Amanda Eubanks Winkler | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (original) (raw)

Books by Amanda Eubanks Winkler

Cambridge University Press, 2023

Performing Restoration Shakespeare embraces the performative and musical qualities of Restoration... more Performing Restoration Shakespeare embraces the performative and musical qualities of Restoration Shakespeare (1660-1714), drawing on the expertise of theatre historians, musicologists, literary critics, and-importantly-theatre and music practitioners. The volume advances methodological debates in theatre studies and musicology by advocating an alternative to performance practices aimed at reviving 'original' styles or conventions, adopting a dialectical process that situates past performances within their historical and aesthetic contexts, and then using that understanding to transform them into new performances for new audiences. By deploying these methodologies, the volume invites scholars from different disciplines to understand Restoration Shakespeare on its own terms, discarding inhibiting preconceptions that Restoration Shakespeare debased Shakespeare's precursor texts. It also equips scholars and practitioners in theatre and music with new-and much needed-methods for studying and reviving past performances of any kind, not just Shakespearean ones.

Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sir William Davenant and the Duke's Company, 2021

Shakespeare’s survival on the Restoration stage depended primarily on the effort, talent, and vis... more Shakespeare’s survival on the Restoration stage depended
primarily on the effort, talent, and vision of one person: Sir William Davenant (1606–1668).This book is about how Davenant and the Duke’s
Company, which he founded and led for nearly a decade, performed Shakespeare in the Restoration. It seeks to understand an influential movement in Shakespeare’s theatrical afterlife, so influential that it shaped productions of Shakespeare for the next two hundred and fifty years.

Scholars have long taken note of the musical/theatrical works presented by students in early mode... more Scholars have long taken note of the musical/theatrical works presented by students in early modern England, but have resisted a thorough and systematic investigation of the phenomenon because relatively few works survive or they survive in an incomplete form. As Neal Zaslaw commented in a 1977 article on Orpheus and Euridice, a masque given at a girls’ school in Besselsleigh, “eight masques over half a century is hardly an adequate number for purposes of defining the genre or of demonstrating any continuities of tradition.” Zaslaw’s statement points to a more global problem that many scholars working with early music face. The sources we have frequently survive in what Bruce Haynes has called a “skeletal” form—skeletal because of the vicissitudes of time or because the performer was expected to fill in the gaps. But we know that music and dance played a major role in the education of youth during this period, so obviously the extant sources tell a woefully incomplete tale. This study will explore and in some cases fill these uncomfortable evidentiary gaps using three strategies. First, I have spent five years combing the archives, finding descriptions of school performance in sometimes unexpected places: letters and documents written by pupils’ family members, school records from local and national archives, newspaper advertisements, court records, and other heretofore neglected musical and theatrical evidence. Secondly, I have collected a substantial body of printed and manuscript music that appears to have been used at schools, allowing us to understand the theatrical performances as only the most public manifestation of a larger pedagogical practice. Thirdly, throughout my study I engage with methodologies gleaned from performance studies to reanimate these “skeletal” sources, situating the embodied performance of schoolchildren within a historical context that answers questions such as: what was at stake with such entertainments? How did contemporaries view these performances? How might we contextualize musical masques on potentially unseemly topics such as incest, the triumph of Cupid, and the judgment of Paris story?

Editions by Amanda Eubanks Winkler

John Eccles’s active theatrical career spanned a period of about sixteen years, though he continu... more John Eccles’s active theatrical career spanned a period of about sixteen years, though he continued to compose occasionally for the theater after his semi-retirement in 1707. During his career he wrote incidental music for more than seventy plays, writing songs that fit perfectly within their dramatic contexts, offering carefully tailored vehicles for his singers’ talents while remaining highly accessible in tone. This edition includes music for plays beginning with the letters A–F for which Eccles composed music. These plays were fundamentally collaborative ventures, and multiple composers often supplied the music; thus, this edition includes all the known songs and instrumental items for each. Plot summaries of the plays are given along with relevant dialogue cues and the songs are given in the order in which they appear in the drama (when known).

Journal articles by Amanda Eubanks Winkler

Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 2022

In the 1980s when Peter Hall, the director of the National Theatre, complained about the impoveri... more In the 1980s when Peter Hall, the director of the National Theatre, complained about the impoverished state of the British stage, Thatcher famously exhorted him to ‘Look at Andrew Lloyd Webber’. With this statement Thatcher pitted Lloyd Webber’s highly profitable brand of commercial musical against the financially failing government-subsidized theatre. Indeed, Michael Billington, the theatre critic for The Guardian, has recently argued that the musical during the 1980s was ‘the most potentially profitable of all theatrical forms and the ultimate celebrant of individualism … [it] was Thatcherism in action’. Clearly, Lloyd Webber enjoyed tremendous commercial success during the 1980s, and provided Thatcher with a ready example of the powers of free enterprise. But this focus on Lloyd Webber’s profitability elides a more interesting question: is there anything inherently conservative about Lloyd Webber’s 1980s aesthetic?

