Current Students

Hazel Rowland

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was the first post-Beethoven composer to engage extensively with sonata-form composition – the most exalted instrumental form from the Classical period until well into the twentieth century. His music is indicative of a singular period of flux in the form’s history, as he was composing after his Viennese Classical predecessors had raised the form to its prestigious status, but before the theoretical concepts surrounding it had been concretely theorised. Sonata-form composition occupied Mendelssohn particularly in his chamber works, a genre that holds a central position in his output. Yet although Mendelssohn wrote chamber music throughout his life, scholarship has focused more on his orchestral and more overtly experimental early chamber music, even though his mature works hold numerous innovations yet to have received thorough scrutiny. My research thus concentrates on Mendelssohn’s mature chamber works, spanning from his three Op. 44 String Quartets (1837) to his final major work, his String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80 (1847). Mendelssohn’s music also occupies an unexplored gap in current music theory, between Classically orientated analytical methods and approaches developed for late-Romantic repertoire My PhD thus makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of nineteenth-century music through its examination

An online culture and ideas idea that I’ve set up and edit:

http://northernreview.co.uk

Supervisory Team: Prof. Julian Horton, Music (Durham), Dr Katherine Hambridge, Music (Durham).

Start Date: October 2017