Nineteenth- and twentieth-century British music are my main research interests, particularly Scottish art music, issues of identity and modernity, and concert culture in Scotland. My work ranges from composer-centered studies of Hamish MacCunn (including my 2013 biography in Routledge’s Nineteenth-Century British Music series) and Sir Granville Bantock to depictions of Scotland in nineteenth-century art music and musicals, such as Brigadoon, to modernism in music in the British Isles. In addition to my published writings, I have edited a critical score edition of MacCunn’s overtures and a complete edition of his songs for the Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries series and performance editions of selected MacCunn part-songs with Yelton Rhodes Music.
I also write about information literacy. My article, “Engaging with Research and Resources in Music History Courses” in spring 2014 issue of The Journal of Music History Pedagogy, received the Music Library Association’s 2016 Richard S. Hill Award for best essay or article on library instruction/pedagogy.
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
“The ‘Failure’ of Provincial Opera (1870-1917): Nineteenth-Century Print Culture and Opera in Scotland.” In Opera and Print Culture in 19th-Century Britain, edited by Christina Fuhrmann and Alison Mero (Clemson University Press, forthcoming).
“‘The Beginning of the End’: Granville Bantock, Modernism, and the First World War.” In A Great Divide: Music, Britain and the First World War, edited by Michelle Meinhart (Routledge, forthcoming).
With Paul Watt, “Colonial Mobility and the Cultural Replication of British Music: Granville Bantock’s Australian Tour, 1938-1939,” Music & Letters, forthcoming 2023.
The Songs of Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916), 2 volumes. Recent Researches in Music of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, v. 68-69. Madison, WI: AR Editions, 2016.
“Scotland, the ‘Celtic North,’ and the Sea: Issues of Identity in Bantock’s Hebridean Symphony (1915).” In The Sea and the British Musical Imagination, edited by Eric Saylor and Christopher Scheer, pp. 31-50. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer Press, 2015.
“Engaging with Research and Resources in Music History Courses.” The Journal of Music History Pedagogy, issue in honor of Douglass Seaton, 4/2 (Spring 2014): 283-300. http://www.ams-net.org/ojs/index.php/jmhp/article/view/121 (Music Library Association Richard S. Hill Award, 2016, for best essay or article on library instruction/pedagogy)
Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916): A Musical Life. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013.
“The Choral Music of Hamish MacCunn.” American Choral Review 55/1 (Winter-Spring 2013): http://www.chorusamerica.org/publications/american-choral-review
Three Overtures of Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916): The Dowie Dens o’ Yarrow, Land of the Mountain and the Flood, and The Ship o’ the Fiend, full-score edition. Recent Researches in Music of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, v. 53. Madison, WI: AR Editions, 2010.
“Brigadoon: Lerner and Loewe’s Scotland.” Studies in Musical Theatre, 3/1 (2009): 91-99. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/qc_pubs/8/
“Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916): A Scottish National Composer?” In Europe, Empire and Spectacle in 19th-Century British Music, edited by Rachel Cowgill and Julian Rushton, pp. 145-57. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006.
“Practical Ways to Bring Information Literacy into the Undergraduate Music Curriculum.” College Music Symposium, 44 (2004): 74-82.
“Music Librarianship Education: Problems and Solutions.” Music Reference Services Quarterly, 8/3 (2004): 1-24.
“The Making of Scottish National Opera: Hamish MacCunn’s Jeanie Deans.” The Opera Journal, 35/2-3 (June-September 2002): 3-28.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
CD liner notes for Caledonian Scenes: Weir, Britten, MacCunn, Justin Vickers, tenor, 2020. (The cover art for this recording is one of my photos of the the Isle of Staff.)
“Beyond the Dowie Dens: The Songs of Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916),” AR Editions, featured publications blog, August 2018, https://www.areditions.com/news/beyond-the-dowie-dens/
“Granville Bantock and Modernism in Britain.” CHOMBEC News (April-May 2016).
“Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916): 100 Years On.” NABMSA Blog, June 2016. http://nabmsa.org/2016/06/29/hamish-maccunn-1868-1916-100-years-on/
Love Charms: A Trio of MacCunn Partsongs (“Child of the Summer Rose,” “There is a Garden,” and “Why Lovely Charmer”). Performance score edited by Jennifer Oates. Los Angeles, CA: Barton Rhodes Music, 2013.