This article explores this question through an analysis of Cats, Starlight Express, and Phantom of the Opera, Lloyd Webber’s most successful works during this pivotal decade of his career. These three shows engage with conservative, and, in some cases, Thatcherite aesthetics, both in their music and their subject matter. After establishing some of the core tenets of 1980s conservatism (anti-elitism, nostalgia for the past, the triumph of the individual), I turn to a consideration of how these elements manifested in Lloyd Webber’s shows. I do not claim that Lloyd Webber self-consciously imbued his musicals with conservative aesthetics, but, as he was a supporter of conservative political policies during this period, it is not surprising that conservative elements are present in his most popular 1980s compositions. For instance, these musicals feature nostalgia (works set in the past, engagement with and imitation of earlier, especially nineteenth-century musical idioms); accessibility (deployment of archetypal stories, catchy and pleasing melodies, simple musical structures with a high degree of repetition); individuals who achieve success or transcendence; and the commercialization of elite culture (classical cross-over) to appeal to a middle-brow, non-Establishment audience. As I will show, these elements aligned neatly with the prevailing political Zeitgeist and appealed to a broad middle-class audience, fostering Lloyd Webber’s considerable commercial success.

Theatralia , 2021

Her research focuses on English theatre music of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centu... more Her research focuses on English theatre music of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centuries. She was the Co-Investigator on Performing Restoration Shakespeare (https://www. qub.ac.uk/schools/ael/Research/ResearchinArts/ResearchImpact/PerformingRes-torationShakespeare/), a project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, UK (2017-2020) and is a General Editor for The Collected Works of John Eccles (A-R Editions). Prof. Eubanks Winkler has published on a range of topics, including the relationships among musical, spiritual, and bodily disorder; musical depictions of the goddess Venus; the gendering of musical spirits; and the intersection of music and politics. More recent work has engaged with performance studies and practicebased research, including workshops that staged excerpts of Davenant's Macbeth and Gildon's Measure for Measure (Folger Theatre, Washington DC) and Middleton's The Witch (Blackfriars Conference, Staunton, VA). As part of the Performing Restoration Shakespeare project, she served as music director for a workshop of the Restorationera Tempest (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe, London) and more recently she co-led a workshop for scholars and served as a consultant for a full professional production of Davenant's Macbeth, staged at the Folger Theatre, Washington DC.

Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700, 2018

Shakespeare Bulletin, 2018

Tim Carroll’s “original practices” production of Twelfth Night, first performed at Middle Temple ... more Tim Carroll’s “original practices” production of Twelfth Night, first performed at Middle Temple Hall, then at Shakespeare’s Globe, in the West End, and on Broadway, included music from the time of Shakespeare arranged by composer Claire van Kampen. This article considers the role of music in “original practices” productions and how members of the Twelfth Night artistic team discussed authenticity and “original practices” in divergent ways, with musicians being the most skeptical about the possibility of recovering an “original.” “Original practices” may not revivify the past, but this approach, like the most radical Regietheater, reveals much about our present-day concerns and values. Deploying period music causes what musicologist John Butt refers to as performative “double coding,” as past sights and sounds are juxtaposed with present modes of understanding. In my essay, I analyze two musical moments from the Broadway production of Twelfth Night where this “double coding” was most evident, before turning to a consideration of the critical and audience reception to Twelfth Night’s music and the commodification of authenticity, which feeds a capitalist desire to consume the artisanal, the vintage, and the reclaimed.

Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, 2017

Cambridge Opera Journal, Nov 2014

This article analyses the complicated and conflicted critical response to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s T... more This article analyses the complicated and conflicted critical response to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera within the political, economic and cultural context of the Thatcher/Reagan era. British critics writing for Conservative-leaning broadsheets and tabloids took nationalist pride in Lloyd Webber’s commercial success, while others on both sides of the Atlantic claimed that Phantom was tasteless and crassly commercial, a musical manifestation of a new Gilded Age. Broader issues regarding the relationship between the government and ‘elite’ culture also affected the critical response. For some, Phantom forged a path for a new kind of populist opera that could survive and thrive without government subsidy, while less sympathetic critics heard Phantom’s ‘puerile’ operatics as sophomoric jibes against an art form they esteemed.

