Contributors to Understanding Bach

Suzanne Aspden UB 5 (2010) is a University Lecturer at the University of Oxford. Her research interests centre on eighteenth-century opera and issues of performance and identity; publications have appeared in JAMS, COJ, JRMA and elsewhere. Her book on the reputed rivalry between the singers Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni in 1720s London will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2011/12. Her next book project concerns opera and national identity in the eighteenth century. She is currently co-editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal.
Rachel Baldock UB 3 (2008) is a freelance oboist and an AHRC research scholar at the Royal Academy of Music in London. After gaining a First Class BA degree in Music at Cambridge University and a Distinction in Performance and Research at Masters level at the Royal Academy of Music, she is continuing her academic studies with doctoral research into dynamic markings in C. P. E. Bach’s instrumental music alongside performing regularly with many British leading period instrument ensembles.
Manuel Bärwald UB 6 (2011) is a doctoral student at Leipzig University and research assistant at the Bach-Archiv Leipzig. From 2003 to 2009 he studied musicology at Leipzig University. Between 2007 and 2009 he researched the Leipzig newspapers of Bach's time for the project ‘Expedition Bach’. Since 2009 he has been responsible for research into archival documents relating to the Bach family and the history of baroque music in Central Germany. In his doctoral dissertation he will present new documents concerning Leipzig opera and concert performances in the time of Johann Sebastian Bach.
John Butt UB 1 (2006) holds the Gardiner Chair of Music at the University of Glasgow. His research has ranged over aspects of the ontology of music in the seventeenth century, listenership, and music and emotion. His most recent book is a study of Bach's Passions Bach's Dialogue with Modernity, which attempts to place Bach within the broader context of Western cultural history through detailed analysis of the music. As Musical Director of Edinburgh's Dunedin Consort he has made several award-winning recordings of Bach and Handel, and travels widely as a conductor and organist. He was awarded the 2011 Royal Academy of Music/Kohn Foundation Bach Prize.

Donald Burrows UB 6 (2011) is Professor of Music at the Open University, and a leading scholar of the music of George Frideric Handel. He read History and Music at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and completed his PhD at the Open University in 1981. He is Vice-President of the Händel-Gesellschaft, and Chairman of the Handel Institute. He has published numerous critical editions and books including The Cambridge Companion to Handel (Cambridge, 1997), Händel and the English Chapel Royal (Oxford, 2005), and Handel (Oxford, 2nd edition, 2012). 
Dalia Cohen UB 3 (2008) (d. 2013) is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Musicology at The Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Academy of Music. Her research interests include music theory, universals in music, music perception and cognition, learned and natural musical schemata, style as determined by both the aesthetic ideal and cognitive constraints, vocal communication among humans and animals, symmetry in music, musical language of Bach, Arab music in theory and practice.
 
Elise Crean UB 3 (2008) and UB 5 (2010) is a doctoral scholar at Queen’s University Belfast. After gaining a First Class BMus degree and a Distinction in Music at Master’s level, she is currently researching the historical and musical context of Bach’s canons under the supervision of Professor Yo Tomita. She is expecting to complete her PhD in 2011. She co-edited Understanding Bach’s B-minor Mass, 1 (Belfast, 2007) for the International Symposium: Understanding Bach’s B-minor Mass.  
Ian Cross UB 2 (2007) is Reader in Music and Science and is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, where he is also Director of the Faculty’s Centre for Music and Science. He has published widely in the field of music cognition. His current research focus is on the exploration of music as a biocultural phenomenon, involving collaboration with psychologists, engineers, anthropologists and archaeologists.

Alison Dunlop UB 3 (2008) is a PhD student under the supervision of Yo Tomita at Queen’s University Belfast having earlier graduated with a First Class BA degree in Modern Greek and Music, and a Distinction in Music at Masters level. In 2007 she designed and produced the exhibition and accompanying catalogue ’Bach’s B-minor Mass Performed in Foreign Lands’ for the International Symposium: Understanding Bach's B-minor Mass.

Ruth HaCohen UB 1 (2006) and UB 4 (2009) holds the Artur Rubinstein Chair of Musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In her work she seeks to explicate the role played by Western music in shaping and reflecting wide aesthetic and cultural processes, extending from baroque to modern music. Among her recent publications is: Tuning the Mind: Connecting Aesthetic Theory to Cognitive Science, Transaction, 2003 (with Ruth Katz). Her study on Vocal Fictions of Noise and Harmony: The Music Libel against the Jews was published in 2010.
 
