Newcastle University

Introduction

My research focuses upon the music of late-medieval and early modern Europe, especially in the sources and contexts of early-Tudor polyphony. My teaching reflects these interests. I teach on several music modules in music history; medieval, renaissance and baroque music; techniques of counterpoint; notation and editing.

I read music at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating in 1990. After completing my DPhil thesis I was lecturer in music at Somerville College, Oxford, and then at Newcastle University (where I have been since 1997). 

Research

My interest is mainly in the music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, particularly in:

• music manuscripts (who copied them, how, where and for what purposes); 
• printed books of chant and polyphony (how they were produced and who bought them);
• in social and religious rituals (how they worked in practice, who participated, who didn't);
• musical cultures, especially outside the big urban centres;
• early organ music, both improvised and written-down;
• the critical editing of music (I am currently General Editor of the British Academy series, Early English Church Music).

I am also active as a performer.  In 1988 I became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, while I was organ scholar at Magdalen College, and won prizes as an improviser, giving recitals in the UK and abroad. More recently, my collaboration with the Early English Organ Project and with the ESRC/AHRC-funded Experience of Worship project has drawn together my academic interests and my experience as an improviser and church musician.   

Roles and Responsibilities

Senior Tutor in Music 

Qualifications and Awards

DPhil (Oxford): 'The Eton choirbook: its institutional and historical background' (1997)  

BA Hons in Music (first class), Magdalen College, Oxford (1990)

Fellow, Royal College of Organists, with Dixon Prize (1988)

Previous Positions

Lecturer in Music, Somerville College, Oxford (1995-7)

Director of Music, University Church of St Mary, Oxford (1992-7)

Assisting Organist, Magdalen College, Oxford (1990-1)

Memberships

American Musicological Society; Royal Musical Association; Renaissance Society of America; 
Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society

Languages

French; Latin

Research Interests

Medieval and Renaissance music
Liturgy and ritual
Social and political contexts
Reformation studies
Source studies

Other Expertise

Early English organ music
Performance
Improvisation
Editing early music

Current Work

Music and the Reformation in England, Scotland and France

The late-medieval parish and college: soundscapes and resources

Printed liturgical chant books of the sixteenth century

John Sheppard 

Future Research

French music, 1450-1700

Research Roles

General Editor, Early English Church Music

Postgraduate Supervision

Kirsten Gibson (PhD, completed 2005)

Numerous MMus candidates

Esteem Indicators

Expert Evaluator, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (2005)

Assessor, National Heritage Memorial Fund (2005)

Palisca Prize for outstanding edition, American Musicological Society (2011)

Funding

Early English Church Music: the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries (AHRB Resource Enhancement Scheme, February 2004-7)

Undergraduate Teaching

Music History

Counterpoint

and various historical/cultural options on subjects from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries

Postgraduate Teaching

Music Research Training

Notation and editing 

Performance Practice

• Williamson M. ‘The Quadring cow: making music in the pre-Reformation parish’. In: P. S. Barnwell, Sally Harper & Magnus Williamson, ed. The Experience of Late-Medieval Worship. 2013. In Preparation.
• Williamson M. John Sheppard, III: Hymns, Psalms, Antiphons and other Latin Polyphony. In: Williamson, M ed. Early English Church Music 2012. London: Stainer & Bell/British Academy, 54, 300.
• Williamson M. Affordable Splendour: Printing and Marketing the Sarum Antiphoner, 1519-20. Renaissance Studies 2012, 26(1), 60-87.
• Williamson M. The Eton Choirbook: Facsimile and Introductory Study. In: Bent, M ed. DIAMM Facsimiles 2010. Oxford, UK: Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music, 320.
• Williamson M. Double cantus firmus compositions in the Eton Choirbook. In: Maw, D., Hornby, E, ed. Essays on the History of English Music in Honour of John Caldwell: Sources, Style, Performance, Historiography. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2010, pp.162-184.
• Harrison FL, Williamson M, ed. The Eton Choirbook: III: third, revised and expanded edition. London: Stainer & Bell, 2010.
• Williamson M. The Will of John Boraston: Musicians within Collegiate and Parochial Communities. In: Burgess C; Heale M, ed. The Late Medieval English College and its Context. York: York Medieval Press, 2008, pp.180-198.
• Williamson M (organ), Choir of Caius College, Cambridge, dir. Geoffrey Webber. More Sweet to Hear: organs and voices of Tudor England. . Abingdon: OxRecs Digital, 2007.
• Williamson M. Liturgical Music in the Late Medieval Parish: Organs and Voices, Ways and Means. In: Burgess, C., Duffy, E, ed. The Parish in Late Medieval England: Proceedings of the 2002 Harlaxton Symposium. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2006, pp.177-242.
• Williamson M. Early English Organs and early Anglican liturgical polyphony: some considerations of performance practice. In: Royal College of Organists Yearbook 2004-2005. London, UK: Royal College of Organists, 2005, pp.46-53.
• Williamson M. Liturgical polyphony in the pre-reformation English paris church: A provisional list and commentary. Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 2005, 38, 1-43.
• Williamson M. Evangelicalism at Boston, Oxford, and Windsor under Henry VIII: John Foxe's narratives recontextualized'. In: Loades, D, ed. John Foxe at Home and Abroad. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004, pp.31-45.
• Skeaping L, Harper J, Gwynne D, Williamson M, The Cardinall's Musick, Carwood A. Music Restor'd. BBC Radio 3, 2001.
• Williamson M. The role of religious guilds in the cultivation of ritual polyphony in England: the case of Louth, 1450-1550. In: Kisby, F, ed. Music and Musicians in Renaissance Cities and Towns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp.82-93.
• Williamson M. Pictura et scriptura - The 'Eton Choirbook' in its iconographical context. Early Music 2000, 28(3), 359-380.
• Williamson M. 'Royal Image-making and Textual Interplay in Gilbert Banaster's O Maria et Elizabeth'. Early Music History 2000, 19, 237-278.
• Magnus Williamson. 'The Early Tudor Court, the Provinces and the Eton Choirbook'. Early Music 1997, 25(2), 229-43.
• Magnus Williamson. The Eton Choirbook: music-making within the collegiate context. In: Benjamin Thompson, ed. The Reign of Henry VII: proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium. Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1995, pp.213-28.
• Williamson M. The Eton Choirbook Project. Newcastle: ICMuS/CETL4MusicNE, 2012. Available at: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/etonchoirbook/about.html.