Robert Rawson

Canterbury Christ Church University, Music, Faculty Member

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I am a scholar and performer (double bass and viola da gamba) with a special interest in music before circa 1800 and more broadly an interest in Czech music and music of Central and Eastern Europe. I have also written about and recorded lesser-known music in Britain between the eras of Purcell and Handel.

I am also interested in the role(s) of music within particular cultures, not only geographic or other common notions of culture, but also within religious groups, as a propaganda tool, and in advertising.

Am currently Professor of Musicology and Historically-Informed Performance at Canterbury Christ Church University.

I am also a founding member and artistic director for the acclaimed period-instrument group, The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen. We have released four CDs and awards and accolades from around the world including winning the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (Opera), for our 2016 world-premiere recording of Pepusch's Venus and Adonis. Our most recent recording of 'Music for European Courts and Concerts' by Gottfried Finger has won five-star reviews in Europe and Australia. Please feel free to PM for press pack.

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Marc Vanscheeuwijck

University of Oregon

Michael Talbot

University of Liverpool

Dr. Myrna Herzog

Francis Yapp

University of Canterbury/Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha

Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu

Rosalind Halton

The University of Newcastle

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Books by Robert Rawson

Bohemian Baroque: Czech Musical Culture and Style, 1600–1750 (Boydell and Brewer, 2013)

Book Chapters by Robert Rawson

‘‘After the Italian manner’—Finger, Pepusch and the first concertos in England’

Musical exchanges between Britain and the Continent, c.1500-1800, Bryan White and John Cunningham, eds., 2020

‘And all the world is keyboard shaped’ in What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book edited by Mark Fisher, Limelight, March 2019.

Rawson, Robert. ‘Suffering and Supplication as Emblems of Power in Music Relating to the 1683 Ottoman Siege of Vienna’ in Music and Power in the Baroque Era, edited by Rudolf Rasch, 221–36. Turnhout, 2018

'Concertos "upon the stage" in Early Hanoverian London: the Instrumental Counterpart to opera seria.' In: DeSimone, A. and Gardner, M., eds. Music, Theatre, and the Benefit Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, planned for 2018.

‘Sublime et merveilleux dans les pastorales de Noël tchèques des xviie et xviiie sièclesin’ in Le Sublime et musique religieuse de Lalande à Haydn, ed. Sophie Hache and Thierry Favier. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015

‘1700–1749’, in Classical Music 1600–2000: A Chronology, edited by Jonathan Paxman. London: Omnibus Press, 2014

'Harmonia Anglicana, or Why Finger Failed in 'The Prize Musick', chapter in The Lively Arts of The London stage, 1675–1725, K. Lowerre, ed. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014)

'Musical Contexts and the Habsburg Rehabilitation of Czech Saints.' In Sacred Music in the Habsburg Empire 1619–1740 and its Contexts, edited by T. Erhardt, 271-83 (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2013)

Chapter '1700–1749′ in Music Timelines, edited by Jon Paxman (London: Music Sales, scheduled for 2013)

'The Context and Content of Czech-Language Liturgical Music in the 17th Century: Some Questions.' In Early Music Context and Ideas II, 228-36. Kraków: Institute of Musicology, Jagiellonian University, 2008.

'Gottfried Finger and the Baryton.' In Festschrift Alfred Lessing (2000), edited by Bernard R. Appel and Johannes Boer, 53-61. Düsseldorf: Foundation for Historical Performance Practice, 2003

'Gottfried Finger and the Di Martinelli Collection at Leuven.' In The Di Martinelli Music Collection, 159-63. Leuven: Alamire, 2000.

