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Dr Christopher Wiley guest-edits special issue of the Journal of Musicological Research on musical biography

27 October 2019

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JMR 38 3-4

Dr Christopher Wiley has guest-edited a special double-issue of the Journal of Musicological Research together with co-editor Dr Paul Watt (Monash University, Melbourne).

Entitled ‘Musical Biography: Myth, Ideology, and Narrative’, the special issue comprises Vol. 38, Nos. 3–4 of the journal, and developed originally from a conference on musical biography co-organized by the editors in 2015.

The special issue includes articles by a wide range of international scholars: Kirsty Asmussen, Anna Maria Barry, Joanne Cormac, Uri Golomb and Ronit Seter, Markéta Kratochvílová, Emily MacGregor, Richard Parfitt, Paul Watt, and Christopher Wiley.

Dr Wiley’s contribution to the special issue includes his 10,000-word article, ‘Myth-Making and the Politics of Nationality in Narratives of J.S. Bach’s 1717 Contest with Louis Marchand’ (pp. 193–215), which examines the widely divergent writing on a single biographical episode across the countries and centuries (see abstract here).

Dr Wiley and Dr Watt also co-authored an introductory article, ‘Musical Biography in the Musicological Arena’ (pp. 187–92), in which they reflect on the current status of musical biography within the discipline of musicology.

The full table of contents for the special issue is available here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gmur20/38/3-4

Bibliographic citations 

Wiley, Christopher and Watt, Paul (eds.). ‘Musical Biography: Myth, Ideology, and Narrative’, Journal of Musicological Research, Special Issue, Vol. 38, Nos. 3–4 (2019).

Wiley, Christopher and Watt, Paul. ‘Musical Biography in the Musicological Arena’, Journal of Musicological Research, Vol. 38, Nos. 3–4 (2019), pp. 187–92. doi: 10.1080/01411896.2019.1644140

Wiley, Christopher. ‘Myth-Making and the Politics of Nationality in Narratives of J.S. Bach’s 1717 Contest with Louis Marchand’, Journal of Musicological Research, Vol. 38, Nos. 3–4 (2019), pp. 193–215. doi: 10.1080/01411896.2019.1644141

Dr Christopher Wiley delivers Keynote lecture at international conference at the University of Amsterdam

26 January 2018

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Dr Christopher WJanuary 2018_Amsterdam_Poster 2018 Workshop Transnational Perspectives on Artistsiley gave a Keynote lecture at the two-day international workshop, ‘Transnational Perspectives on the Writing of Artists’ Lives, 19th-21st centuries’, held at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands on 25–26 January 2018.

Dr Wiley’s 50-minute paper, entitled ‘Musical Biography as a National and Transnational Genre’, explored the extent to which composer life-writing reflects the preoccupations and concerns of its time and place of origin while simultaneously embodying pan-European values that remain strikingly robust across texts from different countries and centuries.

Addressed to an interdisciplinary audience primarily from The Netherlands, France, the UK, and US, Dr Wiley’s lecture developed research previously presented at the University of Oxford, and generated much productive discussion from delegates.

An internationally acknowledged expert in the field, Dr Wiley has given a number of previous keynotes at conferences on biography, including the four-day ‘(Auto)Biography as a Musicological Discourse’ held at the University of Arts, Belgrade in 2008.

The full schedule for the workshop may be viewed here: http://www.uva.nl/en/shared-content/subsites/amsterdam-institute-for-humanities-research/en/events/events/2018/01/transnational-perspectives-artists-lives.html

The programme is also available online as a PDF: https://www.huizingainstituut.nl/v02/wp-content/uploads/Programme-Workshop-Transnational-Perspectives-on-Artists-Lives-2-Jan-18.pdf

Dr Christopher Wiley delivers paper in the Music Research Colloquia series at the University of Oxford

16 June 2015

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Dr Christopher Wiley presented his paper ‘National Trends in Musical Biography’ in the Music Research Colloquia series at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford on 16 June 2015, to close the series for the 2014–15 academic year.

