Sinéad Dempsey-Garratt
Sinéad studied music at Trinity College, Dublin and the University of Manchester. Her teaching and research interests centre on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German music, culture and aesthetics. She completed her PhD dissertation, ‘Aesthetic and Ideological Trends in the Reception of Mendelssohn’s Music in Nineteenth-Century Germany’ at Manchester in 2008, and is currently revising her doctoral work as a monograph. Future research plans centre in particular on nineteenth-century German instrumental music, especially the orchestral suite and the violin concerto.
Sinéad has a wide of range of teaching experience, having taught music history, aesthetics, harmony and counterpoint and aural skills at both the University of Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music. In addition to teaching at both these institutions and the University of Bristol, she is a Visiting Tutor for the BA in Opera Studies at Rose Bruford College.
Sinéad enjoys playing the violin in Stockport Symphony Orchestra.
Current Teaching:
University of Bristol
- 18th and 19th-century components of first-year Historical Studies II MUSI 10046
- Second- and third-year split-level history unit: Orchestral Music in German Thought and Culture 1830-1890 MUSI 29005/MUSI39005
Royal Northern College of Music
- Year One History Lectures on aspects of nineteenth-century music: lectures on Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner and Strauss
University of Manchester
- Music, Culture and Politics in Germany, 1815-1848: lectures on music and gender, Berlin concert life, Mendelssohn and historicism.
- Tutoring first years on an interdisciplinary course Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Foundations of Study in the Arts.
- First-year modules in Baroque Harmony and Counterpoint, Classical Harmony and Aural Training
- Academic Tutor to first years looking after all aspects of their academic work
- Academic Tutor for Manchester Access Programme preparing talented AS level students for entry into University
Rose Bruford College, BA Opera Studies
- Tutor for second-year module Romanticism and its Sources.
Publications
‘Interpreting the Metaphorical Dimensions of Mendelssohn Criticism’ – book chapter in Viewing Mendelssohn, Viewing Elijah: Assimilation, Interpretation, and Culture, ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and David Schildkret (forthcoming).
‘Mendelssohn’s “Untergang”: Reconsidering the Impact of Wagner’s “Das Judentum in der Musik”’ – book chapter in Mendelssohn in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Nicole Grimes and Angela Mace (Ashgate, forthcoming).
‘Composer and Critic: The Mendelssohn-Marx Relationship Reconsidered’, Proceedings of the First Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland ed. Barra Boydell (2004) pp. 65-71.
‘Hero or Has Been? Mendelssohn Reception in England and Germany in the 1840s’, British Postgraduate Musicology Online 6 (2004).
Recent Conference Papers and Invited Talks
‘Odious Comparisons: The Roles of Handel, Haydn and Purcell in Mendelssohn’s Nineteenth-Century Reception’, SMI/RMA Joint Annual Conference, Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin (July 2009).
‘Mendelssohn: A Model of the Musically Beautiful?’, Eduard Hanslick: Aesthetic, Critical, and Cultural Contexts, University College Dublin (June 2009).
‘Interpreting the Metaphorical Dimensions of Mendelssohn Criticism’, Viewing Mendelssohn, Viewing Elijah: Assimilation, Interpretation, and Culture, Arizona State University (April/May 2009) (funded)
‘Odious Comparisons: The Roles of Handel, Haydn and Purcell in Mendelssohn’s Nineteenth-Century Reception’, Purcell, Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn: Anniversary Reflections, New College Oxford (March 2009).
‘Anti-Semitism and Mendelssohn’s Nineteenth-Century Reception’, Research Seminar, University of Bristol (February 2009).
‘A Conflict of Musical Ideals: Mendelssohn and the New German School’, Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, Waterford Institute of Technology (May 2008).
‘Mendelssohn’s “Untergang”: Reconsidering the Impact of Wagner’s “Das Judentum in der Musik”’, Richard Wagner International Conference, Rose Bruford College (October 2006); International Conference, Mendelssohn in the Long Nineteenth Century, Trinity College Dublin (July 2005).
‘Hero or Has-Been? Mendelssohn Reception in England and Germany in the 1840s’, Thirteenth Biennial International Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music, University of Durham (July 2004); Thirty-Sixth Royal Musical Association Annual Music Research Students’ Conference, University of Salford (January 2003).
‘Sa(l)vaging Mendelssohn: A Closer Look at his Obituaries’, Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, Queen’s University Belfast (May 2004).
‘Composer and Critic: The Mendelssohn-Marx Relationship Reconsidered’, Thirty-Seventh Royal Musical Association Annual Music Research Students’ Conference, Royal Holloway, University of London (January 2004); Society for Musicology in Ireland First Annual Conference, NUI Maynooth (May 2003).
‘Mendelssohn and his Critics: Issues in Reception and Ideology’, Royal Musical Association Irish Chapter, University College Dublin (May 2002).