Martin W. B. Jarvis UB 3 (2008) is Associate Professor at Charles Darwin University and Artistic Director of the Darwin Symphony Orchestra, and in 2007 was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for services to music. He is currently exploring the application of Forensic Document Examination techniques to Bach manuscripts in conjunction with leading international FDE expert Dr Bryan Found.
 

Richard Jones UB 3 (2008) is an English Bach scholar well known for his editions and translations, among which are the edition of Clavierübung I (Neue Bach-Ausgabe), the edition of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (Associated Board), and his recent translation of Alfred Dürr’s classic Die Kantaten von J. S. Bach. The first volume of his two-volume work The Creative Development of J. S. Bach was published in December 2006.

 
Tanja Kovačević UB 3 (2008), UB 5 (2010), UB 7 (2012) and UB 8 (2013) read Musicology and English at the University of Zagreb, and completed her undergraduate studies at Queen’s University Belfast, where she also studied for her PhD. Her thesis Trailing the Sources: In Pursuit of a European Picture of Bach Reception in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries is expected to appear as a book in 2014. She was arts correspondent for the bi-weekly broadsheets Vijenac and Zarez, and co-edited Understanding Bach’s B-minor Mass, 2 (Belfast, 2007). From 2008 she has served as editor of the Bach Bibliography Review Section, and has been on the Editorial Team of Understanding Bach since January 2010
 
 
Reinhold Kubik UB 4 (2009) had a career as opera Kapellmeister before studying musicology, art history and theatre history. He took his doctorate with a dissertation on Handel’s Rinaldo. His work has primarily been in musical editing (Hänssler Verlag, Universal Edition); since 1992 he has directed the Critical Edition of the complete works of Gustav Mahler, and in 2000 he edited all of Bach's church cantatas for John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach Pilgrimage (2000). Stage realisation of baroque opera, and Lieder recitals with historical gesture in collaboration with his wife, Margit Legler remain an important focus.
 
Robin A. Leaver UB 3 (2008), UB 5 (2010) and UB 7 (2012) is Emeritus Professor of Sacred Music at Westminster Choir College, where he taught for almost twenty-five years; currently Visiting Professor at Yale University, and at Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is a past president of both the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Hymnologie and the American Bach Society, and the author of numerous books and articles in the cross-disciplinary areas of liturgy, church music, theology, and hymnology, published in four continents, with significant contributions to Luther, Schütz and Bach studies.
 
David Ledbetter UB 6 (2011) is an internationally recognised authority on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century keyboard music, with particular research interests in how an understanding of context and structure may deepen and enrich performance. His publications include Harpsichord and Lute Music in 17th-Century France (Macmillan, 1987), Continuo Playing According to Handel (Oxford University Press, 1990), Bach's Well-tempered Clavier (Yale University Press, 2002), and (with Simon Rowland-Jones) a new performing edition of Haydn’s string quartets (Peters Edition)
 
 
Margit Legler UB 4 (2009) has worked for many years as a professional dancer having studied baroque singing and gesture. She teaches stage performance, according to historically-oriented performance practice, in Vienna and in numerous workshops across Europe. She has directed operas by Mozart (Die Zauberflöte), Gassmann (Il trionfo d’amore), Gluck (Il Parnaso confuso), and Purcell (Dido and Aeneas) for the Halle Handel Festival at the Goethe theatre (1797) in Bad Lauchstädt. For this performance she founded her own student ensemble (L’Azione Teatrale), which she directs in collaboration with her husband, Reinhold Kubik.
 
Mattias Lundberg UB 8 (2013) is an Associate Professor at the Department of Musicology, University of Uppsala, Head of Rare Collections at the Swedish National Collectons of Music, and collaborator in the Swedish working group of Répertoire International des Sources Musicales. He has published books, articles and critical editions pertaining to a range of topics on  music theory, counterpoint, liturgy in early modern Lutheranism. 
 
 
Michael Maul UB 3 (2008) and UB 4 (2009) was born in Leipzig, studied musicology, journalism and business studies. In 2006 he obtained the doctorate in musicology at the Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg with a dissertation on Baroque Opera in Leipzig (1693–1720), which appeared as a book in 2009.  Since 2002 Maul has been working in the Bach Archive in Leipzig. His publications focus on Johann Sebastian Bach and German music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 2008 he was appointed a council member of the Neue Bachgesellschaft.
 
