Current Postgraduate Community
Sudies in Funerary Violin

Focusing on the "Golden Age" of Funerary violin, from Herr Gratchenfleiss to Charles Sudbury, I will be examining all of the available evidence and archive recordings to evaluate the changes in performance practice during this period and examining the many social causes behind such changes.

Jonah Briskett
PhD - Musicology - The shift in the Mortal Aesthetic - Herr Gratchenfleiss and the Modern European Mind

Taking the works of Herr Gratchenfleiss as a model of the European mortal aesthetic, I intend to examine the evolution of attitudes to mortality with particular emphasis on the shift of focus from the tragedy of the end of life, into the dramatic and ostentatious display of grief so prevalent in the later nineteenth century.

Franklin Boyd-Chesterton
MMus - Funerary Violin Performance 1584 - 1670

Paying special attention to contemporary accounts, I am studying the improvisational process of the first three generations of funerary violinists, and how their increasing social and political status was influential upon the execution of the Art.

 

Isiah Brimble
PhD - Musicology - Spiritual Catharsis as Intercession - The origins of Funerary Violin in the Protestantisation of Europe

Looking specifically at the origins of Funerary Violin, I will be assessing how the Art was initially used as a political tool in the repression of Catholics, and considering the true extent of political and religious motivation in George Babcotte's influence over the musical execution of improvised form during the following 100 years.

Maxwell Wallington
PhD - Musicology - Social, Heraldic and Militaristic Intimidation as a factor in the Evolution of Funerary Violin 1584 - 1670

Currently in the third year of my PhD looking at the evolution of musical intimidation as a political force in times of cultural change. I am paying particular attention to the military application of funerary violin as exemplified by Bulstrode Whycherley during the English Civil War.

Presley Stroud
MMus - Musicology - The Great Funerary Purges - Myth or Reality?

With an emphasis on actual contemporary evidence I am examining whether there is any real justification for claims of the Vatican's involvement in the Great Funerary Purges, and scrutinising the credibility and biases of the many witness accounts such as those of Matthew Connisten, Father Elias Passmore Jarvis and Thomas Broadfoot.