University News Last updated 06 May 2020
Emeritus Professor of Music at the Conservatoire Professor Ronald Woodley has been awarded an Emeritus Fellowship by The Leverhulme Trust.
The Fellowship will allow Professor Woodley to continue his research into 15th-century musician, theorist and lawyer Johannes Tinctoris, including spending six months working on archival collections in Italy – once post-lockdown circumstances allow – to research new manuscript sources relating to Tinctoris’ biography.
Professor Woodley, who retired in 2018 after 14 years at the Conservatoire, focuses his research primarily on the notation and music theory of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. He has spent many years researching Tinctoris, including as Principal Investigator on Phase 1 of the ongoing Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded projects at the Conservatoire in this area.
The Leverhulme Trust is a national charity offering scholarships for research and education. The Emeritus Fellowship scheme provides support for up to two years of research conducted following retirement from an academic post.
Professor Woodley said: “I am pleased and honoured to have been awarded this Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship. There are very few opportunities for retired academics to apply for funding to continue their research, as they very often do after retirement, and of the major humanities funding bodies the Leverhulme scheme is perhaps uniquely enlightened in this respect.
“Primary archival research such as is necessary for my project is particularly hard hit by lockdown, especially where the need to get one’s hands dirty in the hunt for new manuscript materials means that one cannot rely on the digitisation of already identified resources. I am, therefore, very much looking forward to the time when I shall be able to travel to Italy safely to continue my Tinctoris research.”
CD recording
In addition to his Fellowship, this week Professor Woodley has released a CD entitled Façades through SOMM Recordings. Alongside colleagues James Geer (tenor) and Andrew West (piano), Professor Woodley’s recording is an entertaining programme of rarely-heard songs and piano duet music from the 1920s and 30s by William Walton and Constant Lambert, including Lambert’s arrangement for piano duet of Walton’s popular Façade Suites 1 and 2, and settings by Lambert of the Chinese poet Li Po, as well as other songs and piano duets by both composers.