Journal Articles by Robert Rawson

‘For the Sake of Fulness of Music in the Choir’—Performance Practice and the Double Bass at the Kroměříž Court’, Historical Performance, 1 (2018): 119–47

Most modern soloists have by now widely accepted the premise that surviving music notation from t... more Most modern soloists have by now widely accepted the premise that surviving music notation from the baroque period does not tell us all we need to know in order to realize an historically-informed performance. This same basic understanding has not been extended to the use of bowed bass instruments in basso continuo. Too often, when performers encounter a bowed bass part, they assume that the instru- ment specified (if they are so lucky as to have such a specification) must be capable of playing all of the notes on the page. Using source materials from the period, I will argue that this was not the case. Using central-European and English sources between c.1670 and 1715, I argue that bowed basses at 16-foot pitch were being used to reinforce tutti passages as early as the 1670s, but that their presence was, in part, determined by the size the ensemble and the size of the venue. In urging a reconsideration of how we conceive of the roles of basses at 16-foot pitch, I will also use the earliest surviving English “double bass” part to make a case for the use of the double bass in recitative in London theatres in the first decades of the eighteenth century.

Editorial: Early Music 40, no. 4 (2012).

'Courtly contexts for Moravian Hanák music in the 17th and 18th centuries', Early Music XI, 4 (2012): 577–591.

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''Ab unisonis'—Musical Textures and Genres and the echoes of paraliturgical practices', Musicologica Brunensia 47, 2012, 1: 25–34.

'Poglietti's Ricercare: Open-Score Keyboard Music and the Implications for Ensemble Performance.' Early Music Performer 20 (2007): 10-15.

'Clangor tubarum: a response to Peter Downey.' Correspondence in Early Music 35, no. 1 (2007): 165.

Conference report (with Tassilo Erhardt, David Irving and Peter Holman): ‘Baroque music in Warsaw’. Early Music 34 (2006): 718–20.

Bohemian Baroque: Czech Musical Culture and Style, 1600–1750 (Boydell and Brewer, 2013)

‘‘After the Italian manner’—Finger, Pepusch and the first concertos in England’

Musical exchanges between Britain and the Continent, c.1500-1800, Bryan White and John Cunningham, eds., 2020

‘And all the world is keyboard shaped’ in What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book edited by Mark Fisher, Limelight, March 2019.

‘1700–1749’, in Classical Music 1600–2000: A Chronology, edited by Jonathan Paxman. London: Omnibus Press, 2014

'Harmonia Anglicana, or Why Finger Failed in 'The Prize Musick', chapter in The Lively Arts of The London stage, 1675–1725, K. Lowerre, ed. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014)

Chapter '1700–1749′ in Music Timelines, edited by Jon Paxman (London: Music Sales, scheduled for 2013)

'Gottfried Finger and the Baryton.' In Festschrift Alfred Lessing (2000), edited by Bernard R. Appel and Johannes Boer, 53-61. Düsseldorf: Foundation for Historical Performance Practice, 2003

'Gottfried Finger and the Di Martinelli Collection at Leuven.' In The Di Martinelli Music Collection, 159-63. Leuven: Alamire, 2000.

‘For the Sake of Fulness of Music in the Choir’—Performance Practice and the Double Bass at the Kroměříž Court’, Historical Performance, 1 (2018): 119–47

Editorial: Early Music 40, no. 4 (2012).

'Courtly contexts for Moravian Hanák music in the 17th and 18th centuries', Early Music XI, 4 (2012): 577–591.

Download

''Ab unisonis'—Musical Textures and Genres and the echoes of paraliturgical practices', Musicologica Brunensia 47, 2012, 1: 25–34.

'Poglietti's Ricercare: Open-Score Keyboard Music and the Implications for Ensemble Performance.' Early Music Performer 20 (2007): 10-15.

'Clangor tubarum: a response to Peter Downey.' Correspondence in Early Music 35, no. 1 (2007): 165.

Conference report (with Tassilo Erhardt, David Irving and Peter Holman): ‘Baroque music in Warsaw’. Early Music 34 (2006): 718–20.

'Gottfried Finger's Christmas Pastorellas.' Early Music 33, no. 4 (2005): 591-606.

'From Olomouc to London: Some Questions of Instrumentation in the Music of Gottfried Finger.' Musicologica Olomucensia 4 (1998): 177-86.

