John Irving BMus PhD (Sheffield) LRAM ARCM (Hons)

Professor of Music History and Performance Practice

PLEASE NOTE: From August 2009 until August 2014, John Irving will be on secondment as Director of The Institute of Musical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London. He will not be available to supervise new research students during this period.

Look up John in the University contacts directory

John Irving's research interests are

• the keyboard and chamber music of Mozart
• the fortepiano (on which he is an active performer of classical period repertoire)
• baroque and classical performance practice
• English music of the Elizabethan period

His published studies of Mozart include three books on Mozart's piano sonatas, string quartets and piano concertos. He has also produced editions of Tomkins's Consort Music (Musica Britannica) and the Anders von Düben Keyboard Tablature (Hänssler). His numerous journal articles and book chapters focus on issues such as reception, compositional process, aesthetics, sources and their transmission and performance. His 1997 monograph, Mozart's Piano Sonatas: contexts, sources, style has recently been reissued in paperback by Cambridge University Press. Recently completed projects currently in press include a facsimile edition of Mozart's Piano Concerto in A, K.488 (Editions J-M Fuzeau), a chapter on Performance in the Eighteenth Century for The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music (ed. Simon Keefe) and a revision of the Musica Britannica edition of Tomkins's Keyboard Music (Stainer & Bell). Current research projects include a book on performance as an analytical context for Mozart's Piano Sonatas (contracted with Ashgate), a chapter on the Viennese Symphony for the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to the Symphony (ed. Julian Horton), the General Editorship of a series of monographs on the English-Texted Music of William Byrd (Boydell 7 Brewer), and an edition and recording of solo keyboard sonatas by Leopold Mozart and his Salzburg contemporaries from Johann Ulrich Haffner's Oeuvres Melées, a multi-volume anthology from the mid-eighteenth century. This project, supported by a British Academy Research Grant was recorded on historic keyboards from the Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments. John is a Council Member of the Royal Musical Association, a Board Member of The British Library Journal and a Member of the AHRC's Peer Review College.

Principal publications

Books

The Instrumental Music of Thomas Tomkins, 1572-1656 (Garland Press; New York & London, 1989) 2 vols. in one ix + 235 pp.; xi + 181 pp. ISBN 0-8240-2011-1

Mozart's Piano Sonatas : Contexts, Sources, Style (Cambridge, 1997) xxii + 211pp. ISBN 0 521 49631 4

'The book is solid, reliable and erudite...a valuable addition to the growing body of literature...lay[ing] a firm foundation for future research' Early Music

Mozart: the 'Haydn' Quartets (Korean translation; Dongmunsun/CUP, 2003) 132 pp. ISBN 89 8038 447 5 (pbk)

Mozart: the "Haydn" String Quartets Cambridge Music Handbook (Cambridge, 1998) vii + 105 pp. ISBN 0 521 58475 2 (hbk); 0 521 58561 9 (pbk)

‘Irving is never less than authoritative and persuasive’ The Musical Times

Mozart's Piano Concertos (Ashgate Press, 2003) xxii + 274pp. ISBN 0 7546 0707 0 (hbk)

'An essential companion for players, students and listeners of this amazing body of music' Early Music Review

Critical editions

Thomas Tomkins: Consort Music Musica Britannica 59 (Stainer & Bell; London, 1991) ISBN 0-85249-798-9 xxviii + 110 pp

Thomas Tomkins: Consort Music I for three viols (Stainer & Bell; London, 1991), 18pp [playing parts]

Thomas Tomkins: Consort Music II for four, five and six viols (Stainer & Bell; London, 1991) 16pp [playing parts]

Claude Le Jeune, Benedicite Dominum, omnes angeli; Magnificat from Second livre des Meslanges... (Paris, 1612) Antico Edition RCM 22 iv + 26 pp. (1996)

The Anders von Düben Tablature Corpus of Early Keyboard Music American Institute of Musicology/Hänssler-Verlag (2000)

