Staff Profile

Profile

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

Chairman, Early English Church Music (British Academy)

Internal Roles

School of Arts & Cultures: Acting Head of School (2021-22)

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.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1746-7905 

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 often neglected but very significant corpus of printed chant books), and the Chapel Royal under the Tudors.

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). I was for some years General Editor of the British Academy series, Early English Church Music (2008-2021) and am now its Chairman.

It is a great pleasure to collaborate with performers.  This has led over the years to some fascinating co-productions of CDs and broadcasts such as Queen Mary’s Big Belly with Gallicantus (2017). More recently I have been actively engaged with the choral scholars of St Wulfram, Grantham, and with the outstanding Ensemble Pro Victoria and their debut album commemorating Robert Fayrfax’s quincentenary, Music for Tudor Kings and Queens (Delphian CDC34265, 2021).

Reviews of Music for Tudor Kings and Queens include: ‘one of Britain’s finest young vocal ensembles, who in turn are supported by musical scholarship of the highest order …I can't recommend Magnus Williamson's booklet notes enough...Williamson leads the reader through the background to this music, its construction and its context brilliantly, the perfect adjunct to these brilliantly focused performances from Ensemble Pro Victoria, caught in the lovely acoustic of St Brandon's Church, Brancepeth, County Durham.’

Future Research

Pipeline projects include:

• the music legacies of purgatory;
• spatial and acoustic experiences in medieval Europe, 1000-1500

Postgraduate Supervision

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

Funded Research Projects (selected)

Bee-ing Human: An Interactive Bee Book for the 21^st Century (Leverhulme Trust, 2022-2025): Co-Investigator

English Saints Offices (British Academy, 2019-20): Principal Investigator

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

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

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

• Artefact

  • Skeaping L, Harper J, Gwynne D, Williamson M, The Cardinall's Musick, Carwood A. Music Restor'd. BBC Radio 3, 2001.

• Articles

  • Williamson M. Queen Mary I, Tallis’s O sacrum convivium and a Latin Litany. Early Music 2016, 44(2), 251-270.
  • Williamson M. Voices from the past: the delicate art of reconstructing Tudor partbooks. Choir & Organ 2015, 23(4), 25-27.
  • Williamson M. The fate of the choirbook in Protestant Europe. Journal of the Alamire Foundation 2015, 7(2), 117-131, 135 (plate).
  • Williamson M. Affordable splendour: editing, printing and marketing the Sarum Antiphoner (1519–20). Renaissance Studies 2012, 26(1), 60-87.
  • Williamson M. Liturgical polyphony in the pre-reformation English parish church: A provisional list and commentary. Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 2005, 38(1), 1-43.
  • Williamson M. 'Royal Image-making and Textual Interplay in Gilbert Banaster's O Maria et Elizabeth'. Early Music History 2000, 19, 237-278.
  • Williamson M. Pictura et scriptura - The 'Eton Choirbook' in its iconographical context. Early Music 2000, 28(3), 359-380.
  • Magnus Williamson. 'The Early Tudor Court, the Provinces and the Eton Choirbook'. Early Music 1997, 25(2), 229-43.

• Book Chapters

  • Williamson M. The Eton Choirbook. In: Shepherd T; Borghetti V, ed. The Museum of Renaissance Music. Turnhout: Brepols, 2023, pp.184-185.
  • Williamson M. Sing Here: The Physical Traces of Sacred Song. In: Julian Luxford, ed. The Medieval Book as Object, Idea and Symbol: Proceedings of the 2019 Harlaxton Symposium. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2021, pp.239-258.
  • Williamson M. Singing the Litany in Tudor England, 1544-1555. In: Witold Sadowski and Francesco Marsciani, ed. The Litany in Arts and Cultures. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020, pp.197-219.
  • Williamson M. ‘Recovering the Soundscape of pre-Reformation Newcastle upon Tyne’. In: Kirsten Gibson, Stephanie Carter and Roz Southey, ed. Music in North-East England Before 1850. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020. 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. Performing Spaces: The Art of Polyphony Within and Beyond St Stephen’s Chapel. In: Tim Ayers, J.P.D. Cooper, Elizabeth Hallam Smith and Caroline Shenton, ed. St Stephen's Chapel and the Palace of Westminster. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2024, pp.171-185. 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. Making Do? Musical Participation in an Early-Tudor College. In: Feingold, M; Watts, J, ed. Renaissance College: Volume XXXII/1-2: Renaissance College: Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in Context, 1450-1600. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019, pp.143-159.
  • 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.
  • 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. 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 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. 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 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. 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. 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

• Digital or Visual Media

  • 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.

• Edited Book

  • Harrison FL, Williamson M, ed. The Eton Choirbook: III: third, revised and expanded edition. London: Stainer & Bell, 2010.

• Musical Compositions

  • Hogg B, Williamson MG. Lost Voices. . 2017.
  • 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.

• Online Publication

  • Williamson M. The Eton Choirbook Project. Newcastle: ICMuS/CETL4MusicNE, 2012. Available at: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/etonchoirbook/.

• Review

  • 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.

• Scholarly Editions

  • 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: Facsimile and Introductory Study. DIAMM Facsimiles 2010. Oxford, UK: Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music, 320.