Musicology

Research Strands

Ethnomusicology: Centring music study through ethnographic and anthropological methods.

Historical Musicology: Mapping the history of music cultures and practices around the world.

Jazz: Analysing the history, culture and structure of jazz as a global phenomenon flowing from African American roots.

Music Cognition: The scientific analysis of the production and reception of music.

Music Theory and Analysis: Describing the organisation and relationship of musical components.

Popular Music: Responding to the contemporary landscape of the music and film industry, with a sociological focus.

Our Researchers

Professor Neal Peres Da Costa
Emeritus Professor Linda Barwick FAHA
Emeritus Professor Richard Charteris FAHA FRHS
Emeritus Professor Allan Marett FAHA
Associate Professor Christopher Coady
Associate Professor Charles Fairchild
Associate Professor Helen Mitchell
Honorary Associate Professor Kathleen Nelson
Associate Professor Myfany Turpin
Dr Catherine Ingram, Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology
Dr David Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Musicology
Dr Alan Maddox, Senior Lecturer in Musicology
Dr Toby Martin, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Music
Dr Rachel Campbell, Lecturer in Musicology
Dr Georgia Curran, University of Sydney Robinson Fellow
Dr Amanda Harris, ARC Future Fellow
Dr Jadey O’Regan, Lecturer in Contemporary Music
Dr Graeme Skinner, Senior Research Associate
Dr Joseph Toltz, Honorary Research Associate

Publications

2023

Barwick, L. (2023). Songs and the deep present. In Ann McGrath, Laura Rademaker and Jakelin Troy (Eds.), Everywhen: Australian languages and deep history, (pp. 93-122). Montgomery, Alabama: NewSouth Publishing. [More Information]
Harris, A., Onus, T., Barwick, L. (2023). Performing Aboriginal Rights in 1951: From Australia's Top End to Southeast. Australian Journal of Politics and History, 69(2), 227-247. [More Information]
Stephens, M., Peres Da Costa, N., Mitchell, H. (2022). Case study - The Dowling Songbook Project. In Jeanice Brooks, Matthew Stephens, Wiebke Thormählen (Eds.), Sound Heritage: Making Music Matter in Historic Houses. New York: Routledge.

2022

Campbell, R. (2022). Primitive, Exotic, and Australian: The Reception of John Antill's Corroboree. Journal of Musicology, 39(4), 405-431. [More Information]
Campbell, R. (2022). Primitivism and Settler Primitivism in Music: The Case of John Antills Corroboree. Musical Quarterly, 105(1-2). [More Information]
Harris, A., Barwick, L., Troy, J. (2022). Embodied Culture and the Limits of the Archive. In Harris, A., Barwick, L., Troy, J. (Eds.), Music, Dance and the Archive. Sydney: Sydney University Press. [More Information]
Harris, A., Barwick, L., Troy, J. (2022). Music, Dance and the Archive. Sydney: Sydney University Press. [More Information]
Larkin, D. (2022). A stylistic crossroad: Sardanapalo and the reassessment of Liszt. Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle. [More Information]
Larkin, D. (2022). What the Climber Saw: Strauss's Alpensinfonie and the Romantic Tradition of Nature Representation. Nineteenth Century Music Review, 19(3), 427-457. [More Information]
Maddox, A. (2022). 'A great commotion of spirit': Tartini's 'Ancona experience' and the Power of Affective Performance. In Nejc Sukljan (Eds.), In Search of Perfect Harmony: Tartini's Music and Music Theory in Local and European Contexts. Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien: Peter Lang Verlag. [More Information]
Thieberger, N., Barwick, L. (2022). Customary song in Christian clothing. 11th Conference on Oceanic Linguistics, Nouma, New Caledonia: New Caledonia University Presses. [More Information]