Mozart (attrib.): Missa Solemnis in C, K.Anh. C1.20 Producer and General Editor (Classico) Prague Chamber Orchestra/Choir, cond. Douglas Bostock (summer 2001)

Book chapters

"Byrd and Tomkins: the instrumental Music" in Byrd Studies ed. A. Brown and R. Turbet (CUP; Cambridge, 1992), pp.141-58

"Reading Haydn's Quartets" in Haydn the Innovator - A Study of the String Quartets ed. D. Young (Manchester, 2000), pp.11-31

"The Invention of Tradition" in J. Samson (ed.), The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge, January 2002), pp.178-211

articles in The Revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001) include: 'Tomkins'; 'Sonata §3: 1750-1830'

contributions to C. Eisen (ed.), The Mozart Encyclopedia (CUP, 2006): 'Sonatas'; 'Miscellaneous Piano Music'; 'String Quartets'; 'Rhetoric'

Journal articles (selection)

"Consort Playing in mid-17th-century Worcester: Thomas Tomkins and the Bodleian Partbooks Mus.Sch. E.415-18" Early Music 12 (1984), pp.337-44

"Thomas Tomkins's Copy of Morley's 'A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music'" Music and Letters 71 (1990), pp.483-93

"The Keyboard Music of Thomas Morley" Music and Letters 75 (1994), pp.333-43

"John Blitheman's Keyboard Plainsongs - another 'kind' of composition?" Plainsong and Medieval Music 3 (1994), pp.185-93

"A Fresh Look at Mozart's 'Sonatensatz', KV312" in Mozart-Jahrbuch (1995), pp.79-94

"'Das Conzert hat viel Änlichkeiten mit der Tragedie der Alten': Mozart's Piano Concertos and Heinrich Koch's 1787 Description" in Mozart-Jahrbuch (1998), pp.103-18

"Haydn's Influence on Mozart's Sonatas, K.279-84: Fact or Fiction?" in Revue Belge de Musicologie/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Muziekwetenschap (1999), pp.137-50

"Revisiting Mozart's 'Haydn' Quartets" in Studi Musicali 29 (2000), pp.185-214

"Derrida, Mozart und Kulturelle Identität" in Musik und Aesthetik 21 (2002), pp.40-8

"Variation technique in the Adagio of Mozart’s D major String Quintet, K.593" in Dutch Journal of Music Theory/ Tijdschrift voor Musiektheorie 9 (2004), pp.12-18

“Er hat Geschmack und über das, die größte Kompositionswissenschaft: Geschmack, Fertigkeit und Kreativität in Mozarts ‘Haydn’-Streichquartetten” in Die Musikforschung 57 (2004), pp.2-17 [in German]

"Deconstructing Topics” in Acta Mozartiana (2006), pp.

"How Much Music Theory can Music History Bear? " in Dutch Journal of Music Theory/ Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie11 (2006), pp.119-27

“Deconstructing Topics: tracing their status in the Allegro of Mozart’s Piano Sonata, KV332” in Mozart Studien, hrsg. v. Manfred Hermann Schmid, Band 15, Schneider: Tutzing, pp. 269-276

Publications currently in press

a facsimile edition of Mozart – Piano Concerto in A, K.488 (‘Collection Dominantes’ – Editions Fuzeau, Paris, c.2006)

‘Angleterre, 1470-1600’, in Guide de la Musique de la Renaissance ed. F. Ferrand (Fayard; Paris, 2006) [in French, c.150pp]

Revision of Thomas Tomkins: Keyboard Music. Musica Britannica vol. 5 (Stainer & Bell/ The British Academy, c.2007)

articles on ‘Coprario’, ‘Humfrey’, ‘Mace’, ‘Okeover’, ‘Peerson’, ‘Tomkins’ in The Oxford New Dictionary of National Biography (OUP, 2006-7)

articles on ‘Tomkins’ and ‘Young’ in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (2007)

Research in Progress

an edition of Johann Ulrich Haffner's Oeuvres Melées 4 vols. (Editions Fuzeau, Paris, c.2007--)