Staff Profiles

My teaching reflects my passion for music history and is strongly influenced by my research expertise. I aim to foster a spirit of inquiry and intellectual curiosity among my students and encourage them to develop their own research skills and interests.

Modules taught

Undergraduate teaching comprises modules such as:

• Key moments in music history, past and present (1st year, with Dr Jan Butler)
• Music in Society (2nd year)
• Music Analysis (2nd year)
• Dissertation and Interdisciplinary Dissertation

For the MA in Music I offer:

• Advanced Musicology 1: Approaches to 19th-Century Music
• contributions to Research Skills and Applied Research

 

Supervision

Inquiries from prospective PhD students who want to focus on 19th-century music, opera or music in early-modern culture are always welcome.

My PhD student Dr Andrew Holden successfully completed his thesis Opera avanti a Dio! Religion and Opera in Liberal Italy from Unification to the First World War.

My research interests fall into two areas: On the one hand I interrogate issues of music and identity, particularly (German) national identities in the "long" nineteenth century, as demonstrated in her monograph History in Mighty Sounds: Musical Constructions of German National Identity, 1848-1914 (Boydell, 2012). I'm also returning frequently to the operas of Richard Strauss and the music dramas of Richard Wagner, having recently completed chapters about Wagner's medievalism and the reception history of the Ring.

My other main research area is music in the early modern era, particularly sacred music and the works of Orlando di Lasso. Currently I'm working on a British-Academy funded monograph entitles Cloistered Voices: Music and Monasteries in Early-Modern Germany, 1550-1632. I have published widely on both sixteenth- and nineteenth-century music and frequently speak at national and international conferences.

Research group membership

• Co-director, with Dr Alexandra Wilson, of OBERTO (Oxford Brookes: Exploring Research Trends in Opera), the opera research group at Oxford Brookes University. We organise annual study days, conferences and lectures on topical themes in opera studies, edit publications and disseminate our opera-related research to wider audiences.
• Member of the Royal Musical Association, Gesellschaft für Musikforschung and the International Musicological Society as well as the German Studies Society, the Wagner Society and the Historischer Verein für Mittelfranken.

Research grants and awards

In 2018/2019 I enjoyed the support of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for my project Cloistered Voices: Music and Monasteries in Early Modern Germany.

Its previous incarnation, "Music as a gendered practice in South-German nunneries and monasteries", was supported by a British Academy Small Research Grant. The Music & Letters Trust funded a presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Vancouver 2016.

Research impact

I disseminate my research to wider audiences beyond academia through public lectures, radio broadcasts and accessible writings such as programme notes for Bavarian Radio or liner notes for recordings. Recent activities include:

• two concerts with the renowned Brabant Ensemble (dir. Stephen Rice) entitled "A monk's life". The concerts featured music by Lasso, A. Gabrieli, Aichinger, Clemens non Papa and several composers who were themselves in holy orders, and traced the lifestory of a sixteenth-century monk through the music he would have encountered.
• pre-concert talk at the "Proms Plus" events, introducing Wagner's orchestral writing and Richard Strauss' relationship to Mozart.
• interval talks for BBC Radio3's "Opera on 3" broadcasts and contributions to their online Opera Guides (e.g. Tannhäuser).
• curating the musical exhibits for the exhibitionMichael Ostendorfer und die Reformation in Regensburg
• text for a recording of Orlando di Lasso's Requiem and motets by Girton College Choir and Gareth Wilson (Toccata classics TOCC0397)

Further information

For further information and downloadable papers and publications please visit my Academia profile.

Books

• Eichner B, History in mighty sounds: musical constructions of German national identity, 1848-1914, Boydell & Brewer (2012)
  ISBN: 9781843837541
  Abstract

  Music played a central role in the self-conception of middle-class Germans between the March Revolution of 1848 and the First World War. Although German music was widely held to be 'universal' and thus apolitical, it participated - like the other arts - in the historicist project of shaping the nation's future by calling on the national heritage. Compositions based on - often heavily mythologised - historical events and heroes, such as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest or the medieval Emperor Barbarossa, invited individual as well as collective identification and brought alive a past that compared favourably with contemporary conditions. History in Mighty Sounds maps out a varied picture of these 'invented traditions' and the manifold ideas of 'Germanness' to which they gave rise, exemplified through works by familiar composers like Max Bruch or Carl Reinecke as well as their nowadays little-known contemporaries. The whole gamut of musical genres, ranging from pre- and post-Wagnerian opera to popular choruses to symphonic poems, contributes to a novel view of the many ways in which national identities were constructed, shaped and celebrated in and through music. How did artists adapt historical or literary sources to their purpose, how did they negotiate the precarious balance of aesthetic autonomy and political relevance, and how did notions of gender, landscape and religion influence artistic choices? All musical works are placed within their broader historical and biographical contexts, with frequent nods to other arts and popular culture. History in Mighty Sounds will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in nineteenth-century German music, history and nationalism.