Musical Quarterly, 2010

Singing spirits frequently appeared on the late 17th-c. English stage, especially in the works of... more Singing spirits frequently appeared on the late 17th-c. English stage, especially in the works of John Dryden. Although these scenes have been widely studied, one element has puzzled musicologists: the gender ambiguity of these spirits fostered both by textual descriptions and also, sometimes, cross-gender casting. A typical line of thinking has held that Dryden, who famously proclaimed that spirits could not have sexes, purposely injected gender ambiguity into these scenes in order to suggest sexlessness or their supernatural status. Yet an analysis of the musical scenes in The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island; Tyrannick Love; King Arthur; The Indian Queen; and The Indian Emperour reveals how contemporary gender ideology shaped Dryden’s spiritual realm. Female sopranos frequently play airy spirits, which according to neoplatonic thought are higher on the spiritual ladder; however, these spirits generally use music as a tool of persuasion and seduction, just as offstage women were thought to do. Boy sopranos and countertenors sing in Dryden’s American plays as prognosticating spirits who are part of a disappearing pagan world that will soon be supplanted by Christianity. Within this dramatic context the falsetto or immature male voice was deployed to suggest the emasculation and impotence of these pagan spirits and deities, whose prophecies are met with derision and skepticism.

Journal of Musicology, 2006

Enthusiasm, a state in which the soul is supposedly freed from the body and the human vessel is f... more Enthusiasm, a state in which the soul is supposedly freed from the body and the human vessel is filled with the divine, troubled the religious mainstream in 17th-century England. During the English Civil War, radical Protestant sects used enthusiastic prophecy to justify rebellion against monarchical tyranny. Such practices drew fire from members of the Church of England who vilified the prophets' “religious enthusiasm” by associating it with madness and melancholy. This strategy pathologized enthusiasm, transforming it into a mental disorder. Anti-enthusiastic discourses shaped musical and dramatic practices on the Restoration stage, as witnessed in two songs for enthusiastic prophets, Cumana in Nathaniel Lee's Sophonisba (music by Henry Purcell for a 1690s revival) and the elderly Brahmin priest in Peter Motteux's revision of The Island Princess (music by Richard Leveridge, 1699). Purcell's song for Cumana, “Beneath a Poplar's Shadow,” incorporates the standard conventions of musical madness and is even called a “mad song” in Orpheus Britannicus, Book Two (1702). Similarly, the Brahmin priest channels the speech of the false pagan gods in Leveridge's “Enthusiastick Song”—a piece that parallels contemporary political discourses about the “madness” of religious nonconformity and fanaticism. A close reading of the music, dramatic texts, and contemporary political, religious, and medical discourses demonstrates how musical representations of enthusiasm were affected by the critical rhetoric of religious orthodoxy.

Cambridge Opera Journal, 2003

London composers competed for a music prize in 1701, setting William Congreve's libretto on the j... more London composers competed for a music prize in 1701, setting William Congreve's libretto on the judgment of Paris, a beauty contest among Juno, Pallas and Venus. Paris, contest judge, exiled prince and amorous shepherd, prefers Venus, placing love above Juno's promised empire and Pallas's martial success. This essay reveals the general political meanings of the judgment of Paris myth, shows how the tale had been used to critique Charles II and James II, examines the political beliefs of the sponsors and librettist, and demonstrates how music by John Eccles, Daniel Purcell and John Weldon supported the politics of Congreve's libretto.

Book Chapters by Amanda Eubanks Winkler

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music, ed. Christopher Wilson and Mervyn Cooke (Oxford University Press), 2021

When we think of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, we might recall the famous soliloquy upon a dagge... more When we think of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, we might recall the famous soliloquy upon a dagger or Lady Macbeth’s compulsive hand washing. We do not think of showstopping musical numbers. And yet, for audiences in Restoration London, the musical witches were the big draw. As Pepys observed, ‘[it is] one of the best plays for a stage, and variety of dancing and music, that ever I saw’ (19 April 1667). This chapter will consider the aesthetic strategies adapters used when making space for music, through an analysis of Davenant’s Macbeth (1663/4); Dryden/Davenant’s The Tempest (1667; rev. Shadwell, 1674); The Fairy-Queen (1692); and Gildon’s Measure for Measure (1700).

The relationship between music and drama varied in each of these Restoration reworkings. In some adaptations, musical set pieces are performed for onstage spectators, revealing hidden truths (the Masque of Devils in the 1674 Tempest; the Dido and Aeneas interpolations performed as ‘masques’ in Measure for Measure). The masques in The Fairy-Queen move further in the direction of encapsulated entertainment, as they are all called for by Titania and/or Oberon and are only loosely related to the action of the play. At other moments in these Shakespearean adaptations, music is used in a more dynamic fashion: for instance, when Hecate’s coven encourages her to ‘Come away’ in Macbeth or in ‘Go thy way’ in The Tempest, as Ariel tries to persuade Ferdinand to follow him.

