Research

Understanding music's contexts

The RCM’s Centre for Performance History, headed by Professor Paul Banks, seeks to bring together the unrivalled materials which are housed in its library, Museum of Instruments and the Portraits and Performance History Collection, for the purpose of illuminating the contexts in which music is created and performed.

The Centre for Performance History encourages musicians studying across all programmes to link the RCM’s rich heritage to present and future performance practices. Research is centred in the areas of:

• performance practice
• music history and aesthetics
• music businesses past and present

Performance practice

Under the leadership of Professor Colin Lawson, Director of the RCM and Ashley Solomon, Head of Performance Practice, the college has a strong reputation for the practical exploration of how to bring music’s past context to life in the present through concerts and recordings. Among the professoriate there are many performer-researchers working from historical sources – whether instruments, manuscripts and early printed editions, treatises, or historical accounts – to invigorate and illuminate practice. These include Rachel Brown, Jane Chapman, Terence Charlston, Dr Geoffrey Govier, David Graham, Janis Kelly, Norbert Meyn, Dr Ingrid Pearson (Research Fellow in Performance Practice ) and Robert Woolley.

Music history and aesthetics

With its roots in the 19th century, having been founded in 1883, the RCM boasts a strong team of scholars concerned with exploring the wider factors – aesthetic, socio-economic, and political – which have influenced the growth and make-up of the institution’s performance repertoire. These include Professor Amanda Glauert, Professor Paul Banks, Professor Richard Langham Smith, Dr Elisabeth Cook (Head of Academic Development & Undergraduate Programmes), Dr Natasha Loges (Assistant Head of Programmes), Dr PeterHorton (Deputy Librarian), Ivan Hewett and Dr Jane Roper.

Music businesses past and present

As a complement to its outstanding collections of musical instruments, manuscripts and early printed editions and concert programmes, the RCM has researchers working on the business of instrument-building (Jenny Nex, Curator of Musical Instruments), of music publishing and editing (Professor Paul Banks, Dr PeterHorton, Amelie Roper) and of concert programming and recording (Stephen Johns, Artistic Director).