Journal articles

• Eichner, B, 'Musical diplomacy in a divided city: the Lassus-Mayrhofer manuscripts'
  Early Music 48 (1) (2020) pp.55-74
  ISSN: 0306-1078
  Abstract

  Gifts of music manuscripts continued to serve an important diplomatic function well into the 16th century. This article investigates the production, content and function of two choirbooks prepared by the Benedictine monk Ambrosius Mayrhofer of St Emmeram in Regensburg, which mainly contain sacred music by Orlande de Lassus. They were dedicated to Abbot Jakob Köplin of St Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg (1568) and the city council of Regensburg (1567) respectively. The programmatic opening motet and accompanying illuminations of the Regensburg choirbook suggest that it functioned as a politically motivated gift that helped to ‘harmonize’ the frictions within a city divided by ancient rights and new religious allegiances: Regensburg was a free imperial city with a predominantly Protestant population and council, but also harboured an episcopal see and several nunneries and monasteries (among them St Emmeram), with the Catholic Dukes of Bavaria as close and powerful neighbours. Mayrhofer’s music manuscript projects a conciliatory message that was particularly timely in the late 1560s, when the permission of Eucharistic communion under both kinds (with consecrated bread and wine) offered a short-lived hope of religious compromise.
  

  Website 
• Eichner B, 'Abermals vom Antichrist: Orlando di Lassos Theaterchöre und die Musikdramaturgie der frühen Jesuitenbühne'
  Musik in Bayern 84 (2020)
  ISSN: 0937-538X
  
• Eichner B, 'The woman at the well: Divine and earthly love in Orlando di Lasso's parody masses'
  Revue belge de Musicologie 72 (2019)
  ISSN: 0771-6788
  
• Eichner B, 'Sweet singing in three voices: a musical source from a South German convent?'
  Early Music 39 (3) (2011) pp.335-347
  ISSN: 0306-1078
  Website 

Book chapters

• Eichner B, 'Richard Wagner's Medieval Visions' in Stephen C. Meyer, Kirsten Yri (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism, Oxford University Press (2020)
  ISBN: 9780190658441
  Abstract

  This contribution will focus on three aspects of Wagner’s medievalism: the historic medievalism of Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, set in a recognizable historical framework but also invoking the aura of the Middle Ages through marvel and miracle; the mythical medievalism of the Ring cycle where Nordic myth displaces the more familiar sphere of the medieval Nibelungenlied; and finally the civic medievalism of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg where a medieval city is imagined in a way that glosses nineteenth-century issues of German patriotism, nationhood, and the relationship of the creative individual with the community of the people. Instead of focusing on Wagner’s relationship with and adaptation of his medieval sources, this essay will examine the kind of Middle Ages he created.
  

  Website 
• Eichner B, 'Messen, Madrigale, Unika: Mehrstimmige Musik aus Kloster Neresheim in der Fürst Thurn und Taxis Hofbibliothek' in Schiltz K (ed.), Musikalische Schätze in Regensburger Bibliotheken, ConBrio (2019)
  ISBN: 9783940768827
  Abstract

  Die Benediktinerabtei Neresheim, im Osten der Schwäbischen Alb etwa 20 Kilometer südwestlich von Nördlingen gelegen, ist in der Kulturgeschichte vor allem wegen ihrer spätbarocken Kirche bekannt, die nach Plänen des Würzburger Hofbaumeisters Balthasar Neumann von 1750 bis 1769 gebaut wurde. Der lichtdurchflutete, von sieben Kuppeln überwölbte Raum gilt als »ein Stück Weltarchitektur«, eine letzte Glanzleistung des ausgehenden Barock und wurde in den 1770er-Jahren von Martin Knoller ausgemalt. Altäre, Kanzel, Taufstein und die bewegliche Ausstattung führte ab 1776 Thomas Schaidhauf im frühklassizistischen Stil aus. Erst nach der offiziellen Weihe am 9. September 1792 erhielt die Klosterkirche ein großdimensioniertes Orgelwerk des oberschwäbischen Orgelbauers Johann Nepomuk Holzhey. Das dreimanualige Instrument mit 48 Registern war sein letztes großes Projekt vor der Säkularisation der süddeutschen Klöster; nach einer Restaurierung in den 1970er-Jahren vermittelt es wieder einen Eindruck der ursprünglichen Klangpracht und wird für Einspielungen barocker Orgelmusik genutzt.