2021

Barwick, L., Vaarzon-Morel, P., Green, J., Zissermann, K. (2021). Conundrums and Consequences: Doing Archival Returns in Australia. In Linda Barwick, Jennifer Green, and Petronella Vaarzon-Morel (Eds.), Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond. Sydney, Australia: Sydney University Press.
Barwick, L., Huebner, S., Ormond-Parker, L., Treloyn, S. (2021). Reclaiming archives: Guest editorial. Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture (PDT&C), 50(2023-04-03 00:00:00), 99-104. [More Information]
Coady, C. (2021). 'Exiled from the Musical Activities of His Homeland': Dean Dixon in the Australian and African American Press During the Era of Immigration Reform. Musicology Australia, 43(1-2), 1-21. [More Information]
Ingram, C., Liu, L., Ng, N. (2021). Falling Leaves and New Roots: Informed Practice Within the Sydney Conservatorium of Music's Chinese Music Ensemble. In Anna Reid, Neal Peres Da Costa, Jeanell Carrigan (Eds.), Creative Research in Music: Informed Practice, Innovation and Transcendence, (pp. 73-81). New York: Routledge. [More Information]
Larkin, D. (2021). The 'War' of the Romantics. In Joanna Cormac (Eds.), Liszt in Context, (pp. 85-93). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]
Larkin, D. (2021). The Outsider's Tale: Jameson on Mahler's Sixth Symphony. Affirmations: Of the Modern, 7(1), 55-71.
Larkin, D. (2021). The Symphony, 1870-1911. In Charles Youmans (Eds.), Mahler in Context, (pp. 127-135). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]
Maddox, A. (2021). Performing Emotions. In Katie Barclay, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa and Peter N. Stearns (Eds.), Sources for the History of Emotions: A guide, (pp. 127-142). Abingdon: Routledge. [More Information]
Rose, J., Coady, C. (2021). Memory and Mindfulness in the Musical Rituals of the Necks. Jazz & Culture, 4(1), 68-86. [More Information]
Vaarzon-Morel, P., Barwick, L., Green, J. (2021). Sharing and storing digital cultural records in Central Australian Indigenous communities. New Media and Society, 23(4), 692-714. [More Information]

2020

Barwick, L., Green, J., Vaarzon-Morel, P. (2020). Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond. Sydney, Australia: Sydney University Press (including "Conundrums and consequences: Doing digital archival returns in Australia" pp. 1-28)
Curran, G. (2020). Sustaining Indigenous Songs: Contemporary Warlpiri Ceremonial Life in Central Australia. New York: Berghahn Books.
Curran, G. (2020). Bird/Monsters and Contemporary Social Fears in the Central Desert of Australia. In Y. Musharbash, G. H. Presterudstuen (Eds.), Monster Anthropology: Ethnographic Explorations of Transforming Social Worlds through Monsters, (pp. 127-142). Sydney: Bloomsbury. [More Information]
Curran, G. (2020). Incorporating archival cultural heritage materials into contemporary Warlpiri women's yawulyu spaces. In Linda Barwick, Jennifer Green, and Petronella Vaarzon-Morel (Eds.), Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond, (pp. 91-110). Sydney, Australia: Sydney University Press.
Harris, A. (2020). Indigenising Australian music: authenticity and representation in touring 1950s art songs. Postcolonial Studies, 23(1), 132-152. [More Information]
Harris, A. (2020). Representing Australia to the Commonwealth in 1965:Aborigiana and Indigenous Performance. Twentieth-Century Music, 17(1), 3-22. [More Information]
Nelson, K. (2020). Seeking History and Identity for an Antiphonal (Fisher Library RB Add. Ms. 413). In David Andres Fernandez and Jane Morlet Hardie (Eds.), Into the Diaspora: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Liturgical Music Manuscripts at the University of Sydney, (pp. 147-183). Kitchener: The Institute of Mediaeval Music.
Nelson, K. (2020). The Sacramentario de Sahagun and an Exultet. In Eduardo Carrero and Sergi Zauner (Eds.), Respondamosle a Concierto: Estudios en homenaje a Maricarmen Gomez Muntane, (pp. 185-198). Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Medievals.
Ingram, C. (2020). Localized listening to state-sponsored heritage-making in Kam minority communities of southwestern China. International Communication of Chinese Culture, 7(2). [More Information]
Irving, D., Maddox, A. (2020). Towards a Reflexive Paradigm for the Study of Musics in Australian Colonial Societies (1788-1900). Context: Journal of Music Research, 46, 51-73.
Marsh, K., Ingram, C., Dieckmann, S. (2020). Bridging Musical Worlds: Musical Collaboration Between Student Musician-Educators and South Sudanese Australian Youth. In Heidi Westerlund, Sidsel Karlsen, Heidi Partti, editors (Eds.), Visions for intercultural music teacher education, (pp. 115-134). Cham: Springer. [More Information]
Toltz, J. (2020). 'My Song, You Are My Strength': Personal Repertoires of Polish and Yiddish Songs of Young Survivors of the Lodz Ghetto. Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 32, 393-410.
Toltz, J. (2020). Ethnography and the empathic imperative: negotiating histories in The Sydney Brundibar Project. Studies in Musical Theatre, 14(1), 23-36. [More Information]
Turpin, M. (2020). Return of a travelling song: Wanji-wanji in the Pintupi region of Central Australia. In Linda Barwick, Jennifer Green, and Petronella Vaarzon-Morel (Eds.), Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond, (pp. 239-262). Sydney, Australia: Sydney University Press.
Wierzbicki, J. (2020). Cult Soundtracks (Music). In Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema, (pp. 307-314). London and New York: Routledge.
Wierzbicki, J. (2020). Silent Listening: The Aesthetics of Literary Sounds. Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, 1(1), 60-76. [More Information]

