shortlisted for theAMS Ruth Solie Award 2007.)
With Christina Bashford and Simon McVeigh, ‘The Concert Life in Nineteenth-Century London Database Project’, chapter in Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies 2, ed. by J. Dibble and B. Zon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 1–12.
‘”Wise Men from the East”: Mozart’s Operas and Their Advocates in Early Nineteenth-Century London’, chapter in Music and British Culture, 1785–1914: Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich, ed. by C. Bashford and L. Langley (Oxford: OUP, 2000), 39–64.
‘The Papers of C.I. Latrobe: New Light on Musicians, Music, and the Christian Family in Late Eighteenth-Century England’, chapter in Music in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. by D.W. Jones (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 234–58.
Periodical articles
‘Germondo and Vittorina: Genre and Politics in the London Reception of Goldoni´s Libretti in the 1770s’, as ‘Germondo e Vittorina: genere, politiche teatrali e ricezione dei libretti di Goldoni nella Londra del 1770’, trans. Marta Zoppetti, Problemi di Critica Goldoniana, 14 (Numero Speciale: Terzo centenario della nascita di Carlo Goldoni e Secondo centenario della morte di Carlo Gozzi) (2007; pub. 2009), 231-65.
With Philip Butler, Celia Duffy, Richard J. Hand, and Debs Price, ‘Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings Project’, Performance Research, 11/4 (Special Issue: Digital Resources) (2007), 117–126.
‘An Unknown Handel Arrangement by Mozart?: The Halifax Judas’, Musical Times, 143 (2002), 19–36. (Interim report published in the Guardian, 17 March 2001.)
‘The Business of Music in late Georgian and Victorian Halifax, c.1760–c.1901’, Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, 10 (2002), 77–95.
‘”The most musical spot for its size in the kingdom”: Music in Georgian Halifax’, Early Music, 28 (2000), 557–75.
‘The London Apollonicon Recitals, 1817–32: A Case Study in Bach, Mozart, and Haydn Reception’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 123 (1998), 190–228.
‘Re-Gendering the Libertine; Or, The Taming of the Rake: Lucy Vestris as Don Giovanni on the Early Nineteenth-Century London Stage’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 10 (1998), 45–66.
‘Le nozze di Figaro voor het voetlicht te Londen, 1786–1813’, Musica Antiqua, 9 (1992), 168–77.
Contributions to encyclopaedias
The Routledge International Encyclopaedia of Queer Culture, ed. by David A. Gerstner (London: Routledge, 2006). Original entries: ‘Callas, Maria’; ‘lang, k.d.’; ‘Opera, female cross-dressing’; ‘Opera Queens’; ‘Sutherland, Joan’.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004). Original entries: ‘Billington, Elizabeth’; ‘Stephens, Catherine’.
Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn, ed. by David Wyn Jones (Oxford: OUP, 2002). Original entries: ‘Barthelemon family’; ‘Burney, Charles’; ‘Crotch, William’; ‘Gardiner, William’; ‘Horn family’; ‘Latrobe, Christian Ignatius’; ‘Novello’; ‘Peploe, Mrs’.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, ed. by Stanley Sadie & John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001). Original entries: ‘Savage, Jane’; ‘Weichsel, Charles’. Revisions of entries: ‘Carter, Richard’; ‘Corri’; ‘Harrison, Samuel’; ‘Smith, Theodore’.
The Reader’s Guide to Music: History,Theory, Criticism, ed. by Murray Steib (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000). Original entries: ‘Burney, Charles’; ‘Opera, English’.
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776–1832, ed. by Iain McCalman (Oxford: OUP, 1999). Original entries: ‘Braham, John’; ‘Catalani, Angelica’; ‘Corri family’; ‘Crouch, Anna Maria’; ‘Harrison, Samuel’; ‘Kelly, Michael’; ‘Linley family’; ‘Mara, Gertrud Elisabeth’; ‘Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus’; ‘Ries, Ferdinand’; ‘Singing’.
Reviews
For: Early Music; Early Music Performer
Radio/TV broadcasts
Participant: Chopin and his Singers, BBC FOUR, forthcoming
Participant and consultant: Faking the Classics: Mozart, BBC Radio 4. October 2005
Panel member: Music, Gender, Sexuality, University of Sussex. New Art on Monday, Resonance 104.4FM. November 2004
Consultant (and participant): Mozart’s Missing Manuscript? – a documentary and televised performance of the Halifax arrangement of Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus attributed to Mozart. Broadcast on BBC FOUR, 13 October 2002, 13 April 2003, and 19 March 2004
Consultant: documentary on the 1920s for BBC & OU; part of series on the history of love and romance, Trouble with Love. September 2002
Interviews on the arrangement of Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus attributed to Mozart, for BBC Radio 3 (live), BBC Radio Leeds, Musik Aktuell, etc. 2001
Panel member: All the Rage (programmes on the 1800s and 1810s) BBC Radio 4. 1998–2000
Panel member: Woman’s Hour (material on Elizabeth Linley, and music in eighteenth-century Manchester). BBC Radio 4. 1998–2000
Question-setting for BBC Radio 4’s quiz show, The Department Score. 1998–99
FORTHCOMING LECTURES/PAPERS IN 2009/10:
'Reaching Your Public: From Viva to Publication'. Institute of Musical Research (SAS, University of London), postgraduate research-training session. 19 October 2009
'The Rise and Fall of the Metropolitan Police Minstrels'. American Musicological Society Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, US. 13 November 2009. MA Research Seminar, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. 4 December 2009
‘New Light and the Man of Might: Revisiting Early Interpretations of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte’. Conference: After The Magic Flute, University of California, Berkeley, US. 5-7 March 2010.
Inaugural Lecture: 'From Text to Cultural Practice: The Changing Objects of Musical Study'. Hope Hall, Liverpool Hope University Creative Campus. 24 March 2010
'"Une leçon de grace": Performance, Femininity and Spectatorship at the Italian Opera in early nineteenth-century London'. Femininities: 10th Annual Cultural History conference, York University. 22-25 April 2010
Guest lecture for opening night of Jonathan Kent's production of Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne Festival Opera. 4 July 2010
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| Area of Expertise: | Musicology Archival Studies Music and Cultural History Opera Studies Mozart Reception 18th- and 19th-Century Music British Musical Cultures from c.1730 Music and Politics Music and Identity (incl. race, gender, sexuality, class) |