  Website 
• Eichner B, 'Scandinavian Myths in Nineteenth-Century Opera and Choral Music' in Margaret Clunies-Ross (ed.), The Pre-Christian Religions of the North. Research and Reception, vol. II: From c. 1830 to the Present, Brepols (2019)
  ISBN: 978-2-503-56880-5 eISBN: 978-2-503-56882-9
  Abstract

  Over more than a thousand years since pre-Christian religions were actively practised, European – and later contemporary – society has developed a fascination with the beliefs of northern Europe before the arrival of Christianity, which have been the subject of a huge range of popular and scholarly theories, interpretations, and uses. Indeed, the pre-Christian religions of the North have exerted a phenomenal influence on modern culture, appearing in everything from the names of days of the week to Hollywood blockbusters. Scholarly treatments have been hardly less varied. Theories – from the Middle Ages until today – have depicted these pre-Christian religious systems as dangerous illusions, the works of Satan, representatives of a lost proto-Indo-European religious culture, a form of 'natural' religion, and even as a system non-indigenous in origin, derived from cultures outside Europe.

  The Research and Reception strand of the Pre-Christian Religions of the North project establishes a definitive survey of the current and historical uses and interpretations of pre-Christian mythology and religious culture, tracing the many ways in which people both within and outside Scandinavia have understood and been influenced by these religions, from the Christian Middle Ages to contemporary media of all kinds. The previous volume (i) traced the reception down to the early nineteenth century, while the present volume (ii) takes up the story from c. 1830 down to the present day and the burgeoning of interest across a diversity of new as well as old media.

  Website 
• Eichner B, 'Musikalisches Mit- und Gegeneinander in Regensburg im 16. Jahrhundert' in Wagner C, Delarue D (ed.), Michael Ostendorfer und die Reformation in Regensburg, Schnell & Steiner (2017)
  ISBN: 978-3795432249
  Website 
• Eichner B, 'A new light on the biography of Johannes Nucius' in Gancarczyk P (ed.), Ars musica and its contexts in medieval and early modern culture, Liber Pro Arte (2016)
  ISBN: 978-83-65631-03-9
  
• Eichner B, 'Wagner in London and the Quest for an English National Opera' in Stollberg A, Rentsch I, Gerhard A (ed.), Gefühlskraftwerke für Patrioten? Wagner und das Musiktheater zwischen Nationalismus und Globalisierung, Königshausen & Neumann (2016)
  ISBN: 978-3-8260-5433-4
  
• Eichner B, 'Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde: Lebens- und Schaffensmythen in der letzten Zürcher Kunstschrift' in Fornoff C, Unseld M (ed.), Wagner - Gender - Mythen, Königshausen & Neumann (2015)
  ISBN: 9783826057298
  Website 
• Eichner B, 'Kirchenmusikerinnen zwischen Ausgrenzung und Professionalisierung' in Körndle F, Kremer J (ed.), Der Kirchenmusiker. Berufe - Institutionen - Wirkungsfelder, Laaber (2015)
  ISBN: 978-3-89007-693-5
  