2019

Campbell, R. (2019). 'The Whole Work is Full of Primitive Rhythms': The Folk-Primitivist Origins of Peter Sculthorpe's National Music. Musicology Australia, 41(1), 36-57. [More Information]
Campbell, R. (2019). The Genesis of John Antill's Corroboree. Context: Journal of Music Research, 45, 1-18.
Charteris, R. (2019). New Light on Two Canons by Adam Gumpelzhaimer. Musik in Bayern, 82/83, 112-155. [More Information]
Coady, C. (2019). New Orleans Rhythm and Blues, African American Tourism, and the Selling of a Progressive South. American Music, 37(1), 95-112. [More Information]
Curran, G., Barwick, L., Turpin, M., Walsh, F., Laughren, M. (2019). Central Australian Aboriginal Songs and Biocultural Knowledge: Evidence from Women's Ceremonies Relating to Edible Seeds. Journal of Ethnobiology, 39(3), 354-370. [More Information]
Curran, G. (2019). 'Waiting for Jardiwanpa': History and Mediation in Warlpiri Fire Ceremonies. Oceania, 89(1), 20-35. [More Information]
Curran, G., Carew, M., Napanangka Martin, B. (2019). Representations of Indigenous Cultural Property in Collaborative Publishing Projects: The Warlpiri Women's Yawulyu Songbook. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 40(1), 68-84. [More Information]
Fairchild, C. (2019). Sounds, Screens, Speakers: An Introduction to Music and Media. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Harris, A., Gagau, S., Kell, J., Thieberger, N., Ward, N. (2019). Making Meaning of Historical Papua New Guinea Recordings. International Journal of Digital Curation, 14(1), 136-149. [More Information]
Ingram, C. (2019). "Each in Our Own Village": Creating Sustainable Interactions between Custodian Communities and Archives. In Frank Gunderson, Robert C. Lancefield, Bret Woods (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation, (pp. 1-17). New York: Oxford University Press. [More Information]
Larkin, D. (2019). Richard Strauss at work in his works. In John Attridge, Helen Rydstrand (Eds.), Modernist Work: Labor, Aesthetics, and the Work of Art, (pp. 65-82). New York: Bloomsbury Academic. [More Information]
Maddox, A. (2019). 'The general softening of manners among us': Music and the moral power of nostalgia in a colonial penal colony. In Alicia Marchant (Eds.), Historicising Heritage and Emotions: The Affective Histories of Blood, Stone and Land, (pp. 168-182). Abingdon: Routledge. [More Information]
Martin, T. (2019). Dougie Young and political resistance in early Aboriginal country music. Popular Music, 38(3), 538-559. [More Information]
Peres Da Costa, N. (2019). Carl Reinecke's Performance of his Arrangement of the Second Movement from Mozart's Piano Concerto K. 488. Some Thoughts on Style and the Hidden Messages in Musical Notation. In Thomas Gartmann and Daniel Allenbach (Eds.), Rund um Beethoven. Interpretationsforschung heute, (pp. 114-149). Schliengen: Edition Argus.
Wierzbicki, J. (2019). Terrence Malick : sonic style. New York: Routledge. [More Information]
Wierzbicki, J. (2019). Double Lives: Film Composers in the Concert Hall. Abingdon: Routledge. [More Information]
Wierzbicki, J. (2019). The 'Silent' Film in Modern Times. In Ruth Barton, Simon Trezise (Eds.), Music and Sound in Silent Film: From the Nickelodeon to The Artist, (pp. 198-208). New York: Routledge. [More Information]
Wierzbicki, J. (2019). Science Fiction and Its Music. Lied und Populaere Kultur, 64, 19-30.
Wu, J., Ingram, C. (2019). Six decades of ethnic minority population change in China. Asian Population Studies, 15(2), 228-238. [More Information]