Susan McCormick UB 8 (2013) is a doctoral student at Queen's University Belfast. In 2007 she graduated with a first class Bachelor of Music degree, specialising in pedagogy, from DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama. After completing a Postgraduate Diploma in Education at Trinity College Dublin, she gained a Distinction in Music at Master's level from Queen's University Belfast in 2009. She is currently studying at the Bach-Archiv Leipzig as a DAAD award holder. Her forthcoming doctoral dissertation will examine the chorales of Johann Christian Kittel.
 
Ian Mills UB 3 (2008) and UB 5 (2010) is a prize-winning organist and choir director and in 2008 was the youngest Cathedral Organist in the UK. Having gained a First Class BMus and a Distinction at Master’s level he continued his academic studies with a doctoral dissertation on the reception of Bach’s Great Eighteen chorale preludes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which he plans to complete in 2011. He co-edited Understanding Bach’s B-minor Mass, 1 (Belfast 2007) for the International Symposium: Understanding Bach’s B-minor Mass.

Julian Mincham UB 4 (2009) was Chair and Curriculum Leader of Music at Middlesex University  until 2005, leaving it to devote more time to research. His present main interests include researching, presenting and improvising piano scores for films of  the ‘silent movie’ era (e.g. Keaton, Chaplin and Lloyd) and the Bach cantatas. His five-year project on the latter has been in the public domain since 2010.

Szymon Paczkowski UB 2 (2007) is a lecturer at the University of Warsaw.  Following his doctoral research in Warsaw, Freiburg and Tübingen he published his first book Nauka o afektach w myśli muzycznej I połowy XVII wieku  (The musical doctrine of affections of the first half of the seventeenth century) in 1998. Currently in preparation is his monograph on the allegorical meaning of the Polish style in eighteenth-century German music. He was chairman in 2006 of the highly acclaimed 12th Biennial Conference of Baroque Music in Warsaw, and in 2009 became a member of the Bach Network UK Advisory Council.

Joshua Rifkin UB 5 (2010) Joshua Rifkin’s work as performer and scholar has included many concerts, recordings and writings devoted to Bach. His edition of the B minor mass was published in 2006, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750): Messe h-moll BWV232, ed. Joshua Rifkin (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2006).

 

Stephen Rose UB 3 (2008) is Lecturer in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the Reviews Editor (Books & Music) of Early Music. His publications examine German music in its social, material and performing contexts, with a particular focus on printing and the book trade. His book on the novels and autobiographies written by German Baroque musicians was published in 2011. He became a member of the Bach Network UK Advisory Council in 2009
Irmgard Scheitler UB 4 (2009) has studied Theology, German Literature and Byzantine Studies and is professor at Würzburg University, teaching modern German philology. Her research includes travel literature, contemporary novel and poetry of the romantic era. A focus of her interests are the interactions between music and text (Lied, hymn, cantata); her most recent publication is Deutsche Oratorienlibretti. Von den Anfängen bis 1730. She is presently holding a research scholarship, preparing a major study on incidental music in German drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Burkhard Schwalbach UB 3 (2008) is an AHRC scholar reading for a DPhil at Magdalen College, Oxford under the supervision of Professor Laurence Dreyfus. Graduating from King’s College, London with a First Class BMus and the Purcell Prize in Music for the best result in the final examinations, he continued his studies there, gaining a Distinction in a MMus specialising in Historical Musicology. He is currently preparing a thesis on J. S. Bach’s social and creative environment in eighteenth-century Leipzig.
Yael Sela UB 5 (2010) Following doctoral studies at Oxford university, she has been a postdoctoral fellow in musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 2008, where she is expanding her research on women's music manuscripts and domestic musical culture in early modern England and Germany. Recipients of various grants, including the AHRC doctoral award, Ireen Alm Memorial Prize and two research grants from the DAAD in 2010 and 2011 to embark on a project dealing with Jewish patronage of music in Berlin, 1770-1830.

