Cheryll Duncan

Current and Future Research

My research broadly encompasses professional music culture in Britain during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, drawing on newly discovered archival material, particularly common law and equity lawsuits.

In press: 

For Grove Music Online: entries on John Cox (music seller, publisher and instrument dealer) and John Simpson (music publisher, engraver and instrument dealer)

Forthcoming

Gambling debts, music lessons and lawsuits: the origins of Lewis Granom’s Flute Treatise (1766). Cambridge University Press.

Selected presentations:

”Much want of judgment’? New evidence concerning Jane Barbier’. Women’s Studies Group 1558–1837 Annual Seminar Series (May 2021).

‘Giovanni Francesco Crosa and opera in London 1748-50: new evidence from the Court of Exchequer’. Royal Musical Association, 55th Annual Conference, University of Manchester and RNCM (September 2019).

‘Musical life in the King’s Bench Prison c.1760: new evidence from the Courts of Common Pleas and Exchequer’. Music in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 33rd Annual Conference, Foundling Museum, London (November 2017), also 46th Annual Conference of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, St Hugh’s College, Oxford (January 2017).

”Your Orator … hath for many years studied and practised the composing of Musick’: the royal licence as an early form of music copyright protection’. International conference on Music and Power in the Baroque Era, Complesso Monumentale di San Micheletto, Lucca, Italy (November 2016).

‘Henry Purcell and the construction of identity’. Music Biography Conference, Institute of Musical Research, London (9 April 2015).

‘Felice Giardini v. John Cox: new light on London concert life in the 1750s’. 43rd Annual Conference of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, St Hugh’s College, Oxford (January 2014).

‘Women on top: Geminiani v. Mrs Frederica and the case for legal documents in musicology’, RNCM Research Forum (December 2013).

‘Ferdinando Tenducci in a London court and prison’. 42nd Annual Conference of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, St Hugh’s College, Oxford (January 2013).

‘Caterina Galli’s finances in new Handel documents’. Handel Documents Study Day, The Open University, London (December 2010).

Postgraduate Teaching

Research Supervision

David Cane: Representations and intersections of queerness and disability in the stage works of Benjamin Britten. (Primary supervisor) Completed 2022.

Anna Wright: The supporters and benefactors of the Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM): musical patronage and philanthropy in Manchester, 1891–1920. (Primary supervisor).

Leighton Triplow (University of Melbourne): Constructs of gender and character representation in Purcellian song. (Joint supervisor during Exchange programme). Completed 2019.

Amy Smith (Lancaster University): Order and Authority: Libel in Rural England, 1603–1640. (Secondary supervisor).

Publications

Authored Books

• • Cheryll Duncan, Felice Giardini and Professional Music Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London, (Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2020).

Chapters in Books

• • Cheryll Duncan, ”Geminiani v. Mrs Frederica: Legal Battles with an Opera Singer”, in Geminiani Studies, ed. by Christopher Hogwood, (Bologna: Ut Orpheus, 2013), pp.399-411.

Journal Articles

• • Cheryll Duncan, ‘The Law and the Profits: Lewis Granom and the Royal Licence as a form of music copyright protection’, Music & Letters, 104 (2023), 374-404. https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcad028
  • Cheryll Duncan, ”Henry Purcell and the construction of identity: iconography, heraldry and the Sonnata’s of III Parts (1683)”, Early Music, 44 (2016), 271–288. doi:10.1093/em/caw031
  • Cheryll Duncan, ”New Purcell Documents from the Court of King’s Bench”, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 47 (2016), 1-23.
  • Cheryll Duncan, ”New Light on ‘Father’ Smith and the Organ of Christ Church, Dublin”, Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 10 (2015), 23-45.
  • Cheryll Duncan, ”A Debt contracted in Italy’: Ferdinando Tenducci in a London court and prison”, Early Music, 42 (2014), 219-230. 10.1093/em/cau028
  • Cheryll Duncan, ”’Young, Wild, and Idle’: New Light on Gaetano Guadagni’s Early London Career”, The Opera Journal, 46 (2013), 3-28.
  • Cheryll Duncan, ”Castrati and impresarios in London: two mid-eighteenth-century lawsuits”, Cambridge Opera Journal, 24 (2012), 43-65. 10.1017/S0954586712000134
  • Cheryll Duncan and David Mateer, ”An Innocent Abroad? Caterina Galli’s Finances in New Handel Documents”, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 64 (2011), 495-526. 10.1525/jams.2011.64.3.493

Review Articles

• • Opera and Politics in Queen Anne’s Britain by Thomas McGeary (2022), NABMSA Reviews, Cheryll Duncan, 2023, North American British Music Studies Association,
  • Music for French Kings: Amanda Babington (musette). CD. Deux-Elles, 2022, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Cheryll Duncan, 2023, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Online
  • Venanzio Rauzzini and the Birth of a New Style in English Singing by Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837, Cheryll Duncan, 2023, Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837, Online
  • The Siren of Heaven’: a glimpse into the life and works of Francesca Caccini (2017), Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2018, ACMRS Publications,
  • Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music by Anna Beer (2017), Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Cheryll Duncan, 2018, ACMRS Publications,
  • The Lives of George Frederic Handel by David Hunter (2015), Eighteenth-Century Music, Cheryll Duncan, 2017, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Conference Contributions

• • Giovanni Francesco Crosa and opera in London 1748-50: new evidence from the Court of Exchequer ,  Royal Musical Association 55th Annual Conference, Manchester,  13 September 2019
  • Musical life in the King’s Bench Prison c.1760: new evidence from the Courts of Common Pleas and Exchequer ,  Music in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 33rd Annual Conference, London,  24 November 2017
  • ‘Your Orator … hath for many years studied and practised the composing of Musick’: the royal licence as an early form of copyright protection ,  Music and Power in the Baroque Era, Lucca, Italy,  11 November 2016
  • Henry Purcell and the construction of identity ,  Musical Biography: National Ideology, Narrative Technique, and the Nature of Myth, London,  9 April 2015
  • Felice Giardini v. John Cox: new light on London concert life in the 1750s ,  British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 43rd Annual Conference, Oxford,  8 January 2014 2014
  • Ferdinando Tenducci in a London court and prison ,  British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 42nd Annual Conference, Oxford,  5 January 2013 2013

Dictionary Entrys

• Duparc, (Anna Maria) Elisabeth Rossa. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. 2022.
• Duparc, Elisabeth. Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. 2021.
• Manfredini, Giuseppe. Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. 2014.

Professional Activity

Peer reviewer for:

Music & Letters

The London Journal 

Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle

Routledge