Finally, this essay will consider Restoration Shakespeare as palimpsest. Just as traces of Shakespeare’s plays co-exist alongside newly composed lines of text, older songs were retained or their memory lingered. For instance, the anonymous adapter of The Fairy-Queen (probably Thomas Betterton) retained the text of Bottom’s song ‘The Woosel Cock’ in the word book, although no setting of this piece survives by Henry Purcell, probably because the pre-Restoration version of the song was retained. The music for other Restoration Shakespeare adaptations were set repeatedly: three settings of Macbeth survive (a partial one by Matthew Locke, and two full ones by John Eccles and Richard Leveridge), while Locke, Banister, Pelham Humfrey, Pietro Reggio, G.B. Draghi, Purcell, and John Weldon all contributed to revivals of The Tempest. Just as Shakespeare lurks behind Davenant, so might the memory of Humfrey resonate behind Weldon’s new settings of the same texts.

Cambridge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Opera, ed. Jacqueline Waeber (Cambridge University Press), 2021

Music in North-East England, 1500-1800, ed. Stephanie Carter, Kirsten Gibson, and Roz Southey (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer), 2020

Cambridge University Press, 2023

Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sir William Davenant and the Duke's Company, 2021

Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 2022

Theatralia , 2021

Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700, 2018

Shakespeare Bulletin, 2018

Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, 2017

Cambridge Opera Journal, Nov 2014

Musical Quarterly, 2010

Journal of Musicology, 2006

Cambridge Opera Journal, 2003

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music, ed. Christopher Wilson and Mervyn Cooke (Oxford University Press), 2021

Cambridge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Opera, ed. Jacqueline Waeber (Cambridge University Press), 2021

Music in North-East England, 1500-1800, ed. Stephanie Carter, Kirsten Gibson, and Roz Southey (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer), 2020

Music and the Benefit Performance Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Alison DeSimone and Matthew Gardner (Cambridge University Press), 2019

The benefit concert was an offshoot of the Restoration tradition whereby an individual or group o... more The benefit concert was an offshoot of the Restoration tradition whereby an individual or group of individuals received the proceeds from one night’s performance in the playhouse. Sometimes benefits in the theatre were given for charitable purposes (in 1700 a version of Thomas D’Urfey’s highly musical Don Quixote was performed for the benefit of “a Gentleman in great distress” and his family). More often, these benefits provided monetary recompense to particular actors or playwrights. In both cases, musical entertainments were added as bait to increase attendance. For instance, in 1700 Shadwell’s The Virtuoso was performed for the benefit of the actors Hodgson and Bowen with an “addition of Instrumental Musick never performed in Publick before” by Monsieur Le Riche.

Starting in the 1690s, the benefit concert also flourished with the proliferation of dedicated concert spaces (York Buildings) as well as repurposed ones (Hickford’s Dancing School and Stationers’ Hall). In this essay, I will show the significant role English composers and their music played in these benefit concerts from the 1690s to 1714. Through an examination of newspaper advertisements and other surviving sources I will reconstruct the repertory for these benefits, demonstrating the continued importance of native music and musicians even as foreign composers and performers flooded the market.

During this period, benefit concerts served several purposes. Singers (such as Bowman, Bowen, Pate, Lindsey) performed in concerts for their own benefit or for the benefit of fellow musicians. English composers (Blow, Clark, Corbett, Eccles, D. Purcell, Turner and others) organized benefits for the twin purposes of self-promotion and financial gain. Occasionally, these benefit concerts served charitable purposes, as with the 1701 performance of Henry Purcell’s Yorkshire Feast Song for the benefit of a widow.

The repertory for these benefits is also of interest. Sometimes they included gems from the past, particularly the music of Henry Purcell. Audiences also heard music that had recently been performed in a more elite, courtly context. Certain genres appear frequently on benefit programs, particularly odes of various kinds, including the odes for St. Cecilia’s Day.

Operatic Geographies, ed. Suzanne Aspden (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 2019

Bryan White’s discovery of a letter about “Harry’s” music “made” for a ball at Josias Priest’s Ch... more Bryan White’s discovery of a letter about “Harry’s” music “made” for a ball at Josias Priest’s Chelsea boarding school has reopened questions about the relationship of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas to Priest’s establishment. As scholars have noted, the performance of Dido at Priest’s school was not unusual; other works, including Thomas Duffett’s Beauties Triumph (1676) and John Blow’s Venus and Adonis (1684), were also performed at Chelsea. This essay both contextualizes these famous examples and moves beyond them, as I consider the interaction of pedagogical space with cultural product, mapping the geography of schoolgirl operatic performance in England in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Boarding schools, designed to train young ladies in the so-called ornamental arts, often were located in repurposed manor houses (aligning the schools with money and privilege). Because of their proximity to urban centers, these institutions had access to or were actually run by a person with close ties to a professional musician, dancer, or other stage professional. The performances given at schools occupied an interstitial space; they neither belonged to the public stage, accessible to all who could afford a ticket, nor were they, judging from contemporary accounts, entirely private, much to the disapprobation of some.

