Dr Jonathan Hicks

Dr Jonathan Hicks
Dr Jonathan Hicks
Dr Jonathan Hicks

BMus, MSt, DPhil

Lecturer

Accepting PhDs

About
123 MacRobert Building
Old Aberdeen Campus
581 King Street
AB24 5UA

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Biography

I grew up in a village outside York (North Yorkshire) and took my undergraduate degree in music at the University of Birmingham. I spent a year working in creative education and arts admin before starting a masters in musicology at the University of Oxford. I stayed at Oxford for my doctoral studies, where I wrote my dissertation on “Music, Place, and Mobility in Erik Satie's Paris” under the supervision of Peter Franklin. I then held a Junior Research Fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, which led to a postdoctoral post on the European Research Council project, Music in London, 1800-1851, directed by Roger Parker at King’s College London. I began moving back north with a fellowship at Newcastle University's Humanities Research Institute before joining the University of Aberdeen in 2019 as a lecturer in music.

Qualifications

  • BMus Music 
    2005 - University of Birmingham 
  • MSt Musicology 
    2007 - University of Oxford 
  • DPhil Music 
    2013 - University of Oxford 

Memberships and Affiliations

Internal Memberships

I am a member of the George Washington Wilson Centre for Art and Visual Culture as well as the Museums and Special Collections Academic Forum. I am also an elected senator for LLMVC.

As a committed trade unionist, I'm delighted to be the Department of Music representative for the University and College Union (UCU). Drop me a line if you'd like to know more about UCU. Or, if you're already a member, let me know if you'd like to discuss any work-related issues. 

 

 

External Memberships

I'm a co-director of the Institute for Musical Research, which is currently going through a (hopefully brief) fallow period as we reconfigure the Institute to be run by a consortium including the University of Aberdeen. We'll be updating the website in due course. In the meantime, please get in touch if you have any questions.

I convene a working groups on equality, diversity, and inclusion in higher education beyond music studies for the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Music Studies (EDIMS) Network. I'm also a member of the EDIMS working group for parenting and caring as well as the sub-group for reimagining the music history curriculum.

In terms of learned societies, I'm a member of the Royal Musical Association (RMA), but I should stress that I'm no fan of royalty and have spoken about this (twice) at RMA events. I'm also a member of the International Musicological Society and the North American British Music Studies Association. I'm usually a member of the American Musicological Association, though my membership has lapsed now and then.

Research

Research Overview

Much of my work is concerned with music and theatre in the British nineteenth century. I am particularly interested in the criss-crossing of musical and urban histories in big cities like London (and Paris). I like to approach the music of the past via the places and spaces with which it was commonly identified. This might mean paying close attention to particular sites of performance (Italian opera is a different beast when taken out of the theatre and into the street, for instance) or it might mean asking how music contributed to the (often multi-media) evocations of particular territories or landscapes. I also research the history of how music and musicians travel and adapt. The notion of cultural mobility is central to The Melodramatic Moment, a collection of essays that I edited with Katherine Hambridge (Durham) as well as my first monograph (in preparation), Music on the Move in Victorian London. If any of this is up your street, do get in touch. 

You can find deatils of some of my published research on my Academia.edu profile page.

Research Areas

Accepting PhDs

I am currently accepting PhDs in Music.


Please get in touch if you would like to discuss your research ideas further.

Email Me

Music

Supervising
Accepting PhDs

Research Specialisms

  • Urban Studies
  • History of Music
  • Musicology
  • Theatre Studies
  • British History

Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is HESA open data, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Current Research

As well as working on my monograph (see above) I have recently finished an essay on the curious history of promenade concerts (for a special issue of 19th Century Music on music and the environment in the nineteenth century) as well as a review article (for Cambridge Opera Journal) entitled "Opera History, the Travel Edition," which deals with a range of issues in the transnational study of operatic practice.

I have further essays in the pipeline exploring aspects of song, sound, mobility, and domesticity in the nineteenth century: one such essay addresses resonance, fame, and Fingal's Cave (for a book on sound and sense in Britain, 1770-1830); another explores the global travels of the "Old Hundredth" psalm tune (for a book on music and the Bible in the British nineteenth century); a third takes the hit song "Home, Sweet Home" as a cue for addressing the ambivalence of much of the Victorian public when faced with urban expansion and intensification (for a special issue on music and urban desire in the nineteenth century); finally, I am in the early stages of writing an article about "Onward, Christian Soldiers" as part of a project on hymnody, coloniality, and mobility. 

