Amanda Babington
Lecturer in Music, School of Academic Studies
BMus (Hons), MA (Performance), MA (Musicology), PhD, FHEA
Email: [email protected]
- PhD Supervisor
- Module coordinator for PG module Repertoire Project
- Tutor for PG module Lecture Recital
- PG Mentor
- Elective tutor
- Theory Tutor
- Lecturer on MCP1 Module
- JRNCM tutor in Advanced Theory, Musicianship II and Sight-Singing
Amanda Babington’s publications include a major article on the letters between Charles Jennens (librettist of Messiah) and his Jacobite friend Edward Holdsworth. Her edition of Handel’s Dettingen Te Deum and Dettingen Anthem was published by the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe in 2015. And her PhD thesis (University of Manchester, 2010) was titled ‘Handel’s Messiah: the Creative Process’.
More recently, her research has turned towards French Baroque music and she is currently working on a research project exploring the repertoire potentially played by Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) on his Musette. Her debut solo Musette disc will be released in 2022 on the Deux-Elles label
Amanda regularly shares her research at conferences in the UK and Europe, and has given talks for a number of organisations and events, including Göttingen International Handel Festival, The Foundling Museum, London, and Manchester Camerata.
In addition to her musicological work, Amanda is a Baroque violinist, Recorder and Musette player. Specialising in 17th– and 18th-century repertoire, “Amanda soared magnificently whether on violin…on recorder…or on musette.” “Amanda’s performance was absolutely stunning and the audience responded with a much extended ovation.”
Artistic Director of Baroque In The North, Amanda is also a member of chamber ensembles AB24, Four’s Company and Aberdeen Early Music Collective. She has given masterclasses at various universities and conservatoires across the UK and Europe, from The University of Aberdeen to the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, Riga.
A Visiting Performance Fellow at Aberdeen University, she has been Director of the University of Manchester Baroque Orchestra since 2006.
As a violinist and recorder player she records and performs regularly in the UK and Europe with many of the leading British and European period-instrument ensembles, including Les Talens Lyrique, Dunedin Consort, Ex Cathedra, the Gabrieli Consort and Players, Academy of Ancient Music, Florilegium, and Fiori Musicali.
She appears on several recordings with Les Talens Lyrique and Ex Cathedra, as well as a recording of newly-edited and previously–unrecorded music by Giovanni Ruggieri (Aberdeen Early Music Collective, Vox Regis, 2018) and another of music by Gottfried Finger (Harmonious Society of Tickle Fiddle Gentlemen, Ramée, 2019).
Described as a ‘canary on amphetamines’ (for her performance of Vivaldi’s concerto for sopranino recorder), Amanda completed a Master’s degree in performance in 2018 at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, where she specialised on musette – 18thcentury French bagpipes. This makes her one of only a handful of musette players in the world. Her debut solo Musette album will be recorded in 2021 and released on the Deux-Elles label.
Personal website:
Current and Future Research
Research Interests:
- Handel
- Messiah
- Editing
- Performance Practice
- Musical culture in the North East of Scotland in the 18th century
- French Baroque music
- Music at the Stuart court in Rome
Publications:
- G. F Handel Te Deum for the Victory at the Battle of Dettingen, HWV 283, and Anthem for the Victory of Dettingen, HWV 265, edited for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe. Published Bärenreiter, 2016.
- ‘Musical References in the Jennens-Holdsworth Correspondence (1729-46)’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 45/1 (2014), 76-129.
- ‘Handel the Tutor’, Brio, 51/1 (2014), 16-22.
- ‘Handel’s Messiah: the Creative Process’. Re-written PhD thesis currently under consideration by Boydell and Brewer.
- ‘Saul in Buxton’, Early Music Review, 143 (2011), 18-19. Review.
- ‘Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690-1749): Two Serenatas’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 8/2 (2011). (recording review)
- ‘European Renaissance Music’, Early Music, 39/2 (2011). 7 (recording review)
- ‘Early British Song’, Early Music, 38/4 (2010), 611-614 (recording review).
- ‘Handel’s solo sonatas’, Early Music Performer, Issue II (March 2003), 15-23.
Research Funding
- The National Lottery Community Fund, 2020
- RMA Small Research Grant, 2013
- Music & Letters Award, 2011
Undergraduate Teaching
- Theory and Musicianship
- Music, Culture and Performance
- Performance Studies
- Research Electives
- Theory and musicianship (JRNCM)
Postgraduate Teaching
- PG Repertoire Project (Module coordinator)
- PG Freelance Musician (Module coordinator)
- PG Lecture Recital (Module tutor)
Research Supervision
Peggy Nolan, A practice-based enquiry into the correlation of Luigi Boccherini’s craft both as composer and cellist, towards the comprehension and publication of a performance practice method specific to Boccherini’s chamber music.
Professional Activity
Fellow of Advance HE (formerly Higher Education Academy)
Artistic Director, Baroque In The North
Visiting Performance Fellow, Univerity of Aberdeen
Director, University of Manchester Baroque Orchestra
Guest leader, Early Music Latvia/Collegium Musicuum Riga
Member of chamber ensembles AB24 Aberdeen Baroque, Aberdeen Early Music Collective, Four’s Company
Member of the Society for Tickle Fiddle Gentlemen, Ex Cathedra, Fiori Musicali
Violinist, Recorder player, Musette player