Despite the anxieties over schoolgirls singing, dancing, and acting that are evident in many of the prologues and epilogues to these works, student performances served a crucial purpose, providing entertainment for those inclined or invited to attend, advertising the training the girls received at the school, and showing off their accomplishments to parents, relatives, prospective students and, perhaps, suitors. The entertainments also demonstrated the skills of the girls’ teachers, both indirectly and directly, as evidence suggests that the masters may have performed alongside their pupils. Locating famous operas such as Dido and Aeneas and Venus and Adonis within a broader pedagogical performative context enriches and deepens our understanding of these canonical works and challenges our modern assumptions about where opera was performed.

Music, Myth, and Story, ed. Katherine Butler and Samantha Bassler (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer), 2019

by Katherine Butler, Samantha Bassler, John MacInnis, Jason Stoessel, Tim Shephard, Férdia J Stone-Davis, Erica Levenson, Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Jamie Apgar, Sigrid Harris, and Aurora Faye Martinez

Myths and stories offer a window onto medieval and early modern musical culture. Far from merely ... more Myths and stories offer a window onto medieval and early modern musical culture. Far from merely offering material for musical settings, authoritative tales from classical mythology, ancient history and the Bible were treated as foundations for musical knowledge. Such myths were cited in support of arguments about the uses, effects, morality, and preferred styles of music in sources as diverse as theoretical treatises, defences or critiques of music, art, sermons, educational literature, and books of moral conduct. Newly written literary stories too were believed capable of moral instruction and influence, and were a medium through which ideas about music could be both explored and transmitted. How authors interpreted and weaved together these traditional stories, or created their own, reveals much about changing attitudes across the period.

Looking beyond the well-known figure of Orpheus, this collection explores the myriad stories that shaped not only musical thought, but also its styles, techniques, and practices. Moreover, music itself performed and created knowledge in ways parallels to myth, and worked in tandem with old and new tales to construct social, political, and philosophical views. This relationship was not static, however; as the Enlightenment dawned, the once authoritative gods became comic characters and myth became a medium for ridicule. This collection provides a foundation for exploring myth and story throughout medieval and early modern culture, and facilitating further study into the Enlightenment and beyond.

Beyond Boundaries: Re-Thinking of the Circulation of Music in Early Modern England, ed. Linda Austern, Candace Bailey, and Amanda Eubanks Winkler (Indiana University Press), 2017

Upon the death of William III in 1702, Queen Anne took the throne without incident. Unfortunately... more Upon the death of William III in 1702, Queen Anne took the throne without incident. Unfortunately, after this peaceful transition of power, strife marked the early years of her reign: the War of the Spanish Succession raged in Europe, the French renewed their support for the Jacobite cause, partisan factions divided Parliament, and many of her subjects viewed her proposed union between England and Scotland with anxiety. To demonstrate support for the new queen and assuage the fears of the public during difficult times, a series of musical panegyrics appeared on the London stage. My paper will consider Thomas D’Urfey’s The Old Mode and the New (1703), Richard Steele’s The Lying Lover (1704), and Peter Motteux’s Britain’s Happiness (1704), all of which feature songs in praise of Anne. As I will demonstrate, many of the same rhetorical strategies of praise and celebration found in odes and encomiums carried over into this more public context, suggesting a highly permeable boundary between courtly and theatrical discourses.

A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, 2nd ed., ed. Dympna Callaghan (Blackwell Publishers Ltd.), 2016

Although Ariel, as described by Shakespeare, is a spirit that exists sometimes within the bounds ... more Although Ariel, as described by Shakespeare, is a spirit that exists sometimes within the bounds of and sometimes beyond materiality, in a practical sense human actors embody this character, giving him form and sound. Just as the corporeal and sonic presence of modern-day actors affect the reception, staging, and costuming of Ariel, so too did gendered bodies and voices shape the performance of early modern Ariels. It is much easier to see and hear these modern examples—often one only needs access to an internet connection—but there are ways of filling in the evidentiary gaps to find the traces of these past Ariels. Ariel’s “sounds and sweet airs,” first sung by boy actors, were almost certainly performed by actresses after the Restoration, giving Ariel’s voice new layers of gendered meaning. Print and manuscript culture also point toward a multivalent, multivocal Ariel, as his music was sung not just by professional actors onstage, but also offstage by recreational and occupational musicians in a range of locations. Recent feminist scholarship has encouraged us to look beyond women’s correspondence and the confines of the stage for evidence of gendered cultural performance (Callaghan 2007, 1); considering Ariel’s performance in theatrical and non-theatrical contexts allows for a fuller idea of the multivalent grain of Ariel’s voice, “the body in the voice as it sings” (Barthes 1977, 189). How did the meaning of Ariel change when he was embodied, envoiced by a prepubescent boy at court or at Blackfriars? By a professional actress with the Duke’s Company at Lincoln’s Inn Fields or Dorset Garden? By recreational and occupational musicians of both genders at home or school? How might we understand Ariel phenomenologically, as “the legacy of sedimented acts rather than a predetermined or foreclosed structure, essence, or fact?” (Butler 2004, 190–191).