 

Tatiana Shabalina UB 4 (2009) is a Professor at the St Petersburg State Conservatoire (Piano and Musicological Departments). She is author of a series of books on J. S. Bach’s life and works and editor of the Clavierübung and the Flute Sonatas. Her recent contributions to Bach studies include the discovery of a Bach autograph in Pushkin-House, St. Petersburg and other Bach sources in various Russian archives and libraries. She is currently compiling a catalogue of Texte zur Music in St. Petersburg and preparing a book on Bach sources in Russia.
Peter Smaill UB 4 (2009) and UB 8 (2013) is chairman of an Investment Trust, Core plc. At Edinburgh University he was a tenor in its Renaissance Singers. His lifelong study of the Bach Cantatas has resulted in a complete survey of the oeuvre along with the online Bach cantatas website (www.bach-cantatas.com). His interest in analysing the theological tendencies of Bach's vocal works is complemented by research into the numerological evidence in works such as the hybrid St Luke Passion. Becoming a trustee of BNUK in 2008, he was elected Chair of the Trustees in 2010.
Eberhard Spree UB 8 (2013) has been a member of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Leipzig, since 1989. After discovering the Registers of Ursula Erbstollen in early 2010, he has written extensively and lectured on Bach's mining shares. His ongoing research into the subject has led to the discovery of many additional documents bearing the name of J. S. Bach, specifically in the Mining Archive at Freiberg.   
Andrew Stewart UB 1 (2006) is a freelance music journalist and critic based in London, regularly contributing to consumer and trade magazines. He is currently researching the post-war reception of Wilhelm Furtwängler and the intervention of selective memory in music journalism. His musical activities include theartistic direction of Southwark Voices, a professional chamber choir.

Reinhard Strohm UB 1 (2006), UB 4 (2009) UB 6 (2011) is Professor of Music at Oxford University and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. He is interested in late medieval music, the history of opera, eighteenth-century composers (Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, A. Scarlatti) and the historiography of music. His publications include critical editions of music, libretto translations and the books, Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985), Dramma per musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven & London, 1997), The Eighteenth-Century Diaspora of Italian Music and Musicians (Turnhout, 2001) and The Operas of Antonio Vivaldi (Florence, 2008).

Ruth Tatlow UB 1 (2006), UB 2 (2007), UB 3 (2008), UB 5 (2010), UB 6 (2011), UB 7 (2012) and UB 8 (2013) is a freelance musicologist and Docent of Stockholm University, currently researching a project funded by the Swedish Research Council (2013–2015). Since publication of Bach and the Riddle of the Number Alphabet, her research has focused on the use of numbers in compositional theory and practice. She co-founded Bach Network UK in 2004, founded Understanding Bach in 2006, from January 2010 she has been Chair of the BNUK Advisory Council and serves on the Editorial Teams of both BNUK and the American Bach Society. 

Yo Tomita UB 2 (2007), UB 6 (2011), UB 7 (2012) and UB 8 (2013) was Reader at Queen’s University, Belfast, becoming Professor in 2008. His research interests include Bach Studies (in particular the Well-Tempered Clavier II ), the pedagogical aspects of piano education, text-critical analysis using Artificial Intelligence techniques, manuscript studies, and the development of computer software and tools for musicology. He maintains the on-line Bach Bibliography. He was a trustee of Bach Network UK from 2006, becoming a founder member of the Advisory Council in 2009 and from 2010 a member of the Editorial team of Understanding Bach. 
 
Isabella van Elferen UB 2 (2008) and UB 7 (2012) is assistant professor of Music and Media at Utrecht University (NL). She has published widely on baroque sacred music, film and TV music, videogame music, and Gothic theory and subcultures. She is the author of Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny (2012), Mystical Love in the German Baroque: Theology—Poetry—Music (2009), and the editor of Nostalgia or Perversion? Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day (2007). She is editor for The Soundtrack, member of the advisory board of Horror Studies and guest editor of the Journal for the Fantastic in the Arts (2013).
 
Christoph Wolff UB 2 (2007) is Adams University Professor at Harvard University. He serves as Director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig, Chair of the Akademie für Mozart-Forschung in Salzburg, and President of the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales. He has published widely on the history of music from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries.
 
Peter Wollny UB 3 (2008) is head of research at the Bach Archive in Leipzig, General Editor of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Collected Works, Editor of the Wilhelm-Friedemann-Bach-Ausgabe, Editor of the Bach-Jahrbuch and of the Jahrbuch Mitteldeutsche Barockmusik. His numerous publications include editions in the Neue Bach Ausgabe series, books and articles on the Bach family and on the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music.