• Eichner B, 'Chorwerke' in Werbeck W (ed.), Richard Strauss Handbuch, Metzler, Bärenreiter (2014)
  ISBN: 9783761820582
  Abstract Verglichen mit Richard Strauss’ Symphonischen Dichtungen und Bühnenwerken führen seine Chorwerke ein Schattendasein. Trotz einer keineswegs geringen Anzahl von immerhin 51 Kompositionen, die sein ganzes kreatives Leben von jugendlichen Übungen bis zu Altersfragmenten umspannen, würde man Strauss kaum, wie Johannes Brahms oder Max Reger, als »Chorkomponisten« apostrophieren. Denn in dieser Zahl sind, wie Heiner Wajemann in der bisher einzigen umfangreichen Studie zum Chorschaffen betont, auch zahlreiche Kleinformate und Gelegenheitsstücke enthalten (Wajemann 1986, 43), wie etwa der Strauss’ Skatbruder Willy Levin gewidmete »Skatkanon« TrV 210 oder die Hymne »Licht, du ewiglich Eines« TrV 183 zur Eröffnung der Münchner Kunstausstellung »Sezession« 1897, die man bei einem profilierteren Chorkomponisten kaum zum Werkbestand zählen würde.Website 
• Eichner B, 'Getting proper-ly started: Heinrich Isaac's Choralis Constantinus at the Benedictine Abbey of Neresheim' in Heinrich isaac and polyphony for the proper of the mass in the late middle ages and the renaissance, Turnhout Brepols Publishers (2011)
  ISBN: 9782503542492
  Abstract While the genesis and early manuscript transmission of Isaac's cycle of mass propers has repeatedly been the object of scholarly inquiry, this cannot be said of its continued use in ecclesiastical institutions after the appearance of the Choralis Constantinus in print in 1550/55. Several manuscripts from southern-German monasteries, such as St. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg (D-As, Tonkunst Schletterer 7 and 23) and Ottobeuren (Sign. Lit. 3), attest to its enduring popularity in the 1570s and after. To these manuscript a hitherto unknown source can now be added, a book of propers from the Benedictine abbey of Neresheim, wrongly labelled Antiphonarium and held today at the Farstliche Thurn und Taxis Hofbibliothek in Regensburg (F.K. Mus. 48 Abth. II). This manuscript was bound in 1570 and is therefore one of the earliest sources documenting the sudden interest in polyphonic music in Neresheim that was possibly sparked by the building of a new choir in 1568 and of the proximity to musically active Augsburg. The selection of propers covers the main feasts of the church year, with some adjustments to Isaac's originals to cater for the locally venerated saints Ulrich and Afra, patrons of the diocese of Augsburg. The present article outines the gradual building-up of the Neresheim music library from the late 1560s onwards, the interaction between polyphonic music for the mass ordinary, mass proper and the office at this institution, and the particular significance that Isaac's work held for a Benedictine monastery that was struggling to assert its status as free imperial abbey.Website 
• Eichner B, '"Though english not an infidel". Britinnen in Rom zwischen Sixtina und Salon' in Sabine Meine, Rebecca Grotjahn (ed.), "Dahin!..." Musikalisches Reiseziel Rom: Projektionen und Realitäten, Georg Olms Verlag (2011)
  ISBN: 9783487147086
  
• Eichner B, 'Musizieren und Komponieren in süddeutschen Frauen - und Männerklostern. Bedingungen und Begrenzungen' in Susanne Rode-Breymann (ed.), Musikort Kloster: kulturelles Handeln von Frauen in der frühen Neuzeit, Böhlau Verlag (2009)
  ISBN: 9783412203306
  
• Eichner B, 'In Schönheit sterben Frederick Delius' "A Village Romeo and Juliet"' in Frederick Delius, edition text+kritik (2008)
  ISBN: 9783883779522
  Abstract Frederick Delius' fourth opera, A Village Romeo and Juliet, is his most successful dramatic work and marks the breakthrough to his mature musical style. Written around 1900, the opera is based on Gottfried Keller's novella Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe. The first part of the chapter traces the genesis of the opera, its early performance history in Berlin and London and its reception. Although the beauty of the music was widely praised, many critics found the »lyrical drama« lacking in dramatic verve. The second part of the chapter addresses this issue from various angles, including the influence of Wagner and Delius' position within contemporary operatic production of the fin de siecle.

Reviews

• Eichner B, review of Jonathan E. Glixon, Mirrors of Heaven or Worldly Theaters? Venetian Nunneries and Their Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, in Renaissance Studies 33 (2) (2018) pp.321-323ISSN: 0269-1213 eISSN: 1477-4658
  Website 
• Eichner B, review of Das mehrstimmige Repertoire der Benediktinerabtei St. Ulrich und Afra in Augsburg (1549-1632), in Jahrbuch des Vereins für Augsburger Bistumsgeschichte (2016) ISSN: 9783959760676
  Website 
• Eichner B, review of Alexander J. Fisher, Music, Piety, and Propaganda: The Soundscapes of Counter-Reformation Bavaria, in Renaissance Studies 30 (5) (2015) pp.784-787ISSN: 0269-1213 eISSN: 1477-4658
  Website 
• Eichner B, review of Beghinae in Cantu Instructae: Musical Patrimony From Flemish Beguinages (middle Ages - Late 18th C.), in Music and Letters 92 (2012) pp.639-641ISSN: 0027-4224
  Website 
• Eichner B, review of Hidden Sounds. Inventory of Traditional Hand-written Music From the Luneburger Convent to About 1550. With a Presentation of Music Iconography From Ulrike Volkhardt., in Music and Letters 91 (2010) pp.412-413
• Eichner, B, review of Jennifer Bain, Hildegard of Bingen and Musical Reception: The Modern Revival of a Medieval Composer (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), in Journal of the American Musicological Society () ISSN: 0003-0139
  Website 

