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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.
Clive Brown's research has had impact worldwide, informing and influencing high-profile professional musicians, those in and delivering education, and for amateurs and listeners. Recognised as a leading expert in the performance of classical and romantic music, he has advised many specialist musicians working in that area, making a far-reaching contribution to pedagogy, and providing performers with fresh insights into repertoire and relevant practice. This has had an important effect on major performing and recording ensembles. The relationship between compositional practice and performance is a central concern, as is the relevance of historically significant editions and performing materials.
Dibble's research on Britain and Ireland's neglected Victorian and Edwardian composers, particularly Hubert Parry (1848-1918), Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) and John Stainer (1840-1901), together with his public engagement and media work, has had a considerable influence on British musical culture. As a result of Dibble's research there has been a substantial increase in the performance, programming and recording of works by these composers, leading to enhanced awareness, enjoyment and understanding of this repertory and its importance to the nation's musical heritage. This research has also led to increased public access to archival documents related to this music, brought work to orchestras and choirs and contributed to the sales generated by music, CD and DVD publishers.
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.
This research has had a significant impact on raising the profile of the Polish born composer Mieczysław Weinberg. Prior to Professor Fanning's work little was known in the West about this composer's extensive musical output and his music was rarely performed. Professor Fanning's research has enhanced public and professional awareness of the music of Weinberg, impacting on musicians, record companies, arts venues and audiences in Britain and Europe. It has led to the first ever performance cycle of his 17 string quartets as well as world premieres of his Requiem and his comic opera Lady Magnesia, alongside other performances and numerous recordings. The research has established the University of Manchester as the main repository of information and source material concerning Weinberg in the Western world.
Roger Parker's case study involves his critical edition of Donizetti's opera Le Duc d'Albe, which was given its world premiere at Vlaamse Opera (Belgium) with an international cast in May-June 2012. This edition made available to the public, for the first time, what is in effect a new Donizetti opera, never before (even in the composer's lifetime) performed in its original language and in this particular configuration. The impact of the performances is demonstrable in international reviews and in the fact that a commercial recording of the opera is now planned (by Opera Rara of London).
Julian Johnson's work on the contemporary status and meaning of Viennese musical modernism and its relation to ideas of social modernity has had impact well beyond academia. Through broadcasts, public lectures, consultancies, essays, programme notes and web-based documentaries for international music festivals he has shaped the presentation of Mahler's music, and that of his contemporaries, for the general public. These activities, undertaken with institutions such as the BBC, the South Bank Centre, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Glyndebourne Opera, have made a long-standing, substantial and far-reaching contribution to public discourse around this repertoire, and to its heightened appreciation.
Learning from the Past is a priority in the RCM's research strategy, building on the College's reputation for bringing music's context to life, whether through concerts, recordings or text-based outputs. The rich RCM Collections provide a stimulating environment for advancing dialogue across the theory and practice of music. RCM Director Colin Lawson, an internationally recognised clarinettist, takes a lead in working from historical sources (often from within the RCM) to invigorate and illuminate performance. His multifaceted research and his leadership across the institution and beyond have radically advanced the understanding of music across a wide range of national and international beneficiaries, including the general public, the business community and the public sector. He challenges the cultural values and sociological assumptions of performance practice in ways which enrich the lives, imaginations and sensibilities of a broad cross-section of society.
`Anya 17 is not just an opera. It's a campaign' (cast member's blog, http://tinyurl.com/ne64uqt).
Anya 17 (an opera about human trafficking), first performed in March 2012, generated wide media and civil society attention. 13 UK and international anti-trafficking campaigning groups have endorsed the opera and used it to raise awareness and help leverage their agenda to change legislation. Third sector and media attention has taken the research to a wider community than just the original audience, winning recognition and enabling follow-through of various kinds. Collaboration, publicity and support from NGOs has enabled Anya17 to further its reach internationally, with performances in Romania, Germany, the UK and the USA in the near future creating opportunities for developing further impacts on opera audiences, campaigning organisations, wider civil society and government in Europe and America.
The opera Knight Crew by Julian Philips provides a model for how contemporary large-scale opera can excite young people for whom the medium is often perceived as excluding and exclusive.
Knight Crew's impacts were both direct and indirect: direct through the involvement of young people with little or no experience of opera in the development and performance of the work; indirect through the international influence the various studies and evaluations of the opera have had on subsequent initiatives within opera and education.