Correction: The publisher of Ariel's Songs was John Playford, not Henry. The error was discovered after the volume was in production and could not be corrected.

The Sea and the British Musical Imagination, ed. Eric Saylor and Christopher Scheer (Boydell and Brewer), 2015

In their opera Dido and Aeneas, Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate created the most famous musical-thea... more In their opera Dido and Aeneas, Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate created the most famous musical-theatrical portrayal of sailors in seventeenth-century England. ‘Come away, fellow sailors’, sing the nautical lads, espousing a love ‘em and leave ‘em philosophy toward women—a philosophy that darkly mirrors Aeneas’s own behavior as he prepares to callously desert Dido. The sailors’ raucous music, superficially jolly but embedded with hints of the descending chromatic tetrachord associated with Dido’s death, serves as an aural analogue for their entertaining yet disruptive position in the opera.
Purcell and Tate’s musical sailors—rollicking, drunken, and womanising—were part of a much larger discursive tradition. Sailors were heroic, expert seamen who navigated difficult waters and comported themselves with bravery in naval battle: they possessed the necessary attributes for protecting an island nation. These nautical virtues were increasingly prized, as sailors played crucial roles in executing foreign policy and acquiring riches from abroad. On the other hand, sailors also frequently exhibited undesirable and disruptive behaviours. In English ports, sailors’ sexual promiscuity and tendency to brawl (often exacerbated by the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol) threatened social harmony and order. Musical depictions of both types of sailors—in ballads, masques, plays, and operas—played an integral role in shaping popular notions of English identity during this period of colonial expansion, for the sailor was a figure that could mediate between English Self and Foreign Other.

Queen Anne and the Arts, ed. Cedric Reverand (Bucknell University Press), Jan 2014

In 1706 George Granville wrote The British Enchanters, a reworking of the medieval romance Amadis... more In 1706 George Granville wrote The British Enchanters, a reworking of the medieval romance Amadis of Gaul via Philippe Quinault and Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Amadis (1684). The British Enchanters was the first new dramatic opera produced in five years, although many old chestnuts such as Purcell’s King Arthur had found favor in revivals. Featuring vocal music by John Eccles and Bartholomew Isaack and instrumental music by William Corbett, The British Enchanters was an enormous success for the company at the Haymarket, enjoying a run of twelve performances between February and May 1706.

The British Enchanters was shaped by two overlapping discourses. The first of these—sparked by Jeremy Collier’s A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698)—focused primarily on the supposed debauchery and atheism of the contemporary spoken theater, although Collier also lambastes the “Airy and Galliardizing” music found in many plays. By 1706, however, another critical discourse had developed, excoriating not the native theater but rather the newly popular Italian opera. The irrationality and sensuality of this foreign genre, according to these texts, constituted a moral and political threat to the British nation.
All of these moral and aesthetic issues appear as plot elements in The British Enchanters. Granville and his collaborators address questions of morality (how far should one go for love?), nationalism (what are the defining characteristics of Britons?), and music’s ability to ennoble as well as to seduce and corrupt. Yet, ironically, given the xenophobic discourses of the time, the work also bears the marks of foreign genres—the Spanish/Portuguese medieval romance and the French tragédie en musique. Thus, The British Enchanters manifests the tensions and contradictions that informed English theatrical music and national identity during in the early years of Anne’s reign.

Gender and Song in Early Modern England, ed. Katherine Larson and Leslie Dunn (Ashgate) , 2014

As numerous seventeenth-century English conduct books attest, girls needed to possess skills in m... more As numerous seventeenth-century English conduct books attest, girls needed to possess skills in music and dancing. At the same time, authors warned about the dangers of these arts, as they held the potential to corrupt, leading to moral degradation and lasciviousness. Given the conflicted space that music and dance occupied within early modern England, how might we understand masques intended for performance by female students, particularly when they contain the potentially transgressive character of Cupid? To answer this question, this paper will analyze two works—Robert White’s Cupid’s Banishment (1617, performed by pupils from Ladies Hall in Deptford for Queen Anna at Greenwich) and Thomas Jordan’s Cupid His Coronation (1654, performed by “Masters and yong Ladyes that were theyre Scholers” at Spittle [Christ’s Hospital?])—through two lenses. The first lens takes the works’ pedagogical and moralistic intentions at face value, attempting to reconstruct the role of the masques in the curriculum of the schools, describing the social status of the pupils, the location of the performances, the audience (if known), and the musical and terpsichorean strategies used to train girls in proper gendered deportment. The second lens will focus on moments where the students’ embodied performances in conjunction with the erotically charged figure of Cupid seem to disrupt the pedagogical aims of the masques. What meanings were brought to bear when the girls at “Spittle”, dressed as twelve Virgins, danced a “Grand Maske” and crowned Cupid their king? When pupils from Ladies Hall performed a violent, aggressive dance to banish Cupid?