Gottfried Finger, 'Music for European Courts and Concerts' (RAM1802), with The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen

J. C. Pepusch, Venus and Adonis (masque in two acts), The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen, double bassist, researcher and artistic director. Ramée, 2016.

Josef Guretzky, Concertos for Cello and Violin, with The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen. Chandos Recordings, 2016

Recording: Concertos and Overtures by J. C. Pepusch (1667-1752) with The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen (as double bassist), 2012.

Focus Knack, Belgium ‘The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen—what a fantastic name—ha... more Focus Knack, Belgium
‘The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen—what a fantastic name—have made one of the most beautiful baroque recordings I have heard in a long time.'

Toccata, Germany
'Since everything is just right from the tempi to the expression and the phrasing. Everything sounds elegant, light, joyful, varied and virtuosic. Because real experts are at work here.'

Fanfare, USA
I don’t think one album will make any significant strides to addressing Pepusch’s current fortunes, but if anything could, this just might. The music, composed for the most part in the first two decades of the 18th century, is unfailingly attractive throughout, always well crafted and tuneful. I would single out as most worthy of attention the Concerto Grosso for Trumpet, and the Oboe Concerto, both probably composed for the Cannons, the extravagant estate built for the first Duke of Chandos. The former concerto is blessed with a big, jaunty march, and a slow movement of great sweetness, while the two adagios in the latter work emphasize that peculiarly noble lyricism associated with some English music of the period.

RBB Kulturradio (Berlin), 5/5 stars. 05.22.2012
‘… the superior instrumental mastery in all participating members of the ensemble can be felt. Deep emotions are presented in the slow movements, with virtuosity and freshness of the fast movements. Given the large contrasts in music and the ever-changing combinations of instruments, makes listening to the Pepusch works an entertaining experience’.

Recording: Gottfried Finger, Music for Solo Viol and Continuo (as continuo violist), released in July 2005 by Arta recordings.

Gottfried Finger' in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004. [with Peter Holman]

'Gottfried Finger.' In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell, London: Macmillan, 2002.

Introduction to: Antonín Dvořák, Hymnus Dědicové Bílé hory. Muziproduktion Jürgen Höflich, Repertoire Explorer, no. 1420 (Munich, 2013)

[with Petr Wagner] The Complete Music for Solo Viola da Gamba by Gottfried Finger. 2nd ed. Vol. FE28, Teddington: Fretwork, 2009.

Edition: Pavel Josef Vejvanovský, Salve Regina, motet for solo bass voice and strings. Richmond: Green Man Editions: 2009.

Charles Brewer, The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and Their Contemporaries (Ashgate, 2011). In Fontes Artis Musicae, January 2012.

David Ingram, The Jukebox in the Garden, Ecocriticism and American Popular Music Since 1960 (Rodopi, 2010) book review in Organisation and Environment 25, September, 2011.

Daniel Freeman, 'Josef Mysliveček, "II Boemo": The Man and His Music.' Book review in Eighteenth-Century Music (Nov. 2010).

(Online publication March 11 2011)

Review: 'Kroměříž explored'. Jiří Sehnal, Pavel Vejvanovský and the Kroměříž music collection: perspectives on 17th-century music in Moravia (Olomouc, 2008) in Early Music, November 2011.

'Supraphon Surprises', Early Music 41/3 (2013): 530-533.

'Bohemians and Moravians Abroad.' Early Music 40, no. 4 (2012): 710-14.

CD Review: ‘Antarctic Symphony, by Peter Maxwell-Davies’. Organisation and Environment 19 (2006), 129

Giovanni Bononcini's Sancte Nicola di Bari. CD review in Eighteenth-Century Music (2010): 143-145.

'"Where Musick and More powerful Beauties Reign": the Finger-Draghi Concerts at York Buildings (c. 1689–97) and Their Impact on Theatre Music', read at the Royal Musical Association 57th Annual Conference, University of Newcastle, 14 September 2021.

