Staff Profile

Background

I am a Research Associate on the "Music, Heritage, Place: Unlocking the Musical Collections of England's County Record Offices", an AHRC-funded collaborative project between Royal Holloway and Newcastle University. I have also been the County Editor of the Northamptonshire Victoria County History project since 2020.

Qualifications

• PhD ('Music Publishing and Compositional Activity, 1650-1700’), AHRC-funded
• MMus, with Distinction
• PGDip in Archives and Records Management, with Distinction
• PGCE (Secondary Music)
• BMus (Hons), First Class

Google Scholar: Click here.

Research Interests 

My research focuses on musical culture in early modern England. My published work includes articles on music ownership and circulation, the role of the publisher as music editor, and the sale of printed music outside London. Most recently, I have worked on the music print trade, networks and recreational music-making in Cambridge and Newcastle upon Tyne. I co-edited, with Kirsten Gibson and Roz Southey, Music in North-East England, 1500-1800 (Boydell, 2020) and, with Simon D.I. Fleming, The Music Trade in Regional Britain, 1650-1800 (Boydell, 2025).

Current Work 

My current work continues to focus on printed music books in early modern England, placing them within the wider context of the full range of activities that comprise the commercial music trade. I am researching the movement of musical goods via the domestic coastal trade (thanks to funding from the Bibliographical Society) and evidence of music-making activities in the Duke of Northumberland’s archives at Alnwick Castle (thanks to funding from the Music & Letters Trust and the Bibliographical Society) and music activities at late 17th-century Carlisle Cathedral.

• Articles

  • Carter S. Thomas Mace and Music in Seventeenth-Century Cambridge. Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 2022, 28(1).
  • Carter S, Gibson K. Printed Music in the Provinces: Musical Circulation in Seventeenth-Century England and the Case of Newcastle upon Tyne Bookseller William London. The Library 2017, 18(4), 428-473.
  • Carter S. 'Yong Beginners, Who Live in the Countrey': John Playford and the Printed Music Market in Seventeenth-Century England. Early Music History 2016, 35, 95-129.

• Book Chapters

  • Carter S. Musick’s Hand-maid in Westmorland: A Story of the Music Trade in Early Modern England. In: Carter, S; Fleming, SDI, ed. The Music Trade in Regional Britain, 1650-1800. Boydell Press, 2025, pp.18-33.
  • Carter S, Fleming SDI. London and Beyond: Rethinking a Nation’s Trade in Music. In: Carter, S; Fleming, SDI, ed. The Music Trade in Regional Britain, 1650-1800. Boydell Press, 2025, pp.1-17.
  • Carter S. Thomas Mace and the Publication by Subscription of Musick’s Monument (1676). In: Fleming S; Perkins M, ed. Music by Subscription: Composers and their Networks in the British Music-Publishing Trade, 1676-1820. New York: Routledge, 2022, pp.21-38.
  • Gibson K, Carter S. Amateur Music Making Amongst the Mercantile Community of Newcastle upon Tyne from the 1690s to the 1750s. In: Carter S; Gibson K; Southey R, ed. Music in North-East England, 1500-1800. Martlesham, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2020, pp.192-215.
  • Carter S. Published Musical Variants and Creativity: An Overview of John Playford's Role as Editor. In: Rebecca Herissone and Alan Howard, ed. Concepts of Creativity in Seventeenth-Century England. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013, pp.87-104.

• Edited Books

  • Carter S, ed. A History of Northamptonshire Volume VIII: Towcester, Parish and Hundred. Boydell Press, 2026. In Press.
  • Carter S, Fleming SDI, ed. The Music Trade in Regional Britain, 1650-1800. Boydell Press, 2025.
  • Carter S, Gibson K, Southey R, ed. Music in North-East England, 1500-1800. Martlesham, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2020.

• Reviews

  • Carter S. Review of Alison C. DeSimone, The Power of Pastiche: Musical Miscellany and Cultural Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Clemson: Clemson University Press, 2021) . Eighteenth-Century Music 2024, 21(1), 65-66.
  • Carter S. Review of Music and the Benefit Performance in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Edited by Matthew Gardner and Alison DeSimone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2020. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 2021, 44(3), 316-318.
  • Tritton, S. 'Songs from the Shows', Review of Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, eds., The Monthly mask of vocal musick 1702-1711. A facsimile edition. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). Early Music 2008, 36(4), 637-8.