The Lively Arts of the London Stage, 1675–1725, ed. Kathryn Lowerre (Ashgate), 2014

Approaches to Teaching the Works of John Dryden, ed. Jayne Lewis and Lisa Zunshine (MLA), 2013

Concepts of Creativity in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Rebecca Herissone and Alan Howard (Boydell and Brewer), Nov 2013

The Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell, ed. Rebecca Herissone (Ashgate), 2012

Musical Voices of Early Modern Women: Many-Headed Melodies, ed. Thomasin LaMay (Ashgate), 2005

Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, 2010

Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, 2005

These events offer unique opportunities for the public to engage with scholars, actors and musici... more These events offer unique opportunities for the public to engage with scholars, actors and musicians and learn more about the history of Shakespeare on stage.

When London theatres reopened in 1660, Shakespeare’s plays were performed not as found in the First Folio but in specially commissioned adaptions. Now rarely staged, Restoration versions of Shakespeare – with added music, song and scenic effects – were extremely popular with audiences.

In this open workshop, we will explore scenes from Thomas Shadwell’s operatic adaptation of The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island, the most successful ‘Shakespeare’ play in the Restoration era.

This event is part of 'Performing Restoration Shakespeare', a three year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by Queen's University Belfast.

This seminar focuses on Shakespeare performance between the Restoration and the twentieth century... more This seminar focuses on Shakespeare performance between the Restoration and the twentieth century, with contributions welcome from scholars (Shakespeareans, theater historians, musicologists) and practitioners (directors, actors, musicians, dancers). Papers might problematize binary reductions of Shakespeare to an artist either remotely past or perpetually present; engage directly with performance; or reflect upon research-led creative practice by means of multimedia documentation or performances.

The seminar will include direct encounters with European art in the High Museum and live and reco... more The seminar will include direct encounters with European art in the High Museum and live and recorded performances of period music. To help prepare for these experiences, participants will read and discuss scholarly articles and original texts from the period. They will study basic stylistic developments in European painting and music, examine the wide variety of roles that painting and music played in religious and secular life, discuss commonalities and rivalries between the visual arts and music and among their practitioners and patrons, and consider how theory and practice linked painting and music. Two noted scholars of the period—Gary Radke, professor emeritus of art history at Syracuse University, and Amanda Winkler, associate professor of music history and cultures at Syracuse—will lead the seminar. Atlanta-based early music ensembles, including the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, will join with the High Museum to make the seminar a truly interdisciplinary experience.

This colloquy proposes to situate the earliest extant musical materials from Thomas Middleton’s T... more This colloquy proposes to situate the earliest extant musical materials from Thomas Middleton’s The Witch within the digital humanities, current historical scholarship, and informed approaches to staging a Jacobean private theatre scene that features a spectacular musical number. Our goal is to think through the varying ways in which scholars and public audiences might approach the fluid range of source materials and performance possibilities surrounding dramatic song. We will do so by 1) outlining how a digital humanities site might allow users to hear, see, and interact with the music 2) comparing possibilities for both performing and studying the theatrical scene, and 3) demonstrating and enacting how reconstructed or creatively reimagined sounds from the Jacobean theatre can garner audience interest in early modern music and its performance.
The end of Act III, scene iii (from line 15 on) of The Witch lends itself particularly well to this inter-media treatment because the song “Come Away Hecate,” later incorporated into Shakespeare’s Macbeth, not only remains extant in two seventeenth-century manuscripts, but has been edited in multiple modern editions of music and performed by a number of historically informed ensembles specializing in early modern English music. This scene from a seasonally appropriate play exemplifies the full range of academic and practical issues for the investigation and performance of any early modern English indoor musical-theatrical work. . Confirmed participants include scholars and scholar-performers from literary studies, music, and theater/theater history.

We will begin our colloquy with a presentation on how a public, digital humanities interface might construct and mediate “Come Away Hecate” for any scholar or member of the public with access to the internet. This will include playing a recorded version of “Come Away Hecate” and demonstrating how the range of archival sources for the text (Oxford Bodleian Library MS Malone 12) and musical settings (New York Public Library Drexel MS. 4175, no. 54; and Cambridge University, Fitzwilliam MS. 52 D. ff. 107v-08) might be presented online. This will lead us to an overview of questions surrounding provenance, modern scoring, additional historically informed recordings, and possibilities for live performance based on information from the three manuscripts and understanding of Jacobean musical and musical-theatrical practice. At this point, having thought about the song in digital, manuscript, and modern printed editions (which themselves mediate original material), we will talk about how and why witches were presented as musical beings on the Jacobean stage and what practical concerns need to be taken into account for choosing voice types, bodies, and instrumentation in an historically informed performance of musical scenes from The Witch. Finally, under the direction of a musically sensitive scholar-stage director, we will perform the scene in two ways: with live music and blocking in the style of the Jacobean Blackfriars Theatre, and as a modern/postmodern production featuring a judicious selection of familiar and appropriate popular songs in place of the Jacobean original.