Areas of expertise

My main areas of expertise, as demonstrated in my publications and public-engagement activities, are

• music in the "long" nineteenth century, especially the German tradition
• opera studies, particularly Wagner, Strauss and romantic opera
• music historiography
• music in the early modern era, particularly sacred music, gender, disability

Membership of professional bodies

• Member of the AHRC peer review college
• Member of the international editorial board of the journal Muzyka
• Member of the international editorial board of the journal Musik in Bayern

Conferences

International and national conference appearances include:

• April 2020: participation in the virtual workshop of the Sound Affects research project
• October 2019: annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, Boston: 'Infirm Singers and Dyslexic Nuns: Negotiating Disability in Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Monastic Institutions'
• June 2017: The musical heritage of the Reformation, Augsburg: ‘Musik in Augsburger Männer- und Frauenklöstern: Verfall und Neubeginn’
• November 2016: annual meeeting of the American Musicological Society, Vancouver: 'The Woman at the Well: Divine and Earthy Love in Orlando di Lasso’s Parody Masses'
• May 2016: Lexikographie, Gender und Musikgeschichtsschreibung, Hamburg, invited international respondent
• March 2016: Für Auge und Ohr: Die Chorbücher der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München, Munich: ‘Strandgut der Säkularisation: Die Klosterchorbücher der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek’
• October 2014: Christoph Willibald Gluck. Bilder – Mythen – Diskurse, Vienna: ‘Zurück in die Zukunftsmusik: Gluck und die Idee der deutschen Nationaloper’
• November 2013: Symposium Wagner – Gender – Mythen, Oldenburg: ‘Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde: Lebens- und Schaffensmythen in der letzten Zürcher Kunstschrift’
• January 2013: Research seminar of the University of Huddersfield: ‘The good, the bad and the ugly: Wagner’s music dramas from the perspective of the minor characters’
• November 2012: Symposium Wagner and Opera between Nationalism and Globalisation, Berne Switzerland: ‘Die Wagnerianer in London und die Suche nach einer englischen Nationaloper’
• October 2012: Symposium Strauss in Stuttgart – 100 Jahre Ariadne auf Naxos, Stuttgart: ‘Spielt sie immer nur sich selbst? Einige Überlegungen zur Rolle der Zerbinetta’
• January / February 2012: All Souls College, Oxford, and Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw: ‘Faithfully Yours: Monastic Music and Its Patrons’

Other experience

09/2009 – 2020         Lecturer / Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University

09/2007 – 08/2009     Lecturer in Musicology at Goldsmiths College, University of London

Since 07/2007            Honorary Research Fellow at Prifysgol Bangor University

01 – 07/2007             Non-Stipendiary Lecturer in Music at St Peter's College, Oxford

09 – 12/2006             Retained Lecturer in Music at Magdalen College, Oxford

09/2001 – 06/2002    Copy editor at record company Orfeo International Music GmbH, Munich

Press, publicity and reviews

Reviews for History in Mighty Sounds: Musical Constructions of German National Identity, 1848-1914:

"Certainly makes for an impressive opening volume. (...) A very well-researched, cogently argued, as well as sympathetic, treatment of a fascinating subject, equally fruitful for the historian and the musicologist, and perhaps still more so for the scholar and reader who would be both." MUSIC AND LETTERS

"This work is a valuable contribution for anyone wishing to chart the trends and developments of German music during a crucial era." GERMAN HISTORY

"Eichners Buch bietet eine hervorragende, klar geschriebene Einführung in die Thematik und ein breites Panorama an Beispielen mit einer Vielzahl neuer Fakten, Schlussfolgerungen und Querbezüge. Besonders hervorzuheben ist die gelungene Verbindung von einfühlsamer Werkanalyse und kulturgeschichtlicher Kontextualisierung." DIE TONKUNST

"Eichner's thesis is ambitious. The book, after all, is designed to be as much about nationalism as it is about musicology; she even classifies it as a 'study into German national identity' (...), rather than a study of music per se. To that end, the introduction is an impressive assault on the ivory towers of German historiography. Eichner demonstrates formidable understanding of the forces at play in the pre-unification era, and her citations reflect a mastery of the relevant historiography. Once the text wades into the arcane detail of German musicology, Eichner is clearly on familiar ground. She demonstrates deep understanding of and passion for her chosen field. (...) this work is a valuable contribution for anyone wishing to chart the trends and developments of German music during a crucial era." GERMAN HISTORY

Further information

Follow me on Twitter: @BarbaraEichner

Academia profile: http://oxfordbrookes.academia.edu/BarbaraEichner