‘Music, Politics and Religion—Reframing Restoration Bands of ‘Hoboys’ in the Context of Diplomacy’, read at the Royal Musical Association 56th Annual Conference, Goldsmiths, University of London 8–10 September 2020.

‘Jenůfa and Kaťa’s public and private reactions to the violence of samodurstvo in Janáček’s Jenůfa and Kaťa Kabanová’, paper read at the OBERTO ‘Opera and Violence’ conference, Oxford, 11 September 2018.

‘Opera de rebellione boëmica rusticorum (1777)—subjugation and political conflict on the Bohemian stage in the age of Enlightenment, paper read at 53rd Annual RMA Conference, University of Liverpool, 7–9 September 2017.

‘“Come to the Mother and You, O Cowardly Nations, Will Defeat the Rebels’ – Music, Symbol and the 1683 Siege of Vienna’ read at Music and Power in the Baroque Era, 11–13 November 2016, Lucca, Italy.

'Žižek, Freud and Kafka—analysing matriarchy in Janáček's Jenůfa and Káťa Kabanová', paper read at The Ninth Biennial International Conference on Music Since 1900, University of Glasgow, 7–9 September 2015

Žižek, Freud and Kafka—analysing matriarchy in Janáček's Jenůfa and Káťa Kabanová Dr. Robert G. ... more Žižek, Freud and Kafka—analysing matriarchy in Janáček's Jenůfa and Káťa Kabanová

Dr. Robert G. Rawson, Canterbury Christ Church University

In the second part of his essay ‘The Politics of Redemption, or, Why Richard Wagner is Worth Saving’, Slavoj Žižek presents a picture of ‘Janáček as Anti-Wagner’. He argues that Janáček’s setting of Ostrovsky’s play The Storm [as Káťa Kabanová] undermines the roles of social rebellion inherent in the original play and instead focusses the dramatic material around Kaťa as a ‘victim of fate in the guise of a blind uncontrollable passion’. Žižek raises questions around the idea of ‘progess’ by comparing depictions of the main women in this opera to Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth.
In this paper I will query some of Žižek’s conclusions around two Janáček operas; including the notion that the matriarchy in Jenůfa is ‘a benevolent’ one, compared with the malevolent version of the same in Káťa Kabanová. I will then deal with some insightful analysis from Žižek dealing with the boundaries of romanticism and freudian influences and the reactions with Max Brod and Franz Kafka—the latter two both noted the common feature of the public confession in both operas. To compliment the final part of Žižek’s discussion of these two operas, I will encourage a reconsideration of the role of Gabriela Preissová (1862–1946) who was the victim of a dreadful campaign of public bullying in the Czech press because of her play Její pastorkyňa [Her stepdaughter], the basis for Janáček’s libretto for Jenůfa. I argue that the play Její pastorkyňa was already moving away from the romantic stereotypes (in terms of characters and tropes) criticised by Žižek.

'Borders and Crossings: Musical Style in the Austro-Bohemian Baroque', presented at Music in Transition - Changing Styles and Approaches in the Mid-Baroque (1650-1710), Birmingham Conservatoire, 2–3 July 2015

The study and understanding of musical style in Austria and the Czech lands from 1650–1710 differ... more The study and understanding of musical style in Austria and the Czech lands from 1650–1710 differs fundamentally from most geographically bound studies because of the fundamental shift in confessional boundaries that resulted from the Catholic victory of The Thirty Years War. After the war musical styles found in the Austria and the Czech lands underwent changes in stylistic influences from within (village life) and without (courts, monasteries and other ecclesiastical institutions—dominated by Italian influences). Unsurprisingly, the results are not uniform across the Empire: the Austrian love of the earlier Italian styles (Gabrielli, Grandi and Valentini) contributed to the emergence of a ‘colossal baroque’ style exemplified in the large-scale works for Salzburg Cathedral (Biber, Muffat and Hofer) and St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna (Sances, Bertali, Schmelzer, Dolar and others) and St Vitus in Prague (Jacob, Sehling, Vaňura, Poppe). Meanwhile a much more personal style also emerged after the war, found more frequently in works for solo instrument (or voice) and continuo. In such works, the form and style were subject to frequent and often dramatic changes in mood, tempo, harmony and rhythm (Biber, Schmelzer, Finger, Voijta and others). These two dominating approaches to musical style were reflections of the seemingly paradoxical expressions of religiously ideology driving the counterreformation aesthetic in the Austrian crown lands—the competing ideas of magnificence and edification. Within this context Italian, French and native musical styles are to be found—the export of these styles and performance practices abroad is an overlooked aspect of considering musical style in the region.