Longer term, I plan to write a study of sound and music in the early town planning movement (mainly in Britain, from the late-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century). I also aim to publish something on the history of musical cartography (see the section on grants below). 

Past Research

I was a founder member of the Hearing Landscape Critically research network, which brought together scholars and practitioners from various fields between 2012 and 2016 to address the significance of sound in landscape and the role of landscape in shaping our understanding of music.

Collaborations

I am co-director of The London Stage Project led by Michael Burden (New College, Oxford), which hosts a biannual conference on The London Stage and the Nineteenth-Century World as well as the London Stage Calendar of theatrical perfromances, 1800-1844 (Part 1: 1800-1832 was launched in April 2021 as part of the most recent conference). In previous years we have curated a major exhibition on Staging History, 1780-1840 (2016-2017) and published a volume of essays (also titled Staging History, 1780-1840) on the phenomenon of historical drama in Britain and the United States. 

I am a member of the editorial collective of the journal Radical Musicology and the editorial board of the Cambridge Elements series Music and the City. I am also a board member of the newly-formed Nineteenth-century Song Club, which meets roughly quarterly to disucss work in progress in the literary, historical, and musical study of nineteenth-century songs and singers. 

Supervision

My current supervision areas are: Music.

I'm first supervisor for:

  • Ignasi Solé Piñas's study of the performance and recording history of Beetoven's cello sonatas. 

I'm joint supervisor (with Thomas McKean) for:

  • Mollie Carlyle's study on sea shanty performance and collecting since the nineteenth century.

I'm second supervisor for:

  • Ben Ponniah's creative practice portfolio of choral compositions;
  • Daniel Collins's study of the influences of the Edda and the Heimskringla on Norwegian Composers in the nineteenth century; and 
  • Claudia Falcone's study of women and domestic music in early 19th century Britain.

 

Funding and Grants

I am Principal Investigator for an for an AHRC research network on Mapping Music History (2019-2022). As the network gather steam we will be posting blogs and resources to musicalgeography.org, a site run by my co-investigator Louis Epstein (St. Olaf College). 

 

Teaching

Teaching Responsibilities

I'm programme director for the MMus in Music. If you're a current MMus student, please feel free to conatct me with any questions or concerns. If you're thinking of applying to the MMus, drop me a line and we can discuss your options.

Non-course Teaching Responsibilities

I currently have 22 undergraduate personal tutees as well as the 17 postgraduate taught students on the MMus. It's always a pleasure to hear from person tutees so, if that includes you, please do get in touch whenever you'd like a chat. 

Publications

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  • Teaching Romantic Melodrama

    Hicks, J. (ed.), Burdett, S. (ed.)
    Romantic Textualities
    Contributions to Journals: Special Issues
  • Opera History, the Travel Edition

    Hicks, J.
    Cambridge Opera Journal, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 273-283
    Contributions to Journals: Review articles
  • In Memoriam Indoor Fountains: Promenade Concerts and the Built Environment

    Hicks, J.
    19th-Century Music, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 37-48
    Contributions to Journals: Articles
  • The London Stage Calendar 1800-1844: Part I: 1800 to 1832

    Hicks, J., Burden, M.
    Bodleian Library (Website).
    Other Contributions: Other Contributions
  • [Review] Rachel Mundy, Animal Musicalities: Birds, Beasts, and Evolutionary Listening (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2018).: Birds, Beasts, and Evolutionary Listening

    Hicks, J.
    Twentieth-Century Music, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 119-124
    Contributions to Journals: Review articles
  • Cockney Masquerades: Tom and Jerry and Don Giovanni in 1820s London

    Hicks, J.
    Operatic Geographies. Aspden, S. (ed.). University of Chicago Press, pp. 74-87, 14 pages
    Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters (Peer-Reviewed)
  • The Melodramatic Moment

    Hicks, J. E., Hambridge, K.
    The Melodramatic Moment. Hambridge, K., Hicks, J. (eds.). University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-24, 24 pages
    Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters (Peer-Reviewed)
  • The Melodramatic Moment: Music and Theatrical Culture, 1790–1820

    Hambridge, K. G. (ed.), Hicks, J. (ed.)
    University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 288 pages
    Books and Reports: Books
  • Erik Satie and the Subject(s) of Mobility

    Hicks, J.
    Music, Modern Culture and the Critical Ear. Attfield, N., Winters, B. (eds.). Routledge, pp. 75-90
    Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters (Peer-Reviewed)
  • Another Case of 'Le Cas Satie'

    Hicks, J.
    Ars Lyrica: Journal of Word-Music Relations, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 90-96
    Contributions to Journals: Review articles
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