Staff Profiles

Background

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). 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 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 background as an improviser and church musician. In 1988 I became a fellow of the Royal College of Organists (with the Dixon Prize for improvisation).

External Roles

General Editor, Early English Church Music (British Academy)

Internal Roles

UoA Co-ordinator, Music

Previous Posts

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 Medieval Music Society

Languages

French; Latin

Google Scholar: Click here.

Research Interests

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries:

• musical contexts: social, ritual, spatial
• loss, damage and restoration: reconstructing lacunary polyphony, re-imagining mutilated and lost spaces
• musical sources: manuscripts, chant and polyphony in print; choirbooks and partbooks, provenance and purpose; palaeography, codicology, notation, editing, formats: for instance, the Petre Gradual in Newcastle University's Robinson Library
• change and upheaval, reform, innovation, reaction
• organ and choral music in early-Tudor England
• performance, particularly improvisation

Current Work

Since the 1990s I have focused on musical sources and contexts of the late Middle Ages, mainly in Britain, but more recently in France as well. I have several on-going research projects on the soundscape of the pre-Reformation parish, the printing of music books (particularly the oft-neglected but very significant corpus of printed chant books), and the Chapel Royal under the Tudors. Often mutually antagonistic, but culturally interconnected, Renaissance France and Tudor England make for interesting comparisons, not least in their divergent responses to religious change.

I have been Principal Investigator on various RCUK-funded projects, including Tudor Partbooks: The manuscript legacies of John Sadler, John Baldwin and their antecedents (Co-I: Dr Julia Craig-McFeely of Oxford University and DIAMM) (AHRC, 2014-17). More details can be found on the ICMuS Research pages and the Tudor Partbooks project site.

Future Research

Pipeline projects include:

• musical cultures and contexts in France from the English invasion to the wars of religion (1340s-1560s)
• spatial and acoustic experiences in medieval Europe, 1000-1500

Postgraduate Supervision

I welcome inquiries from anyone interested in pursuing research on Renaissance musical sources, North European historical contexts, sixteenth-century contrapuntal techniques, keyboard improvisation, editing, and notation. 

Recent Esteem Indicators

Leverhulme Trust: Visiting Professorship, Dr Kerry McCarthy (autumn 2017): host

University Research Committee: Visiting Professorship, Dr John Milsom (2015): host

LE STUDIUM® Research Fellow, Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université François-Rabelais de Tours, France (2013-14): guest

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

Current Research Projects

Animating Texts at Newcastle University: AtNU is a large project investigating Digital Technology and the Humanities; led by Professor Jennifer Richards (English Literature), with Professor Michael Rossington (English Literature); Professor Paul Watson (Digital Institute); Dr James Cummings (English Literature). We have been awarded a grant of £476,132 by Newcastle University to develop a new field of study, Digital Technology and the Humanities.Over three years we are exploring how the digital can complement rather than replace the print edition, exploring different ways of understanding, explaining, and experiencing text as mobile, variable, adaptable, performable, while also helping us to re-imagine the reading experience.

Tudor Partbooks: the manuscript legacies of John Sadler, John Baldwin and their antecedents (AHRC, 2014-17): PI

The Sarum Hymnal in Manuscript and Print (British Academy, 2017-18): PI

Creative Exchanges (ARHC): Co-I

Early English Church Music: the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries (AHRB, 2004-7): PI

 

Undergraduate Teaching

Music History from the ninth to the seventeenth centuries, particularly 1400-1550

Historic Compositional Techniques

Dissertation

Edition and transcription

Postgraduate Teaching

Research methods in medieval and early modern studies

Notation and editing 

Performance practices

• Williamson M. Making do? Musical participation in an early Tudor college. In: John Watts, ed. Renaissance College. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, pp.143-159. In Press.
• Williamson M. Playing the organ, Tudor-style: some thoughts on improvisation, composition and memorisation. In: David Smith, ed. Aspects of English Keyboard Music Before 1630. London and New York: Routledge, 2019, pp.99-122.
• Williamson M. Polyphonic Music at St Stephen's: spaces, networks, aftermath. In: John Cooper, Caroline Shenton, Miles Taylor and Tim Ayers, ed. St Stephen's Chapel and the Palace of Westminster. London: Paul Mellon Centre, 2019. Submitted.
• Williamson M. Revisiting the soundscape of the medieval parish. In: David Harry and Christian Steer, ed. The Urban Church in Late Medieval England. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2019, pp.17-35.
• Williamson M. English Organ Music, 1350-1550: a study of sources and contexts. In: Iain Quinn, ed. Studies in English Organ Music. London: Routledge, 2018, pp.97-121.
• Williamson M. Musica ficta. In: Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Historical Performance in Music. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp.424-5.
• Hogg B, Williamson MG. Lost Voices. . 2017.
• Williamson M. Parish music in late-medieval England: local, regional, national identities. In: B. Kümin & M. Ferrari, ed. Pfarreien in der Vormoderne: Identität und Kultur im Niederkirchenwesen Europas. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017, pp.209-244.
• Williamson MG. Queen Mary’s Big Belly: Hope for an heir in Catholic England. Perivale, Middx: Signum SIGCD464, 2017.
• Williamson M. Chorus vel organa: Music from the Lost Palace of Westminster [CD recording]. Wallyford, East Lothian: Delphian Records, 2016. CD.
• Williamson M. Quadring Cows: Resourcing Music in the Pre-Reformation Parish. In: Harper S; Barnwell PS; Williamson M, ed. Late-Medieval Liturgies Enacted: The Experience of Worship in Cathedral and Parish Church. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2016, pp.125-153.
• Williamson M. Queen Mary I, Tallis’s O sacrum convivium and a Latin Litany. Early Music 2016, 44(2), 251-270.
• Williamson M. The fate of the choirbook in Protestant Europe. Journal of the Alamire Foundation 2015, 7(2), 117-131, 135 (plate).
• Williamson M. Voices from the past: the delicate art of reconstructing Tudor partbooks. Choir & Organ 2015, 23(4), 25-27.
• Williamson M. Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England: Discourses, Sites and Identities, by Jonathan Willis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). English Historical Review 2014, 129(538), 707-709.
• Williamson M. Affordable splendour: editing, printing and marketing the Sarum Antiphoner (1519–20). Renaissance Studies 2012, 26(1), 60-87.
• Williamson M. John Sheppard, III: Hymns, Psalms, Antiphons and other Latin Polyphony. In: Williamson, M ed. Early English Church Music 2012. London: Stainer & Bell, for the British Academy, 54, 300.
• Williamson M. The Eton Choirbook Project. Newcastle: ICMuS/CETL4MusicNE, 2012. Available at: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/etonchoirbook/.
• Williamson M. Double cantus firmus Compositions in the Eton Choirbook. In: Hornby, E., Maw, D, ed. Essays on the History of English Music in Honour of John Caldwell: Sources, Style, Performance, Historiography. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2010, pp.162-184.
• 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.
• 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.