Carrie Churnside

Associate Professor in Music & Research Degrees Coordinator

Email:: carrie.churnside@bcu.ac.uk

Carrie Churnside is Associate Professor in Music and Research Degrees Coordinator. She is also Director of the Forum for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Music, and leads Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s Athena Swan Self-Assessment Team.

Carrie specialises in Italian Baroque music, particularly vocal music, including the genre of the cantata.

After graduating from the University of Birmingham with a BA (First Class) in English and Music in 2002, she went on to complete an MPhil on cantatas by Giovanni Paolo Colonna ('Colonna's Cantatas for the Medici: A Study of GB-Lbm Add. MS 27931') and a PhD on Bolognese volumes of cantate morali e spirituali ('A Study of Sacred Cantatas Printed in Bologna 1659-1717').

Prior to joining the staff of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in 2010 she held a Rome Fellowship at the British School at Rome (2008-9), studying Roman seventeenth-century sacred cantatas.

Carrie's research centres on Italian seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century vocal music, in particular the relationship between text and music, and its historical and social contexts. She has presented at various international conferences throughout Europe. Publications include the edited collection (Boydell, 2024) as well as work on the relationship between composer and librettist in early eighteenth-century oratorio, Bolognese cantatas referencing the Ottoman wars, and music printing and publishing in Bologna at the beginning of the eighteenth century. She is also a member of the Council of the Handel Institute, and has written programme notes for the Salzburg Festival and the BBC Proms.

Current projects include a journal article examining patronage and the dedication of music through a case study of Count Pirro Albergati’s relationships with the Imperial Court c. 1700, based on documents in the Albergati archive, and an edition of Muzio Scevola (HWV 13), an opera by Filippo Amadei, Giovanni Bononcini and George Frideric Handel, for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe.

She teaches on a number of modules for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses, on subjects including performance practice, critical editing, music and gender and music and philosophy, as well as supervising research students.

Current Activity

Areas of Expertise

Qualifications

Teaching

Research

Publications

‘The Italian Influence’, in An English Baroque Journey, ed. by Kirsten Gibson and Sir Nicholas Kenyon [4,000-word chapter in companion book to Arcangelo’s An English Baroque Journey concert series at the Wigmore Hall, 2026–2028; at press]

Transitions in Mid-Baroque Music: Style, Genre and Performance, ed. C. Churnside (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2024). Including Preface (pp. xxii–xxvii) and chapter: ‘Ho procurato di seguitare ... i tre maggiori lumi della nostra professione’. Homage and Modernity in Perti’s Cantate morali e spirituali, op. 1 (1688)’, pp. 272–298.

‘Musical Discourse in Italy 1500-1800’ in Cambridge History of Music Criticism, ed. by Christopher Dingle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 42-61.

‘“S'oda in Ciel sempr'ecchegiare: Viva pur Felsina viva!”: Patriotism in Bolognese Oratorios’ in Dramma scolastico ed oratorio nell'età barocca, ed. by Nicolò Maccavino (Reggio Calabria: Edizioni del Conservatorio di Musica “F. Cilea”, 2019):
https://www.conservatoriocilea.it/images/pubblicazioni/dramma_scolastico_e_oratorio_2012/dramma_scolastico_e_oratorio_07_Churnside.pdf

‘“Guerra, guerra, all’armi o guerrieri!”: Depictions of the Ottoman Conflict in Bolognese Cantatas’, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, 20 (1) (2014/2017)

'Text-Music Relations in the Early Settecento: The Case of Il Trionfo della Carità', Ars Lyrica 21 (2012), 1-16.

'Music printing in early eighteenth-century Bologna: the case of Giuseppe Antonio Silvani and Pirro Albergati (1716-1717)', Fonti musicali italiane 17 (2012), 105-134.

'Colonna's Cantatas for Modena and Florence: Art and Music Combined' in La cantata da camera intorno agli anni italiani di Händel: problemi e prospettive di ricerca, ed. Teresa M. Gialdroni (Rome: Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, 2009), 129-152

'Images of Crying in Bolognese Sacred Cantatas: The Jesuit Influence', British Postgraduate Musicology, 8 (2006)

Reviews

Review of The Italian Cantata in Vienna: Entertainment in the Age of Absolutism by Lawrence Bennett in Music and Letters, 96 (2015), 277-8.

'A Wealth of Cantatas', Early Music 42 (2014), 133-6.