Speaking to some 25 academics and postgraduate students in the Faculty’s Denis Arnold Hall, Dr Wiley explored the relationship between musical biography and nationality, in terms of the status of the genre at particular times and places as well as its development over time.

Case studies upon which Dr Wiley drew included biographical retellings of the story of J.S. Bach’s keyboard contest with Louis Marchand, and the ideologies that emerge from the original volumes of the ‘Master Musicians’ series. Dr Wiley had presented earlier versions of this research at the Institute of Musical Research, University of London in 2015 and 2014.

The weekly colloquia are organized by graduate students and feature musicological research presented by a range of leading academics and younger researchers from universities around the world.

Details of Dr Wiley’s Research Colloquium may be found here: http://www.music.ox.ac.uk/event/research-colloquium-chris-wiley/

Faculty of Music, University of Oxford

Dr Christopher Wiley co-organizes and delivers paper at international conference on musical biography at the Institute of Musical Research, London

10 April 2015

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Institute of Musical Research logoDr Christopher Wiley and Dr Paul Watt (Monash University, Melbourne) have co-organized a two-day international conference on musical biography held at the Institute of Musical Research, University of London, on 9-10 April 2015.

The conference, entitled ‘Musical Biography: National Ideology, Narrative Technique, and the Nature of Myth’, brought together a broad range of some 50 interdisciplinary scholars from the UK, US, Australia, and Continental Europe.

In addition to several panel sessions, the conference incorporated two invited roundtable discussions, whose speakers included Professors Simon Keefe (University of Sheffield), Mark Evan Bonds (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Jonathan Cross (University of Oxford), and Rosamund Bartlett (Oxford).

In the course of the conference, Dr Wiley also chaired three of the panel sessions as well as presenting his paper ‘Myth-making and the Politics of Nationality in Narratives of J.S. Bach’s 1717 Contest with Louis Marchand’, which discussed the ideological significance of the variations in retellings of a single biographical story across different countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The schedule for the event may be viewed at the conference website: http://events.sas.ac.uk/imr/events/view/17765/Music+Biography+Conference

The full conference programme may be downloaded here.

Dr Christopher Wiley contributes book chapter to major new volume on Haydn

15 November 2013

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The Land of Opportunity: Joseph Haydn and BritainA book chapter written by Dr Christopher Wiley, entitled ‘Mythological Motifs in the Biographical Accounts of Haydn’s Later Life’, has appeared in a recently-published anthology that represents a major new contribution to Haydn scholarship.

The volume, The Land of Opportunity: Joseph Haydn and Britain, is edited by Richard Chesser and David Wyn Jones and has its origins in a conference hosted by The British Library (who also published the book) in 2009, organized to commemorate the bicentenary of Haydn’s death.

Dr Wiley’s essay investigates three prominent stories in life-writing on Haydn’s later life: his visit of 1795 to the monument erected in his honour by Count Harrach at Rohrau; the performance of The Creation in March 1808; and the episode of his death the following year. It explores various revealing themes that emerge from their retellings in musical biographies over the decades, including the rising social status of the artist, Haydn’s reconciliation with Beethoven, and notions of The Creation as a harbinger of the composer’s death.

Bibliographic citation

Wiley, Christopher. ‘Mythological Motifs in the Biographical Accounts of Haydn’s Later Life’, in Richard Chesser and David Wyn Jones eds. The Land of Opportunity: Joseph Haydn in Britain. London: The British Library, 2013, pp. 195–211. ISBN 978-0-7123-5848-4.

Full text

The full text is available for free download under licence from Surrey Research Insight Open Access: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/800492/

Further information

Listing of the volume in the British Library Publishing catalogue:

Listing of the volume on amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Land-Opportunity-Joseph-Britain/dp/071235848X/