Historically and culturally informed analysis
In recent years, music analysis has begun to re-emerge in newly contextualised ways, following the debates about its role that took place during the 1980s and 1990s.
Our research staff at Manchester are playing a key role in establishing methodologies that develop historically and culturally informed approaches to analysis of repertories across several different periods.
These include:
- Rebecca Herissone's reinterpretation of surviving primary musical sources from the 16th and 17th centuries according to the purposes for which the documents were created and their practical functions, and her research seeking to revive understanding of how humanist rhetorical principles governed creativity in the arts in the early modern period;
- Anne Hyland's analytical research on Schubert's formal strategies, which aims to shift the focus away from an assumed Beethovenian model towards a focus on lyric processes that reflects more accurately the originating circumstances of his string quartets;
- Chloe Alaghband-Zadeh's approach to the analysis of north-Indian classical music, which brings contemporary listening and performing practices to the fore.
Staff in this core research area
Synthesising ethnomusicological and analytical approaches to understanding north Indian classical music.
Historically and culturally informed approaches to analysis of 18th- and early 19th-century music.
Historically informed analytical approaches to the 20th-century symphony.
Historically informed analysis of creativity and creative processes in the early modern period; ontologically informed analysis of early music through primary notated sources.
Historicist approaches to analysis of early 19th-century Austro-Germanic chamber music.