“Nay, that’s not next.” In Othello Desdemona interrupts her performance of the “Willow Song” with... more “Nay, that’s not next.” In Othello Desdemona interrupts her performance of the “Willow Song” with these words, a comment upon the fallibility of musical-textual memory. Music and memory also intersected in other ways in early modern drama. As a number of scholars have shown, well-known songs, instrumental tunes, and ballads were an essential part of the fabric of Shakespeare’s plays; even a brief textual reference prompted audiences to remember a ballad’s tune and full text, a process of remembering that is largely lost in modern theatrical and cinematic interpretations. However, Dmitri Shostakovich’s score for Grigori Kozintsev’s Hamlet (1964) weaves the original tunes of several ballads sung by Ophelia on Shakespeare’s stage into its fabric along with several evocations of the 1960s “early music” movement, and Tim Carroll’s production of Twelfth Night for Shakespeare’s Globe (recently revived on Broadway) also encourages remembrance as it plays into nostalgic, early twenty-first century expectations of “historically informed” musical performance. This seminar will investigate such intersections among music, performance, and memory as played out in the dramas of Shakespeare and his contemporaries as well as in modern theatrical, cinematic, and televised productions of early modern plays.

“Memory studies” is a lively and growing field of cross-disciplinary enquiry. As Hester Lees-Jeffries has demonstrated, in Shakespeare’s time new modes of knowledge distribution (print, the theatre) created a rapid change in the way early moderns conceived of memory. Marvin Carlson’s The Haunted Stage moves beyond the early modern era to discuss theatre as palimpsest. And Peter Holland’s edited collection, Shakespeare, Memory, and Performance, draws together memory studies and performance studies in profitable ways, showing how memory affects everything from editing, to performance, to Shakespeare’s interface with digital technologies. Music, an art form deeply affected by “technologies of memory,” has thus far been largely omitted from scholarly inquiry. Therefore, an important focus of this seminar will be to explore together the most fruitful methodological approaches for analyzing the relationship between music and memory, both in Shakespeare’s time and our own.

In most studies of Restoration Shakespeare, the overwhelming concentration on textual adaptation ... more In most studies of Restoration Shakespeare, the overwhelming concentration on textual adaptation loses sight of the reality that it was multimedia theatre, featuring music, dance, and scenery. This workshop will redress the imbalance by asking some new questions: How can direct engagement with theatrical performance enrich an understanding of Restoration Shakespeare? How can theatre practice articulate meaningful research questions? Participants will tackle these questions through an innovative workshop that integrates hands-on practical work in the Folger Theatre—with actors, musicians, and singers—with scholarly readings and discussion. To focus this activity, participants and professionals will stage and analyze selected scenes from William Davenant’s operatic version of Macbeth (ca. 1663/4, with additional revivals in 1673, ca. 1695, and 1702) and Charles Gildon’s adaptation of Measure for Measure (1700). With the musical contributions of Folger Consort Co-Artistic Director Robert Eisenstein and other performing artists, the workshop promises to open up new areas for studying and teaching Restoration Shakespeare by combining primary sources from the Folger’s collections (including musical scores, promptbooks, and performance iconography), an interdisciplinary approach that unites musicology and theatre history, and a willingness to see performance theory and performance practice as mutually enriching.

Co-Directors: Amanda Eubanks Winker is Associate Professor of Music History and Cultures at Syracuse University. She is author of O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note: Music for Witches, the Melancholic, and the Mad on the Seventeenth-Century English Stage (2006) and Music for Macbeth (2004). Her current book project concerns music and dance in early modern English schools. Richard Schoch is Professor of Drama at Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of Shakespeare’s Victorian Stage (1998) and Not Shakespeare (2002) and the editor of Great Shakespeareans: Macready, Booth, Terry, Irving (2011) and Victorian Theatrical Burlesques (2003). He is currently writing a book on British theatre historiography from the Restoration to the Twentieth Century.

Invited speaker; paper on Ariel in performance on the 17th-century stage and in non-theatrical co... more Invited speaker; paper on Ariel in performance on the 17th-century stage and in non-theatrical contexts.

A lecture-recital of Ariel's music, featuring students from University of South Carolina.

A discussion of my collaborative practice-based research project with Richard Schoch.

Roundtable with participants from the 2014 workshop at the Folger Shakespeare Library