RCM Research Partnership Awarded AHRC Grant

Wednesday 28 June 2017

A three-year research partnership between the Royal College of Music and the University of Southampton has been awarded a £665,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for 'Music, Home and Heritage: Sounding the Domestic in Georgian Britain'.

The project has been designed by Dr Wiebke Thormählen, the RCM’s Area Leader in History, and Professor Jeanice Brooks and Dr Katrina Faulds from the University of Southampton, and it explores how listening to and performing music affected the construction of home and family life in Georgian Britain. Taking specific country houses and music collections as the basis for a series of case studies, it will also explore new and innovative ways of integrating our understanding into the ways we interpret heritage today.

Over the next three years the research team will work in collaboration with the British Library, National Trust, Sydney Living Museums and Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust. A range of musicians (who may well include RCM students and professors), dancers and technical staff will explore musical genres such as dance music, oratorio and opera, that linked familial leisure with forms of public entertainment.

Dr Wiebke Thormählen commented: 'I'm thrilled to have received this major AHRC grant and very excited to expand our knowledge of the sounding history of Georgian domestic life. I look forward to working in a fantastic team of historians and heritage experts, and I am especially delighted that we will have the chance to involve RCM musicians in our research.'