Oliver Puckey
I am a third-year PhD student working on musical and operatic culture in nineteenth-century Britain and Germany, supervised by Prof. Christopher Clark. My dissertation examines exchanges of orchestral music and opera between Britain and the German states, drawing our attention to the limits of framing nineteenth-century musical life in terms of "national musics". The project draws upon transnational methodologies to present a new look at the history of nineteenth-century music culture in Britain and Germany, looking at the border-crossing activities of critics, composers, traveling musicians, concert organisers, choral and orchestral societies, and municipalities. More generally, it approaches the reception of German music in Britain as a barometer for measuring continuities and changes in the Anglo-German cultural relationship up to the 1860s.
Specific chapters focus on opera and romanticism in Regency London; Felix Mendelssohn and the choral festival movement; mid-century concert life in London and the advent of Richard Wagner; provincial concert life and European networks of exchange. The dissertation is provisionally titled "The Reception and Reimagining of German Music in Britain, c. 1813-1858".
My research interests include the history of nineteenth century Europe in transnational and global perspective; the history of music and music aesthetics from the late-eighteenth century to the present; opera studies; intersections between music history and intellectual history, and cultural exchanges/transfer processes.
I supervise undergraduate students on Paper 08 - Modern Europe 1789-1914.
'Futurity in Richard Wagner's Early British Reception', Transnational Opera Studies Conference @ Lisboa. Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. 6 July 2023.
'The Idea of 'Musical Germany' in British Intellectual Culture, 1800-60', The Thirteenth Music in Nineteenth Century Britain Conference. Open University. 29 June 2023.
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Key publications
Oliver Puckey, 'The German Museum and the Early Reception of German Letters in Britain, 1800-1801', German Life and Letters, Vol. 76/2 (2023), pp. 222-44.