'Gottfried Finger as Music Collector and Arranger', 16th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music 9–13 July 2014. University of Music and Dramatic Arts Mozarteum Salzburg

‘Devotional practices and the culture of conversion in seventeenth-century Bohemia’, presented at Denominational Boundaries and Sacred Music, Liverpool Hope University, 23 June 2014

'Music for Lent and Holy Week: Musical Manifestations of the idea of Humility'

'Rescuing the Czech Baroque from Czech Romanticism'

‘For the sake of the choir’—the role(s) of the double bass in late seventeenth-century central Europe

German moon, Czech fire: A case study of musical and national characteristics in Baroque Bohemia

Stylo Bohemo—Music Sources and ‘Czechness’ before 1800

‘Ab unisonis — musical textures and genres and the echoes of paraliturgical practices.’ Paper presented at the Central European Musical Culture between the Thirty Years War and the Congress of Vienna: Forms and changes in musical institutions and performance, 1618-1815, Brno, 2011.

'The Italian-style concerto in the Czech lands in the early eighteenth century: some overlooked sources and implications for musical style and performance'. Paper read at The 14th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, Queen's University Belfast, June 30-July 4, 2010.

'German Moon, Czech Fire: A Meeting Point of National Perceptions in Eighteenth-Century Music'. Paper read at Central and the conference 'Eastern European Music: Musical Crossroads?' Oxford University Faculty of Music, Saturday, 26 June, 2010

'Notational Issues and the Evocation of the 'Barbaric Beauty' of Moravian Folk Music in the Seventeenth Century.' Paper presented at the IAML/IMS Conference, Amsterdam, 2009.

'Musical Contexts and the Habsburg Rehabilitation of Czech Saints.' Paper read at the conference Sacred Music in the Habsburg Empire 1619–1740 and Its Contexts, Middelburg, Nov. 5-8, 2009.

'Patterns of Provicial Piety in Bohemia: the Domestication of Liturgy and its Effect on Music.' Paper presented at the 13th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, Leeds, 2008.

Positioning the Rustic and the Vernacular in Baroque Bohemia, invited lecture given at NYU, 25 March 2015

By the early eighteenth century (if not earlier) Catholic church music in Europe had become large... more By the early eighteenth century (if not earlier) Catholic church music in Europe had become largely, if not entirely, secularised—and this played no small role in changes of style. Sacred music also began to outgrow its liturgical frameworks and by the middle of the century there were many thousands of pieces whose titles and functions now held pieces that both functioned—and were heard—in a completely different manner. By the 1790s, some masses were masses in name alone. The chapel and the cathedral become a sacred opera houses, complete with rustic buffa. characters. I am not arguing that ‘folk’ music or its imitation formed any kind of basis for a formalised approach to composition, but rather that the unusually close cultural proximities of the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ styles in the Czech lands enabled (if not demanded) a careful manipulation of alla rustic compositions. While context remained paramount, the careful use of the rustic is apparent in both sacred and secular repertoires. In this talk I will extend this thread as it is covered in my book Bohemian Baroque to consider the transformations to this approach into the nineteenth centuries. By the time of Smetana’s triumphs in Prague the situation had practically reversed. Instead of village-trained musicians working in Prague’s theatres and courts (as has been the case in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), urban-educated city dwellers now headed out into the Bohemian and Moravian hinterland in order to acquaint themselves and their musical approach with ‘authentic’ Czechness [českost]. In short, Smetana used high art to dignify the low; whereas his baroque predecessors used the low to dignify the high.