Four Songs of Love and Longing for women’s voices and piano by Hamish MacCunn (“Night,” “O my love leave me not,” “On a faded violet,” and “Whither?”). Performance score edited by Jennifer Oates. Los Angeles, CA: Barton Rhodes Music, 2012.
CD liner notes for Selected Partsongs of Hamish MacCunn, The Queens College Vocal Ensemble, directed by James John, 2009.
Selected program notes for the Queens College Choral Society, 2008-2014: Bach Das neugeborne Kindelein, BWV 122, and Mass in B Minor; Beethoven, Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony; Mendelssohn, Elijah and Psalm 42; Orff, Carmina Burana; Vaughan Williams, Dona Nobis Pacem.
REVIEWS
Ethel Smyth’s Serenade in D Major for Orchestra, Recent Researches in Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, vo. 84. Edited by John L. Synder. Notes, forthcoming.
Granville Bantock (1868-1946): A Guide to Research, by John C. Dressler. NABMSA Book Reviews, summer 2021.
Irish Musical Studies 12: Documents of Irish Music History in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Kerry Houston, Maria McHale, and Michael Murphy. Journal of the Society of Musicology in Ireland, forthcoming 2020.
Music and Victorian Liberalism: Composing the Liberal Subject, edited by Sarah Collins. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, forthcoming 2020.
Ernest Newman: A Critical Biography, by Paul Watt. Notes 76/1 (September 2019): 109-11.
Granville Bantock’s Letters to William Wallace and Ernest Newman, 1893-1921, edited by Michael Allis. NABMSA Book Reviews 5/2 (Fall 2018): https://nabmsa.org/nabmsa-reviews/
British Royal and State Funerals: Music and Ceremonial Since Elizabeth I, by Matthias Range. Notes (June 2018): 650-53.
Opera in the British Isles: 1875-1918, by Paul Rodmell. Fontes Artis Musicae 63/2 (April-June 2016): 149-51.
Mendelssohn and Victorian England, by Colin Eatock; Music and Victorian Philanthropy, by Charles E. McGuire; and Music in London and the Myth of Decline, by Ian Taylor. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 9/1 (June 2012): 131-5.
Erik Chisholm, Scottish Modernist 1904-1965 ‘Chasing a Restless Muse’, by John Purser. NABMSA Newsletter 6/1 (Fall 2010), http://www.nabmsa.org/pdfs/NABMSA%20Fall%202010%20Newsletter.pdf
Charles Hallé: A Musical Life,by Robert Beale. NABMSA Newsletter, 5/1 (Spring 2009), http://www.nabmsa.org/newsletters/Newsletterindex51.html#Oates
Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music, by Diana McVeagh. Journal of Musicological Research, 27/2 (April-June 2008): 196-99.
Paul Hindemith: A Guide to Research, by Stephen Luttmann. Music Reference Services Quarterly, 9/3 (2005): 94-95.
Britten on Music, edited by Paul Kildea. Notes, 61/4 (June 2005): 1013-15.
Michael William Balfe, by William Tyldesley. Notes, 61/2 (December 2004): 433-35.
PEER-REVIEWED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“Ancient Oriental Philosophy”: The Songs of the East (1896-98) and Granville Bantock (1868-1946), Society for Musicology in Ireland Annual Plenary Conference, online, 27-31 May 2021
“Granville Bantock, ‘Pioneer-in-Chief” of Modern British Music, North American British Music Studies Association biennial conference, Utah State University, 30 July-1 August 2018.
“Granville Bantock, ‘Pioneer-in-Chief of the Young British Movement’?” Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference, University of Birmingham, 28-30 June 2017.
“Nineteenth-Century Print Culture and Scottish Opera,” Opera and Print Culture in 19th-Century Britain Symposium, London, 23-24 June 2017.
“Opera in Edinburgh from the 1870s to the Great War,” Annual Plenary Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, June 2017, Queen’s University Belfast, 16-18 June 2017.
“Musical Maverick: Granville Bantock, Modernism, and the First World War,” A ‘Great Divide’ or a Longer Nineteenth Century? Music, Britain and the First World War, Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, Durham University, UK, 21 January 2017.