2018

Barwick, L., Thieberger, N. (2018). Unlocking the archives. FEL XXI Alcanena 2017: Communities in Control, Hungerford, UK: Foundation for Endangered Languages. [More Information]
Curran, G. (2018). On the Poetic Imagery of Smoke in Warlpiri Songs. Anthropological Forum, 28(2), 183-196. [More Information]
Fairchild, C. (2018). Transcendent myths, mundane objects: setting the material scene in rock, soul, and country museums. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(5), 477-490. [More Information]
Harris, A. (2018). Gender, Science and Imperial Drive: Margaret McArthur on Two Expeditions in the 1940s. In Martin Thomas, Amanda Harris (Eds.), Expeditionary Anthropology: Teamwork, Travel and the 'Science of Man', (pp. 290-311). New York: Berghahn Books. [More Information]
Maddox, A. (2018). 'The Finest and Grandest Work Ever Created by Human Genius': The First Performance of J. S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Colonial Sydney. In Denis Collins, Kerry Murphy, Samantha Owens (Eds.), J.S. Bach in Australia: Studies in Reception and Performance, (pp. 51-70). Melbourne, Australia: Lyrebird Press.
Maddox, A. (2018). The 'storm' topos in two solo bass motets at the Pontifica Biblioteca Antoniana. In Alberto Colzani, Andrea Luppi, Maurizio Padoan (Eds.), Barocco padano e musici francescani II: l'apporto dei maestri conventuali, (pp. 499-514). Padova: Centro Studio Antoniani.
Mitchell, H. (2018). Music students' perceptions of experiential learning at the moot audition. Music Education Research, 20(3), 277-288. [More Information]
O'Keeffe, I., Barwick, L., Coleman, C., Manmurulu, D., Manmurulu, J., Mardbinda, J., Naragoidj, P., Singer, R. (2018). Multiple uses for old and new recordings: perspectives from the multilingual community of Warruwi. FEL XXI Alcanena 2017: Communities in Control, Hungerford, UK: Foundation for Endangered Languages. [More Information]
Thomas, M., Harris, A. (2018). Expeditionary Anthropology: Teamwork, Travel and the 'Science of Man'. New York: Berghahn Books (incl. Anthropology and the Expeditionary Imaginary: An Introduction to the Volume (pp. 1-34) [More Information]
Toltz, J., Boucher, A. (2018). Out of the Depths: Complexity, Subjectivity and Materiality in the Earliest Accounts of Holocaust Song-Making. East European Jewish Affairs, 48(3), 309-330. [More Information]
Turpin, M., Yeoh, C. (2018). An Aboriginal Women's Song from Arrwek, Central Australia. Musicology Australia, 40(2), 98-123. [More Information]
Turpin, M., Green, J. (2018). Rapikwenty: 'A loner in the ashes' and other songs for sleeping. Studia Metrica e Poetica, 5(1), 52-79. [More Information]