UNIVERSITY NEWS LAST UPDATED : 12 JULY
Associate Professor of Music Adam Whittaker has been elected Chair of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society. In this role, he is keen to build awareness of and explore new possibilities for early music.
As Chair of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, Adam will represent the society and its international membership in promoting the performance and study of liturgical chant and medieval polyphony through the publication of editions, facsimiles and scholarly articles, and organising events. He has been on the society’s governing council since 2019.
Working alongside the council, Adam will be looking for new ways that the society can support the study and performance of medieval music, create partnerships with key stakeholders, and engage new audiences in the world of musical manuscripts and early music.
He is keen to develop and continue popular study days and seek out new possibilities to support the further investigation of plainsong and medieval music.
Adam said: “I am looking forward to helping the society set out a strategy for the long term and find new ways to engage members. I want to continue to support the great work of the academic journal associated with the society, ‘Plainsong and Medieval Music’, and share my passion for medieval music.
“The society has existed since 1888 and the landscape it works in has changed significantly since then, so I want to ensure that the community interest in medieval music is maintained and goes from strength to strength.”
Adam has also co-edited History as Fantasy in Music, Sound, Image, and Media , which was published by Routledge recently. His contribution looks at some of the ways that Virtual Reality is opening up new ways to experience and recreate medieval music, allowing audiences to experience music in spaces that are now lost to ruin and the passage of time.
Other chapters in the book deal with film, TV, and video game music, and pose provocative questions regarding perceptions of ‘early’ music and the sensory experience of distant history.
His co-editors were James Cook from the University of Edinburgh, Alexander Kolassa from the Open University, and Alexander Robinson of CESR-Tours.
Adam added: “We're really delighted to present a book with such a wide array of fascinating and thought-provoking chapters, and build on the success of our previous book Recomposing the Past (Routledge, 2018).”