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John Butt's research has played a leading role in bringing historically informed music performance to professional and public audiences across the world. His recording of Messiah (2006) achieved critical acclaim and was presented with the Classic FM/Gramophone Baroque Vocal Album and the Marché International du Disque et de l'Edition Musicale Award. The recording also achieved commercial success for independent record producer, Linn Records with sales of over 20,000, and had a significant impact on Scotland's leading baroque ensemble, the Dunedin Consort, with seven more recordings of works by Bach and Handel, substantial royalty income, increased funding (including new subsidies) and new touring opportunities. This success has also enabled an active education outreach programme to develop both professional training and broader public interest.
Practice-led performance research at Oxford fosters dynamic, interactive relationships between academics and professional ensembles that are of huge cultural and economic impact to a wide variety of beneficiary groups. This case study presents two internationally recognised research-led groups - Phantasm and the Choir of New College, Oxford - whose work offers strong examples of social and cultural impact, including: a significant contribution to public understanding of English and European musical and cultural heritage; increased public access to previously inaccessible repertories; contribution to the local economy and tourism industry in Oxford; and the provision of unique educative opportunities for instrumentalists and singers.
The University of Huddersfield's performance-led research into the consort of viols and its relationship to the voice has resulted in familiar repertory being heard in new ways and the performance of music largely unknown to modern audiences. This work has earned international recognition through public performances, lecture-recitals, commercial CDs and radio broadcasts, influencing instrument makers, performers, concert promoters and audiences. Its importance is further evidenced by a close association with the National Centre for Early Music, advising on and leading events and the award of a £268,000 AHRC grant for the project The Making of the Tudor Viol.
With a series of three CDs, created by his ensemble The Dowland Project on the ECM label, Dr John Potter succeeded in bringing early vocal music that was formerly the preserve of the `classical' concert hall into the realm of contemporary practice, including jazz. The CDs and the public performances that followed them, influenced the creative practice of leading professional musicians from both sides of the jazz/classical divide, and directly inspired the creation of an innovative digital work by Ambrose Field (Being Dufay), which has itself received international acclaim through CD reviews and public performance in significant venues. Potter's work has played a significant part in the preservation and reinvigoration of musical heritage, while proposing and demonstrating a new creative approach to early music.
Extensive research conducted by Donald Burrows on the music and biography of Handel has had a significant impact on the way Handel's music is performed and heard. It has directly enabled and influenced a large number of public performances internationally, by a range of ensembles. It has also materially contributed to enhancing public awareness, and enjoyment of the music of this important composer, and of his historical significance, through publications and input to festivals, recordings, broadcasts and exhibitions. The research has facilitated and supported performances of Baroque music that are `authentic' in content and style, at a time when Handel's music has been a fundamental repertory for orchestras, choirs and opera companies.
This case study describes the impact of an AHRC-funded project examining the `St Emmeram Codex', a key source of early fifteenth-century European polyphony. Amongst the principal impacts of this research have been: (a) exposure of high-quality yet largely unknown repertoire for performers of late medieval music; (b) new insights into performance practice, enhanced prestige, and new performance opportunities for one of the project's collaborators, the German vocal group Stimmwerck; (c) increasing audience reach and understanding for this repertoire, through a series of concerts around Europe, over a period of six years; (d) creation of a highly distinctive and attractive offering for concert venues and a commercial CD company.
Stowell's research into historically informed performance (HIP) resulted from his concern that performances of music of the `long 18th century' have lacked historical accuracy and fidelity, and that genuine `period' techniques have been widely misrepresented. Through his publications, outreach and public engagement activities he has fired imaginations and illuminated practice, influencing performers and conductors to revise their performance approaches and transform their interpretations by drawing on the evidence-based `period' string techniques and style that he promotes. His making more explicit the relationship between musicology and practice has also enhanced audiences' knowledge and understanding of HIP, with `knock-on' impacts on the trans- national music entertainment and recording industries, and on individual professional careers.
Research on the history, repertoires and performance cultures of brass instruments has reconfigured the international music community's understanding of how brass instruments have been played in the past and has unveiled new repertoires. The results are new understandings of performance techniques and instrumentation that continue to influence creative practice among leading professional performers. The findings from the research are recognised as major points of reference for professional and amateur performers, and have also contributed to work in the heritage industry and to that of print and broadcast media professionals. The research has also been translated for wider consumption in pivotal publications such as Grove Music Online, which features new entries on bands and individual brass instruments. The research also inspired Music in Words, the seminal textbook for teachers and students of music performance outside the higher education sector.
The research community that has grown up around the Art of Record Production project is inextricably entwined with the professional and creative communities of record production practitioners and therefore the research permeates the practice and vice versa. The London College of Music (LCM) — University of West London (UWL), is at the heart of both of these communities, with staff immersed in both research and professional practice and is also engaging with the professional recording community through the Audio Engineering Society (AES). The highly vocational nature of the academic subject and the fact that research underpins the pedagogy means that LCM's research has a profound impact on professional practice. This comes from two directions. Firstly, this research has become central to pedagogy on record production in higher education around the world and is thus helping to shape the mind-set of the new wave of professional practitioners who are graduating from these courses. Secondly, the high level of engagement with the Art of Record Production projects by existing professionals, many of whom are now developing dual careers in academia, and their trade organisations means that they are engaging with, and even helping to shape, the research.
Recent work carried out in Cambridge has brought academic research and performance practice into multiple relationships; the impact of this work has been far-reaching and various. On the one hand, research on the origins of polyphony and on nineteenth-century piano music has impacted performance practice and, through this, the experiences and thinking of a broad listening public. Some of this research has enabled performers to revive scores long thought unperformable, while other work has empowered interpreters in ways that would have been unimaginable before the digital age. On the other hand, research that links polyphonic composition and performance practice with scientific thinking has explored the potential of the concert hall as an arena for research, turning music into a vehicle for public engagement with science. In this way, academic research informs and transforms musical performance and listener experience, while the practice of performance informs and transforms the understanding of music.