‘Bohemian Baroque: Czech Musical Culture and Style 1600-1750’, an illustrated talk given at the Embassy of the Czech Republic (London), 22 January 2015, at the invitation of the Dvořák Society

''Melancholy Ditties about Dirt and Disorder': the Roles of Rustic Music at Bohemian and Moravian Courts c.1600-1750'; University of Nottingham Colloquia, Nov. 6, 2012.

Gottfried Finger: Music for Viols. Read at the study day around Peter Holman's Life After Death: The Viola Da Gamba in Britain from Purcell to Dolmetsch (Boydell and Brewer, 2010). London, 19 November 2011.

'Stylo Bohemo: Czechness in music c.1600-1750'. Lecture given as part of the Research Seminar series at Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, Feb. 25, 2010.

'The Ingenious Mr Finger', invited lecture presented as part of the International Baryton Symposium, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, May 23-24, 2009.

'Music and Propaganda in Wartime', presented as part of the jointly organised Music Colloquia by Cambridge University and Anglia Polytechnic University, 20 February, 2006.

'From Bohemia's Fields, Pubs and Chapels: Toward the Origins of Melodic Style in Music of the Czech Baroque', lecture presented on 12 October, 2005 as part of the Colloquium at the Music Faculty of Cambridge University, West Road.

'Writing History: Italian Baroque Operas on Czech themes', part of the jointly organised Music Colloquia by Cambridge University and Anglia Polytechnic University, 18 March, 2002.

Interview for Czech Radio (interview on popularity of Czech opera in the UK), Nov. 2011.

Performer and Interviewee on BBC Radio 3 'In Tune'. With my group, The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen. Music by H. Roman, G. Finger, J. Guretzky and W. Babel.

OUP Blog: 'The Search for "Folk Music" in Art Music'. June 18, 2013.

“For the Sake of Fullness of Music in the Choir”—Performance Practice and the Double Bass at the Kroměříž Court

Historical Performance, 2018

The use of 16' string bass instruments in seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century repertoire has... more The use of 16' string bass instruments in seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century repertoire has undergone several transformations since the early music revival-in earnest since the 1960s, when the movement began to make important inroads in the recording industry. In the early phase, the double bass was used in ensemble music more or less in the modern way, doubling the cello(s) throughout at 16' pitch. In the 1970s and 1980s the equation of 'violone' with 'double bass' was challenged-rightly, in many instances-and by the early 90s (or earlier) 16' basses had vanished from most HIP recordings of Lully and Purcell, for example. 2 Given the large amount of attention given to notions of nomenclature and tunings early bassses in scholarly literature, this study focusses instead on the function of 16' bowed basses and argues for a reconsideration of their performance practice in light of the evidence from court of Carl Liechtenstein-Castelcorno at Kroměříž in Moravia, presented here. 3 Moreover, there is also a tantalising link between Kroměříž and London.

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Ab unisonis" - musical textures and genres and the echoes of paraliturgical practices

The rehabilitation of the kancionál tradition in the Czech lands after The Thirty Years War creat... more The rehabilitation of the kancionál tradition in the Czech lands after The Thirty Years War created a set of devotional circumstances probably without parallel anywhere in Catholic Europe. One of the more unusual aspects of the tradition was the paraliturgical phenomenon. Whilst it took a variety of forms, at its core was a collection of vernacular songs interspersed before and between sections of the Latin Mass (or other service). These songs usually paraphrased the part of the Mass that they complimented and were often sung by the congregation though it seems that at least some of those settings were sometimes sung by literary brotherhoods.1 The tradition is one of a few to survive the Thirty Years War albeit with a Catholic rehabilitation. This phenomenon not only brought high and low styles together under one roof, but sometimes even brought them together in single works. A selection of sacred pieces by Šimon Brixi are used here as indicative examples. Much of the repertoire of ...

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