Graduate Student, Music
B.Sc. Hons. (Lond. Guildhall), M.Mus. (Leeds) D.Phil, (Oxon. - in progress)
St Cross College
Thesis Title: The London Music Trade, 1500-1725. (or possibly: From Patronage to Commercialism: Instrument Making and the Musical Environment in Early Modern England)
About
My major research interest is in the technological development of musical instruments and the social and cultural context within which they evolved. I am also a consultant and private dealer specialising in rare violins and early musical instruments.
My doctoral thesis uses these technologies in order to evaluate the history of music in England from about 1500 to 1725 firstly to document the shift in London from a patronage based economy to a commercial market, and also to examine the integration between music and the broader cultural context of the time through the material medium of musical instruments and other physical artefacts. I am also working on a project about the violin as a symbol of nationhood in post-Revolutionary France.
My professional training concerns the forensics relevant to the authenication of paper objects, and I worked first as an apprentice and then in the dealing department of Stanley Gibbons Ltd. I then studied for an undergraduate degree at London Guildhall University where I trained as a harpsichord maker, before winning a music scholarship to the University of Leeds to study for an M.Mus in historical musicology.
My work at Oxford is highly influenced by my training as a musical instrument maker, and by a desire to understand the genesis of instruments that we copy today. I am an acknowledged expert in the field. As a respected authority on the authentication and connoisseurship of stringed instruments, I was formerly the European Specialist Head of Sale for the musical instruments department at Christie's in London. I have been awarded a Curatorial Fellowship in Art History and another in Conservation Science from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and an honourary research fellow at London Metropolitan University. I have been a consultant for numerous musicians, collectors, museums and auction houses worldwide. I am available to be contacted for enquiries and professional consultations about musical instruments, and welcome discussion on research projects related to my field.
See:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-stradivarius-viol
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/nyregion/30violin.html
Contact Information
St Cross College
Oxford
OX1 3LZ