Funded Projects

The Conservatoire has an excellent track record in attracting external funding for its research. Here are some of the major funded projects either currently running or recently completed.

Aural Histories of Coventry

A project led by BCU aims to explore the changing experience of music in late-medieval Coventry through performances and recordings within Virtual Reality (VR) reconstructions of its lost performing spaces.

Find out more about the Aural Histories project >>

The Complete Theoretical Works of Johannes Tinctoris: A New Digital Edition

Funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council 2011-2014

Prof Ronald Woodley: Principal Investigator
Dr Jeffrey J. Dean: Senior Researcher
David Lewis: Researcher
Christian Goursaud: PhD Student

The corpus of 12 Latin treatises by the 15th-century musician and theorist Johannes Tinctoris (c. 1435–1511) is widely acknowledged as one of the most significant and comprehensive sources for late medieval musical notation and compositional process, as well as a central focus for important recent research on musical aesthetics and reception at this crucial turning-point in western European culture.

'Accenting the Classics': Exploring the musical past through French publishing

Funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council 2016-2019

Professor Deborah Mawer: Principal Investigator, Prof Graham Sadler, Prof Barbara Kelly, Dr Rachel Moore

This research, ‘Accenting the Classics’, aims to measure a varying French accent brought to bear upon earlier European music. In order to achieve this aim, the project focuses on French publisher Durand’s Edition classique (particularly volumes from the decade 1915–1925), a vast collection of European piano music that, despite featuring established French composers as editors, has been largely dismissed. In essence, the project looks to discover more about attitudes to the musical past in early twentieth-century, wartime France, and to hear how the past was made to sound to French ears.

Find out more about Exploring the musical past through French publishing

Soundbeam 3DOM project

A further, valuable extension of our recent compositional research has involved the work of Dr Liz Johnson on the Soundbeam 3DOM project, bringing creative music-making into the lives of adults with physical disabilities.

Soundbeam is an award-winning ‘touch-free’ device which uses sensor technology to translate body movement into music and sound. Dr Johnson’s project, along with a parallel project funded under the Cultural Engagement Fund scheme of the AHRC, has been funded by Arts Council England.