Austin Glatthorn

Current and Future Research

Austin’s first monograph, entitled Music Theatre and the Holy Roman Empire: The German Musical Stage at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2022), draws on a wealth of archival sources and digital tools to explore the extent to which the Holy Roman Empire delineated and networked a cultural entity that found expression through music for the German stage. His book uncovers how material and discursive networks mediated an entangled web of Central European theatres—networked by postal communication and mobility—that served as preconditions for a shared musico-theatrical culture. Austin’s other recent work appears in book chapters and with A-R Editions, Eighteenth-Century Music, Journal of Musicology, Music & Letters, and Journal of War & Culture Studies. His article ‘The Imperial Coronation of Leopold and Mozart, Frankfurt am Main, 1790’ won the Mozart Society of America’s Marjorie Weston Emerson Award, and his essay ‘The Legacy of “Ariadne” and the Melodramatic Sublime’ was a winner of the Music & Letters Centenary Prize Competition. Austin often creates editions of music long since heard for performance and has worked with student ensembles to stage the modern premieres of such works in public concerts in the US, UK, and Germany. His edition of the melodrama Philon und Theone (1779), for instance, was used to stage its world premiere in Vienna (2021) as was planned, but never realized in the eighteenth century. Together with Estelle Joubert (Dalhousie University, Canada), Austin is currently editing the Cambridge History of German Opera to the Early Nineteenth Century and serves as reviews editor for the journal Eighteenth-Century Music.

Research Areas

• Music, diplomacy, and empire
• Early modern cultural history
• Media and mobility
• Melodrama
• Digital Humanities

External Research Roles

Austin is a Visiting Fellow in Music at the University of Southampton, an Honorary Fellow of Durham University, and was elected a Fellow of the the Royal Historical Society in 2022.

Research Funding

Austin’s research has been funded by, among others, the British Academy, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

Undergraduate Teaching

Austin’s research helps inform his teaching. He holds a degree in education, and strives to provide students with a vibrant and engaging environment in which to explore music and the interrelated arts. He has taught at research-intensive and performance-focused institutions in the UK, US, and Canada and is passionate about helping students to explore digital tools to broaden their skillsets in music and the humanities more broadly.

Selected Outputs

Written Outputs

• Austin Glatthorn, ‘The Magic Flute in 1791’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Magic Flute, edited by Jessica Waldoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 61–82.
• Austin Glatthorn, Music Theatre and the Holy Roman Empire: The German Musical Stage at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
• Austin Glatthorn, ‘Staging Imperial Identity: Music Theatre, the Holy Roman Empire, and the French Revolutionary Wars’, Journal of War and Culture Studies, 14/2 (2021): 157-174.
• Georg Anton Benda, Philon und Theone, edited by Austin Glatthorn (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2020).
• Austin Glatthorn, ‘Sympathetische Aneignung: Höfische Gelegenheitsmelodramen um 1800’, in Das Melodram in Geschichte und Aufführungspraxis, edited by Ute Olmonsky and Christian Philipsen (Augsburg: Wißner, 2020), 109–127.
• Austin Glatthorn, ‘The Legacy of “Ariadne” and the Melodramatic Sublime’, Music & Letters, 100/2 (2019): 233-270.
• Austin Glatthorn, ‘In the Name of the Emperor: Representational Theater and the Princes of Thurn und Taxis’, The Journal of Musicology, 35/1 (2018): 1-41.
• Austin Glatthorn, ‘The Imperial Coronation of Leopold II and Mozart, Frankfurt am Main, 1790’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 14/1 (2017): 89-110.
• Austin Glatthorn and Estelle Joubert, eds, The Cambridge History of German Opera to the Early Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [Contracted; forthcoming]).

Practice Research/Compositions

• Georg Anton Benda (edited Austin Glatthorn), Philon und Theone, world premiere, performed by Teatro Barocco, conducted by Christoph U. Meier, Neuer Burgsaal Perhtoldsdorf and Schlosstheater Schönbrunn, Vienna, Austria (12-22 August; 1 September, 2021).
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (transcribed for winds by Anton Schneider c.1820; edited by Austin Glatthorn), selections from Don Giovanni, world premiere, performed by the Hartley Harmonie, St Michael’s Church, Southampton, United Kingdom (20 November 2015).

Public Presentations

• Austin Glatthorn, ‘An Empire of Theatres: The Habsburg Monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century’, Druckfrisch: Musik Theatre and the Holy Roman Empire, Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany, 16 May 2023.
• Austin Glatthorn, ‘German Opera on the Move’, 16th Congress of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Rome, Italy, 3–7 July 2023.
• Austin Glatthorn, ‘Letters from the German Stage: Correspondence, Mobility, and the Emergence of a Common Operatic Repertoire, c.1800’, Transnational Opera Studies Conference, Bayreuth, Germany, 23 June 2022.

Web Resources

• Austin Glatthorn, ‘Teaching German Romantic Melodrama’, in ‘Teaching Romanticism’, edited by Sarah Burdett and Jonathan Hicks, Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780–1840, 22 December 2022, romtext.org.uk/teaching-romanticism-xxxvi-romantic-melodrama/.

Professional Activity

• Reviews Editor, Eighteenth-Century Music (from 2022).
• Board of Directors, Mozart Society of America (2019–2022).
• Awards Committee, Mozart Society of America (2019–2022; chair, 2020).
• Ethics Committee, Department of Music, Durham University (2020–2021).
• Research Committee, Department of Music, Durham University (2020–2021).
• Advisory Board, Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, Durham University (2019–2021).