Music, Society, Agency

Nancy November is Professor of Musicology at The University of Auckland. Combining interdisciplinarity and cultural history, her research centers on chamber music of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, probing questions of historiography, canonization, and genre. She is the recipient of a Humboldt Fellowship (2010-12); and three Marsden Grants from the New Zealand Royal Society. She recently published a book on Beethoven’s Symphonies Arranged for the Chamber (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Introduction

Nancy November




Part One: Cultural and Cross-Cultural Agencies

The Year the Music Died: Agency in the Context of Demise on Takū, Papua New Guinea

Richard Moyle




“One of the finest and best-appointed theatres in the colonies”: His Majesty’s Theatre and the Evolution of Entertainment in Dunedin, New Zealand

Sandra Crawshaw




“In the Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Room”: Musicalizing the South Pacific in Disney’s Theme Parks

Gregory Camp







Part Two: Vocal Music’s Agencies

Figaro Transmuted through the Agency of Neapolitan Social and Political Creatives: Niccolò Piccinni’s La serva onorata

Lawrence Mays




Josephinism and Leopold Koželuh’s Masonic Cantata Joseph der Menschheit Segen 

Allan Badley




Agency, Politics, and Opera Arrangements in Fanny von Arnstein’s Salons

Nancy November




Part Three: Performance and Agency

Reflections on Aladdin’s Lamp: Developing a Framework for Creative Practice Research in-and-through Historically Informed Performance

Imogen Morris




When Your Heart Is Set on Both Broadway and the Met: An Exploration of Vocal Technique in Contemporary Musical Theatre

Christopher McRae




Part Four: Composition and Agency

“Brows betwixt and between”: The Agents of the Cultural Middlebrow and the Use of Topoi in Benjamin Britten’s First Suite for Cello 

Eliana Dunford




Provincializing Practice: Parsing Historical Influences on Contemporary Cross-Cultural Music in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Celeste Oram




Contributors

Index