“A Revolt of the Provinces Against the Centre”: Provincialism, Identity, and Art Music in Edinburgh 1900-1917,” North American British Music Studies Association Panel at the Biennial Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, 8-10 July 2015.
“Sir Granville Bantock: A Forgotten “Pioneer of Contemporary British Music,” The State We’re In: Directions in Researching Post-1900 British Music, University of Surrey, 16-17 April 2015.
“‘A Revolt of the Provinces Against the Centre’: Provincialism, Identity, and Art Music in Edinburgh 1900-1917,” North American British Music Studies Association, Biennial Conference, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 31 July-4 August 2014.
“Provincial or National? The Edinburgh Dunedin Association and the Articulation of British Identity, 1911-1917,” Biennial Conference for Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Cardiff, Wales, 24-27 June 2013.
“Cosmopolitan Songs by a Scottish Composer: Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916) Sheds his Caledonian Persona,” North American British Music Studies Association, Biennial Conference, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, 26-28 July 2012.
Lecture Recital with Justin Vickers (tenor), “Cosmopolitan Songs by a Scottish Composer: Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916) and his Caledonian Cloak,” Greater New York American Musicological Society, Hunter College, 28 April 2012.
“‘Thank God, it is British!’: The Scots’ Contribution to Nineteenth-Century British Music,” Biennial Conference for Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Queen’s University Belfast, 21-24 July 2011.
“Scotland, the Celtic North, and the Sea: Bantock’s Hebridean Symphony (1915),” the Greater New York Chapter of the American Musicological Society, Wagner College, Staten Island, New York, 16 October 2010 and North American British Music Studies Association, Biennial Conference, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, 29 July-1 August 2010.
“Mendelssohn, MacCunn, and the Ossianic Topos,” North American British Music Studies Association, Biennial Conference, York University, Toronto, Canada, 31 July-3 August 2008 and Biennial Conference for Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Dublin, Ireland, 25 June-29 June 2008.
“Brigadoon: Lerner and Loewe’s Scotland,” Musical Theatre in 1957 Symposium, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 9-10 November 2007.
“Eclecticism and Englishness in Five Tudor Portraits: A Portrait of Vaughan Williams’s Musical Style?” North American British Music Studies Association, Biennial Conference, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, VT, 4-5 August 2006.
“(Mis)Appropriations of History: Constructions of the English Musical Renaissance,” panel presentation with Byron Adams, Jenny Doctor, Deborah Heckert, James Brooks Kuykendall, Leanne Langley, Charles McGuire, Eric Saylor, American Musicological Society, National Meeting, Washington, D.C., 27-30 October 2005.
“Hamish MacCunn and Imperialism: A Scot Glorifies the Empire?” American Musicological Society, National Meeting, Washington, D.C., 27-30 October 2005.
“A Scot Glorifies the Empire: Hamish MacCunn’s Imperialistic Compositions,” Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference, Nottingham, UK, 7-10 July 2005.
“The Ship o’ the Fiend: Hamish MacCunn as a Scottish Bard,” Britannia (Re-)Sounding: Music in the Arts, History and Culture of Great Britain, Oberlin College, OH, 18-19 June 2004.
“Hamish MacCunn (1868-1914): A Scottish National Composer?” Biennial Conference for Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, University of Leeds, UK, 24-27 July 2003.
“An Intersection of Opera Traditions and Scottish Nationalism: Hamish MacCunn’s Jeanie Deans (1894),”Biennial Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music, University of Leeds, UK, 4-7 July 2002 and American Musicological Society Southern Chapter meeting, Florida State University, 31 January-2 February 2002.
INVITED PRESENTATIONS
“Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916): Scottish One-Hit Wonder or Cosmopolitan Composer?,” Texas Christian University, 3 April 2019.
“Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916): 100 Years On,” MacCunn Centenary Festival, Glasgow University, 23 November 2016.
“Keeping Score: Musicology and the Scholarly Score,” Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College – CUNY, Music Theory/Musicology Club Colloquium, 19 October 2015.
“Nineteenth-Century British Music and the Press: The Rise and Fall of Hamish MacCunn,” CUNY Junior Faculty Colloquium Queens College – CUNY, 15 April 2004.
Jennifer Oates, Ph.D. 