Review of Rosanna Scalfi Marcello, Twelve Cantatas for Alto Voice and Basso Continuo, ed. Deborah Haynes and John Glenn Paton, Eighteenth-Century Music 10 (2013), pp. 299-301.

Review of concert performance of Agostino Steffani's Orlando generoso at the Barber Institute (September 2012) in 17th-Century Music, Newsletter of the SSCM, Spring 2013.

Review of Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni, The Cantatas for Soprano and Basso Continuo in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, ed. Michael Talbot, Eighteenth-Century Music 8 (2011), 133-5.

Review of Bolognese Instrumental Music, 1660-1710 by Gregory Barnett, Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 66 (2009), 301-3.

Sleeve-notes for Academia Montis Regalis's recording of Alessandro Scarlatti's Davidis pugna et Victoria (Hyperion records; October 2009).

'Seicento Naples', Early Music 37 (2009), 118-9.

'Italian Handel Conferences', The Handel Institute Newsletter 19 (2008), 5.

'Ghizzolo and Gagliano', Early Music 35 (2007), 648-649.

Conference Papers

‘O Padre Tevere!’: The Figure of Orazio in Muzio Scevola (1721), Twenty-first Biennial Conference on Baroque Music, Birmingham, July 2025; revised for Handel Institute Conference, London, November 2025

‘Ho procurato di seguitare ... i tre maggiori lumi della nostra professione’: Homage and Modernity in Perti’s Cantate morali e spirituali, op. 1 (1688), Twentieth Biennial Conference on Baroque Music, Geneva, June 2023

‘Handel “easily triumphed over the others”: The Third Act of the Composite Opera Muzio Scevola (1721) by Amadei, Bononcini and Handel, L’ultimo Atto nell’opera del Settecento, Conservatorio di Musica Francesco Cilea, Reggio Calabria (online), October 2021 (invited paper).

‘When the Composer is also a Count: Patronage and Power Relationships in the Case of Pirro Albergati’. Music Patronage in Italy from the 15^th to the 18^th Century, Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Lucca, November 2019; Nineteenth Biennial Conference on Baroque Music, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, July 2021.

‘Muzio Scevola: Amadei, Bononcini and Handel’s Responses’. Eighteenth Biennial Conference on Baroque Music, Cremona, July 2018.

‘Opera in Bologna at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century: Papers from the Albergati Archive’. Twenty-third annual conference of the Società Italiana di Musicologia, Verona, October 2014.

‘Che Roma viva di sensi priva è vano pensier: Depictions of the Senses in mid-Seicento Roman Sacred Song’. Sixteenth Biennial Conference on Baroque Music, Salzburg, July 2014.

'Reflections on Working on Italian Music Printing in the Early Eighteenth Century: The Case of Giuseppe Antonio Silvani'. Music Printing and Publishing in Early Modern Italy: New Approaches. Venice, February 2014 [invited paper].

'"O Reno, o Reno, o fortunato fiume": Patriotism in Early Settecento Bolognese Oratorios. Dramma scolastico ed oratorio nell'età barocca. Reggio Calabria, October 2012.

'Musical Patronage in Bologna at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century: Papers from the Albergati Archive'. Fifteenth Biennial Conference on Baroque Music, Southampton, July 2012.

'Text-Music Relations in Early Settecento Oratorio: The Case of Il trionfo della carità'. Eighteenth annual conference of the Società Italiana di Musicologia, Genoa, October 2011.

'The war in words: the Ottoman conflict depicted in Bolognese cantatas'. Fourteenth Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, Belfast, July 2010.

(with Giulia Giovani) 'The Bolognese music printing firm of Silvani as revealed by archival documents'. European Sacred Music 1500-1800: New Approaches, Fribourg, Switzerland, June 2010.

'"Che Roma viva de' sensi priva è vano pensier": The Seventeenth-Century Sacred Cantata in the Papal States'. Public lecture delivered at the British School at Rome, June 2009.

'Colonna's Cantatas for Florence and Modena: Art and Music Combined', RMA Annual Conference, Aberdeen July 2008; Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia's conference 'La cantata negli anni italiani di Händel', Rome, October 2007.

'A Poetic Approach to Bolognese Sacred Cantatas'. Thirteenth Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, Leeds, July 2008.

Theses

'A Study of Sacred Cantatas Printed in Bologna (1659-1717)' (PhD, Birmingham, 2008)

'Colonna's Cantatas for the Medici: A Study of GB-Lbm Add. MS 27931' (MPhil, Birmingham, 2004).